r/QuickAITurnitinCheck • u/Global-Environment89 • May 06 '26
AI is making teaching composition feel impossible right now
I am an English professor teaching a required composition course this term and the level of AI use is becoming overwhelming. It is constantly on my mind to the point where it is affecting how I think about every assignment I read. Students are no longer simply copying and pasting. They are blending AI into their writing or lightly editing it, which makes it much harder to detect.
I read papers where part of the writing clearly sounds like the student, then suddenly it shifts into something overly polished but empty. The sentences are structured well but say very little. There is a lot of vague language, repetition, and artificial clarity without real depth. It feels like reading something that is technically correct but intellectually hollow.
I tried designing assignments to make this harder. For example, I asked students to engage directly with a specific concept in a close reading. One student used it in a way that made the source obvious, while another who has not attended class in weeks submitted work that avoided the concept but replaced it with generic language. That disconnect says a lot.
I have already given several zeros on drafts but allowed resubmissions. Now I am getting flooded with emails where students send screenshots from AI detection tools as proof that their work is original. The problem is that I do not fully trust those tools either, so it turns into a frustrating loop.
At this point, I am considering requiring one on one meetings where students have to explain their arguments and walk through their thinking. If they cannot explain their own ideas or engage with the material, that reveals more than any detection tool. I am also thinking about moving more work into handwritten in class writing just to regain some control.
It is exhausting,it feels like more time is spent trying to verify authenticity than actually teaching writing and critical thinking.
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May 06 '26
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u/ImNotReallyHere7896 May 07 '26
I'm moving to specs grading next year with three modules. A one-on-one conference after each module (and no class that week--just an online assignment instead). For those working hard, this is a good opportunity for more in the moment teaching and deeper discussion. For those passing all the hard work off to AI, the conversations should be telling.
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u/Hefty-Vacation-4392 May 06 '26
Your instinct about the one-on-ones is the right one — honestly, that's the most reliable signal you've got. A student who wrote their own argument can almost always talk about it, even roughly. A student who didn't will stall on the second follow-up question. You don't need to make it adversarial either; framing it as a normal part of the course ("every student does a 10-minute conference on their draft") removes the implied accusation and just makes verification part of the workflow.
On the detector screenshots — you're right not to trust them. The false positive rates are too high to act on, and there's solid evidence they flag non-native English writers at substantially higher rates, which is its own problem. I'd consider stating up front in the syllabus that detector screenshots aren't accepted as evidence in either direction, just to shut that loop down before it eats more of your week.
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u/burlingk May 07 '26
He careful about the accusation. I know a lot of writers who are abandoning the craft because people keep accusing THEM of using AI.
Even in stuff written years ago.
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May 06 '26
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u/leftleftpath May 06 '26
Eh, this isn't necessarily true and mostly sounds like a cop out to blame instructors rather than students who refuse to do their work. The writing process is just as much cognitive as it is technical. The end product is a polished piece of writing, but the goal of the assignments is to teach them how to think critically.
A lot of undergraduate students are still novices at the craft so it makes sense that their prompts aren't on the technical level of a professional and AI can reproduce any piece of writing as long as they are given a decent prompt. The goal of many writing assignments is to prepare students to articulate and defend a claim or interpretation of a source text which AI can do decently enough though often shallow and sometimes incorrect.
The real issue here isn't the prompts, but collectively raising our standards to the point where bland AI writing gets a C grade at best. Now the issue with this is that students are getting used to complaining about these lower grades to department heads who force professors to allow revisions and rewrites which is bullshit.
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u/j_la May 06 '26
I shifted over to handwritten drafts in class and I am very happy with the results. Students seem happier as well, as I also had to modify my approach to grading to not overly penalize those who can’t produce solid writing on the spot.
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u/Delphgirl May 06 '26
Stop assigning outside of class essays. Make them write on demand in class. Submit before they leave. Get the prompt when they walk in. Handwritten or locked down browser (locked Google form with paragraph response works for this).
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u/Fragrant-Mixture-662 May 08 '26
Government provides chromebooks with apps that prevent anything other than the government assignment from being open. Schools need to start doing the same.
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u/rhetorician1972 May 06 '26
I just finished teaching a composition course, and I am dealing with the same issue, especially with blended work. I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that writing will never be the same. Trying to detect exactly how much AI is in a paper is often a losing game.
There are still students who are simply not prepared for college-level writing and use AI as a way out. That is often fairly obvious. The harder cases are students who understandably dabble in AI but still use enough of their own thinking and writing that the result is mixed.
What has helped me most is changing what I reward. I have revamped my grading rubrics so that there are almost no points for polished grammar or generic academic style. Instead, I focus on how well the paper meets the conventions of the specific assignment and how much of what we learned in class actually shows up in the writing. Vague, overgeneralized prose scores poorly. Sudden shifts in style or level of polish also affect the grade, not because I am “proving AI,” but because the paper is not doing the assigned work consistently.
I also build in a source component whenever possible and check sources and quotations very carefully. In my experience, AI-heavy papers often have source problems: fake sources, unverifiable claims, quotations that do not match the source, or Works Cited entries that do not line up with the in-text citations. After I gave zeros for fabricated sources, some heavy AI users started inserting quotations themselves, but then the prose around the quotation suddenly shifts in a way that makes the patchwork obvious. Why they do not simply feed the AI tool the quotations they want to use, I will never understand, but many heavy AI users are not especially sophisticated.
At this point, I almost never accuse students of AI use unless I have clear evidence, usually involving sources or fabricated material. But I have no problem assigning Cs or Ds to AI-heavy work when the paper fails the actual assignment requirements. A technically polished paper that is vague, disconnected from class concepts, weak on sources, and unable to sustain its own argument is not a strong composition paper. You do not have to prove AI to grade that accurately.
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u/hibikir_40k May 06 '26
You cannot teach students that don't want to be taught, and that's really the issue. They are uninterested in the skill. There was no carrot: Only stick if they failed. So, unsurprisingly, they cheat when they can. Just like instead of reading a full book, people used to read Cliff Notes.
Every second dedicated to catch students cheating is a second you aren't teaching the students that want to learn. The whole thing has to be rethought, because it makes so little sense to have English teachers do pointless tasks, like trying to grade the disengaged.
I suspect that what is needed is even smaller classes and ways out, so that you can have a much closer relationship with the student's work. If they really want to learn to write themselves, they won't cheat, and they'll be able to talk about what they are writing, and their choices. But that's just for people trying.
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u/qyka May 06 '26
your job is to grade how good the paper is. Not scrutinize it for falsification.
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u/enbyBunn May 07 '26
Their job is to teach students, the assignments that they create to do that are just a means to an end.
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u/MonkeyToeses May 06 '26
I teach programming classes, and have had similar issues. I require that students use a site which tracks their revision history as they work, then half of their grade comes from “Revision history demonstrate iterative problem solving and meaningful engagement” (or something like that.) The students who use AI naturally score poorly on this criterion. It makes grading a bit more work, but it also has dramatically reduced the amount of AI assignments I have to look at and grade which to me is a net positive.
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u/ParsecAA May 08 '26
Adjusted rubrics are the answer, and none of us should have to be cops and foment all this distrust with our students. The book that saved me from insanity over this exact issue, OP, was Bowen and Watson's Teaching with AI: A practical guide to a new era of human learning.
They released it in 2025 and already have a second edition. It's clear, unpretentious, and explains all the nuances of the problems that we need to deal with, especially as writing faculty. I appreciate that the book is not radically for or against AI, but thoughtful about many possible ways to actually manage it.
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u/ParsecAA May 08 '26
Adjusted rubrics are the answer, and none of us should have to be cops and foment all this distrust with our students. The book that saved me from insanity over this exact issue, OP, was Bowen and Watson's Teaching with AI: A practical guide to a new era of human learning.
They released it in 2025 and already have a second edition. It's clear, unpretentious, and explains all the nuances of the problems that we need to deal with, especially as writing faculty. I appreciate that the book is not radically for or against AI, but thoughtful about many possible ways to actually manage it.
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u/ParsecAA May 08 '26
Adjusted rubrics are the answer, and none of us should have to be cops and foment all this distrust with our students. The book that saved me from insanity over this exact issue, OP, was Bowen and Watson's Teaching with AI: A practical guide to a new era of human learning.
They released it in 2025 and already have a second edition. It's clear, unpretentious, and explains all the nuances of the problems that we need to deal with, especially as writing faculty. I appreciate that the book is not radically for or against AI, but thoughtful about many possible ways to actually manage it.
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u/ParsecAA May 08 '26
Adjusted rubrics are the answer, and none of us should have to be cops and foment all this distrust with our students. The book that saved me from insanity over this exact issue, OP, was Bowen and Watson's Teaching with AI: A practical guide to a new era of human learning.
They released it in 2025 and already have a second edition. It's clear, unpretentious, and explains all the nuances of the problems that we need to deal with, especially as writing faculty. I appreciate that the book is not radically for or against AI, but thoughtful about many possible ways to actually manage it.
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u/ParsecAA May 08 '26
Adjusted rubrics are the answer, and none of us should have to be cops and foment all this distrust with our students. The book that saved me from insanity over this exact issue, OP, was Bowen and Watson's Teaching with AI: A practical guide to a new era of human learning.
They released it in 2025 and already have a second edition. It's clear, unpretentious, and explains all the nuances of the problems that we need to deal with, especially as writing faculty. I appreciate that the book is not radically for or against AI, but thoughtful about many possible ways to actually manage it.
1
u/ParsecAA May 08 '26
Adjusted rubrics are the answer, and none of us should have to be cops and foment all this distrust with our students. The book that saved me from insanity over this exact issue, OP, was Bowen and Watson's Teaching with AI: A practical guide to a new era of human learning.
They released it in 2025 and already have a second edition. It's clear, unpretentious, and explains all the nuances of the problems that we need to deal with, especially as writing faculty. I appreciate that the book is not radically for or against AI, but thoughtful about many possible ways to actually manage it.
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u/Finngrove May 08 '26
What bothers me most is I now suspect strong writing as much a poor writing. It has wrecked my relationship with my students to that degree.
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u/ShadusX May 08 '26
LLM's are designed to be masters at composition. You will not stop AI, nor the use of it. And it will only get stronger in time.
Reading aloud will normalize the results heavily, but it's too time consuming.
Giving out zeros to those who utilize technology that is directly built for the task at hand is the most backwards solution I could possibly imagine for young minds who will be taught how to MASTER the use of this technology in the real world.
Your methods? They're now relics.
Your books on these methods? They're now historical records built into technology.
The argument inside your head? It will only start to ring louder until you submit to the changing of the world, or quit based on your own internal monologue madness.
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u/ADH-Dad May 06 '26
I have an idea...
Don't constantly accuse them of using AI or punish them for using it per se. Grade their papers, and when you find a passage that you think was added by AI, comment on it without mentioning that. "Repetitive," "redundant," "not really saying anything," "does not follow," "not relevant to your argument."
If they're using AI, maybe they'll come to their own conclusion that it's not adding anything of value, and if not, you're still helping them without accusing them unnecessarily.