NEA - ChatGTP

Also not things you should be mentioning in your son's defence..

Principle! 🤦‍♀️

Paying someone to write your essay would also get you disqualified. It's the same principal really and students are most definitely aware of the consequences of submitting work that is not their own.

I suspect the number of children who have this level of support are extremely low. I barely understood the question in DS1 A Level History coursework let alone had enough knowledge to write an A star worthy essay (literally only four marks can be dropped in order to get A star in history coursework) on US economic interventionism in 1970s South East Asia.

Sorry haven't got an answer for you, OP, I'm sorry you and your son is in this situation. It must be so difficult for students everywhere to avoid it. They all know about ChatGBT (whatever they might say) and it's not a big leap from using Google to then using ChatGBT, although of course it is cheating.

Saying that, the whole NEA issue has always been fraught as SO many students use their parents to 'input' (read: write the essays). It ranges from literally writing the essays to heavy editing to just a quick proof read. But not all kids have access to parents who have the ability to write A* essays so quite unfair.

U suspect that NEA (non exam assessments) and other assessed homework will soon be a thing of history and kids will need to do the work at school, where they can be supervised.

Tricky!

I've spoken to my DC off the back of this thread to see whether they're aware of it being used in school. Mine are at Year 13 A level stage and Year 11 GCSE stage. Both said they've had so many talks at school about it and about how the teachers can spot the difference in style a mile off. Younger DC has said he knows that some people use it for homework and haven't been caught (yet).

Its going to have a major impact on schools (and the rest of the world as the technology develops).

It's malpractice. Look at the JCQ regs, section 5.11.
My recollection is that the exam board will communicate with the school but that their decision will not be known until results. But that may not be correct.

This.

I asked out an essay question yesterday with references and the references it kicked out looked good on the face of it, but when I checked they didn't actually exist.

I agree with @OffTheTableMaurice

@Cliff1975 get your son to show you his Chat GPT log, it will show what he searched and what it returned back. Then have his submitted NEA work and compare. As a parent I would want to see it so that I could fight his corner depending on how much he relied on it. Knowledge is power here.

ChatGTP often makes up fake citations. I wouldn't be surprised if it made up something else and your DS put it in the report which has raised suspicion. I know people try to say it's amazing and undectable - but honestly it's not when a human looks at the work. Particularly at A- level.

It's not an appropriate source for research without doing further research to back up anything it suggests. If there's no evidence of further research on the laptop this won't help his case.

The college won't discuss the situation of other students with you, so it's irrelevant if someone used it at home. Your DS has used it in college and the college has good reason to believe he has cheated. I would imagine the college has a policy for this on their website, or if not you can ask for it - this will explain what happens next.

If the college believes the whole NEA is not his work then in theory he should get 0 marks. As it's a number of them, I doubt the college would want this to happen and they will avoid it if they can. But the college won't risk submitting work that may have come from another source so I doubt the research argument will hold.

Did you fact checking the essay and references? I asked it questions for test purposes and it was wildly inaccurate!

It might be a valid question but NEA doesn't require controlled conditions. We have to be able to trust our A level students.

If that's going to be your defence he's fucked.

If used properly it's hard to detect. Using it on school premises is a whole other level of ridiculous.

But it surely is a valid question? Schools block all sorts of things on their internet. Why wouldn't they block this? Or is it a case of this AI stuff coming in so quickly that IT departments haven't kept up?

This response will get you nowhere, I'm afraid. We don't want students to cheat. They know that if they cheat, they may well be punished with the loss of their grade.
Turnitin now has the facility to check for AI written work, according to the email I received this week.
The best case scenario is that - if he hasn't signed the declaration - they let him redo it from scratch. The worst case is that they report him to the board for plagiarism and he loses all NEA marks with that board.

I suspect any school that says they have software to detect it are bluffing.

Unless the student is typing in a really basic wide question and taking the first thing that comes out. Rather than asking series of questions to construct a more considered essay.

For example: 'write me an essay about WW2' is a pretty predictable question and will give you something similar to anyone else that asks the same question....

But: 'Write an introduction about the run up to WW2' then 'tell me about British's decision to join WW2' then 'add a section about the impacts WW2 had on farming' etc. is a less predictable series of questions that'll make it harder to prove.

They could argue that the work isn't of your usual standard or tone. And the referencing isn't good enough. But I doubt they could prove it was from GPT.

So... if this is the case he should be able to prove he only used it for research.

He needs to log into his CharGPT account and it'll shown chat history, date, time, his input and the AI output.

If the ChatGPT output doesn't match the essay/report then it's not plagiarism.

That said ChatGPT doesn't give references, which are usually required at a level, so if that was his source of all research I suspect he'd be in for a bad grade.

DCs school sent email letter last week advising they have software to pick this up and it would be considered as plagiarism if any students were found to be using it for school. They did say 1 student had been found to use it, obviously did not go into detail. We received a second letter this week with more info, but I can't find it now.

DC did go on to say that a friend's older sibling has an offer from Oxford and they used something similar to write their PS.

Our university can’t pick it up via turnitin.

I think they would struggle to prove he used it, aside from for research.

I set it an essay question I’ve recently set my students. First attempt was a decent discussion on the topic but no references. Then I asked it for references and got a decent list of references on the topic. So to be honest I can see the benefit of using as an adjunct to literature searching in a more traditional manner. And if I was a current student I’d certainly be using it for literature searching.

I suspect coursework will become a thing of the past because of these programmes. It’s such a shame for the kids who struggle with exams.