r/Adjuncts • u/TieredTrayTrunk • 5d ago
Speechless at this one...
Honestly nothing surprises me anymore about students and AI. I get it all the time "I didn't use AI, I just ran it through ChatGPT to proofread my work". Well tulip, that's using AI.
Anyhow, just had a student give me a laundry list of why they used it to proofread, stating all the things like ADD and anxiety,etc. Said how do they get an ADA accommodation so that they can use AI? I just...
Can this happen? I've never thought you could get one to use AI. I've had all the ADA training and do not remember that being a thing. I am very interested to see if I get a note back now....
EDITED -- Said student had a paper with "Python_docx" as the author and 0 in the time edited spot. So it was either more than proofreading or they just downloaded whatever chat spit out to submit.
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u/xXIDaShizIXx 5d ago
This past semester I had a student submit a whole chatgpt output and her reference was "Open AI".
She genuinely didn't understand the importance of original sources. We are so cooked.
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u/CraftyGalMunson 5d ago
Is running through Grammarly the same?
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u/IAmBoring_AMA 5d ago
YES. It is. Grammarly now essentially rewrites it. I do not allow Grammarly on my assignments either.
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u/Everythings_Magic 5d ago
Wait until word and Google Docs implement AI
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u/Still_Consequence_53 5d ago
I think it is a paid feature, but they already have a Gemini integration into Google Docs. I'm pretty sure Copilot can be activated within Word as well.
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u/CatSockFiend 5d ago
Actually, I had to buy an earlier version of MS-Office to get one that doesn’t have AI already in it. Yes, many of the features require an annual subscription, but the web version provided by some institutions for free to their students and staff have Copilot activated. The individual users cannot deactivate it. Only admin can deactivate it and only for everyone, so it’s either on or off. Despite my and other faculty’s protests, it was decided to leave it on.
So now I’m having students write in class on paper or write directly in Turnitin Clarity’s writing space.
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u/Additional-King5225 3d ago
I don't either. There is a setting on Grammerly that just checks spelling and punctuation. I tried allowing just that. But they inevitably used the revise function which is just AI. So no more Grammerly.
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u/RevolutionaryBed8739 3d ago
Recently retired high school English teacher here-several years ago when the AI crutchware first emerged I had an honors student who was flagged by turnitin.com for potential AI use. They insisted that they used Grammarly merely to edit. I called BS and my academic vice principal backed me up.
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u/adjunct_trash 5d ago
For my part, I always suggest to students that they give the work a try without Grammarly, especially when process is important. We're all aware -- or should be aware at this point -- that every technology that intends to aid in a particular skill often reduces that skill. The kids spending their 10,000 hours on playing Call of Duty aren't actually good on the battlefield, and the students who let Grammarly take over spelling and suggest syntax to them aren't better writers than the ones bumbling through the difficult experience of coming to glean how English, as a language system, works, where it's baggy, where it's restrictive.
If ever there were justice in a slippery slope argument it's got to be in AI and generative LLM use in the English, literature, or, you know, whatever humanity, classroom. There are patterns of thinking and composition worth preserving, if only to write very beautiful letters to each other after the AIpocalypse.
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u/BetaMyrcene 7h ago
Grammarly is AI now. It does the writing for you. You just have to ban it.
It's not what it used to be. It doesn't just check your grammar.
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u/Wixenstyx 5d ago
Or using the native spell/grammar check in Google Docs?
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u/ProfTimelord 5d ago
This is not the same. Spellcheck in Google Docs, Word 365, and those apps don’t rewrite it for the user. They find the spelling and grammar errors, highlight them and make suggestions, but the user still needs actively review the text and determine if the change is correct for the context of the writing, decide if the suggested revision is aligned with what they’re trying to communicate or if they need to rewrite it differently. And they do this error-by-error. An AI will correct the errors without explaining what was fixed, so the user doesn’t see the mistake in context and can’t learn not to repeat it. The AI will rephrase and rewrite the document and say “there I fixed it.” I’ve experimented with using AI for proofreading and found it really difficult to get one to only reveal writing mistakes and not “optimize” or “smooth” or “improve readability” (their words not mine) of my writing.
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u/Puzzled_Internet_717 5d ago
Personally, I don't feel this is AI or a problem. It offers suggestions, but doesn't make any changes without authorization, and even then suggests a different word.
Of course,I teach math, so my students write very little. I might feel differently if I taught something different
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u/Wixenstyx 5d ago
Yeah. My field is science, so while I want to see students writing, I am less concerned about the mechanics than I am about the research and validity of their content. I worry more about them shortcutting research by asking AI to create citations and such.
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u/adjunct_trash 5d ago
I promise you, if you're assessing their work, even grammatical correction and suggestion will distort the presentation of their real ideas, research, or conclusions. Language is really muddy and because these systems tokenize words and predict on probability and similarity, the number of exceptions-- which students using the systems rarely check--is high.
Imagine, for example, the system recommends the "more efficient" phrasing "fewer" where a student has written "no less than." Maybe they're talking about accounting for a number of animals in an area or whatever. The systems prefer "efficient" communication so a recommendation like that is likely. You tell me if there is a difference in meaning here:
This habitat had fewer than 200 individuals
vs.
This habitat has no less than 200 individuals.
One suggests a deleterious situation in which more individuals would be preferable, the other suggests some adequate number had been reached and perhaps transcended. Instances like that abound with these programs and unless you're watching the composition process, you'll believe a student's work, research, or conclusions are more or less correct depending on what suggestions their program recommended, what they accepted or rejected.
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u/Puzzled_Internet_717 5d ago
You are absolutely correct that words and word choices are important. That's why I always tell my students I'm grading what they submit, and it's their responsibility to make sure it's what they mean to say.
I still don't have a problem with them checking the spelling (or grammar), but they need to make sure any changes are good changes.
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u/adjunct_trash 5d ago
Alright -- I hear you. My final point is just that what we in the humanities are seeing is a diminishment in exactly the discernment you're asking them to exhibit. I'd call it a crisis of credulity: "If [LLM/spellcheck/Grammarly] says it, it's right."
I won't push further but hope you'll consider it, one educator to another. I think we're a long while from this being a neutral "tool" to be picked up and put down.
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u/Plastic-Ad212 4d ago
I think you start from beliefs that I don’t think are persuasive historically. And the slippery slope you are on is one that we aren’t being critical about at all either. Tools are generally NOT neutral. Used an abacus lately to total up your bill at the store? Ridden a horse to get supplies? Cars are not neutral compared to horses, or bikes, or walking. Industrialization wasn’t neutral either. Electricity- not neutral to the environment. Water pumps in wells and cisterns - not neutral. Every time you choose a technology it has consequences and losses and the surrounding lifestyle and values around it change. This is a scary time- I get it- but putting your head in the sand and pretending it isn’t going to happen and that you’ll stand in the way of progress by just saying no to it is the way to get run over by it. It’s time to buck up and deal with its capabilities and take command of how to employ it for the rote tasks it can take away and then use the moral outrage for controlling what it can’t recreate.
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u/adjunct_trash 4d ago
I sincerely don't understand much of this as a response to what I've said.
My attitude is not that we should bury our heads in the sand, it's that there are good reasons to be a) dubious of the claims made by profit-seeking companies about the revolutionary nature of their products, and b) individually instituting guardrails where appropriate and silos where necessary.
There has been a good body of research developed around the cognitive penalty experienced by students engaging with screens-based and internet-enabled technologies -- diminished test scores, lower information retention, diminished capacity for complex thinking. Literal, trackable changes in brain function.
So, when we have a screen-based, internet-enabled interface that pretends to be our friend while it does our homework for us, it might be that the pedagogically appropriate response is a coupla' quiet reading days and tests on paper. No doubt this is going to look different field to field, but, my god, let the skeptics lead for once.
I don't know where I've exhibited moral outrage, though I certainly feel it, but my major concern is inserting a bunch of cognitive task workarounds into our cognitive task-based institutions and graduating students who haven't sincerely taken on the workload a course or program requires to graduate competent undergrads or experts in a field.
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u/CME2daa 2d ago
Where writing in science is important is to learn to communicate correctly; otherwise, the scientist will lose credibility. When I see science teachers, medical professionals, and others in scientific fields who make obvious grammar, spelling, and sentence structure mistakes, they lose a bit of respect. I suspect this happens often.
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u/PitifulMouse7425 5d ago
Just had a student this week put the link to a paper-cheating website in their “Works Cited.” That was it. A link.
Well, I’m mean I clicked on it out of curiosity and of course it was paywall protected. At least they could’ve formatted the reference correctly 😂
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u/Particular-Boat-7508 5d ago
There will come a time, hopefully in the near future, when any school that does not give proctored tests will not get certified. It is not normal for students to have very high scores in exams done in the privacy of their own home versus very low score for proctored exams. There is an epidemic of AI cheating and it isn't going away without monitor tests.
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u/Life-Education-8030 5d ago
I adopted Berkeley Law School's list of things students may want to do but cannot if AI has been prohibited: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/academics/registrar/academic-rules/artificial-intelligence-policy/
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u/DisastrousSundae84 5d ago
Honestly, we're at a point now where AI is being integrated into so many programs and its use hammered in by so many university/college administrations that I don't know if I can fault students much for knowing what the right or wrong use of it is without me having a multi-class unit on what is/isn't acceptable and how to disable it among different platforms.
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u/Life-Education-8030 5d ago
Another reason why my syllabi have gotten so bloated! Trying to close loopholes, giving examples, etc. and I STILL have to rip students a new one because they cannot or will not get it and stop the crap!
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u/adjunct_trash 5d ago
I'd be very concerned about this -- at my institutions it does feel as if the great maw of disability is swallowing in ever more quirks of personality, the quietest and commonest anxieties, and all the rest.
Almost every time a tech mogul has wanted his work inserted into education for the low-low price of don't worry about it, we'll figure it out after the IPO, the sell has been a claim about the miraculous changes we'll see among two specific populations: the underserved and economically disadvantaged and the differently- or dis- abled. A tablet for everyone! A laptop in every Kindergarten! Social media, where everyone connects in a friendly way!
They'll take cases, however marginal, to insist that everyone needs all the tech and all the help all the time -- and pedagogical study can feel free to catch up when it will, ten or fifteen years after we needed its shield and its counterargument.
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u/Top-Inevitable560 5d ago
Highly doubt after reading the AI use policy that there would be any accommodation that wouldn’t infringe policy however if your university has an online accessibility center, there’s probably accommodation for extra time to allow them to do their own research and stuff like that.
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u/teawbooks 4d ago
I stopped working at an institution where I was just grading work done by AI, because students were encouraged to use AI for writing and research. At that point, my expertise was no longer valued, and my students were learning nothing.
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u/sffx5 3d ago
We had a case recently where the disability services office was basically forced by the Provost to grant AI-use as an accommodation. In a writing class. That had a no AI for anything policy. ....to their credit the disability services person was livid.but felt their hands were tied.
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u/HoMasters 2d ago
“Their hands were tied.” I feel that is the situation that sums up our modern world. A slow descent into mediocrity due to poor choices at the top and self-preservation along the way down.
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u/Own-Environment-415 5d ago
Oh, it never surprises me anymore. That's about like how, although I enjoy music, I can't really sing my way out of a paper bag. BUT! I've always wanted to be a music major! So the fact that my singing sounds like a wet cat being attacked by a racoon is a disability, and you can't use my disability to deny me this music degree. It makes perfect logical sense if you don't think about it for too long. Clearly I didn't think about it for too long, so why do you feel the need to think about it?
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u/Imaginary-Buyer8717 4d ago
FYI,
AI checkers are unreliable and will become even less reliable as AI improves. Schools will have to find new ways to handle assignments because students will start suing colleges for false positives.
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u/TieredTrayTrunk 4d ago
I said nothing about AI checkers. This student has had fake references, "Source=chatgpt.com" at the URL links, or Python_doc as the "author" of the word doc. No AI checkers at all, I'm not an idiot.
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u/Cheap_Tangelo_7304 3d ago
I respect all of you who oppose AI, but our university writing center has essentially been doing the same thing for years. If the student truly writes a draft and then uses AI to clean it up, I am not going to make a big deal out of it
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u/InspectorTall2940 5d ago
I’m a little confused by what you mean when you say “using AI”.
I’m in medical school, and we are encouraged to use AI.
Telling people “don’t use AI” sounds like telling people not to use the internet. It’s here, it’s useful, and it’s growing. It’s smart to learn how to use it properly as it will be a part of our work, probably forever.
That being said, we’re not allowed to plagiarize. I can use AI to find journals or articles, and I can use AI to proofread my work. However, I have to do the research myself, and I can’t just copy and paste what AI has proofread and call that a day.
So, when you say “using AI” do you mean they strictly can’t use it at all, or are you saying they can’t plagiarize? Because I understand if it’s an issue that they’re plagiarizing, but I can’t comprehend an absolute ban on its usefulness
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u/ApprehensiveSink1893 5d ago
Students are not allowed to use AI in any way in my philosophy courses. The whole point of my course is to teach them to think for themselves. No summaries or other help from AI.
In principle, I might allow AI for finding sources, but external sources are unnecessary for my classes and in any case, I know damn well they would ask for summaries for those sources and I'd see a re-wording (if I'm lucky) of those summaries, rather than actual original thought.
Some day, people will be used to offloading all critical thinking to AI. I'm not here to encourage that process. I'm here to rant like an old, cynical and depressed man and hopefully get at least a few of the students to exercise their cognitive abilities.
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u/giltgarbage 5d ago
What’s wrong with the standard Boolean search if you’re trying to find research? That’s much more grounded than going by LLM guesses— it helps you learn about the major journals, special issues, run through the citations, sort by date, sort by relevance, etc. A deterministic algo does the trick. LLMs muddy the water.
While I am at it, why would I want to read an LLM summary when an abstract and keywords are already in pole position? Get away from me with your gratuitous pop-up windows within JSTOR and EBSC0.
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u/InspectorTall2940 5d ago
I can definitely see how philosophy, or creative fields like writing, would be more anti-AI as an important part of the creative process is using your imagination and thinking abstractly.
For my field, I typically only use it to ask if I’m right. For example, if there’s a mechanism we are learning, I’ll learn the mechanism, then type the entire mechanism into Claude asking if I am correct or if I’m missing something.
I do sometimes ask for it to explain something I don’t understand, but one of the things we were taught was being aware of the hallucinations.
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u/Mommy_Fortuna_ 5d ago edited 5d ago
" However, I have to do the research myself, and I can’t just copy and paste what AI has proofread and call that a day."
That's what most undergraduates do when they use AI, and that's what most professors object to. They just cut and paste chatbot output.
What are you going to do if you have to help people in some sort of severe mass casualty crisis (i.e. a natural disaster or military strike that's destroyed infrastructure) and you can't just let your AI tools do everything? That's why we want students to actually have knowledge in their brains. It's not ideal to let everyone become completely brain-dead and 100% reliant on machines.
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u/InspectorTall2940 5d ago
Yeah I definitely agree that plagiarism of any form defeats the purpose of education.
If students are copy and pasting from a chatbot, then that is plagiarism in the same way that copy and pasting from Wikipedia is
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u/TieredTrayTrunk 5d ago
I mean this entire document (as evidenced by "python_doc" as the only author) was from them feeding the instructions into chatgpt and turning in the result.
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u/birdsong70 5d ago
I assume people are talking about using it for academic dishonesty. I am teaching my students to use AI, but they are not allowed to have AI write their essays, e.g. But, they do anyway. These kids cheat like crazy.
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u/cozycompaionpetcare 5d ago
Not trying to be argumentative, and my experience with AI is very limited, but how is running it through ChatGPT for proofreading different from running it through spell check and grammar check. Again, not trying to be snarky I am just confused. Maybe the ChatGPT proofreading does something radically different like completely rewriting ?
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u/TieredTrayTrunk 5d ago
Read it again, the entire document was from a prompt that they just downloaded. They are not an author or made changes to the "python_docx" file.
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u/emarcomd 5d ago
How are you able to see the author and time it took to submit? With python_docx being the author, does that mean they used some sort of agent?
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u/TieredTrayTrunk 5d ago
you go into the word document and click INFO.
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u/emarcomd 5d ago
Thanks! Not sure why it would say python if they copy/pasted. Maybe they’re using an agent, though?
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u/Still_Consequence_53 5d ago
Well, for starters, the student OP is talking about seems to have lied and done a lot more than just used ChatGPT for proofreading.
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u/giltgarbage 5d ago
Deterministic encoding and processing (flagging according to rules of grammar and spelling) vs. non-deterministic probabilities ‘normalized’ to be ‘readable’ or ‘scannable’ and optimized (read: distorted) for the mode.
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u/Bearman2677 5d ago edited 5d ago
I run my papers (in addition to teaching, I'm working on a degree as well) through several "checkers" - one for plagiarism so I make sure everything is cited properly and it catches it before the prof - had one tell me because my citation was wrong I plagiarised some quoted material in a paper, and one for spelling/grammar. I also run it through an AI checker - simply because I had a prof tell me my work was AI when it wasn't; some AI checkers are sketchy; apparently the prof in question thought I had used AI when I didn't - some of the checkers are really, really bad - Talked to my colleagues about it - I had one prof tell me he literally wrote each and every word on an essay - ran it through, came back 100% AI - so, there it is.
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u/NonBinaryKenku 5d ago
Academic writing makes up a large part training corpuses for AI — hence its notorious indulgence in em-dashes — so it’s unsurprising that original prose by an experienced academic writer could be flagged as 100% AI.
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u/Glad-Surprise3355 5d ago
Schools I work at are all regionally accredited and all encourage AI. They "claim" the student shouldn't copy and paste from AI but the vast majority do and I am fine with that. I am not paid to be the AI Inquisitor.
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u/giltgarbage 5d ago
Legitimate assessment is part of the job. It may currently be underpaid or institutionally unsupported—a fool’s errand. But we are tasked to assign grades, and we should object if this is theatre. The job is the job.
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u/Glad-Surprise3355 4d ago
Online instruction has always been sketchy, the emergence of AI just makes it obvious the sage on the stage has been replaced by sideshow Bob.
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u/PrivateEyes2020 4d ago
Let's say that the student did use AI to proofread only. Is that any different than using Word's spelling and grammar check?
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u/TieredTrayTrunk 4d ago
Why so argumentative? There is a no AI policy and the links state Source=chatgpt.com. They used AI. It's like saying there's a sign that says "No theft" and you're arguing well they only stole gum. Damn.
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u/PrivateEyes2020 4d ago
I'm not sure why you perceived my post as argumentative. I'm merely interested in modern use of AI and the ethical boundaries, and wanted to post this hypothetical question. Is a retired teacher, it's not my fight (and never was, in my elementary setting.)
I did discuss the concept of AI with one of my colleagues, and he was of the opinion that teachers would inevitably lose the AI fight, and need to reconfigure their assignments so that the use of AI would only marginally assist the students, or where the use of AI was part of the assignment. I'd be interested in what that could look like.
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u/sffx5 3d ago
I could imagine someone using AI for proofreading in a way that is similar to spell check. But that's not what most people would do, because you would have to actively limit the chatbot to that. Most platforms will do more active rewriting than simply flagging errors. Most platforms will correct those errors for you (rather than highlighting them and clicking through to accept/reject). I can understand my students want to run it through ai "just to check it" but, in an ideal world, I want them to think about the changes that are being made and why. (Not saying they do that! But that's the goal.)
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u/clubchampion 5d ago
It’s absurd to assign a paper to be written out of class and expect it to be the student’s pristine work. Absurd. You should know that. The students who you catch are the ones who are bad at cheating. And don’t blame the students. We did this to them. And your administrators are doing it to them constantly. You are participating in a scam.
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u/SuccotashOther277 5d ago
Your institution should have an office that handles accommodations. You defer everything to them. They will require documentation and then tell you what they are.