DD cheating with essays with AI

Not helpful to you, but Unis have an increasingly clear policy about the use of ChatGPT. It is allowed as long as referenced. Schools will eventually catch up. But, I think it’s important to have the skill to write essays.

It seems to be a problem. One issue is scanning software can also highlight genuine text as false.

I know of one teacher who has his students write short answers in class without using their phone or laptop rather than send them home to generate an answer.

So having first said that schools don't use such software at all, you are now saying it doesn't work. This is also wrong. There are tools that detect with 98%+ accuracy.

Install security software on her laptop, with parental controls. Then block her access to every AI essay generating site you can find.

Tell her that these results she gets in these essays mean nothing. And that she can't use AI to do her exams (she might get away with coursework tbh but I coursework only gets you so far) in a few years.

If she doesn't listen then on her own head be it. By year 9 she should be old enough to understand the consequences of cheating and if you can't force her to study properly or not cheat.

Parents always want their children to do well, but sometimes the best thing you can do is let them learn the hard way.

I assume the schools are using Turnitin (it's the standard package for checking plagiarism for coursework, EPQs etc). The AI doesn't write its own stuff - it combines from Web searches. So if those sentences or sentence fragments exist somewhere online, Turnitin will flag it.

It would be fun to watch a Chat GPT versus Turnitin battle. Kind of like a wordy Robot Wars!

How can it detect that they're using AI? I thought it gives a different answer every time you ask the same question?

It's often quite clear when students have copied and pasted from AI sources. The grammar and vocabulary rarely matches the pupil's own writing style and in my experience it rarely answers the question.

I tried to use AI to write me some mock exam answers to use with students. Even with very detailed prompts it didn't produce a high quality response that matched what I'd been teaching.

We do not rely on turnitin to do the job. However, it's a useful back up when the student and parent "swear down" that they didn't cheat.

Turnitin now has an AI detector.

It is quite funny that schools are relying on "detection software" to detect AI essays - they are really very obvious if you, as a human, read them. Why would a teacher not bother reading an essay and rely on a computer to spot another computer's work?

Detection software is notoriously bad at detecting AI generated essays.

The school should pick up on this. It’s becoming a real issue but, as an English teacher, I can spot an AI essay easily. No child writes like that. You could also tell the school your concerns so they are aware. Our school has moved to a lot more timed essays now to avoid this issue.

For anyone who is relying on a scanner to detect this, please try generating something in ChatGTP yourself and then paste that into the scanner. The detection rate is not great.

I'll be honest, I would have an absolute fit if I found out my daughter was doing this. I would sit her down and we would be having a serious discussion about how immoral, lazy and plain wrong it is to do this. How utterly disappointed I was that she thought that it was acceptable and how I had brought her up better than to be a lying cheat. Then I would make her explain why she thought taking such a riduclous shortcut was a good idea. I would then pick holes in every argument and I would not stop until she understood what she was doing was wrong and why. Then I would tell her teacher and ask them to check every essay she had done and she would be redoing them sat at the dining room table.

Overkill? Almost certainly, I'm usually a fairly laid back parent who guides rather than steers, but I absolutely abhor liars and cheats. This may seem like a minor "just a lazy teenager being a lazy teenager" thing but it's the thin edge of a wedge that could well see them fail their exams.

My y9 dd got a detention for this this week . Of course schools notice

I think schools and unis are going to have to work with it (like calculators) rather than against it -teach children how to use the right prompts (which you can only do if you understand) and edit the waffle out (training them to judge what is waffle and what is informative ) is also useful and can't be done unless they understand
So use of AI saves time and aids understanding

Scans are done in my DDs school too. And anecdotally I've a couple of teacher friends who say it's a growing problem and they paste suspicious essays through checkers to see % probability of it being AI generated.

Am another one who reckons there's an opportunity here for her to learn to proofread well. What kind of essays, OP? I don't think DS's school uses essays any more for homework. Haven't done for years. Is this a private school?

We do, but not routinely in year 9.

If I suspected someone was doing this, I would check though.

I hope she is at least learning proof reading skills as a result. Most "essays" written by AI are frankly very obvious and full of rubbish.

Can you talk to her about the ways she can use it to help her, rather than just cracking down? It might make her more receptive. Ds, fir example, has been using it to help with GCSE mock revision, by getting it to write questions to test him on his subjects. Try to talk to her about being smart in how she can use the AI but still develop her own skills.

schools using scanning software to catch kids out

that’s not true

She must be very good at it as schools using scanning software to catch kids out

Do they have any sort of end of term assessment- something done in school that will show her the effect of doing this?