At least ChatGPT turns its work in on time smh smh

[rynling]

Well lads, I have lost it with teaching. Just completely lost it.

My students are starting to turn in their final short response papers, and I don’t know how to handle them. I can’t prove that these papers were written (or edited?) by ChatGPT, but I also can’t prove that they’re not. What I’m looking at is...

(1) Sentences of completely even length
(2) that all follow the same “clause 1 + conjunction + clause 2” pattern
(3) with perfect grammar
(4) and decent vocabulary
(5) but that are strikingly broad and don’t really say anything.

What I’m also getting in some of the papers is...

(1) Inaccurate hard data (like dates of historical events and population numbers),
(2) sentences repeated almost word for word, and
(3) no paragraph breaks.

My senior colleagues could be correct, and I could be delusional in thinking that AI algorithms are this advanced. Still, something is going on, and that something looks a lot like ChatGPT.

If one or two students take shortcuts at the end of the spring semester, fine. It happens, and you pretend not to see it. Still, this is more than one or two students, and what's going on is much more concerning than a bit of casual cheating or plagiarism. I'm not sure what to do except throw all the papers into the air and go on holiday early.

Comments

[lassarina]

....ooof. Yeah, I wouldn't know what to do with that either.

[rynling]

I sent a short bcc email to all the kids I suspect of using ChatGPT. I briefly explained the situation and told them that I'm not going to count this paper in their final grade, and I added that they can make an appointment with me and the Writing Center if they want to challenge my decision. Nobody took me up on my offer.

So all's well that ends well, I guess? Unfortunately, I have a sneaking suspicion that this isn't over. I may have to give honest-to-god written blue book exams next semester.

Also, I've started to notice ChatGPT-authored fic crop up in the tags I follow on AO3. I guess that's one way to get content for a rarepair ship, but...

[lassarina]

In some ways as a student I liked blue book exams, because I couldn't really procrastinate myself into a corner. There was just the space where I did the thing. But I'm an outlier in that, probably. (And my sympathies to people struggling through handwriting. Mine is tidy, but it's also half line height on college rule, and my belated apologies to my professors and TAs for having to squint at my itty bitty letters.)