After the brutal reality of dealing with student papers in the ChatGPT era finally hit me, here are a few tactics that I've found at least somewhat effective in getting students to do their own writing: 🧵
May 7, 2025 13:361. LOWER THE BAR: most students don't think they write well, so they are easily tempted to "improve" their writing by asking AI for alternatives. Giving them extra credit for imperfect but genuine writing while teaching them to take ownership of their words and ideas has helped.
2. MAKE IT PERSONAL: rather than asking students to explain a theory, apply a conceptual framework, or reproduce material they rarely feel confident they really understand, I ask them to reflect in writing on what an essay or an idea has meant to them.
3. FEEDFORWARD, NOT FEEDBACK: instead of having students submit a paper and return a grade (with maybe a little bit of feedback), I now have students submit a first complete draft, for which I give them a provisional grade and feedforward that they can use to revise and resubmit for a final grade.
4. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE: in every course I teach, I now make sure to incorporate at least two moments in which I launch into a diatribe about the evils of AI. It gives me an opportunity to vent and the students love it because deep down, they know it's wrong and need to hear that.
5. DON'T PANIC: after a moment of deep depression, I realized that most students really can be persuaded to do work in good faith. Some will of course end up cheating, but this has always been the case and it always will be. So focus more on inspiring them and less on making courses "AI-proof."
6. NEVER USE IT YOURSELF. EVER! The most common issue I hear from students is that some of their lecturers use ChatGPT for feedback, syllabus creation, etc., so why shouldn't they? Of course I'm not the boss of you, but as soon as you use it for ANYTHING, you're giving students implicit permission.
The five paragraph essay format sucked but it's what ruled while I was in Jr and Sr HS. All those in-class, timed read-then-write tests were such an asset by the time I got to college. I had a strong basic skill and learned how to expand it beyond a narrow mold.
Do you ever use handwritten products?
So far this actually gets at a lot of what I was complaining about. It is inspiration rather than certification.
The problem is that you have to be a good teacher to inspire, and even then it is easy to fail
Mind if I ask what your average class size is?
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Submit draft one in handwriting while using class time only. Hand in. Teacher adds feedback… photo copies it. Hand back after a week. Student types it up in class using feed back and any new ideas. Submits. After submission give them the option to use AI to improve .Compare/contrast, reflect
Thanks. This is good. My biggest problem now is students in online classes who use AI for the essay portion of their online test. Some students have clearly written their own essay. Some have clearly used AI (and I give them 0 points). And unfortunately some are hard to tell.
📌 advice for teachers
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Tons of blue book exams. But the exams are more about training than evaluating.
The admins are really pushing AI. They want the teachers to use it. I think the goal here is to get AI to teach the classes. IT won't work, but they got to try.
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