The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the way students learn and study, but it has also raised concerns about academic dishonesty. According to educators, the use of AI has become so prevalent that assigning writing outside of the classroom is like asking students to cheat. “The cheating is off the charts. It’s the worst I’ve seen in my entire career,” says Casey Cuny, an English teacher with 23 years of experience.
Cuny’s students at Valencia High School in southern California now do most of their writing in class, where he can monitor their laptop screens and block access to certain sites. He has also incorporated AI into his lessons, teaching students how to use it as a study aid. “We have to ask ourselves, what is cheating?” Cuny says. “Because I think the lines are getting blurred.” This shift in approach is not unique to Cuny, as many educators are rethinking their teaching methods to adapt to the changing landscape of education.
In rural Oregon, high school teacher Kelly Gibson has also made a similar shift to in-class writing. She has incorporated more verbal assessments, having students talk through their understanding of assigned reading. “I used to give a writing prompt and say, ‘In two weeks, I want a five-paragraph essay,'” Gibson says. “These days, I can’t do that. That’s almost begging teenagers to cheat.” This change in approach highlights the need for educators to stay ahead of the curve and find new ways to engage students and assess their learning.
Students are uncertain when AI usage is out of bounds. Many say they turn to AI with good intentions, using it for research, editing, or help with difficult texts. However, AI offers unprecedented temptation, and it’s sometimes hard to know where to draw the line. College sophomore Lily Brown, a psychology major, relies on ChatGPT to help outline essays because she struggles to put the pieces together herself. “Sometimes I feel bad using ChatGPT to summarize reading, because I wonder, is this cheating? Is helping me form outlines cheating? If I write an essay in my own words and ask how to improve it, or when it starts to edit my essay, is that cheating?”
Schools tend to leave AI policies to teachers, which often means that rules vary widely within the same school. Some educators welcome the use of Grammarly.com, an AI-powered writing assistant, to check grammar, while others forbid it, noting that the tool also offers to rewrite sentences. “Whether you can use AI or not depends on each classroom. That can get confusing,” says Valencia 11th grader Jolie Lahey. This lack of clarity highlights the need for schools to develop clear guidelines and policies regarding AI use.
Many schools initially banned the use of AI after ChatGPT launched in late 2022. However, views on the role of AI in education have shifted dramatically. The term “AI literacy” has become a buzzword, with a focus on how to balance the strengths of AI with its risks and challenges. Over the summer, several colleges and universities convened their AI task forces to draft more detailed guidelines or provide faculty with new instructions. The University of California, Berkeley, for example, emailed all faculty new AI guidance that instructs them to “include a clear statement on their syllabus about course expectations” around AI use.
Carnegie Mellon University has seen a huge uptick in academic responsibility violations due to AI, but often students aren’t aware they’ve done anything wrong. Rebekah Fitzsimmons, chair of the AI faculty advising committee, notes that enforcing academic integrity policies has become more complicated, since use of AI is hard to spot and even harder to prove. Faculty are allowed flexibility when they believe a student has unintentionally crossed a line, but are now more hesitant to point out violations because they don’t want to accuse students unfairly.
To address these challenges, educators are exploring new approaches to teaching and assessment. Some have eliminated writing assignments as homework and replaced them with in-class quizzes done on laptops in “a lockdown browser” that blocks students from leaving the quiz screen. Others have moved to “flipped classrooms,” where homework is done in class. As Timothy Rimke, a student at Valencia High School, reads during Casey Cuny’s English class, it’s clear that the traditional model of education is evolving. “To expect an 18-year-old to exercise great discipline is unreasonable,” says Emily DeJeu, who teaches communication courses at Carnegie Mellon’s business school. “That’s why it’s up to instructors to put up guardrails.”
As the use of AI in education continues to grow, it’s essential for schools to develop clear guidelines and policies regarding its use. By doing so, educators can ensure that students are using AI in a way that enhances their learning, rather than compromising their academic integrity. For more information on this topic, click here.
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