Teachers must take the initiative to detect GPT cheating and other forms of AI misuse to maintain academic honesty and refrain from using various means of cheating while working on academic submissions. Doing so helps them uphold academic integrity and mitigate cheating. While plagiarism was a headache a few years ago, the inclusion of AI-generated text in educational submissions has emerged as a new problem lately.
AI can be a brainstorming and research assistant, but overly relying on it to craft the entire content for academic submissions is nothing but cheating. Students don’t put much effort into the creation of content or understand the concept to communicate their original thoughts on it through their submissions, which goes against ethical guidelines. Hence, teachers must take the initiative to catch students who cheat with GPT or other AI tools.
Doing so will help them maintain academic integrity, mitigate cheating, and ensure a fair learning environment. However, many teachers struggle to catch students who use various LLMs (large language models) for cheating because of unawareness of actionable strategies that can prove to be helpful. This article dives deeper into some tips that can help teachers catch cheating with GPT. Read on to learn more.
Strategies to Catch AI-Involvement
If you’re looking to detect GPT cheating in student assignments, the following strategies can help
=> Analyze Submissions Yourself
First of all, you should analyze the submissions yourself to identify students who are involved in adding AI-generated content to their submissions. It goes without saying that the text generated by GPT or any other LLM significantly differs from the human-written content. Focusing on a few factors can easily help you differentiate submissions crafted using GPT responses from ones that are actually written by students. If you observe any of the below-given factors while analyzing a submission, it is most likely AI-generated and requires further investigation:
- Absence of natural errors, such as run-on fragments and logical inconsistencies.
- Lack of unique thoughts on the given topic.
- Content is structured like a flawless Wikipedia entry.
- A significant change in the writing style upon comparison with previous submissions.
- Existence of highly sophisticated vocabulary and impeccable grammar.
- Detailed discussion on the topic that goes way beyond in-class lectures.
=> Use a Reliable AI Content Detector
An AI content detector can make it easier to detect GPT cheating with accuracy and confidence. While manual analysis of assignments can help you identify the involvement of AI, you can’t precisely flag particular sections that feature AI-generated text. The most effective way to pinpoint these segments and encourage students to revise them with their own effort is by using an advanced ChatGPT content detection tool. Such a tool can help you identify such sections with pinpoint accuracy.
The tool will accumulate the data to initialize the analysis, extract distinct features of content, and compare patterns to recognize AI involvement and provide you with insightful guidance. The tool will also help you determine the proportion of human-written and AI-generated text in the given submission with the help of a percentage gauge. Additionally, it enables a deeper understanding of the patterns commonly used by AI systems, making it easier to identify content generated by GPT and other large language models.
=> Go for Process-Based Submissions
Another way to mitigate and catch GPT-based submissions is going for processed submissions. Don’t just assign the task to students and ask them to submit their work before a particular data. Instead, encourage them to leverage their creative thinking, analyze the given topic, recall their knowledge regarding the concept, and formulate a handwritten outline before starting their work. Additionally, require them to share their handwritten outline based on their knowledge about the topic with you.
You should also segment their task into multiple timelines and ask them to share their drafts and thesis statements with you. Doing so will not only help you make it difficult for students to rely on GPT for text-generation but also keep you informed about the progress of their work. If you see any deflection from the shared outline in the submitted work, you can ask students for the reason that made them change their outline. If they fail to give a valid reason for the deflection, you must investigate further to catch AI-based cheating.
=> Keep Track of Submission Times
Another great way to identify students who overly rely on GPT and other AI tools to generate content for academic submissions is keeping the track of submission times. Working on an academic submission, whether it is a simple essay or a lengthy assignment, requires significant research and understanding of the concept. No matter how intelligent anyone is, they can’t come up with flawless content that comprehensively covers a topic in a suspiciously quick time.
A student must go through various sources to fetch relevant facts, figures, and quotations and come up with their original thoughts to ensure a comprehensive write-up. Additionally, they need to naturally synthesize the information to make it meaningful for the readers. Doing all this in just a day or two is not possible. Hence, monitoring time-stamps of submissions can be helpful in identifying red flags and catching students who haven’t written assignments themselves and use unfair means like reliance on GPT for this purpose.
=> Verify Citations
Teachers who want to catch students who cheat while working on their academic submissions using GPT or other LLMs should look for red flags, and one of them is citations. The content generated by AI tools, such as GPT, often lacks citations. The problem doesn’t end here; you may also observe misattributions and inconsistencies in styles used for citations. Students who use such means to craft their assignments don’t pay much attention to citations, and teachers can take advantage of this habit to catch culprits.
So, go through the entire content while keeping an eye out for citations. If you see non-existent citations, it can be a signal that GPT or other tools have been used to generate the underlying text. Additionally, ask students to show their notes where they have jotted down their research takeaways and compare them to figure out whether they resonate with the citations included in their work. You can also compare citations with real sources to identify inconsistencies.
=> Require Verbal Elaborations
While the aforementioned tips can easily help you catch the students who cheat with GPT while working on their academic submissions, there is another effective strategy. You can use it if you are still doubtful about the legitimacy of the work submitted by a student because it appears overly polished and features unexpected accuracy.
This simple technique involves asking students to provide a detailed explanation of a random section of their work in the class. Simply ask students to present the idea that triggered them to write this section and how they found relevant quotes, facts, and figures while researching the topic. If they struggle while elaborating the idea, the content they have submitted is not theirs.
Conclusion
Ultimately, using these strategies will help teachers detect GPT cheating effectively and maintain academic honesty in the age of AI. Catching students who use unfair means to prepare their academic submissions is essential to preserve educational standards and ensure a fair learning environment. Teachers can use a few effective techniques like manual analysis of content, use of a reliable AI detection tool, process-based submissions, verification of citations, and verbal elaborations to catch cheaters and mitigate the unfair use of AI. So, follow the takeaways from this article to uphold academic integrity and encourage the ethical use of AI among your students!
