Instructors cannot tell if students understand or just copy text
Instructors are struggling with assessing student work, particularly regarding academic integrity and demonstrating understanding of core concepts. They face challenges in grading student notes, ensuring proper source usage, and addressing plagiarism, leading to increased workload and concerns about student learning. This highlights a broader issue of maintaining academic standards in a challenging educational environment.
SOURCES (60)
“Howdy folks, Higher education instructor here, teaching English and communications. Between the sheer number of assignments and the time it takes to write useful comments, the workload is becoming untenable. Some semesters I've taught as many as five courses, and the grading is insane. Fortunately,…”
“Year 30 ELA and History, 95% digital. I have 2-3 graded assignments per week although we’re only required to do one. Usually 1 is an auto graded multiple choice. Another is a quick write completion grade. Only one assignment per week requires a quick read. Most of the time I’m looking for one skill/mastery in the assignment. Essays, students are providing feedback on first draft based on a rubric and checklist. Final draft, I’m reading intro and conclusion then quickly cross checking with the bo”
“What is the expectation anymore? Coming to class largely requires some form of reading and writing. Sure there are different activities. But what do they really expect us to do? Backflips? Then if it’s not engaging enough, people are called into meetings and threatened with pips. It’s confusing and nonsense. I have decades of experience. submitted by /u/Allyjet [link] [comments]”
“This week is fall break (Thursday and Friday). I received this gem of an email today: “I am writing to inform you that I will not be in class today as I am on vacation for the week. I wanted to ask if you could send the notes from class today.” Note that I do photocopy my lecture notes for legitimate absences (athletics, medical appointments, etc.). But this? I didn’t even reply. Hope your semesters are going well! submitted by /u/dr_bbq [link] [comments]”
When I was a high school English teacher, I started every school year having my students review the rules from Strunk's **The Elements of Style**. My son, who's a sophomore in high…
“I teach a second-year history course and returned our first source-analysis papers this week. One student brought theirs to office hours and asked which parts they should try to do again in the next paper. They'd earned an A. I'd filled out the rubric, put a couple of ticks in the margins, and written "Good analysis" at the end. We went back through it together. There was a paragraph where two sources disagreed, and instead of trying to make them agree, the student narrowed the”
“So far it seems like the whole class will be about bonds & securities. It hasn’t clicked for me since the first chapter and now we’re 4 chapters in. It would be nice if each chapter was given 2 weeks instead of 1 week. I barely have time to digest the information”
“My professor for AFA only teaches theory in class and the extent of solving problems (NPO financial statements) is just annotating off a printed solutions key. All my previous profs wrote answers from hand but she doesn’t and spends class teaching 90% theory, but all the exam questions are 100% application. Her in class examples are easy AF and I can do them with ease. But the practice and sample midterms are significantly more difficult to the point that most of it is touching upon things we di”
“I received a handwritten submission for an online course, either scanned or, more likely, photographed and uploaded. Context: I have not received ADA accommodations for this student. It was not a timed assignment. The instructions directed that the student should type their response after copying and pasting the prompts into a word processor (though not required). I forbid AI in this class I'm contemplating how to integrate it in the coming semesters. I know it might be an attempt to avoid d”
“> The university insists that homework can't be optional, but it lost its meaning. I've tried to explain to my students that it's in their interest to think about home assignments on their own, but the majority will obviously use gen AI, and it's such a waste of time to check and grade LLM output.Can't you just not grade it at all? If the student has done their homework, just consider it passed. And then don't count it at all for the final grade.”
“I’m talking about reading but also about finding serious meaning within music, movies, and tv. It feels like many of my students just don’t have the tools, desire, or attention span to examine any media past the stuff that’s right there on the surface. I am aware that this is a cliche moral panic-y gripe that has been applied by many previous older generations to their respective younger generations. Do you guys think it’s more real this time due to the tech-fueled dopamine addiction, or am I ju”
“It would be a waste of time. LLMs have become better but not perfect. Personal experience; it's easier/faster to grade for me than have the LLMs grade and cross-check each one.”
“In our thesis there has to be 3 papers but they do not need to be published. I right now I‘m completely freaking out (again) bc I have no referncw how good these papers must be and if me results are novel enough, if there are any missing assumptions.. and I found again a mistake in one of my papers (I‘m doing analytical research). I wrote my 3 papers and habe 1 1/2 years left to present them, write them new etc. So my question now is: have you als expereinece that you tought your paper is „done“”
“I am currently taking college writing, and the paper we are supposed to be analyzing is a Malcolm Gladwell article on why social media by its very nature is not ideal for large scale social change. This made me think of the current state of YouTube which as we all know mainly consists of unemployed guys whining to the camera. I understand information needs to get out there somehow, but complaining about a new YouTube feature that sucks isn't going to change anything. It's not like Chad M”
“What are some types of questions you would consider for a writing assessment exam for ESL students? So far the arrangement im going with consists of: 1-Self Introduction (50 to 80 words) 2-Opinion Writing ( 50 to 80 words) 3-Narrative or maybe Descriptive Writing (50 to 80 words) & 4-A Dialogue ( 6 to 10 lines exchange) What are some other types of questions i could add to this paper And given that its a 60 minute test , How am i doing in regrads to the word count? How would you change the r”
“What strategies do you have for grading and feedback on papers when you have 20+ students? I want to make sure I’m giving authentic feedback. Do I just deal and go one by one or does someone have a solid approach they like to make it more manageable? For context, the university I’m at has course leads so we don’t have much autonomy over assignments and this course has a lot of written work. submitted by /u/SpicyChill77 [link] [comments]”
“I am starting over from scratch. For context, my class had to do a simple traditionally written essay on climate change within 10 minutes and then a class sharing followed. I thought I was doing so good while writing, I even tried to step out of my comfort zone in terms of writing by writing more descriptively. But that smile on my face was quickly taken away from me once the sharing of answers proceeded 💔 Everyone clearly had much better essays than I did. As in there was a big and clear gap b”
“Today I am in grading first drafts of my students first papers in one of my classes (where they'll write five such papers during the semester). These first papers are hot garbage. They are reminiscent of back in the early 2010s when I'd go to a winery to read the first drafts because it was only possible to keep reading with the assistance of alcohol. I'm so happy. There's no way any of these students used AI to write. This is their writing not some stupid chatbot. I can work wit”
“This is my last semester of 2nd year and I've realized that I've been "studying(shoving knowledge into my brain)", but not practicing how to make a decent argument. My research has been all "here looking at this thing everyone knows" and that's about it. I want to step my game up. Any ideas? Training plans, books, how to approach articles... any insights would help me greatly! submitted by /u/Passionate_Noises [link] [comments]”
“They check out in group work! It's usually one person doing all the work. I guess students learn a variety of ways, lecture has its place. Guided Notes and lecture work very well.”
“Hi, all! So, this is a first for me: Most days, I have a no-tech policy in my beginning English composition class (except for special circumstances). Anyway, since the semester started, I've noticed two students staring at their phones regularly. I could tell they weren't playing Candy Crush or fooling around on TikTok, so I wondered what was up. Later, I learned that they were using an app to translate my lectures from another language into English. I've noticed that they have diffi”
“Tldr: Advice needed: At least one professor on my committee grading my proposal fails to understand the thesis statement and is trying to fail it/grade it very poorly. Hi all, let me discuss the context and my present plan of action. Thank you in advance. I can't discuss the technical details on reddit as I haven't published my work yet. Essentially I found a place of confusion in my field where the data and the math are incompatible; but it's not clear to people. So people use the d”
“Depends on the subject, but sometimes the skills we are practicing are not always obvious. In math, students work with a lot of specific formulas which may or may not be particularly useful in their specific future career, but the problem solving, the exercise of the brain etc will be. It’s something that students don’t always realize is being exercised in the way that it is, bc they are focused on the specifics and not the broader goals. Sometimes all the literary analysis of classic books seem”
“I scaffold my writing assignments. My students, a lot of them, no longer understand a process. I don’t mean they suck at it. I mean, conceptually, they don’t understand that A leads to B leads to C. They complete A and then B is a completely different topic. I correct them. C is now a new, new topic. They write a thesis. It’s nowhere in their introduction. I ask where it is. They don’t understand the introduction is based on the thesis they previously wrote. They write a rough draft. They ask wh”
“I did lots of consulting for Flipped Classroom. One method was if kids didn't watch the lectures at home and answer the baseline questions they had to do it at the start of class. This might work depending on your classroom structure, personalities and management. Another method was to give the quick review at the start of class. Depending on age, kids might be receptive to prizes or advantages for answering the flash review. I've had success giving kids a 5 minute intro quiz and if they”
“I will be teaching an undergraduate course in Psychology of Reasoning and I'm hoping to tap into your collective wisdom about how to do assessment. This course is about learning to apply course concepts & research findings to one’s own reasoning. The class size will be around 70 students. The class format will be about equally divided between problem-solving/discussion (e.g., solving and then discussing problems in logic or decision making) and lecture (in which I will talk about researc”
“Hi, I also teach ESL in Europe. At that level I would simply put in "reading comprehension strategies": basically, how to find (and underline) the answers to the questions, how to write full-sentence answers, and maybe how to decide what information is relevant and what isn't. At that level there isn't much room for anything else, but those are all important skills that will be necessary later on.”
“Create one Resources database. This will hold everything for every course... notes, exams, labs, etc. Create a database of courses. This will have a page for each course that filters the Resource database to only things for that course. Create a Semesters database. This will hold a view of all the courses and Resources for that semester. This will allows you to look at Resource items across courses within a semester. Use Notion relations to relate Resources to Courses and Semesters. This is what”
“Hi all, I’m really confused about consolidated financial statements, worksheet entries, and the McGrawHill content. Anyone out there really grasp what is going on? My universities’ resources are of no help, our accounting professor basically doesn’t teach (tenured and doesn’t care), tutors are just literally my peers who are even more confused than I am. submitted by /u/Long-Amphibian9968 [link] [comments]”
“You should go to your instructor and ask for help there to get a basic understanding first”
“This is a completely disingenuous answer that does not even attempt to answer the question. Maybe one of us needs to revisit the schooling that we received? But you know what? I pretty much expected this kind of response; because I genuinely don't think you have a legitimate answer or one could be provided. The real answer is likely that there is a time to provide information to students and then a time to apply it. Very rarely those things can happen simultaneously. But a good teacher, whic”
“Gave the first summative this week and it was abysmal. It was pretty evident that kids did study the terms and other things I directly gave them but did not have the skills (finding latitude and longitude, map scale) despite performing OK on formatives and a quick review of how to do it during review. I have two small classes of this grade, 4 kids in each classroom made an A, there was no 100%. The remainder of the grades were D and F. Obviously, I need to reteach the skills and retest. I will d”
“I’m especially curious about worksheets, and tests. Do you use answer keys, grade one question across the whole class at once, skip written comments, use rubrics, or have any other system that saves time? I don't want to lower the quality of comments but still save time. Looking for practical methods that actually worked for you. submitted by /u/rebasthe [link] [comments]”
“When everything’s fed to you the brain doesn’t go searching for information anymore. That searching wakes up the brain and keeps us alert.”
“How do you help students engage with the material? Any tips and tricks? submitted by /u/Belt-Houdini [link] [comments]”
“Undergrad here. Something I keep noticing: the students getting the most out of these tools are not the ones with the cleverest prompts, they are the ones who know their subject well enough to catch when the model is confidently wrong. Prompt engineering for coursework is mostly knowing what a good answer looks like before you ask. The gap I see in my classes is stark. Half of us paste a question, take the first output, and move on. The other half treat the model like a sparring partner. They as”
“IDK what an LMS app is. We are a media course, they are learning how to use camera, mics, editing software etc every day and building a portfolio. This isn't GCSE maths.”
“I teach history at a community college, and I’ve noticed that many of my students struggle with the readings, especially engaging with primary sources. I recently saw a post on this sub where a professor mentioned that they explicitly teach students how to read for college, and it made me realize I probably need to spend more class time teaching this skill instead of assuming students already know how to do it. For those of you who explicitly teach college reading/annotation skills, what does th”
“Tired of fielding phone calls from student's lawyers. This semester, I've started treating the syllabus like a quasi-legal document. Students have to review, sign and deposit it in our CMS. Any dispute about grades? Let's pull out that contract you signed? Has anyone done this in the past? If so, how did it go? I know it wouldn't hold up in a court of law, but I'm tired, boss. submitted by /u/throwawayyuskween666 [link] [comments]”
“so funny to me that some of my students take pics of the slides. i'm always like, you know this is on our course site, right? WHY DO THEY DO IT? submitted by /u/starrysky45 [link] [comments]”
“If u forget to conclude on a couple of excel exhibits but u do so in word, is it a fail? U conclude on all your recommendations but forget to conclude on excels exhibits. submitted by /u/Huhu2075 [link] [comments]”
“What the title says. I’m trying to study for bio and is a lot of memorization and processes based off the slides in class. Is there a good website where I can upload the notes I made from class and generate some questions? I feel like questions help me learn as well. Also this isn’t considered like cheating right? I mean they would never know anyway but submitted by /u/healthy-outdoors- [link] [comments]”
“Hey all! I have a coffee chat with a team lead at OAI because of similar programme at school they did and I used their book for one of my works. How do I make the best use of this? I come from a physics background rather than CS but I am quite interested in OAI and the team lead also has a PhD in Physics then moved to AI a while ago. submitted by /u/n0obmaster699 [link] [comments]”
“It seems like you're doing the research but not writing the essay to figure out what you really think about it all, to use a university analogy. There's another very good comment here on writing mini-essays about what you''ve learned to clear up your thinking. Also https://www.youtube.com/@odysseas__ channel is very good on this.”
“What are your techniques? I have been trying to find efficient ways to teach writing class. submitted by /u/Odd-Concern-8230 [link] [comments]”
“I've been using a different form of assignments lately in the classroom and for me, it is an absolute game changer with no fewer than 6 distinct benefits. Without going into all of them in depth, I'll just say that it is extremely intuitive for my ADHD brain compared to writing questions on the board or typing up a Google Doc for every activity. Essentially, I write down on notebook paper the questions I want us to answer. The questions are numbered and might say, "1. Complete the a”
“What does everyone do when a student copies another student’s homework when collaboration is not allowed? In the past I’ve given both students zeros on the assignment. Now I have a student saying they “didn’t know” the other student copied from them and wants credit. How would you handle this situation? (High school) submitted by /u/4myL6 [link] [comments]”
“I'm doing a lesson on writing body paragraphs using MEAT (Main point, Evidence, Analysis, Thought). Its a pretty simple lesson where I go through each letter and have my students write their own paragraph with a topic of their choice. It went great with middle schoolers, as all of them are eager to make their bold claims and use their imaginations. Today I tried this with grade 10s, and my freaking gosh they're bad at thinking. Many of them failed to even come up with a main point to tal”
“I'm an adjunct who teaches mainly freshman composition, and it's been rough with AI and everything. I gave my students a simple in-class writing assignment instead of a take-home essay like we usually do since those are all GenAI now. I handed out a half-page excerpt from an article, an opinion piece from Opposing Viewpoints about student attention spans. The article basically states that not allowing any devices in class creates a technology sanctuary that fosters actual learning. "”