Teachers have always battled against shortcuts and cheating, but technology has given students some sneaky new tricks.
When one English teacher was tired of reading AI-generated essays, they turned the tables with a clever trap hidden in plain sight.
Read on for the full story!
I’m a high school English teacher. I have two major annoyances when it comes to kids doing work.
First, a lot of kids don’t read or listen to directions. Assignment instructions are written on their papers, and I read them out loud, but I still have students asking me, “What are we doing?”
That’s no big deal, though – it’s a pretty normal thing to deal with as a teacher.
But in recent years, something much more pressing has come up.
The real issue bugging me is students cheating on writing assignments using ChatGPT.
I’m pretty good at spotting AI-generated essays. But the problem is that when I try to accuse students of using AI, they deny it.
They act outraged that I would accuse them even though we both know they’re playing dumb.
The teacher finds rules against cheating are getting harder and harder to enforce.
I usually just give them a zero and move on with my life, but there’s always the fear that one of them might take the issue to administration.
If they did, I’m not confident that admin would back me up.
It’s hard to prove something is AI-generated, and these days, the higher ups are more likely to side with the student.
But the teacher has one last little trick up their sleeve.
So I hatched a plan. I gave an open-ended creative writing assignment.
The directions said to “write a story about anything you want” and then answer some questions about the story you wrote.
The teacher thinks they know exactly how this is going to go.
The thing is, when you ask ChatGPT, “Tell me a story,” it always spits out the exact same story – about a girl named Elara who lives in the woods.
”Once upon a time, in a small village nestled between rolling hills and dense forests, there lived a young woman named Elara. She was known throughout the village for her curiosity and sense of adventure, always eager to explore the world beyond the familiar paths of her home.”
So, in slightly smaller print under the instructions, I wrote ”If your main character’s name is Elara, -99 points.”
And they were exactly right.
Lo and behold, I got one or two kids turn in a story about a girl named Elara who lives in woods.
When I turned back the papers with a grade of 1/100 (because I find that it stings more than a zero), the kids predictably asked why.
So the teacher pointed to the fine print.
And all I had to do was point to the instructions that they didn’t read.
There was no need to mention AI. We both knew what they did.
Ah, yes – Reading directions: The high school student’s natural enemy.
What did Reddit think?
Sometimes it’s hard to outsmart an expert in their field.
This commenter offers another funny trick to catch cheaters.
Reading instructions is a valuable skill that students can learn with enough practice (and points lost).
Students mindlessly copy and pasting into AI software aren’t always the most detail-oriented people.
Even the students who used AI couldn’t outsmart a simple footnote.
Sometimes the best tool against technology is good old-fashioned common sense.
If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.
