How teachers can identify AI-generated work and combat cheating

CHEATING on school work has existed for as long as teaching has. Back then, it used to be a student completing their assignment using someone else’s work, but in recent times, it has evolved, keeping up with today’s digital era.

In the rapidly evolving educational technology landscape, teachers now face the sophisticated challenge of identifying AI-generated academic work in students’ assignments.

There are clear tell-tale signs that make it easy to spot when a student has used an AI tool to draft their entire assignment, particularly an essay. These include ambiguous language and frequent repetition of key terms from the assignment prompt throughout the essay.

According to Rachel Kane, a professor of strategic communications at Arizona State University, students typically repeat key terms from the assignment prompt in their writing like an AI tool does, which often reads like an SEO-driven piece.

Another way that teachers can stay ahead of their students is by understanding the capabilities of AI tools.

One effective strategy is to copy and paste all your assignments into a tool like ChatGPT at the beginning of the school term and ask it to do the work for you.

That way, you’ll be aware of the type of results it provides and better equipped to catch AI-written assignments.

Additionally, collecting a writing sample from each student at the beginning of the term can serve as a way to gauge their writing styles.

You can require that they submit a short, lighthearted essay related to your subject, that you can have in hand to later use to compare against what you suspect might be AI-written work.

Lastly, this is not a preventative measure however, should you suspect a student of using AI to cheat, you can ask for a rewrite of the same assignment to verify authenticity. If the work is truly their own, they should be able to produce a version of similar quality.

IOL