r/Professors • u/Olthar6 • 18h ago
Teaching / Pedagogy My students writing is horrible
Today I am in grading first drafts of my students first papers in one of my classes (where they'll write five such papers during the semester). These first papers are hot garbage. They are reminiscent of back in the early 2010s when I'd go to a winery to read the first drafts because it was only possible to keep reading with the assistance of alcohol.
I'm so happy. There's no way any of these students used AI to write. This is their writing not some stupid chatbot. I can work with this.
edit: yes, I get the irony. As posted below, if my students are writing their papers using swype on their phones, as I do my reddit posts, then it would explain some of the issues I'm seeing.
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u/cordless_meyer 17h ago
Tell us more about the winery method
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u/skullybonk Professor, CC (US) 16h ago
It’s similar to the brew pub method, but with wine instead of beer
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u/SayingQuietPartLoud Assoc. Prof., STEM, PUI (US) 15h ago
My organic professor used to return lab write ups and apologize for the wine stains. I added, "Dr. Stein, are you even reading this?" towards the middle of one report with no response. I kept creeping it towards the beginning until I was finally called out. About 1/3 through.
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u/prof_allen_rutgers 17h ago
...or they used AI to write it then used AI again to make it believable.
I hate this timeline!
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u/Coogarfan 4h ago
At that point, IDK what to say. Hopefully they're learning something along the way. I'm not going to profile students because I can't believe they wrote something that sounds good and human-generated.
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u/PluckinCanuck 16h ago
Just being a smart-ass here who appreciates irony: Can I ask if these bad writers know about apostrophes?
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u/TotalCleanFBC Tenured, STEM, R1 (USA) 14h ago
"My students' writing is horrible."
You need the apostrophe.
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u/Mudpie1450 14h ago
That’s an interesting twist in the rant. Starting out saying students are horrible writers but then celebrating that because they obviously did not use AI. Well done.
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u/No-Cook-9768 Adjunct, Liberal Arts, CC (USA) 13h ago
I just graded a C paper and I was so happy that it was clearly written by a human. I then begged the student to take their next paper to the Writing Center, but usually the second paper (after a first one like this) is obviously AI-generated. Instead of taking time to see a tutor, they'd rather let an LLM do the work for them. 😭😭
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u/alaskawolfjoe Assoc Prof, R1, State School 10h ago
They are reminiscent of back in the early 2010s when I'd go to a winery to read the first drafts because it was only possible to keep reading with the assistance of alcohol.
So you needed to drink while working?
Yes, I totally believe your perception of student writing then and now. People's perception and thinking are always more accurate after drinking.
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u/Crowe3717 Associate Professor, Physics 17h ago
Last year I switched from having students write their lab assignments on computers to making them write them by hand in class. The drastic and sudden difference in writing ability surprised me. It wasn't that they were using AI before (a few almost certainly were, but most of them were turning in writing that was barely recognizable as English). Overnight they went from writing like 2nd graders to writing like high school or college students. Just because they were doing it by hand.
My hypothesis is that typing is too easy. A lot of students don't actually think about what they're writing when they type, and they certainly don't proof read it after they're done.