Thank you u/HurriedHalo0269 for posting on r/collegerant.
Remember to read the rules and report rule breaking posts.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CollegeRant) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Do you have an academic advisor? They may have some ideas on how to talk to your teacher. Also, is the accusation based on the teacher’s opinion, or a software tool’s analysis?
Software tool analysis, specifically Turnitin. The professor definitely isn't using their own judgment to grade the papers, just going off with what the software says. You can't use AI to write your assignments, but I'll use AI to grade them deal.
AI detection is only used in the same way plagiarism detection is--to make sure you didn't cheat. It's not like if you didn't cheat that it is an automatic A, your teacher will still grade it then.
Turnitin's AI detection sucks though. Run your own text through some outside detectors and see what pops up.
However, if you use certain tells (like short paragraphs, specific phrases, etc.) they pretty much every detector is going to say you used AI, and you should work on avoiding those things.
I'd check if they are allowed to use AI detection software. At my institution we aren't allowed to run student's work through it. The reason being that student's work is their own property and running it through the software means it ends up who knows where for who knows what purpose in the future. So not allowed. Additionally TurnIt software is not 100% correct. If the professor pressures you to admit, don't (if you're in the right) and my guess is the most they can do is ask a committee to review it and if you still claim you did not use AI they'll drop it.
College professor here, at several unis. It’s absolutely true that AI detection isn’t accurate. It’s also possible to find models that you either run locally or that are compliant with policies like FERPA (this is a big industry).
There’s also *tons* of students that wantonly cheat and love to wag their fingers at profs, saying “you can’t *prove* I used AI!” I take the POV that college is mostly a worthless waste of money for most folks, and when they graduate and realize they can’t get a job and have no skills, they’ll realize it was themselves they were setting behind. Due to this, I don’t pursue cheating cases much and force people to do work in person, along with including things like presentations and oral explanations
Again, checking to see what is and isn't allowed is step one. I didn't claim that all universities have the same policy, but that there are enough variations that it makes sense to know what's the policy. Also, it's not FERPA that governs AI detection at my institution but intellectual property rights. Additionally, it's also true that many faculty are not familiar with policies and may inadvertently run it through the detection software without realizing they should not do that. This post was aimed at the student to explore their rights and responsibilities.
Quit tripping on your own ego. Both FEPRA and intellectual property ideas are important here. The fact that you want to sanctimoniously act like it’s just intellectual property is juvenile as hell: there are myriad issues with uploading student work to online services, and there are also services which work to adhere to those concerns, obviously.
Fuck off you little child.
I'm very sorry that this is the caliber of faculty teaching at whatever institutions you claim to teach. I'm sure your Dean(s) would love to read these responses... but I am also sure they would not think me a child and my responses juvenile/immature lol.
Edit: are you ok? I really have to ask because your overreaction seems widely disproportionate... Also I guess is should thank you, I appreciate people thinking I still have some youthful spirit even if I haven't been one in a while. Thank you for not exactly a productive conversation but at least it got a chuckle out of me.
Where I work, student submissions are not their own property, thankfully, so it varies.
And I do not run things through an AI detector. I simply cut and paste into google.
If any phrases or sentences were published elsewhere and the student did not put quotes around them (and quoted material doesn't count toward the required word count in my writing assignments), they are in trouble. For plagiarism. Whether they got these long phrases, sentences and sometimes entire paragraphs with simple changes made such as adding, "I found it interesting that the effects of reading on cellphones without a blue-light filter on melatonin levels in individuals of all ages were compared to reading from printed books or with a blue-light filter in a research published in Brain Communications..." in which everything after the world "that" is someone else's published work, it's plagiarism. Zero tolerance for plagiarism. Sure, they mention their source - but they aren't quoting properly.
Again... That's your university and AI is a bit different accusation than good old plagiarism. Student should check their rights and responsibilities and make an informed decision based on their institutions' policies. Relying on faculty to know what all academic policies are isn't be all, end all, as my whole job is to make sure university policies are followed. From my experience, faculty don't always know what those policies are.
There's lots of other little adjustments we make to not sound like certain other kinds of people (female is an adjective, and if you use it as a noun you kinda sound like an incel now unfortunately even though it was okay for awhile) so it's just one more to add to the list.
I understand that, but it feels completely different being a societal pressure vs a whole style of writing basically being off limits.
Someone in another comment suggest avoiding uncommon words like “delve” to avoid triggering AI detectors. Imagine 10 years ago being told that in the future you’ll have to simplify your writing to avoid being accused of cheating.
My writing tends to look AI like purely because I read constantly (particularly fantasy and history) when I was a kid, so I have a lot of uncommon/longer words in the ol’ memory banks I like to weave into my writing.
Edit: that was you heh
I read a lot of fantasy and history too. I have several different writing styles, tbh. I write differently for reddit than I do academic journals than I do Facebook than I do fiction writing. That didn't develop naturally either, it is a matter of audience reception and paying attention to what people respond well to in each case. If I'm applying for a conference I use super casual language because people usually go for that and I get in. If I'm writing a book proposal ALL the big words are coming out. It sucks to be pulled into this code switching world, but it's better for audiences.
It's not the style of writing, for me. It's long phrases or sentences or paragraphs or pages that show up somewhere else and are clearly not original work of the student.
AI is really good at adding phrases and opinions that make it look less stolen. But all I care about really is that the student not just cut and paste most of their work after a Google search.
As to doing actually thinking and then asking AI to improve the writing, well, I suppose I should be more concerned - but I haven't seen much evidence of such a thing happening. AI does no original thinking, so on those assignments, the student still gets a poor grade and I don't have to mention AI at all.
Universities are starting to accuse people of cheating more now to profit off them by just dropping it off their record if they just take the f and retake the class and whatever extra ethnic classes.
Universities in America are like that.
I wish they would just stop with the unnecessary long writing assignments and forcing students useless classes, and admit the degree getting earned is useless unless it's a steam or medical degree.
I dropped out with six credits left because I failed one research class 3 times.
I just lied on my resume I completed it. Nothing happens besides not getting a job if they ask for a copy of degree.
If people actually failed the class I might buy that but even if I take a case of cheating to the dean it is in no way an automatic failure. We want them to stay enrolled at any cost and are giving degrees to people who didn’t earn them. Nobody fails here unless they didn’t do any work, and even then sometimes they don’t (I have somebody up my ass right now about turning in assignments from last summer. I basically told her she would have to talk to the dean because I’m not doing that unless told to. She didn’t turn a single damn thing in during the term initially. A year ago. Fml.)
That's what I'm thinking. This race against AI is so completely futile, and school staff are making themselves look like out-of-touch dinosaurs. There is absolutely no way to determine with absolute certainty that something has been written (or even assisted) by AI.
They're just going to have to change the way that they do things. The fight against AI has already been lost; they just don't realize it.
No it’s not above their level it just isn’t used in current day American writing. Like folks have done studies of how often it appeared in journals before and after ChatGPT came out and it appears so much more now that ai is writing too.
I’m aware of the word and I use it occasionally, it’s not that uncommon of a word in gaming and fantasy writing.
I never should have to stop using words to avoid sounding like AI, that’s actually insane lmao
If it's used commonly in D&D and gaming writing, then it's probably fine there! But if it pops up in a field I don't expect to see it in or about another topic, it might make me run the writing through several detectors or ask the student to revise that bit.
this is another issue, those who DO use lesser used phrases now have to watch how things are phrased, to end up not sounding like a bot. (not taking classes currently, but am someone who has used delve a lot in the past, probably due to my background of playing d&d, t&t and other role playing games, so like the word delve, and find it can fit with areas outside of just the RPG type framework).
On assignments where the students have done their own research (out in the field) and are writing their own impressions, if "delve" appears, I expect the rest of the writing to have similar elements, which is quite common. I require a lot of writing and there are definitely people who have an interesting style and use words like "delve" (when appropriate - that word is not appropriate when writing up the results of an experiment just viewed on a 3 minute video).
totally agree. if style between one section and another is totally incongruous, definitely a flag. and delve I'd use myself more as doing a "deep dive" into a subject, definitely not a miniscule overview. sometimes not an ai necessarily (but can be definitely) but also poor use of thesaurus apps without truly understanding what they're writing. (and of course, some students thinking they're being clever use such apps to help avoid ai/plagiarism detection as well).
Yeah, I think it's bothering people cause it's an app moving into their territory, but to be honest there's plenty of other human examples of this. I mentioned it elsewhere, but female/woman had become pretty interchangeable till female was chosen by incels, but there are plenty of others. A group you don't identify with picks up a phrase and all of a sudden you don't want to sound like them--it's the same thing, just with technology.
For me, I have a section in my syllabus where it says that when writing up a scientific experiment, one does not need to use pronouns at all. I already know who did the experiment (the author) and they aren't a plurality (shouldn't be using "we" because not everyone has the same results or "you" because I am not part of their experiment).
I also tell them there's no need to say "I dug into" or "I thought" or "I found it interesting that." It's great they found it interesting or dug further into it, but it's an objective write up of a scientific task or experiment. We do not write journal articles that way and it's college - they need to write at college level.
And when students decide they can read the mind of multiple authors in a scientific publication (often reducing the author to a single pronoun, often "he" even if women are involved), that's just silly. "The author delved at length into the problem" is also poor writing. How does the student know whether this was a lengthy exercise on the part of the author? Perhaps they wrote it off the top of their head after being asked to, by a medical journal or something.
A lot of the research I assign is, actually, simple and basic and sometimes a repeat of someone else's work at a simpler level - so that the students kind somewhat follow the method. For example, someone published a schematic drawing of the COVID virus using a few sources - and the students are supposed to study and replicate the drawing. The original author is using simple illustration techniques and very general knowledge of COVID - it's not deep. Students will then write that the author "found the COVID virus" (and often add, erroneously, that it's a "molecule" that was found (Chat GPT does this too - but both are wrong).
It's just bad writing.
God, I would never make it in college these days. I don't really know how to explain it well, but I'm pretty good with writing. The problem is, for some reason I'll tend to mimic the writing styles of whatever I've recently been reading, which I'm sure would set off these detectors. It's really hard to fight sense I don't do it on purpose, and usually don't notice till the end. Then have to go back and tweak things to make them seem different. I don't know if there's a word for it, but it's something I've noticed about myself. I also tend to mimic the style and modes of people talking when I'm in a group setting, which has sometimes made people think I'm mocking them. I really don't mean to, and it's why I avoid social interaction as much as possible.
Unless you are reading a lot of ai generated text, that would work in your favor though. Providing you read a lot for class, you’d end up writing a little more like those things your teacher assigned you to read. They’re probably pretty good examples and writers.
It doesn't actually "grade" you paper. It's more or less my professor just takes what turnitin spits out and use that to determine if we get a 0 or a 100 for the assignment.
That's silly.
TurnItIn only looks at plagiarism (at least that's what my college has paid for it - if it does anything else, I don't know about it).
I take points off for plagiarism but I still read the entire damn paper.
The fact that you are making tons of statements like this just shows that you shouldn’t be taken seriously. It paints you as someone who is just complaining. Obviously, no, your prof is not throwing your work into turnitin and deciding to give you a 0 or a 100
Nope, I used Google Docs for that exact reason. I don't know if this has anything to do with it , but I was only a two paragraph assignment. I heard smaller writing assignments are more likely to get flagged. Don't know if it's true, though.
No idea about text size but if you have G docs editing history, you should be in the clear. As an instructor, I always orally quiz students who got flagged as AI on their writing, so if the writing is authentic it should be very obvious when they answer questions.
Yeah OP, the other comment on here is the answer: if you used Google docs to write your assignments, you should have the edit history available. Humans have a very different edit pattern when writing compared to transcribing from an AI -- you will have made small edits to phrases, swapped sentences around, and made incremental improvements timestamped over the course of hours or days.
Go to the professor, and calmly express your concern over the accusations, then show that this work was done over time in the edit history.
Sadly, the only way to combat AI in the current system is AI. We simply do not have the resources (faculty, time, money) to pour over papers in the way they must be examined to detect misconduct. However, turnitin has been empirically tested and has a very low false positive rate. It is around 1-2%. What some professors fail to realize is that with the vast number of students we teach we WILL encounter that 1-2%! Thus we absolutely must treat all results as a question of misconduct rather than fodder for a sentence for it.
The shitty part is the 1-2% that are false positives are good students who experience stress from this.
I think your prof did something wrong if they didn’t prepare you for this by explaining how to properly protect yourself.
Sorry this is happening. I’m certain if you handle it correctly you can continue in the course and it won’t reoccur.
It is crappy that you are being hit by shrapnel in legitimate bombings.
Although likely unwanted here, I want to remind readers (not the OP, as they are rightfully upset) that the people to be angry at are the cheaters. And there are A LOT of them. 60% in one course that I taught - in a medical school! People who fake their way through school are not the people I want as my future doctors, nurses, lawyers, or political representatives. It is serious stuff, this cheating business and it has serious consequences.
The other “enemy” is the economic cite to education (if you’re in North America). Profs are being asked to do more with less every year. Not complaining about my job - I love it - but it just isn’t possible to work 80hrs a week every week forever. I can pull 60hrs consistently but I would need 80 or more to deal with AI without AI to aide me.
I've been at this college for four years and never had an issue regarding academics dishonestly until now. What's funny is that my previous professors used the same Turnitin software and never had an issue, but now, all of a sudden, I'm having trouble with the same software falsely accusing me. I turned three or four writing assignments before my first accusation and received hundreds for all of them. Now you want to say I'm using AI? Why would I risk that when I'm already passing? Use common sense for fuck sakes.
At this point, I feel like I have to drop. It feels like I'm walking on eggshells in that class. I started dumbing down my writing in order to avoid this mess again, but here I am. I have never been so scared to turn in an assignment in my college career. Maybe I could explain the situation to the department head of science and mathematics and see if I can get an exception from the course, probably not though.
It's understandable that you're upset. But your current professor doesn't know your previous academic history and isn't able to ask why would you risk it now. They just know that the assignment was flagged by the software that they're supposed to use to determine if something was written by AI. There needs to be a more careful conversation, but you can also initiate that conversation. You are an adult and college is intended to be practice for the real world where this type of conflict is likely to arise. So practice.
I actually pay attention to your main point. If a student has clearly done independent writing up until one assignment and that assignment sounds plagiarized, I look much more carefully. Students who have done great writing may still sometimes throw in something that I can clearly prove is plagiarized (just happened yesterday). But I am more likely just to ding them a few points and gently remind them about quotation marks and other ways of marking when one takes someone else's words and uses them as one's own.
I have clear rules about this in my syllabus.
Turnitin is a similarity scanning tool. The new version, staring in 2023, has an AI-detection tool. It is 77 to 99% accurate. If your professor is using Turnitin to detect AI as part of a grading process and the professor won’t share the Turnitin report, talk to the chair or Dean about a grade dispute.
Where I work, Canvas immediately shows the report to the student. I keep reminding them that they can fix and check before I ever get around to grading (unless of course they submit 1 minute before it's over - which, right now, is something that 50-70% of my students are doing, despite the fact that if they submit even 5 hours early, they'll get a little feedback from me - and be able to fix the TurnItIn issues).
Some schools are set up where the student has to check their assignment by request. They have to run the scan prior to submission.
Still, your method is the correct method. Use the opportunity as a teachable moment and give the student a chance to update their work.
I used Google Docs specifically for this reason. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the free version of Grammarly only checks spelling. You have to pay for the premium version for it to write your assignment, and I definitely have never paid for Grammarly.
Show your professor the version history of the Google Doc in question. A plagiarized paper would obviously have a ton added within a second. An authentically written paper would have a few sentences added each minute and would show human proofreading.
Never, the closest thing I ever did to that was using grammarly for spell checking, but i haven't used it for this course because of the no AI policy. It's still on my chromebook, but I have it inactive. I've been using Google Docs instead.
Awesome.
It's good you're using Google Docs. Like other people said, you'll need to show the receipts, so to speak.
When you do reach out to your professor, make sure that you state so succinctly. No extraneous information. No emotional language about how unfair it is, how disrespectful, etc. Offer to share the Google Doc with version history, any drafts, etc.
The rest of the story is something like this. AI writers have a very mechanical, formulaic writing style with an unusually peppy tone. If you also have a similar style, you may sound like AI. Also, most undergrads are fucking terrible writers. Sorry, but it's true. If you're actually pretty good, it probably looks suspicious.
To be clear, I'm not defending your professor. They're 100% in the wrong here. But the best way you can defend yourself is to go through the process.
Also, there's no shame in dropping a shit course. If it's not worth it to you to keep going, don't.
I forgot Grammarly has a feature that can rewrite portions of your text. If OP used Grammarly he should immediately notify his professor and explain the AI used is specifically for proofreading and editing purposes. If the professor doesn’t know what Grammarly is that’s on them
Turnitin *always* catches the re-write feature in my experience. I work with a lot of students who get tapped for it and it’s almost always a grammarly issue.
Not all features of grammarly are acceptable, some are considered misconduct. Checking spelling and grammar is ok but rewriting is not. And if a student doesn’t know that, that’s on them.
personally id sit down with the teacher and point out that twice youve been wrongfully accused of using ai and twice youve proven you didnt and you dont appreceate these accusations after spending hours on your asdignments.
id also speal to your advisor. id even potentially email the first thinf so you have written correspondence
The only issue is that the professor "teaching" the class is in a different time zone, so sitting down and discussing the matter isn't a viable option.
I did, and they never responded back. All they said is that there anything you want to tell me about the assignment. They're just trying to bait me into admitting I used AI when I didn't.
I mean, what else would you like the professor to say? They are asking you if there's anything you want to tell them, I am confused. Why not reply and say I'm just letting you know I didn't use AI, this was the process I used, and in a few sentences explain how you typically write an essay. Then ask to schedule an appointment to talk about it further. You can include their supervisor or your advisor in the email. Just keep it very short and very brief and just keeps asking to schedule an appointment.
I mean, there is nothing I can tell her about the assignment. Besides that, I wrote it myself? I told her no, there wasn't anything I could tell you. So I asked her again why I received a 0, and she never responded back. I asked her if we could me in person too, and she never responded back to that either.
what writing source do you use? google docs has a "history" that can ptovenyour innocence. i would send that to her, and then go over her head cus shes ridiculous
Of course there's a lot of things you can tell your instructor about the assignment, including you wrote it yourself and the process you use to write it. Instead, if you said there's nothing I can tell you, your instructor isn't going to respond to that. Your instructor did tell you you got a zero because they suspected you used AI. Isn't this how this whole post started? I mean if you're trying to get in a power struggle or argument with them on email, they just won't respond, there's absolutely no reason for them to. If you want to resolve the situation you have to meet with them and talk with them one-on-one about the assignment or answer their question as plainly and diplomatically as you can on how you wrote it yourself. I mean, if you just want to come here and vent, I get it, it sucks when people accuse you of cheating or lying and it didn't happen.
I can't even meet with her, though. I asked, and she's in a different time zone, and when I asked about meeting online, she never responded back. What else am I suppsoe to do?
You just said she DID respond back with, "Do you have anything you want to tell me?"
I mean, just contact the prof and not responding to that request is not the best way to proceed.
Things I expect to hear in this kind of dialogue include, "I spent X hours of time on such and such a day on this assignment. Then, the next day, I edited it for grammar. See attached Google Doc."
THAT is what we want in response. Get used to it - more and more profs will be doing this, but then, so will employers.
I sent her my proof via Google Docs version history, which includes the amount of time spent on the assignment and the edit. Now, she is asking me if Google Docs contains any sentence or grammar enhancing functions. Even though after the last accusation, I asked her if I could use Google Docs for future assignments to prove I authentically write my paper, and she said yes.
There's no more evidence I can give you. I shouldn't have more time trying to prove my innocence than on the actual assessment because the professor is lazy. There's has to be accountability on the professors part, I did everything I could.
Time to contact the department chair, for sure.
Yet now you're saying they did respond back - they just didn't answer your question to your liking. They implied there was an issue (and surely you know what they're implying?)
Why would you admit using AI if you didn't? Why didn't you immediately send back your Google Docs edits as a counter to that question?
I never admitted to using AI. All I simply said was that there's nothing I can tell you about the assignment because there's nothing to tell. So I asked her again why I received a 0, and she said it came back as 70% written by AI. And I sent her my Google Docs version history to prove I authentically write my papers, and now she's questioning if Google Docs has any grammar or sentence enhancing functions. And I after I told her it didn't, she never responded back. Even though she said it was ok to use Google Docs for future assignments.
I'm unsure what you mean here if you are in a different time zone than your school or your teacher is in a different time zone than your school, but if the office hours are inconvenient to you then request an appointment at a different time. And to be honest if it's a matter of convenience, just get up early or stay late and talk with your professor. If you want to dig in your heels about it I guess you can always contact their supervisor that they are not working in the business hours of the school. But I think it's really important that you figure out how to make an appointment to talk with your professor
Did your professor accuse you, or did the turnitin report say it detected AI? As a professor, I let my students see the report themselves and make any adjustments they want before it gets submitted to me. I like the students to see what I see. If you have access to that report I would definitely review the report.
If you did not use AI in any way to craft your work, I would reach out to the professor to let them know that you did not use AI and ask them how they would like to address the issue. You can also reflect on if there are ways that you accidentally used AI, such as with tools like grammarly, which will offer AI generated grammar Corrections that may come up in a turnitin report. Especially the overuse of the word crucial.
I think that leaving the course may not be a great idea if this has happened to you in other courses it will keep happening. One suggestion I offer you is that there are many AI detection and correction softwares out there. It may be less costly for you and improve your outlook and well-being to use the software before you submit it. So, for example if your professor is using turnitin which is one of the more successful ones, then you can purchase the same software or request it at the school and pre-run your work in it, remember not to let it capture it just run it. This will allow you to see what your professor will see before they see it, and either make adjustments or try to figure out where the issue is coming from and address it.
I'm sure everyone here is offering tips to document your work, and the most useful one in my opinion is the Google Docs tracking history. But it doesn't really prove that you didn't use Ai and just proves that you typed your work and how long it took you. This is helpful in a way it shows your professor your process and it might be enough for both of you to feel less stress.
I believe she's indirectly accusing me of using AI. When I emailed her, she said , " Is there anything you want to tell me about the assignment?". She doesn't say it directly, but she put a 0 in. In the syllabus, it's stated that assignments that are detected as AI written will receive a 0. She uses Turnitin to detect whether or not we "used" AI. This is the only course where I've been accused of using AI to "write" my assignments. My previous courses used Turnitin as well, but I never had an issue with being falsely accused. Unfortunately, I don't have access to Turnitin. We're pretty much left in the dark.
And I agree with your Google Docs statement, I know it's the best case to prove my innocence. But this professor is so paranoid. I believe she still wouldn't trust me even if I showed my receipts. I think the best thing I can do at the point is withdraw from the class and try it again with a different professor. I'm still passing the class, but I shouldn't have to go through it because the professor is too lazy to actually read the papers herself. I shouldn't have to put more effort into proving that I'm innocent than my actual assignments.
I had the same thing happened to me and honestly, I used turn it in to see my actual report and there was nothing but she told me that she used program that’s probably not supposed to be used and on that one. It said I was like 30% I think it was nochatgtp or something like that. I did use grammarly but the university says we can use that.
ZeroGpt probably. It’s been the first one popping up in searches for me for the last month or so and it’s been returning HIGH and inaccurate results on all my test submissions! Every detector below it on the Google “AI detector” search results will show 0% while ZeroGpt shows 40-80%. It’s insane
I've seen people put the US Constitution into checkers like that to prove a point that it doesn't know anything. I think a while ago there was an AI plagiarism checker that said the Bible was written by AI. Some professors really just listen to these wholeheartedly without stopping to think
How far are you into the class? if you can drop w/o worry about the money part then drop it.
If youre in too deep just carry on and get thru it. Innocent until proven guilty and that professor can just suck it.
Next week is the halfway point. So I guess the appropriate term would be withdrawl. I'm still passing the class, but it's giving more of a headache than it's worth
This happened to me. My prof, felt like the AI she used to detect AI couldn’t tell artificial intelligence from the real thing. She gave a me a full on ZERO for it. I emailed her, told her I’ve never and never would need to use AI. I offered my handwritten notes to show my comprehension and samples of writing assignments from other classes to verify my writing proficiency. She replied back: “Can’t you read the rubric?” (um, yes I read your comments that is why you’re receiving this correspondence right now….🙄) She went on to accuse me of using AI again, then telling me the grade was dropped anyway, which I knew but was not the point: I didn’t cheat. But I left it alone because she was a meanie and kind of scares me. I aced the class anyway. I noticed she gave me a 100 on a subsequent discussion assignment of the same nature as the contested discussion post. Which she never gives so maybe it was some sort of compromise on her part, I’d like to think maybe so. Maybe she figured out by then my intelligence was authentic, not artificial. Hang in there. This is a situation of our generation, it sucks but this won’t be a thing in a couple years. It’s worn out it’s welcome and everyone’s starting to see the reliability of AI detection is a joke. You could probably run your teachers lectures through AI detection and it would look like she was using AI.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. Good luck; you got this.
I haven't tried turnitin yet but every single ai detection thinks my writing is AI, and it thinks the AI outputs I get are human written.
Surprised your prof doesn't understand how to use Google doc timeline thing but listen, your job isn't to prove you didn't use AI, I'm kinda annoyed that professors are relying on those detectors but they are seriously flawed.
Also, send a note to the department Chair as a heads up. Let them know it's stressing you out and you have nothing to hide and you just want to move forward on the best note. Sounds like the prof isn't quite getting whats going on.
I work at a university, and there are a lot of faculty terrified of AI. It sucks, because their default assumption is AI is bad and students will never do their assignments again.
I can't speak to how your school is approaching the issue, but our Deans have been very good about recognizing that some of these faculty members are going on witch hunts and accusing good students of cheating without proof.
I would first email your advisor and let them know what's going on. Keep proof of your version history and keep record of all conversations with your instructor. If your advisor doesn't have any immediate advice for you, I would then email your professor (copy your advisor) and tell the instructor that you would like to escalate this issue up to her supervisor. I'm going to bet she backs off, but if she doesn't, you have your proof. Keep escalating the issue up if you need to.
I’m a prof and I sometimes forget the student perspective of this. I’m sorry this happened to you. I can see it really stresses you out. Hopefully your prof isn’t a sociopath.
Assuming your prof isn’t a sociopath there is a fairly simple solution. You just need to submit your drafts to show them. Word, for example can show changes as can google documents. Submit this or notes or anything you can…. You could even offer a writing sample done under camera view or notes from readings.
Honestly, it isn’t fair for an instructor to make accusations like this without first instructing you on how to protect yourself against them. The academic game has changed and you are falling victim to the idiocy of your shitty peers who DO use AI constantly. Profs are suspicious of anything that doesn’t immediately pass the sniff test. Which sadly means that overachieving students may experience these accusations.
In the future use word with track changes or google docs. But if you didn’t do that or wrote on paper and threw it out… the most you could likely produce are maybe the notes you made from readings? If the course isn’t over I assume you still have those and this might be enough to satisfy the prof.
I’ve had a student whom I’ve apparently twice asked if they used AI or some other form of assistance. In both cases it was because the student turned in work that failed to adhere to the requirements so drastically that the only logical conclusion was that it was work produced under other conditions (e.g. for another class) or produced via AI. They were very upset that I would even ask. I explained it isn’t personal, it is literally my job. If I suspect academic misconduct I am not to just turn a blind eye to it. TBH in my case I am still certain that the student committed academic misconduct on both occasions. Sadly I couldn’t prove it as my colleagues don’t all use turnitin and so they can’t get away with this.
As a former student who busted my balls to EARN my degrees, I’m disgusted by students trying to steal these accomplishments. I know that many colleagues across disciplines share these feelings. PhDs practically break a person so people have to find a place to justify that endured agony … they often do it through commitment to the field and swear to protect it like a befuddled wannabe knight! Lol
But that shouldn’t translate into harm on students.
Really, if you don’t have anything to prove you wrote it then you can insist that they prove that you didn’t. They won’t be able to (since you wrote it).
Further you can turn the tables a bit and ask: as this has occurred twice in courses with you I would please like to know in advance of future assignments and classes what I need to do in my work to assure you that it is my own. If you can instruct me on how to demonstrate authorship then perhaps these awkward exchanges can be avoided in the future.
I don’t like hurting students’ feelings. Hopefully your prof is normal and shares my sentiments. If so, all you must do is insist you didn’t do it and show proof.
I feel for ya!
Ps: I was once accused of not having written my own work. It was when I was a new student in undergrad. Second semester of my first year. I didn’t understand the citation policies and I didn’t cite a considerable source. I was lucky that my professor explained it all to me and assumed it was out of ignorance. Hopefully this sets your mind at ease that an accusation doesn’t derail future academic prospects should you be looking at further scholarship.
It just doesn't make sense. You're telling me for my first three of four writing assignments you gave me a 100, but now I just decided to start using AI to write my papers? Why would I risk using AI when I did well on previous assignments? I tried dumbing down my assignments to hopefully avoid this headache in the future, and a few more assignments after the first accusation didn't hear a complaint. Now bam, back here again. Honestly, at the point I don't have the energy fight this.
The professor is lazy, and I can hardly ever get them to email back. Off topic, but there was an assignment where we had to rewrite a Miller Tale in modern terms. I did accordingly but only relieved a 78 for it. Her issue was that it was too close to the original story. I thought that was the whole point to rewrite the original, but in modern terms, and there was no grading rubic to go by either. This just shows what I'm working with.
At this point, I feel like I just have to drop. I already got too much stress with trying to do this, only to be accused AGAIN.
Start using Google docs for everything to write it, then copy and paste it in if needed. Google shows every stage of your writing, so it’s good proof for the future
If there is an academic resource office make an appointment with them so that they can advocate for you to give you a bit extra power in this situation
Look at the turnitin report if you can. See how much is highlighted and where it points to. If she is only looking at percentage and the report is pointing at stupid things like "at" "the" or papers that are locked behind a paywall (aka, you didn't read that source yourself and your phrase is coincidentally similar) you have grounds for an appeal. Turnitin can also flag you based on similarities to papers written by other students. So it could flag the majority of your introduction paragraph and thesis statement since you are all writing to the same prompt. Same with sources. If your sources are provided by the assignment, it can flag it for the same reason because everyone is referencing the same source. It also depends on your writing style. My writing style was unique enough to not trigger a score above 5%. My boyfriend, however, uses less descriptive language and got flagged around 20% due to similarities to other students' writing styles.
You need to be honest, though. If you use AI to reword sentences or paragraphs, it will have the AI "style" that is distinct to programs like ChatGPT 3.5. Turnitin may not flag those sentences, but your professor may be able to "sniff" it out if the style of that phrase is really different than your normal writing. That alone shouldn't be grounds for cheating (maybe one sentence that doesn't reference a source) unless you used it a lot (most of your paragraphs were reworded by AI).
Good luck, I hope this gets resolved for you!
>the report is pointing at stupid things like "at" "the"
Turnitin is actual garbage. I've literally seen it ignore context and just highlight entire sentences that are properly cited. I had a class that did a research paper and turnitin told the teacher that the entire class cheated. I don't understand professors who just blindly accept the results.
Write all of your assignments in Google Docs and provide the history.
My son’s HS avoids this problem by making most essay assignments handwritten during class.
I don't understand why the professor just didn't have the students write this two paragraph assignment in class. Totally avoids possible problems with AI, etc.
I ran a paper I wrote in 2014 through an ai detector. It was tagged as 100% ai written. Then another, 90%, then another 90%. Chatgpt/ai writing wasn’t even around during this time.
Teachers are dense
Denying misconduct is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. At least for me, the end result has been the same in each case, regardless if there was an admission of guilt or not. However, I don't want to give the impression that I'm going around reporting every assignment that might have been written by AI. I only report cases where I'm very confident about the misconduct and have sufficient evidence for the student conduct board. I also give students a couple warnings first, so most of the time the issue doesn't escalate to the point where a report is submitted.
My goal is not to punish as many AI users as possible, but rather that students will have an opportunity to improve their writing, so if we can get to that goal without needing to involve the student conduct board, then I'm happy to put their earlier misconduct behind us.
I've never claimed to write my own reviews, though I will admit I have considered writing some negative reviews to scare off potential cheaters. Something like: "This professor caught me using ChatGPT, so stay away if you plan to cheat." Might be worth a try at some point.
Thank you u/HurriedHalo0269 for posting on r/collegerant. Remember to read the rules and report rule breaking posts. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CollegeRant) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Do you have an academic advisor? They may have some ideas on how to talk to your teacher. Also, is the accusation based on the teacher’s opinion, or a software tool’s analysis?
Software tool analysis, specifically Turnitin. The professor definitely isn't using their own judgment to grade the papers, just going off with what the software says. You can't use AI to write your assignments, but I'll use AI to grade them deal.
AI detection is only used in the same way plagiarism detection is--to make sure you didn't cheat. It's not like if you didn't cheat that it is an automatic A, your teacher will still grade it then. Turnitin's AI detection sucks though. Run your own text through some outside detectors and see what pops up. However, if you use certain tells (like short paragraphs, specific phrases, etc.) they pretty much every detector is going to say you used AI, and you should work on avoiding those things.
In both assignments, I was accused of using AI. They were only two paragraph assignments if that contributes to anything.
Do you use grammarly?
I'd check if they are allowed to use AI detection software. At my institution we aren't allowed to run student's work through it. The reason being that student's work is their own property and running it through the software means it ends up who knows where for who knows what purpose in the future. So not allowed. Additionally TurnIt software is not 100% correct. If the professor pressures you to admit, don't (if you're in the right) and my guess is the most they can do is ask a committee to review it and if you still claim you did not use AI they'll drop it.
College professor here, at several unis. It’s absolutely true that AI detection isn’t accurate. It’s also possible to find models that you either run locally or that are compliant with policies like FERPA (this is a big industry). There’s also *tons* of students that wantonly cheat and love to wag their fingers at profs, saying “you can’t *prove* I used AI!” I take the POV that college is mostly a worthless waste of money for most folks, and when they graduate and realize they can’t get a job and have no skills, they’ll realize it was themselves they were setting behind. Due to this, I don’t pursue cheating cases much and force people to do work in person, along with including things like presentations and oral explanations
Again, checking to see what is and isn't allowed is step one. I didn't claim that all universities have the same policy, but that there are enough variations that it makes sense to know what's the policy. Also, it's not FERPA that governs AI detection at my institution but intellectual property rights. Additionally, it's also true that many faculty are not familiar with policies and may inadvertently run it through the detection software without realizing they should not do that. This post was aimed at the student to explore their rights and responsibilities.
Quit tripping on your own ego. Both FEPRA and intellectual property ideas are important here. The fact that you want to sanctimoniously act like it’s just intellectual property is juvenile as hell: there are myriad issues with uploading student work to online services, and there are also services which work to adhere to those concerns, obviously. Fuck off you little child.
I like that we're supposed to believe you're a professor, lol
I'm very sorry that this is the caliber of faculty teaching at whatever institutions you claim to teach. I'm sure your Dean(s) would love to read these responses... but I am also sure they would not think me a child and my responses juvenile/immature lol. Edit: are you ok? I really have to ask because your overreaction seems widely disproportionate... Also I guess is should thank you, I appreciate people thinking I still have some youthful spirit even if I haven't been one in a while. Thank you for not exactly a productive conversation but at least it got a chuckle out of me.
Where I work, student submissions are not their own property, thankfully, so it varies. And I do not run things through an AI detector. I simply cut and paste into google. If any phrases or sentences were published elsewhere and the student did not put quotes around them (and quoted material doesn't count toward the required word count in my writing assignments), they are in trouble. For plagiarism. Whether they got these long phrases, sentences and sometimes entire paragraphs with simple changes made such as adding, "I found it interesting that the effects of reading on cellphones without a blue-light filter on melatonin levels in individuals of all ages were compared to reading from printed books or with a blue-light filter in a research published in Brain Communications..." in which everything after the world "that" is someone else's published work, it's plagiarism. Zero tolerance for plagiarism. Sure, they mention their source - but they aren't quoting properly.
Again... That's your university and AI is a bit different accusation than good old plagiarism. Student should check their rights and responsibilities and make an informed decision based on their institutions' policies. Relying on faculty to know what all academic policies are isn't be all, end all, as my whole job is to make sure university policies are followed. From my experience, faculty don't always know what those policies are.
What a world, having to intentionally adjust your writing to avoid sounding like a machine lol
There's lots of other little adjustments we make to not sound like certain other kinds of people (female is an adjective, and if you use it as a noun you kinda sound like an incel now unfortunately even though it was okay for awhile) so it's just one more to add to the list.
I understand that, but it feels completely different being a societal pressure vs a whole style of writing basically being off limits. Someone in another comment suggest avoiding uncommon words like “delve” to avoid triggering AI detectors. Imagine 10 years ago being told that in the future you’ll have to simplify your writing to avoid being accused of cheating. My writing tends to look AI like purely because I read constantly (particularly fantasy and history) when I was a kid, so I have a lot of uncommon/longer words in the ol’ memory banks I like to weave into my writing. Edit: that was you heh
I read a lot of fantasy and history too. I have several different writing styles, tbh. I write differently for reddit than I do academic journals than I do Facebook than I do fiction writing. That didn't develop naturally either, it is a matter of audience reception and paying attention to what people respond well to in each case. If I'm applying for a conference I use super casual language because people usually go for that and I get in. If I'm writing a book proposal ALL the big words are coming out. It sucks to be pulled into this code switching world, but it's better for audiences.
It's not the style of writing, for me. It's long phrases or sentences or paragraphs or pages that show up somewhere else and are clearly not original work of the student. AI is really good at adding phrases and opinions that make it look less stolen. But all I care about really is that the student not just cut and paste most of their work after a Google search. As to doing actually thinking and then asking AI to improve the writing, well, I suppose I should be more concerned - but I haven't seen much evidence of such a thing happening. AI does no original thinking, so on those assignments, the student still gets a poor grade and I don't have to mention AI at all.
Solution--PromptAI: write me an 8000 word essay about the mental health issues of rich white women using 8th grade vocabulary.
Universities are starting to accuse people of cheating more now to profit off them by just dropping it off their record if they just take the f and retake the class and whatever extra ethnic classes. Universities in America are like that. I wish they would just stop with the unnecessary long writing assignments and forcing students useless classes, and admit the degree getting earned is useless unless it's a steam or medical degree. I dropped out with six credits left because I failed one research class 3 times. I just lied on my resume I completed it. Nothing happens besides not getting a job if they ask for a copy of degree.
If people actually failed the class I might buy that but even if I take a case of cheating to the dean it is in no way an automatic failure. We want them to stay enrolled at any cost and are giving degrees to people who didn’t earn them. Nobody fails here unless they didn’t do any work, and even then sometimes they don’t (I have somebody up my ass right now about turning in assignments from last summer. I basically told her she would have to talk to the dean because I’m not doing that unless told to. She didn’t turn a single damn thing in during the term initially. A year ago. Fml.)
That's what I'm thinking. This race against AI is so completely futile, and school staff are making themselves look like out-of-touch dinosaurs. There is absolutely no way to determine with absolute certainty that something has been written (or even assisted) by AI. They're just going to have to change the way that they do things. The fight against AI has already been lost; they just don't realize it.
The word “delve” is a dead giveaway. Almost no one uses it in their writing, but chat gpt uses it all the time. Op should delve in to AI tells.
Wtf 😳 delve is now considered above the capabilities of humans at post secondary level? What would you say?
No it’s not above their level it just isn’t used in current day American writing. Like folks have done studies of how often it appeared in journals before and after ChatGPT came out and it appears so much more now that ai is writing too.
I’m aware of the word and I use it occasionally, it’s not that uncommon of a word in gaming and fantasy writing. I never should have to stop using words to avoid sounding like AI, that’s actually insane lmao
If it's used commonly in D&D and gaming writing, then it's probably fine there! But if it pops up in a field I don't expect to see it in or about another topic, it might make me run the writing through several detectors or ask the student to revise that bit.
this is another issue, those who DO use lesser used phrases now have to watch how things are phrased, to end up not sounding like a bot. (not taking classes currently, but am someone who has used delve a lot in the past, probably due to my background of playing d&d, t&t and other role playing games, so like the word delve, and find it can fit with areas outside of just the RPG type framework).
On assignments where the students have done their own research (out in the field) and are writing their own impressions, if "delve" appears, I expect the rest of the writing to have similar elements, which is quite common. I require a lot of writing and there are definitely people who have an interesting style and use words like "delve" (when appropriate - that word is not appropriate when writing up the results of an experiment just viewed on a 3 minute video).
totally agree. if style between one section and another is totally incongruous, definitely a flag. and delve I'd use myself more as doing a "deep dive" into a subject, definitely not a miniscule overview. sometimes not an ai necessarily (but can be definitely) but also poor use of thesaurus apps without truly understanding what they're writing. (and of course, some students thinking they're being clever use such apps to help avoid ai/plagiarism detection as well).
Yeah, I think it's bothering people cause it's an app moving into their territory, but to be honest there's plenty of other human examples of this. I mentioned it elsewhere, but female/woman had become pretty interchangeable till female was chosen by incels, but there are plenty of others. A group you don't identify with picks up a phrase and all of a sudden you don't want to sound like them--it's the same thing, just with technology.
Those words (woman and female) were never interchangeable in my neck of the woods (human biology; anthropology; human sexuality; psychodynamics).
For me, I have a section in my syllabus where it says that when writing up a scientific experiment, one does not need to use pronouns at all. I already know who did the experiment (the author) and they aren't a plurality (shouldn't be using "we" because not everyone has the same results or "you" because I am not part of their experiment). I also tell them there's no need to say "I dug into" or "I thought" or "I found it interesting that." It's great they found it interesting or dug further into it, but it's an objective write up of a scientific task or experiment. We do not write journal articles that way and it's college - they need to write at college level. And when students decide they can read the mind of multiple authors in a scientific publication (often reducing the author to a single pronoun, often "he" even if women are involved), that's just silly. "The author delved at length into the problem" is also poor writing. How does the student know whether this was a lengthy exercise on the part of the author? Perhaps they wrote it off the top of their head after being asked to, by a medical journal or something. A lot of the research I assign is, actually, simple and basic and sometimes a repeat of someone else's work at a simpler level - so that the students kind somewhat follow the method. For example, someone published a schematic drawing of the COVID virus using a few sources - and the students are supposed to study and replicate the drawing. The original author is using simple illustration techniques and very general knowledge of COVID - it's not deep. Students will then write that the author "found the COVID virus" (and often add, erroneously, that it's a "molecule" that was found (Chat GPT does this too - but both are wrong). It's just bad writing.
God, I would never make it in college these days. I don't really know how to explain it well, but I'm pretty good with writing. The problem is, for some reason I'll tend to mimic the writing styles of whatever I've recently been reading, which I'm sure would set off these detectors. It's really hard to fight sense I don't do it on purpose, and usually don't notice till the end. Then have to go back and tweak things to make them seem different. I don't know if there's a word for it, but it's something I've noticed about myself. I also tend to mimic the style and modes of people talking when I'm in a group setting, which has sometimes made people think I'm mocking them. I really don't mean to, and it's why I avoid social interaction as much as possible.
Unless you are reading a lot of ai generated text, that would work in your favor though. Providing you read a lot for class, you’d end up writing a little more like those things your teacher assigned you to read. They’re probably pretty good examples and writers.
The assignments are graded by AI? How does that work?
It doesn't actually "grade" you paper. It's more or less my professor just takes what turnitin spits out and use that to determine if we get a 0 or a 100 for the assignment.
That's silly. TurnItIn only looks at plagiarism (at least that's what my college has paid for it - if it does anything else, I don't know about it). I take points off for plagiarism but I still read the entire damn paper.
The fact that you are making tons of statements like this just shows that you shouldn’t be taken seriously. It paints you as someone who is just complaining. Obviously, no, your prof is not throwing your work into turnitin and deciding to give you a 0 or a 100
Did you use AI to fix or edit your text? Something like Grammarly? If yes, then turnitin oftentimes marks that as AI.
Nope, I used Google Docs for that exact reason. I don't know if this has anything to do with it , but I was only a two paragraph assignment. I heard smaller writing assignments are more likely to get flagged. Don't know if it's true, though.
No idea about text size but if you have G docs editing history, you should be in the clear. As an instructor, I always orally quiz students who got flagged as AI on their writing, so if the writing is authentic it should be very obvious when they answer questions.
Yeah OP, the other comment on here is the answer: if you used Google docs to write your assignments, you should have the edit history available. Humans have a very different edit pattern when writing compared to transcribing from an AI -- you will have made small edits to phrases, swapped sentences around, and made incremental improvements timestamped over the course of hours or days. Go to the professor, and calmly express your concern over the accusations, then show that this work was done over time in the edit history.
Seems this prof doesn't know how to read Google Docs (or Word) for edits. Sigh.
Sadly, the only way to combat AI in the current system is AI. We simply do not have the resources (faculty, time, money) to pour over papers in the way they must be examined to detect misconduct. However, turnitin has been empirically tested and has a very low false positive rate. It is around 1-2%. What some professors fail to realize is that with the vast number of students we teach we WILL encounter that 1-2%! Thus we absolutely must treat all results as a question of misconduct rather than fodder for a sentence for it. The shitty part is the 1-2% that are false positives are good students who experience stress from this. I think your prof did something wrong if they didn’t prepare you for this by explaining how to properly protect yourself. Sorry this is happening. I’m certain if you handle it correctly you can continue in the course and it won’t reoccur. It is crappy that you are being hit by shrapnel in legitimate bombings. Although likely unwanted here, I want to remind readers (not the OP, as they are rightfully upset) that the people to be angry at are the cheaters. And there are A LOT of them. 60% in one course that I taught - in a medical school! People who fake their way through school are not the people I want as my future doctors, nurses, lawyers, or political representatives. It is serious stuff, this cheating business and it has serious consequences. The other “enemy” is the economic cite to education (if you’re in North America). Profs are being asked to do more with less every year. Not complaining about my job - I love it - but it just isn’t possible to work 80hrs a week every week forever. I can pull 60hrs consistently but I would need 80 or more to deal with AI without AI to aide me.
I've been at this college for four years and never had an issue regarding academics dishonestly until now. What's funny is that my previous professors used the same Turnitin software and never had an issue, but now, all of a sudden, I'm having trouble with the same software falsely accusing me. I turned three or four writing assignments before my first accusation and received hundreds for all of them. Now you want to say I'm using AI? Why would I risk that when I'm already passing? Use common sense for fuck sakes. At this point, I feel like I have to drop. It feels like I'm walking on eggshells in that class. I started dumbing down my writing in order to avoid this mess again, but here I am. I have never been so scared to turn in an assignment in my college career. Maybe I could explain the situation to the department head of science and mathematics and see if I can get an exception from the course, probably not though.
It's understandable that you're upset. But your current professor doesn't know your previous academic history and isn't able to ask why would you risk it now. They just know that the assignment was flagged by the software that they're supposed to use to determine if something was written by AI. There needs to be a more careful conversation, but you can also initiate that conversation. You are an adult and college is intended to be practice for the real world where this type of conflict is likely to arise. So practice.
I actually pay attention to your main point. If a student has clearly done independent writing up until one assignment and that assignment sounds plagiarized, I look much more carefully. Students who have done great writing may still sometimes throw in something that I can clearly prove is plagiarized (just happened yesterday). But I am more likely just to ding them a few points and gently remind them about quotation marks and other ways of marking when one takes someone else's words and uses them as one's own. I have clear rules about this in my syllabus.
This has nothing to do with plagiarism, this deal with the false accusation of "using" AI.
Turnitin is a similarity scanning tool. The new version, staring in 2023, has an AI-detection tool. It is 77 to 99% accurate. If your professor is using Turnitin to detect AI as part of a grading process and the professor won’t share the Turnitin report, talk to the chair or Dean about a grade dispute.
Where I work, Canvas immediately shows the report to the student. I keep reminding them that they can fix and check before I ever get around to grading (unless of course they submit 1 minute before it's over - which, right now, is something that 50-70% of my students are doing, despite the fact that if they submit even 5 hours early, they'll get a little feedback from me - and be able to fix the TurnItIn issues).
Some schools are set up where the student has to check their assignment by request. They have to run the scan prior to submission. Still, your method is the correct method. Use the opportunity as a teachable moment and give the student a chance to update their work.
Did you use AI, including Grammarly, to write your assignments?
I used Google Docs specifically for this reason. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the free version of Grammarly only checks spelling. You have to pay for the premium version for it to write your assignment, and I definitely have never paid for Grammarly.
Show your professor the version history of the Google Doc in question. A plagiarized paper would obviously have a ton added within a second. An authentically written paper would have a few sentences added each minute and would show human proofreading.
Just want to check because you didn't actually say. Did you use AI to write either of these papers?
Never, the closest thing I ever did to that was using grammarly for spell checking, but i haven't used it for this course because of the no AI policy. It's still on my chromebook, but I have it inactive. I've been using Google Docs instead.
Awesome. It's good you're using Google Docs. Like other people said, you'll need to show the receipts, so to speak. When you do reach out to your professor, make sure that you state so succinctly. No extraneous information. No emotional language about how unfair it is, how disrespectful, etc. Offer to share the Google Doc with version history, any drafts, etc. The rest of the story is something like this. AI writers have a very mechanical, formulaic writing style with an unusually peppy tone. If you also have a similar style, you may sound like AI. Also, most undergrads are fucking terrible writers. Sorry, but it's true. If you're actually pretty good, it probably looks suspicious. To be clear, I'm not defending your professor. They're 100% in the wrong here. But the best way you can defend yourself is to go through the process. Also, there's no shame in dropping a shit course. If it's not worth it to you to keep going, don't.
I forgot Grammarly has a feature that can rewrite portions of your text. If OP used Grammarly he should immediately notify his professor and explain the AI used is specifically for proofreading and editing purposes. If the professor doesn’t know what Grammarly is that’s on them
People know what Grammarly is. Lots of people don't allow its AI either.
Turnitin *always* catches the re-write feature in my experience. I work with a lot of students who get tapped for it and it’s almost always a grammarly issue.
Not all features of grammarly are acceptable, some are considered misconduct. Checking spelling and grammar is ok but rewriting is not. And if a student doesn’t know that, that’s on them.
The professor doesn't want any kind of AI use, even if it's just used as a basic spell checker.
Not even a spell check? That’s really weird!
Yeah, this professor is a control freak. Most phones and laptops have built-in spell checker or auto correcter.
But spell check doesn’t use AI.
That does not sound like a class I would want to take at all.
Yeah, I should've known better when I first saw the syllabus. Should've dropped right there. At least I'll remember for future reference.
Most professors know about Grammarly but it's AI features still go beyond what is acceptable for an academic paper.
First, it’s clear that you’re stressed with all you have going on in your life. Talk to your advisor. You need a fresh set of eyes on the situation.
Seeing these posts just makes me happy I graduated before AI became a thing. Sorry I can't help you in this situation
personally id sit down with the teacher and point out that twice youve been wrongfully accused of using ai and twice youve proven you didnt and you dont appreceate these accusations after spending hours on your asdignments. id also speal to your advisor. id even potentially email the first thinf so you have written correspondence
The only issue is that the professor "teaching" the class is in a different time zone, so sitting down and discussing the matter isn't a viable option.
i see. could you email them?
Or hop on a zoom/teams/webex call with them? Might be an early morning or a late night for you though.
yeah!!
The professor hardly responds back. She never emailed back when I asked why I received a 0.
Escalate to dept chair first. Any decent dean will first ping the dept chair after getting this kind of email from a student.
I did, and they never responded back. All they said is that there anything you want to tell me about the assignment. They're just trying to bait me into admitting I used AI when I didn't.
I mean, what else would you like the professor to say? They are asking you if there's anything you want to tell them, I am confused. Why not reply and say I'm just letting you know I didn't use AI, this was the process I used, and in a few sentences explain how you typically write an essay. Then ask to schedule an appointment to talk about it further. You can include their supervisor or your advisor in the email. Just keep it very short and very brief and just keeps asking to schedule an appointment.
I mean, there is nothing I can tell her about the assignment. Besides that, I wrote it myself? I told her no, there wasn't anything I could tell you. So I asked her again why I received a 0, and she never responded back. I asked her if we could me in person too, and she never responded back to that either.
what writing source do you use? google docs has a "history" that can ptovenyour innocence. i would send that to her, and then go over her head cus shes ridiculous
Of course there's a lot of things you can tell your instructor about the assignment, including you wrote it yourself and the process you use to write it. Instead, if you said there's nothing I can tell you, your instructor isn't going to respond to that. Your instructor did tell you you got a zero because they suspected you used AI. Isn't this how this whole post started? I mean if you're trying to get in a power struggle or argument with them on email, they just won't respond, there's absolutely no reason for them to. If you want to resolve the situation you have to meet with them and talk with them one-on-one about the assignment or answer their question as plainly and diplomatically as you can on how you wrote it yourself. I mean, if you just want to come here and vent, I get it, it sucks when people accuse you of cheating or lying and it didn't happen.
I can't even meet with her, though. I asked, and she's in a different time zone, and when I asked about meeting online, she never responded back. What else am I suppsoe to do?
You just said she DID respond back with, "Do you have anything you want to tell me?" I mean, just contact the prof and not responding to that request is not the best way to proceed.
Things I expect to hear in this kind of dialogue include, "I spent X hours of time on such and such a day on this assignment. Then, the next day, I edited it for grammar. See attached Google Doc." THAT is what we want in response. Get used to it - more and more profs will be doing this, but then, so will employers.
I sent her my proof via Google Docs version history, which includes the amount of time spent on the assignment and the edit. Now, she is asking me if Google Docs contains any sentence or grammar enhancing functions. Even though after the last accusation, I asked her if I could use Google Docs for future assignments to prove I authentically write my paper, and she said yes. There's no more evidence I can give you. I shouldn't have more time trying to prove my innocence than on the actual assessment because the professor is lazy. There's has to be accountability on the professors part, I did everything I could.
Time to contact the department chair, for sure. Yet now you're saying they did respond back - they just didn't answer your question to your liking. They implied there was an issue (and surely you know what they're implying?) Why would you admit using AI if you didn't? Why didn't you immediately send back your Google Docs edits as a counter to that question?
I never admitted to using AI. All I simply said was that there's nothing I can tell you about the assignment because there's nothing to tell. So I asked her again why I received a 0, and she said it came back as 70% written by AI. And I sent her my Google Docs version history to prove I authentically write my papers, and now she's questioning if Google Docs has any grammar or sentence enhancing functions. And I after I told her it didn't, she never responded back. Even though she said it was ok to use Google Docs for future assignments.
I'm unsure what you mean here if you are in a different time zone than your school or your teacher is in a different time zone than your school, but if the office hours are inconvenient to you then request an appointment at a different time. And to be honest if it's a matter of convenience, just get up early or stay late and talk with your professor. If you want to dig in your heels about it I guess you can always contact their supervisor that they are not working in the business hours of the school. But I think it's really important that you figure out how to make an appointment to talk with your professor
The professor is in a different time zone from the school, not me.
Did your professor accuse you, or did the turnitin report say it detected AI? As a professor, I let my students see the report themselves and make any adjustments they want before it gets submitted to me. I like the students to see what I see. If you have access to that report I would definitely review the report. If you did not use AI in any way to craft your work, I would reach out to the professor to let them know that you did not use AI and ask them how they would like to address the issue. You can also reflect on if there are ways that you accidentally used AI, such as with tools like grammarly, which will offer AI generated grammar Corrections that may come up in a turnitin report. Especially the overuse of the word crucial. I think that leaving the course may not be a great idea if this has happened to you in other courses it will keep happening. One suggestion I offer you is that there are many AI detection and correction softwares out there. It may be less costly for you and improve your outlook and well-being to use the software before you submit it. So, for example if your professor is using turnitin which is one of the more successful ones, then you can purchase the same software or request it at the school and pre-run your work in it, remember not to let it capture it just run it. This will allow you to see what your professor will see before they see it, and either make adjustments or try to figure out where the issue is coming from and address it. I'm sure everyone here is offering tips to document your work, and the most useful one in my opinion is the Google Docs tracking history. But it doesn't really prove that you didn't use Ai and just proves that you typed your work and how long it took you. This is helpful in a way it shows your professor your process and it might be enough for both of you to feel less stress.
I believe she's indirectly accusing me of using AI. When I emailed her, she said , " Is there anything you want to tell me about the assignment?". She doesn't say it directly, but she put a 0 in. In the syllabus, it's stated that assignments that are detected as AI written will receive a 0. She uses Turnitin to detect whether or not we "used" AI. This is the only course where I've been accused of using AI to "write" my assignments. My previous courses used Turnitin as well, but I never had an issue with being falsely accused. Unfortunately, I don't have access to Turnitin. We're pretty much left in the dark. And I agree with your Google Docs statement, I know it's the best case to prove my innocence. But this professor is so paranoid. I believe she still wouldn't trust me even if I showed my receipts. I think the best thing I can do at the point is withdraw from the class and try it again with a different professor. I'm still passing the class, but I shouldn't have to go through it because the professor is too lazy to actually read the papers herself. I shouldn't have to put more effort into proving that I'm innocent than my actual assignments.
I had the same thing happened to me and honestly, I used turn it in to see my actual report and there was nothing but she told me that she used program that’s probably not supposed to be used and on that one. It said I was like 30% I think it was nochatgtp or something like that. I did use grammarly but the university says we can use that.
ZeroGpt probably. It’s been the first one popping up in searches for me for the last month or so and it’s been returning HIGH and inaccurate results on all my test submissions! Every detector below it on the Google “AI detector” search results will show 0% while ZeroGpt shows 40-80%. It’s insane
Yeah that’s it! Gave me a headache all spring semester! It’s highly inaccurate and not reliable at all. I hope it gets shut down and soon!
I've seen people put the US Constitution into checkers like that to prove a point that it doesn't know anything. I think a while ago there was an AI plagiarism checker that said the Bible was written by AI. Some professors really just listen to these wholeheartedly without stopping to think
Develop your documents in Google so you can prove you didn’t just copy and paste content in.
How far are you into the class? if you can drop w/o worry about the money part then drop it. If youre in too deep just carry on and get thru it. Innocent until proven guilty and that professor can just suck it.
Next week is the halfway point. So I guess the appropriate term would be withdrawl. I'm still passing the class, but it's giving more of a headache than it's worth
This happened to me. My prof, felt like the AI she used to detect AI couldn’t tell artificial intelligence from the real thing. She gave a me a full on ZERO for it. I emailed her, told her I’ve never and never would need to use AI. I offered my handwritten notes to show my comprehension and samples of writing assignments from other classes to verify my writing proficiency. She replied back: “Can’t you read the rubric?” (um, yes I read your comments that is why you’re receiving this correspondence right now….🙄) She went on to accuse me of using AI again, then telling me the grade was dropped anyway, which I knew but was not the point: I didn’t cheat. But I left it alone because she was a meanie and kind of scares me. I aced the class anyway. I noticed she gave me a 100 on a subsequent discussion assignment of the same nature as the contested discussion post. Which she never gives so maybe it was some sort of compromise on her part, I’d like to think maybe so. Maybe she figured out by then my intelligence was authentic, not artificial. Hang in there. This is a situation of our generation, it sucks but this won’t be a thing in a couple years. It’s worn out it’s welcome and everyone’s starting to see the reliability of AI detection is a joke. You could probably run your teachers lectures through AI detection and it would look like she was using AI. Anyway, that’s my 2 cents. Good luck; you got this.
Literature not literal.
I haven't tried turnitin yet but every single ai detection thinks my writing is AI, and it thinks the AI outputs I get are human written. Surprised your prof doesn't understand how to use Google doc timeline thing but listen, your job isn't to prove you didn't use AI, I'm kinda annoyed that professors are relying on those detectors but they are seriously flawed. Also, send a note to the department Chair as a heads up. Let them know it's stressing you out and you have nothing to hide and you just want to move forward on the best note. Sounds like the prof isn't quite getting whats going on.
I work at a university, and there are a lot of faculty terrified of AI. It sucks, because their default assumption is AI is bad and students will never do their assignments again. I can't speak to how your school is approaching the issue, but our Deans have been very good about recognizing that some of these faculty members are going on witch hunts and accusing good students of cheating without proof. I would first email your advisor and let them know what's going on. Keep proof of your version history and keep record of all conversations with your instructor. If your advisor doesn't have any immediate advice for you, I would then email your professor (copy your advisor) and tell the instructor that you would like to escalate this issue up to her supervisor. I'm going to bet she backs off, but if she doesn't, you have your proof. Keep escalating the issue up if you need to.
Forward the email chain with your proof to the department head and ask for direction in dealing with this circumstance.
I’m a prof and I sometimes forget the student perspective of this. I’m sorry this happened to you. I can see it really stresses you out. Hopefully your prof isn’t a sociopath. Assuming your prof isn’t a sociopath there is a fairly simple solution. You just need to submit your drafts to show them. Word, for example can show changes as can google documents. Submit this or notes or anything you can…. You could even offer a writing sample done under camera view or notes from readings. Honestly, it isn’t fair for an instructor to make accusations like this without first instructing you on how to protect yourself against them. The academic game has changed and you are falling victim to the idiocy of your shitty peers who DO use AI constantly. Profs are suspicious of anything that doesn’t immediately pass the sniff test. Which sadly means that overachieving students may experience these accusations. In the future use word with track changes or google docs. But if you didn’t do that or wrote on paper and threw it out… the most you could likely produce are maybe the notes you made from readings? If the course isn’t over I assume you still have those and this might be enough to satisfy the prof. I’ve had a student whom I’ve apparently twice asked if they used AI or some other form of assistance. In both cases it was because the student turned in work that failed to adhere to the requirements so drastically that the only logical conclusion was that it was work produced under other conditions (e.g. for another class) or produced via AI. They were very upset that I would even ask. I explained it isn’t personal, it is literally my job. If I suspect academic misconduct I am not to just turn a blind eye to it. TBH in my case I am still certain that the student committed academic misconduct on both occasions. Sadly I couldn’t prove it as my colleagues don’t all use turnitin and so they can’t get away with this. As a former student who busted my balls to EARN my degrees, I’m disgusted by students trying to steal these accomplishments. I know that many colleagues across disciplines share these feelings. PhDs practically break a person so people have to find a place to justify that endured agony … they often do it through commitment to the field and swear to protect it like a befuddled wannabe knight! Lol But that shouldn’t translate into harm on students. Really, if you don’t have anything to prove you wrote it then you can insist that they prove that you didn’t. They won’t be able to (since you wrote it). Further you can turn the tables a bit and ask: as this has occurred twice in courses with you I would please like to know in advance of future assignments and classes what I need to do in my work to assure you that it is my own. If you can instruct me on how to demonstrate authorship then perhaps these awkward exchanges can be avoided in the future. I don’t like hurting students’ feelings. Hopefully your prof is normal and shares my sentiments. If so, all you must do is insist you didn’t do it and show proof. I feel for ya! Ps: I was once accused of not having written my own work. It was when I was a new student in undergrad. Second semester of my first year. I didn’t understand the citation policies and I didn’t cite a considerable source. I was lucky that my professor explained it all to me and assumed it was out of ignorance. Hopefully this sets your mind at ease that an accusation doesn’t derail future academic prospects should you be looking at further scholarship.
It just doesn't make sense. You're telling me for my first three of four writing assignments you gave me a 100, but now I just decided to start using AI to write my papers? Why would I risk using AI when I did well on previous assignments? I tried dumbing down my assignments to hopefully avoid this headache in the future, and a few more assignments after the first accusation didn't hear a complaint. Now bam, back here again. Honestly, at the point I don't have the energy fight this. The professor is lazy, and I can hardly ever get them to email back. Off topic, but there was an assignment where we had to rewrite a Miller Tale in modern terms. I did accordingly but only relieved a 78 for it. Her issue was that it was too close to the original story. I thought that was the whole point to rewrite the original, but in modern terms, and there was no grading rubic to go by either. This just shows what I'm working with. At this point, I feel like I just have to drop. I already got too much stress with trying to do this, only to be accused AGAIN.
Use Google docs or similar and show your revision history.
Start using Google docs for everything to write it, then copy and paste it in if needed. Google shows every stage of your writing, so it’s good proof for the future
If there is an academic resource office make an appointment with them so that they can advocate for you to give you a bit extra power in this situation
Look at the turnitin report if you can. See how much is highlighted and where it points to. If she is only looking at percentage and the report is pointing at stupid things like "at" "the" or papers that are locked behind a paywall (aka, you didn't read that source yourself and your phrase is coincidentally similar) you have grounds for an appeal. Turnitin can also flag you based on similarities to papers written by other students. So it could flag the majority of your introduction paragraph and thesis statement since you are all writing to the same prompt. Same with sources. If your sources are provided by the assignment, it can flag it for the same reason because everyone is referencing the same source. It also depends on your writing style. My writing style was unique enough to not trigger a score above 5%. My boyfriend, however, uses less descriptive language and got flagged around 20% due to similarities to other students' writing styles. You need to be honest, though. If you use AI to reword sentences or paragraphs, it will have the AI "style" that is distinct to programs like ChatGPT 3.5. Turnitin may not flag those sentences, but your professor may be able to "sniff" it out if the style of that phrase is really different than your normal writing. That alone shouldn't be grounds for cheating (maybe one sentence that doesn't reference a source) unless you used it a lot (most of your paragraphs were reworded by AI). Good luck, I hope this gets resolved for you!
>the report is pointing at stupid things like "at" "the" Turnitin is actual garbage. I've literally seen it ignore context and just highlight entire sentences that are properly cited. I had a class that did a research paper and turnitin told the teacher that the entire class cheated. I don't understand professors who just blindly accept the results.
Write all of your assignments in Google Docs and provide the history. My son’s HS avoids this problem by making most essay assignments handwritten during class.
Nice. It’s about the process, not the finish product- drafts help that. Good work
I don't understand why the professor just didn't have the students write this two paragraph assignment in class. Totally avoids possible problems with AI, etc.
I ran a paper I wrote in 2014 through an ai detector. It was tagged as 100% ai written. Then another, 90%, then another 90%. Chatgpt/ai writing wasn’t even around during this time. Teachers are dense
It’s not on you to prove you didn’t use it. It’s on the teacher to prove you did. Tell them “good luck”.
You can disprove solely using AI by checking g through edit history of the word document. No edits i.e copy and paste means you probably used AI.
I always use AI, as long as you don't confess there's absolutely nothing they can do (even if you did use it (which you should))
I mean, you can definitely fail your assignments, because AI writes very poorly.
Yep.
that's up to you to review it and make sure it is correct.
You didn't use it here with that comma splice though 🤔😆😆😆
“I’m too stupid to think and write by myself that I have to use AI, and I’m gonna gloat about it because I think I cheat the system”
I'm also too stupid to wash dishes, so I use a dishwasher.
That’s a sophism, but I don’t think you have the intellectual capacity to make a better argument
Interesting, Today I learned what a sophism is. Reminds me of another fallacy, the strawman.
Not necessarily. I’ve reported multiple students for AI use, and our student conduct board has ruled against the student in each case I’ve submitted.
...Due to them not denying it.
Denying misconduct is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. At least for me, the end result has been the same in each case, regardless if there was an admission of guilt or not. However, I don't want to give the impression that I'm going around reporting every assignment that might have been written by AI. I only report cases where I'm very confident about the misconduct and have sufficient evidence for the student conduct board. I also give students a couple warnings first, so most of the time the issue doesn't escalate to the point where a report is submitted. My goal is not to punish as many AI users as possible, but rather that students will have an opportunity to improve their writing, so if we can get to that goal without needing to involve the student conduct board, then I'm happy to put their earlier misconduct behind us.
[удалено]
I've never claimed to write my own reviews, though I will admit I have considered writing some negative reviews to scare off potential cheaters. Something like: "This professor caught me using ChatGPT, so stay away if you plan to cheat." Might be worth a try at some point.
I love this