I don't think we can fight AI creep by weaponizing grades. Nobody learns anything if we decide our job is to be plagiarism mall cops. If we don't win this argument at the level of process, convincing students they CAN'T learn what we have to teach them if they outsource to AI, we won't win at all. - ThreadSky

pjmaciak.bsky.social • 15 days ago

I don't think we can fight AI creep by weaponizing grades. Nobody learns anything if we decide our job is to be plagiarism mall cops. If we don't win this argument at the level of process, convincing students they CAN'T learn what we have to teach them if they outsource to AI, we won't win at all.

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boltman.bsky.social•14 days ago

There's always been too much focus on the end product, imo. Writing is thinking, and the artifact produced by that is just evidence that the thinking and reasoning took place.

adamkotsko.bsky.social•14 days ago

I periodically tell students that I didn't become a teacher in order to be a cop.

pjmaciak.bsky.social•15 days ago

If only because this isn't a job I want or even know how to do. I have a PhD in English, not a PhD in Intellectual Property Law Enforcement. More than that, I think if we stack all our chips on "I CAN SEE WHEN YOU ARE CHEATING," what happens when we can't or don't see?

pjmaciak.bsky.social•15 days ago

The job today is the same as the job before this shit: convince a roomful of students that reading texts, learning about them, and writing about them constitutes meaningful, valuable work socially and personally. If someone uses ChatGPT to write their paper at the end of that class, *I* have failed.

memles.bsky.social•15 days ago

This is where the simultaneous push into online courses becomes a particular struggle, since we’re asynchronously trying to address students we never interact with directly. It’s easier in person, despite still remaining existential.

greeney28.bsky.social•15 days ago

If I have tried to convince them that their own ideas matter, and that they should want to be able to think in complex ways and to communicate effectively, the fault is not mine if they don’t listen. The fault is only mine if I don’t try.

pjmaciak.bsky.social•15 days ago

Beyond that, how long before we don't even have the backing of the university to police this stuff? If I had to bet — and we all do! — on colleges that have blown all this money on this tech continuing to be ok with English profs flunking students for using it, I would not bet on it.

rmbodenheimer.bsky.social•15 days ago

I TA'd for a professor 20 years ago (JFC I'm old!) who when I pointed out a student's plagiarism on their term paper, just waved it off. And that was wayyyy before it was this fucking easy to not write your own paper. Probably for the best I didn't end up getting a TT job.

frittersandclam.bsky.social•15 days ago

My uni already offered profs 200 bucks to go to a workshop where we learn how to integrate AI into our assignments

frittersandclam.bsky.social•15 days ago

So the fight is already lost at an institutional level

cinematthew.bsky.social•15 days ago

This, absolutely, but we also can't put full blame on instructors. The much larger systemic problem is how classroom learning has become viewed as a transactional means to a degree/job instead of as an end in and of itself. AI has just made this attitude blatant

pjmaciak.bsky.social•15 days ago

Oh absolutely. I think the university system has been working for decades to make the job we have to do now — convincing students of the value of this work — next to impossible. My point isn't that instructors are to blame, it's that it's on us to navigate btwn AI and the transactional degree.

patientspider.bsky.social•15 days ago

i think taking pressure off of grades makes students less likely to use AI

hijodegagos.bsky.social•15 days ago

Yes I think the problem isn't just AI but the way we measure student success and the enormous pressure and anxiety that grading causes. Students are already uncertain about their futures and struggling. I teach art so I don't deal with AI much, but I listen to my students talking about it.

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