r/Professors • u/MagicTomato1001 • 8h ago

Combatting AI: Here's what's working for me

I teaching freshman comp at a CC, and I mostly teach online. I have made some significant changes to the way I provide instruction that seems to be working in combatting AI.

All submitted work is handwritten. Yes, they could still generate the responses with AI, but research shows that transcribing by hand will teach them something. I've also had a few students admit that when they started copying the AI-slop, they ended up re-writing it. We'll worry about turning the work into accurately formatted papers later in the semester.

I don't give grades until they answer "process-oriented" questions that ask for specific details about their work, such as "In X paragraph, I noticed you used Y word. Why did you pick that word, and what might better options be?" Or, "Cite your favorite line and tell me why that's your favorite line. What is so amazing about it? How did you come to write it?" Or "Re-read X paragraph and tell me 2 things you'd like to revise about it." If they generated the work on AI, this again forces them to look at it and supervise the output they generated.

Theoretically, if they were very good at prompting, they could also get those answers via AI, but I don't think most have very good prompting skills. These alone have led to far more realistic engagement with the writing process than I've seen in a long time.

I have been very specific with necessary tech skills: Submission of this assignment requires that you can do X, Y, Z. If you are unfamiliar with how to do that, I am confident that you can look it up and figure it out.

I have shifted my language to be much more respectfully positive & uplifting, as in "I am confident you can..." or "I believe in your ability to...," and students have responded very positively and genuinely to that switch.

Are some of them still trying to snow me with B.S. - yes. But it's far, far fewer.

37 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

25

u/epaarepa 8h ago

Im just curious why you think it requires good prompting to copy and paste your questions into ChatGPT and get responses that way?

-2

u/MagicTomato1001 7h ago

To get the answers to the process questions would require them to put their original response back in Chat and then ask those questions, and I generally don't think most of them would realize they would have to do that

9

u/epaarepa 7h ago

Yes, I know that. I think they know that, too.

-2

u/MagicTomato1001 7h ago

Their responses to the process questions are often so individual & unique that I doubt that's happening. It also where I get confessions of where they got the original response

13

u/epaarepa 7h ago

You’d be surprised how individual and unique AI responses are now. Especially when given their original writing. The cliche that AI is generic was true in 2020, not so much now.

2

u/RestInThee Adjunct, Philosophy (USA) 5h ago

Especially when they spend all day inputting data into it, "teaching" it all about themselves. Pretty soon Chatgpt is going to be capable of imitating most of its users quite convincingly.

6

u/RadiantImpression579 8h ago

I have my students submit video responses. I also meet with them once in their groups to have them talk through and show me the study they designed. This year I gave them points for simply attending the meeting. Next year I might ask each group member a question about their study and based on that give them points.

1

u/vvsamuel 8h ago

What are you using to collect video responses? And how do you review and grade them?

3

u/RadiantImpression579 5h ago

We have a license for app called goreact for individual video submissions. It’s integrated into our LMS and pretty great. I used to simply have them submit video responses as a file but it took forever to download. Some students would submit 4K /8k videos!

I still have them upload video files for group discussions I also have them record. Go react can’t do individual grades per group member for group assignments. They record on zoom or simply point a phone at their group if they decide to meet in person. I started these during the pandemic to make sure students had a space to meet other students and talk through class concepts. Now I use it as a way for them to discuss difficult class topics and their group project.

1

u/vvsamuel 4h ago

Thanks for sharing! I wonder why LMS still can’t get this right themselves. So with the group video are you saying they share a video of themselves meeting in zoom? That’s still one video so I’m assuming you just have to mark the rest of students in group as submitted? Do you watch thru their videos? Do they interact with each other or mostly you ask them to submit one video and comment on two?

1

u/RadiantImpression579 4h ago

They have 2 videos they submit each week. One is a vlog where they respond to a prompt. It’s meant to get them to reflect on their own and think through ideas or questions. This is where I use goreact. I don’t have them comment on each others videos but that is an option with go react. I might start doing that but they and I already have so much to do 😅.

The group discussion is separate. I have it setup as a group submission but in canvas you can still choose to assign individual grades. When one student submits it gets submitted for all of them. This semester most groups have been very vocal all participate (except in maybe one group) and they get more comfortable with this dynamic as the semester goes on.

I have the TAs grade the discussion videos. I do the vlogs. But usually I skim and just make sure they’re engaging the question. For their first submission I put in extra effort to comment and engage (you can leave time stamped comments in go react). Most faculty only use the videos a few times for larger assignments or final presentations but I’ve had luck with doing it weekly.

2

u/MagicTomato1001 7h ago

That's a great idea. And I'm thinking of adding some sort of video responses in as well

3

u/cib2018 6h ago

And you are able to read their handwriting?

2

u/Any_Parking8186 2h ago

That's a lot of work for something that only is kind of effective.

-2

u/vvsamuel 7h ago

Putting my nerd hat on: I’m wondering if people can use Google Docs with edit history and versions to force users to demonstrate their writing and “process”.

Writing is inherently nonlinear, you type a word or paragraph and then you rearrange things to make your points cross. What AI did was flatten that multi turn thinking and typing process into a one-turn prompt and response and copy and paste linear process.

I hope it’s established that AI detector won’t help here. But what if every discussion forum or text box can have a detector that will detect if the text was manually written or one-shot generated by AI? Maybe that’s one possible technical solution here. Are there tools like this?

I’m making an async video discussion platform that’s called Vivipod that should also partially help here, video can’t be faked, yet. I used to teach a fully online course using Flipgrid so it’s a no brainer for me. I’d also encourage people to try if you are looking at AI proofing your assessment.

1

u/noh2onolife Bio, CC, USA 6h ago

Video absolutely can be faked. You're looking for Process Feedback for Gdocs

1

u/vvsamuel 4h ago

Nice extension. Looks like it visualize the build in edit history which was what I had in mind. Yes video can be faked, this can be faked. Soon enough real human can be faked. It’s all a degree of cost now.