Assistant to the Professor: This is my policy. I don't know if it's the best. But I just give students a very low grade when they use LLMs because the writing is simply just bad.

This is my policy. I don't know if it's the best. But I just give students a very low grade when they use LLMs because the writing is simply just bad.

I've been using "was not sufficiently responsive to the assignment" because it never is.

I use "focus problems" and "analysis needs further development" because the same vague statements are repeated.

yup. Make your assignment parameters very clear and specific, and then make that the most essential part of the grade.

Yep. Also doesn’t cite sources or course material while adding extraneous information that wasn’t in the course.

It might be a selection effect thing: we don't notice the really good cheating attempts, so we just remember how awful most cheaters are. But damn, most cheaters really suck at cheating. Because, you know, lazy is as lazy does.

I had a bright student who wanted to make honors, so they cobbled together 4 papers (Robert Bates, Elise Guiliano, two others, a smidge of wikipedia), and the language was just wrong. When I went back to documenting it page by page, the "I thank Bob Bates for his comments" was a bit of a giveaway.

Ha. Once had a very well-written paper that gave away the game when the final paragraph started “In the remaining chapters, I will…”

oh noes!!!

some do try to cite, or will add random citations if prompted. They just aren't appropriate or properly formatted citations.

I get that it's a complete time suck. But it's depressing how quickly technology has made plagiarism inexorable. I got plenty of bad grades in my time because I wrote the paper at the last minute. But at least it was my own lousy work. The punishment for plagiarism should be expulsion.

at my school, the paperwork to charge a student officially with plagiarism is tedious and difficult to prove when using AI. And don't bring up early, bad pseudo AI like Turnitin - that's just weak evaluation from a third party instead of the instructor.

Maybe - and give me some rope here, I'm spitballing - this "students are customers" stuff from administrations was a bad idea.

Let ‘em fail on the merits (or lack thereof). Probably easier than trying to prove plagiarism and yields the same results.

I teach a grantwriting class. I tell my students to go ahead use LLMs if they think it will help them write a better proposal. Sort of like the bad plastic surgery issue. Maybe some are using it well, but I can sure see the ones that aren’t.

I’ve done the same thing! Particularly with teaching 5 classes a semester, this seems to work best.

precisely the correct approach and the correct signal

Should be an automatic F. If you’re just there to check off boxes rather than actually learn the material, you’re just another scammer.

and many of the students just want a passing grade, so it does not change their motivation or incentive to do better. Education has been made transactional by the emphasis on quantification and data points, and they are gliding along with the wave created by their elders

Post