I was derailed tonight from grading and documenting to write this. I guess this is what Mother’s Day means to me these days.
My friends. I need to share with you that I am appalled by how much cheating there has been in this class. The bond between teacher and student is a creative and intellectual friendship that depends absolutely on trust. When you cheat by, for instance, using AI to find sources, write your outline, draft your paper, or polish your prose, you break that trust and test that friendship sorely.
As a good writer, a better reader, I can see the signs of generative AI in student work in, at most, 5 minutes. It takes me about 5 hours to verify and document it for the University that will assess and act on my findings. For that 4 hours and 55 minutes, you are losing the allegiance I assumed between us as a starting point for our work together.
Those to whom this message is most directed – you know who you are – I was always on your side. I do not care now for your attestations of innocence or ignorance. Please do not degrade us both by offering them. I told you, you were told, what forms of assistance were permitted and which were not, and if you were unclear about anything, you should have asked.
Everyone else – thankfully that’s most of you – please forgive this intrusion on your attention. I hope that if, in the future, you are tempted to cut corners at the cost of your integrity, this message will incite you to think twice. I hope too that if you find yourself leading others in inquiry, commerce, governance, family time or simple play, something here might stay with you, and be of use.
It might be no coincidence I feel moved to write this on Mother’s Day. No matter how angry you make your mom she doesn’t give up on you.
Chris
The Art of Compost 
Well said, CP.A breach of trust. A pallet of BS. A resignation. A serious waste of your time and their own. Ugh. I’m sorry it’s happening.
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Ah, thank you, my friend. Hope you are well.
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Hi Chris,
What are the official steps you must go through to “prove” AI? I was under the impression that it’s really hard to prove. What do you do in those 4+ hours to do so?
Cheers and condolences (generative AI is a bitch in our situations),
Pam
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Hey Pam. The papers all had features in common. APA style citation (no page numbers), no direct quotation (only ostensible paraphrase), bibliographies without DOIs or URLs (implying student used a print copy – not likely), large passages suspiciously fluent, correct, concise, and generic. The time-suck was chasing down sources listed in the bibliography and following in-text citations. If more than a couple are spurious or hallucinatory, that’s pretty strong evidence. Then there’s asking the student to explicate terms, phrases, concepts in their paper; if they can’t, that’s decisive. Usually though they’ve admitted to some wrongdoing before we have that conversation: using DeepL to translate their paper into English, say, while insisting they made no use of gen AI. That’s enough for me to pass it on to the powers that are. The College Principal and the Student Academic Integrity Office review the evidence, meet with the student, and make a final determination.
Next time – in-class writing! pencil and paper!
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As a former student and deep appreciator of the lessons I learned in your class – I am really sad to hear about the use of AI. The experimentation, creativity and chance to be a weird little goober when talking or writing was a highlight of my week. I hope your students learn to embrace their own cores instead of relying on word garbage generative algorithms. Its like expecting potato au gratin and instead you get a raw potato.
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Ah, thank you, Alex. It’s good to hear from you! I trust you’re well?
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