The book's reports are now a thing of the past. Take-out tests and essays are becoming obsolete.
High school and university educators across the country have become so common for students to use artificial intelligence, so assigning writing outside the classroom is like asking students to cheat.
“Cheating is off the charts. It's the worst I've seen in my entire career,” says Casey Kney, who has been teaching English for 23 years. Educators no longer question whether students will outsource their studies to an AI chatbot. “Whatever you send home, you have to assume you're ai'ed.”
The question now is how schools can adapt, as many of the education and assessment tools that have been used for generations are no longer effective. As AI technology rapidly improves and entangles in everyday life, it changes how students learn and study, how teachers teach, and creates new confusion about what constitutes academic injustice.
“We have to ask ourselves, what is fraud?” says Cuny, the 2024 winner of California's Teacher of the Year Award. “Because I think the lines are blurry.”
Cuny students at Valencia High School in Southern California are currently the most authored in their class. He monitors student laptop screens from his desktop using software that allows him to “lock down” the screen or block access to certain sites. He also integrates AI into lessons and teaches students how to use AI as a learning aid “learning children with AI, not cheating with AI.”
In rural Oregon, high school teacher Kelly Gibson made a similar shift to in-class writing. She also incorporates more oral ratings to speak to students through their assigned understanding of reading.
“I used to give you a writing prompt and say, 'I want a five-paragraph essay in two weeks,'' says Gibson. “I can't do that lately. It's almost begging teens to cheate.”
For example, consider a typical high school English assignment that used to be typical. Write an essay explaining the relevance of social classes in “The Great Gatsby.” Many students say their first instinct is to ask ChatGpt to help with “brainstorming.” Within seconds, ChatGpt brings you a list of essay ideas as well as examples and quotes to back them up. The chatbot ends by asking if there is more to be done.
Students often rely on AI with good intentions for research, editing, reading difficult texts, and more. However, AI offers unprecedented seduction and it can be difficult to know where to draw the line.
Lily Brown, a sophomore in the psychology major at the East Coast liberal arts school, relies on chat grit to help outline the essay. ChatGpt also helped her through a freshman philosophy class assigned to read “feel like a different language” until she read the AI summary of the text.
“I sometimes feel bad using ChatGpt to summarise my reading. Do you think this is cheating? Does it help shape cheating? Is it that cheating when I write an essay in my own words and ask how to improve it, and when I start editing my essay, is it that cheating?”
Her class syllabus says, “Don't use AI to write essays and shape ideas,” but she says, but it leaves a lot of grey areas. Students often say they are alienated from asking teachers for clarity, as allowing AI to use can be flagged as a scammer.
Schools tend to entrust AI policies to teachers. This means that in many cases the rules differ significantly within the same school. For example, some educators will be welcoming the use of Grammarly.com, an AI-powered writing assistant, to confirm Grammar. Others ban it and note that the tool also provides it to rewrite the text.
“It depends on each classroom, whether you can use AI or not. It can be confusing,” says Jolie Lahei, a Valencia 11th grader.
However, this year her teacher has a strict “no AI” policy. “It's a very useful tool, and if we're not allowed to use it, it doesn't make sense,” says Lahei. “It feels outdated.”
Many schools initially banned the use of AI after ChatGpt was launched in late 2022, but views on the role of artificial intelligence in education have changed dramatically. The term “AI literacy” has become a buzzword for the return to school season, focusing on how to balance AI's strengths and risks and challenges.
Over the summer, several colleges and universities convened AI task forces to develop more detailed guidelines and provide new instructions to faculty.
The University of California, Berkeley emailed new AI guidance for all faculty members that directs “include a clear statement about the syllabus regarding course expectations” regarding the use of AI. This guidance provided the language for three sample syllabus statements. Courses that require AI, prohibiting in and out of classes, or allow AI to be used.
“In the absence of such a statement, students may be more likely to inappropriately use these technologies,” the email said, emphasizing that AI is “creating new confusion about what constitutes a legitimate way for students to complete their work.”
At Carnegie Mellon University, academic liability violations have increased dramatically due to AI, but students are unaware that they are doing something wrong.
For example, one English learner wrote assignments in his native language and translated his work into English using Deepl, an AI-powered translation tool, but he also didn't notice that the platform also changed his language, which was flagged by an AI detector.
The implementation of academic integrity policies has been complicated by AI, which is difficult to detect and even more difficult to prove, Fitzsimmons said. Teachers are allowed flexibility when they believe that students have crossed the line unintentionally, but are reluctant to point out violations because they don't want to unfairly accuse them of students, and they worry that there is no way to prove their innocence if they are falsely accused.
Over the summer, Fitzsimmons helped draft detailed new guidelines for students and faculty who are striving to be more clear. Teachers are said to have a comprehensive ban on AI “not a viable policy” unless instructors make changes to how students teach and evaluate. Many teachers have abolished take-home exams. Some have returned to pen and paper tests in their class, while others have moved to “flip classrooms” where homework is done in the class.
Emily DeJu, who teaches communications courses at Carnegie Mellon's business school, eliminated the assignment as homework and replaced it with in-class quiz held on a “lockdown browser” laptop that prevents students from leaving the quiz screen.
“It's unreasonable to expect an 18-year-old to exercise great discipline, so it's up to the instructor to set up guardrails.”
___
Associated Press Education Compensation receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP standards for working with Ap.org supporters and charities, a funded coverage area.
