What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?
The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/07/the-end-of-the-english-paper
#AI #Edu #Education #Humanities #Essay #EnglishEssay #Writing #College #CollegeWriting #HuaHsu
What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/07/the-end-of-the-english-paper
#HackerNews #AIDestroyingWriting #CollegeWriting #FutureOfEducation #AIImpact
I'm teaching first year writing this semester. Their first major paper was due last week and four out of fourteen clearly used AI to write their papers. This after I had them write repeated drafts by hand in class so I could get a sense of their actual style. But the final version was typed, and that's when they had the computer do it.
It's obvious to me that none of them could have written what they turned in, but this is hard to explain to students and it's not great to challenge them without evidence. Of course the AI never writes the same thing twice, so the submissions aren't reproducible. TurnItIn is reprehensible and not very accurate, so that's out. But it turns out that asking ChatGPT to "finish this paragraph" along with a suspicious first sentence from their papers gets close enough to convince them to admit that they used it.
It returns different sentences and mostly similar or identical words, but the flow of ideas and the content is pretty much the same. This worked reliably. They're all new to college and I'm opposed to it anyway, so I'm not willing to report them, but they're all redoing the assignment.
Oh also, in order to encourage them to take the risk of doing their own writing I'm only grading them on whether they turn in all the assignments, including drafts and revisions, so there's nothing to gain grade wise by using AI, but I guess the temptation was too much. 🤷🏻
As a college professor, I have no interest in trying to catch AI cheaters. The arms race between LLMs and AI detectors misses the point.
I created a new statement on AI usage in my courses.
Now if I can just get them to read the syllabus...
https://open.substack.com/pub/syntheticreasoning/p/why-i-have-no-interest-in-catching?r=366lm6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true #chatgpt #highered #college #collegewriting #ai #highereducation
Just published!
Info & order at 25% off quoting code ESSAY here:
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Reminder: Feb. 2 USC is hosting a free online symposium about teaching writing. I will be running a workshop on using generative AI in the writing classroom at 11am pst. Come join. Org by Tamara Luque Black & Elizabeth Durst
https://dornsife.usc.edu/the-writing-program/2024-advanced-writing-symposium/
Feb. 2 USC is hosting a free online symposium about teaching writing. I will be running a workshop on using generative AI in the writing classroom at 11am pst. Come join. Org by Tamara Black & Elizabeth Durst
https://dornsife.usc.edu/the-writing-program/2024-advanced-writing-symposium/ #teachingwriting #collegewriting
For my first "weekly assemblage" post of the new year, I enthuse quite a bit about this week's "#AI and Teaching #CollegeWriting" session of the Future Trends Forum ( hosted by @bryanalexandee ) https://www.ryanpatrickrandall.com/weekly-assemblage/wa-2024-week-01
There's also mentions of my site's home page redesign and the semester that starts tomorrow.
Plus, I should now have the Giscus comments loading "preferred color scheme" correctly! Cheers if you feel like testing that section out! #weekNotes
Just published!
Info & order at 25% off quoting code ESSAY here:
https://bit.ly/3RF9XUV
Just published!
Info & order at 25% off quoting code PA here:
https://bit.ly/42Anhvz
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