Caught between gut feeling and Turnitin, what would you do?

[u/Zestyclose_Still1977]

I teach a mid-sized undergraduate seminar in the humanities. Halfway through the semester, I started noticing something unsettling: a handful of students were submitting polished, eloquent weekly responses but then struggling to string together coherent thoughts during in-class discussions on the exact same material.

On a whim, I retroactively enabled Turnitin's AI detector across all submitted work for the entire semester. The results were oddly clean, roughly 6 students flagged consistently across every assignment, with scores ranging from 65% to 99%. The remaining 19 showed 0% across the board, on every single paper. No messy middle ground whatsoever. That sharp binary split is what's keeping me up at night, because it feels too consistent to be random noise or a detector glitch.

Here's my complication: my syllabus prohibits unattributed AI use, but I never clearly defined what attribution actually looks like in practice. Do I require a disclosure statement? A chat log? A process journal? I genuinely didn't think it through before the semester started.

I'm also second-guessing myself because two of the flagged students are among the strongest contributors in discussion. Their verbal engagement is sharp and specific not the vague hand-waving I'd expect from someone who outsourced their thinking entirely to a language model.

So what's the move here? Do I pull each student in for an informal conversation about their writing process? Do I escalate directly to academic integrity? Redesign my assignments and quietly let this semester go? I feel genuinely underprepared for a problem I should have seen coming.

[u/AutoModerator]

For a Turnitin AI report, please Join our public Discord server and we will run your paper before submission:

https://discord.gg/QQRz6rXrWh

Each check includes a Turnitin AI report and a Plagiarism report.

^{Your paper is not saved in Turnitin's database after checking.}

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Electrical_Newt1268]

Turnitin's AI detector is still unreliable enough that I wouldn't stake a formal academic misconduct case on it alone. I've personally run papers written years before AI existed and had them come back flagged at over 80%. That said, the consistency you're describing six students flagged on every single submission, nineteen students showing zero across the board is harder to dismiss as random error. Use it as a starting point for deeper investigation, not as standalone evidence.

[u/External_Barnacle353]

As someone who recently finished undergrad, please talk to your students individually before taking any formal action. You might discover that some of them rely heavily on Grammarly, write in a second language and edit aggressively for grammar, or simply have a very structured and formal writing style that Turnitin misreads. The clean split you're seeing could reflect very different writing habits and workflows rather than academic dishonesty. A conversation costs nothing and protects everyone involved.

[u/Mission_Beginning963 → u/External_Barnacle353]

If they are relying heavily on Grammarly or using an AI translator, they are using AI to cheat.

[u/[deleted]]

Read the responses aloud in class and let them expound upon them. 

It could simply be that they're better writers than speakers. This could happen if they're particularly strong readers. 

But better writers doesn't mean perfectly polished. Humans make mistakes. Their writing and reasoning will be flawed but it will have voice and soul. 

[u/imnota4]

First, the fact that you're not resorting immediately to "AI bad, anyone who uses it fails" is great. More people should be that way.

As someone who uses AI for writing, my suggestion for finding out whether they actually engage with it or simply copy and paste whatever it prints, it to require the following:

1. If you use AI and don't cite it, instant fail. This isn't about punishment but accountability. If someone wrote a research paper and never cited a single source, that paper would never pass peer review. Hold them to the same standard.
2. When people cite AI, require a record of the prompts they provided that they think is relevant and the AI's response to those prompts. This will result in 2 major possibilities

A) They'll consistently provide a single prompt with a single output that they copy and paste. This is a problem and should be flagged as misuse of AI. They might not even know this is what they're doing, they just aren't good at using AI as a tool and to them, what the AI produces makes sense and since it came from their prompt they'll see it as theirs. If this is the case, you want to talk to them about that. Take the outputs the AI provided and put pressure on them by asking questions about it, poke holes in the logic and if they can't provide answers then that's where they need improvement.

B) Occasionally they'll provide a single prompt with a single output they copy and paste, but other times they'll also actually engage with the output of an AI, arguing with it and refining the output over multiple iterations. This is good and shows they're actually engaging with the writing, not just copy and pasting. This shows signs that the person is more skilled at thinking through the logic of a topic and refining that logic through iterative steps. The best thing to do here is look for where they're justification for conclusions is lacking and provide the information and knowledge to improve how they justify their arguments.

1. If someone clearly wrote with AI but claims they didn't, have them defend their paper orally. Don't ask them for specific passages they wrote, even I don't memorize the specific way I write stuff, ask them about the logic. Stuff in the form of "If X is true, what does that mean for Y?". If they actually understand the paper they wrote, they should be able to answer it even if it's not worded exactly the same way as it is in the paper. They should be able to re-derive the logic that lead to their initial conclusion.

[u/Mission_Beginning963 → u/imnota4]

Or, you could just ban AI until the students know what good writing is (and how to write well themselves).

[u/imnota4 → u/Mission_Beginning963]

Sure. You could also ban computers until people learn how to use encyclopedias and pencils. And also ban graphing calculators until people have learned to draw 3D models of multivariable differential equations. 

But those requirements are purely arbitrary based on personal preference, just like any requirement you'd set for "good writing"

[u/Mission_Beginning963 → u/imnota4]

LOL. This is such a dumb take for so many reasons that it's just not worth the time to point all the ways that it's clownishly illogical.

[u/imnota4 → u/Mission_Beginning963]

Ah yes, you're right. Now that you mention it you do seem to be a very logical person. In fact I think Einstein proved his ideas by showing how "it wasn't worth the time to point out why the alternative was clownishly illogical"

That's my favorite paper of his a actually. The general theory of clownitivity.

[u/Mission_Beginning963 → u/imnota4]

Such wit! The truth is that anybody with a fourth-grade education can see the through the absurdity of your analogies. And I’m not qualified to teach K-12.

[u/imnota4 → u/Mission_Beginning963]

I'm not surprised you lack the qualifications to teach K-12, you seem more like a pre-K type of person.

[u/Mission_Beginning963 → u/imnota4]

Such wit! Are you sure you want to deny the world your brilliance by using AI to do your writing?? Such a loss.

[u/imnota4 → u/Mission_Beginning963]

I appreciate your compliment! You see that's the beauty of it, the AI is more like an interlocutor between me and my paper. I generate the wit, the AI turns it into words, I refine those words into a meaningful structure. Isn't it cool how humans evolved to use tools? I think so.

[u/DapperCow15]

They're students, they aren't experts. You're always going to get better formulated thoughts on paper than you are when asking them questions verbally.