DD cheating with essays with AI

[Meandmyfeelings]

I have realised that my year 9 daughter is using AI to write her essays. I’m sure this must be a fairly common problem but how do I stop this? She is a very wilful child who we battle with homework with anyway. She needs a laptop for work. How are schools coping with this? She said the teachers are not noticing. Ultimately it’s her that will come unstuck at exam times. Any advice please

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I teach university level and have run my essay questions through AI out of curiosity. None of the responses have ever been worth more than a C, the answers from AI are too vague and don't really answer the question properly, they're more of an information dump on the topic. What sort of marks is your daughter getting on her cheat essays?
I'm curious to know what schools are doing about this.

Turnitin doesn't pick up the ai if they have run it through a secondary program like gramerly. And even without the secondary program turnitin is crap at detecting it. The one thing ai is currently really shit at is critical appraisal and referencing but I'm not sure how much of that they are expected to do it secondary school.

I say this as a lecturer in higher education where we suspect a huge amount of our students are using it and we are banging our heads up against a brick wall trying to figure out assessments avoiding it. All while higher education ( at least our uni) is still saying we should be doing online exams 🤦‍♀️

Also proving it becomes incredibly difficult the programs only give a % chance and have actually been shown to be biased against non native speakers so that's not ideal.

i wouldn’t go all hellfire-and-damnation. Most kids occasional veer off the path of ethical perfection when faced with a “final straw” grotty homework assignment at some stage - it’s similar to “can I just borrow your answers and copy” - you know you shouldn’t but it doesn’t feel like crime of the century.

So I would say to her, next time she’s tempted - write her own into and essay plan, THEN let AI have a go, then read the AI answer and put it aside and rewrite in her own words

Tell her at first it will be her and slow and she won’t feel her version is superior

but in time she’ll realise she is capable of better than the AI. And also she’ll learn where AI tools can or can’t help her be more effective

She will ultimately get a better quality output AND wean herself off the AI OR learn how to be so effective with AI tools that she can achieve better-than-human results - which after she passes her school exams is actually a skill she can use in real life.

We had a memo from our school last week about this.

They have stated clearly that teachers can spot an essay generated by AI at 30 paces and any such work submitted will be marked 0 and a detention will be earned.

They have also pointed out that not doing the work now, during the course, almost certainly means a fail at GCSE. All pupils have had that fact explained to them bluntly.

I'd explain the risks to your DD, then let her get on with it. If her teachers are any good, they will react in the same way, and she'll get the message. And if she doesn't, I guess she'll be retaking in a couple of years time.

I think this is a very good point.

I work in a technology field and colleagues have been interested in looking at some of the coding possibilities. All have said that you need to understand the question you want it to answer as well as understanding what the answer should look like.

How can it detect that they're using AI? I thought it gives a different answer every time you ask the same question?
The giveaways are in the vocabulary used and the sentence structure.
I also find the big giveaway is that the question set hasn't been answered in a way that suggests familiarity with teaching materials too.

Ultimately it won’t do her much good. Essays at AL, and assignments at University level will show up pirated material, and the comeback will be swift and sharp.

Her teachers will know the difference between what she produces in lessons and what miraculously appears as homework anyway. I hope they have the decency to speak to her about it before she gets too far into the mindset of not trying because cheating is easier.

‘I teach university level and have run my essay questions through AI out of curiosity. None of the responses have ever been worth more than a C, the answers from AI are too vague and don't really answer the question properly, they're more of an information dump on the topic’

no, but you could ask for a bullet pointed suggested structure. And then for each suggested topic ask it to write a paragraph.

Then ask it to critique it’s own work and then rewrite it based on those critiques.

You might find that the grade you’d give improves with the improvement in prompts.

and all this will take literally about a minute and a half.

She'll come unstuck at assessment time, so just explain this to her. Failing to practice essay writing herself will means she fails her in school assessments. Even if she doesn't see the value of practicing now, she will sooner or later. It'll be very obvious to everyone what she's doing if she does well on homework, but bombs assessments. Her teachers probably do already know what she's doing. Use failure as a learning opportunity.

So easy to get through any ai checker if you use correct prompts.

I know someone who has just completed an entire diploma level 5 with chat gtp. Despite the uni’s many lectures that they can pick it up, they never picked up any of her work.

It can be used in a positive way. I've used it at work to rework or rephrase something I've been stuck on. I sometimes have to write marketing waffle and this isn't my background so I sometimes use AI to help me get the tone right or rework something.

It's very easy to see how kids can fall into the trap of relying on this for essays. Perhaps you need to monitor her computer a bit more or tell the teachers you suspect she is using it?

When I was in high school / sixth form, I had to email in my essays and teachers wouldn't accept handwritten ones.

AI is here to stay, and your daughter will be much better prepared for future work if she can use AI, learn how to use the right prompts, fact check the work and edit it to make it clearer. I know that's not a popular opinion.

Actually, there are lots of people that won’t come unstuck at assessment time because of this. Lots of bright kids can pick things up quickly and are still learning whilst using chat gtp. They are just skipping the laborious task of proving that they are learning to the teacher. Learning has been really adapted to slow learners over last 20 years. Read it and then copy it out, that’s pretty much learning now. Cleverer kids can actually just suck that info up on the first read.

So easy to get through any ai checker if you use correct prompts.

I know someone who has just completed an entire diploma level 5 with chat gtp. Despite the uni’s many lectures that they can pick it up, they never picked up any of her work.
To get something that would meet the assessment criteria, cover the appropriate module/course content and get to the point of it being appropriately written, the person writing the prompts would need to know enough about the topic to write and rewrite decent prompts. It's not going to give them the depth of knowledge as actually learning material.

A lot depends on what the student wants to achieve. If they want to learn about a topic then there isn't a short cut to developing decent knowledge and skills. If they're looking for a quick way to tick some boxes and get a certificate then AI can do that.

Tell her that if she carries on cheating, you'll tell her teachers. Seriously. This kind of thing needs stamping down on, she needs to know you don't condone it. It will do her no good at all in the long term.

Exactly this

I find a lot of people don't know how to use AI tools to get the best out of them

Most expect to be able to feed in a question and if it doesn't instantly produce an A grade piece of work then that means it's rubbish

My husband (lecturer) caught two students cheating by using Google translate into and out of two different languages - it dodged the plagiarism checker and produced authentically broken English of the type that might be produced by a non native speaker! He originally thought one had copied the other Ironically, the topic was efficiency and he had to admit they'd solved the problem of "I haven't done my work for tomorrow's deadline" efficiently...so good business sense but a fail on academic honesty.