{"id":264517,"date":"2024-06-17T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=264517"},"modified":"2024-06-15T06:27:37","modified_gmt":"2024-06-15T05:27:37","slug":"artificial-intelligence-and-the-death-of-student-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/06\/artificial-intelligence-and-the-death-of-student-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Student Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Illustration: geralt\/pixabay<\/p><\/div>\n

The Move Away from True <\/em>Hands-on Scholarship Feels Tragic<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

7 Jun 2024 <\/em>– It was getting toward the end of this recent semester, and I was at a loss. Either one of two things was happening: My freshman-composition students\u2019 writing had gotten mysteriously, miraculously, markedly better over the semester compared with previous ones, or a large minority \u2014 easily one-third \u2014 of them were using AI to write their papers.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been teaching community-college courses in California\u2019s Central Valley for the past 12 years, and I\u2019ve prided myself on my clever assignments, designed to prevent plagiarism \u2014 assignments such as comparing totalitarian regimes in\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a01984,<\/em>\u00a0or discussing the feminist undertones of Charlotte Perkins\u2019s\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Yellow Wallpaper<\/em>\u00a0and Kate Chopin\u2019s\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Story of an Hour<\/em>. But it no longer matters how good my assignments are. By simply inputting the assignment\u2019s parameters, with the click of a button, a student can, in two seconds, come up with something brilliant and polished.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, this excerpt from a student\u2019s essay I assigned about\u00a0The Shining,\u00a0<\/em>by Stephen King: \u201cThe Shining<\/em>\u00a0is a terrifying examination of the human psyche via the lens of Jack Torrance. A complex depiction of Jack\u2019s development from a struggling family guy to a vessel of lunacy and malevolence is made possible by Stanley Kubrick\u2019s brilliant direction.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I called the student in and asked him to write a sentence with the word \u201cdepiction.\u201d He admitted he didn\u2019t know what \u201cdepiction\u201d meant, much less how to spell it, much less how to use it in a sentence. He confessed he hadn\u2019t written a single word of the essay.<\/p>\n

Another student complained when I gave her a zero for using AI. She said, \u201cI don\u2019t know why you\u2019re picking on me. I turned in all my assignments on time. And I never used AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was true she hadn\u2019t used AI, but when I pressed her, she admitted to using Grammarly.<\/p>\n

Bingo. I investigated Grammarly and discovered it\u2019s a multilayered computer program that does everything from simple spelling and grammatical corrections to rewriting entire sentences, adjusting tone and fluency. \u201cThe school gives Grammarly to us for free,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

What?!<\/em>\u00a0I checked with my department head, and she said that yes, the college gives students basic Grammarly free, but that if students have full sentences rewritten with AI, then they\u2019re using the higher-level model that costs money, and that isn\u2019t endorsed by the college. Grammarly is free,\u00a0but<\/em>\u00a0for a small\u00a0monthly fee of $12<\/a>, Grammarly can write most, or all, of an essay. I wrote my department head back, saying, \u201cWhat the school is doing is the same as handing out cigarettes on campus and telling the students not to get addicted.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked online to see how other colleges were handling issues with Grammarly and other AI-software programs, and there were no definitive answers. Even worse, some colleges expressly prohibited teachers from using AI checkers, for fear of false positives.<\/p>\n

Still, what do you do with sentences like this one \u2014\u00a0Emily\u2019s tragic fate is ultimately sealed by the rigid social norms and expectations that govern her life, forcing her to conform to the expectations of her family and community at the expense of her own happiness and well-being\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 from a first-year writing student whose earliest in-class writings were barely literate?<\/p>\n

When I used to read good writing like that, my heart would leap with joy.\u00a0The students are getting it!<\/em>\u00a0I\u2019d think. Now my heart sinks because I know those sentences\/paragraphs\/whole essays are probably computer-generated. When I run them through the AI checker, I\u2019m almost always right. When I began noticing a few students using AI and Grammarly, I realized a full one-third of them were doing it. It was a sickening feeling, like the time I found a few mouse droppings in my kitchen cabinets, and discovered the whole house was infested.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t just that one-third of my students were using AI for one or two assignments. Once they believed they could turn in AI assignments undetected, they got bolder (like the mice) and used AI for every single assignment. One of my online students, whom I\u2019d given a zero for using AI, asked to discuss the essay. He insisted he had written most of the essay himself. When we spoke on the phone, I read aloud a few well-written sentences and he admitted he hadn\u2019t written those parts of the essay.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see, that\u2019s the shit I\u2019m trying to avoid,\u201d I blurted out.<\/p>\n

I quickly apologized. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I didn\u2019t mean to use that word. It\u2019s just so frustrating to spend all this time grading and find out you didn\u2019t write chunks of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The student apologized, and I let him rewrite the essay. I gave him a gentleman\u2019s C.<\/p>\n

When I catch a student using AI, I email him or her and say, \u201cIf you want to discuss this, please email me.\u201d Eighty percent of the time, they never write back. I assume they\u2019re embarrassed because they know they\u2019ve been caught red-handed.<\/p>\n

There is something truly horrifying about AI. And it\u2019s not just my as-expected moral indignation. It\u2019s that the level of cheating is just\u00a0so damn good<\/em>. Take this student\u2019s sentence for example:\u00a0In a small town in Iowa, where cornfields stretch to the horizon, and life moves at a pace that would make a sloth look like a speed demon, Angie Bachmann, a typical stay-at-home mom, found herself in a rut, bored.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was the line \u201clife moves at a pace that would make a sloth look like a speed demon,\u201d sounding as if it came out of a Truman Capote novel, that got me. It\u2019s demoralizing that an 18-year-old student, with literally no effort, can come up with something that I, as an English teacher and professional writer, would struggle to do.<\/p>\n

So, the question is, if AI is that good \u2014 and presumably getting exponentially better at warp speed \u2014 what is the point of learning how to think critically or how to write when the computer can do that for you? I can\u2019t help but wonder if years from now English composition will be phased out of the school system altogether.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not such a far-fetched idea. That was the whole crux of the recent Hollywood actors\u2019 and writers\u2019 strike. At issue was whether Hollywood producers could use AI to write entire screenplays and TV shows, thereby obliterating the need for real writers. The writers scored a narrow victory when producers agreed to allow AI only in very limited ways.<\/p>\n

No one knows for sure where AI will lead us. In higher education, we can\u2019t make AI go away, so some teachers are embracing it. One of my colleagues, whom I like and respect, is showing students how to use AI in the classroom to generate ideas, but not to use on final drafts, she explained.<\/p>\n

Some teachers are taking this a step further. I read recently that some teachers are using AI to grade papers. How is that going to work? Students will write their papers with AI and teachers will grade them with AI? So it will be one computer grading another computer\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

I could be wrong about this. It could be that AI will help the collegiate world in ways I\u2019m not considering. But still, this stepping away from true hands-on scholarship and turning toward AI feels tragic. I remember my days at Berkeley, where, as an English major, I\u2019d take my copy of Wallace Stevens\u2019s The Palm at the End of the Mind, or Chaucer\u2019s \u201cThe Wife of Bath\u2019s Tale,\u201d and pick a nice, sunny spot on campus on a grassy knoll underneath a tree, lay out my blanket, and spend the afternoon reading and scribbling notes in my books. It was just me and my books and my thoughts. There was nothing better.<\/p>\n

As I lay there reading the writer\u2019s words, they came to life \u2014 as if the author were whispering in my ear. And when I scribbled my notes, and wrote my essays, I was talking back to the author. It was a special and deep relationship \u2014 between reader and writer. It felt like magic.<\/p>\n

This is the kind of magic so many college students will never feel. They\u2019ll never feel the sun on their faces as they lie in the grass, reading words from writers hundreds of years ago. They won\u2019t know the excitement and joy of truly interacting with texts one-on-one and coming up with new ideas all by themselves, without the aid of a computer. They will have no idea what they\u2019re missing.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Lisa Lieberman is an adjunct instructor in the California Central Valley and a freelance writer and editor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – dsimian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 Jun 2024 – It was getting toward the end of this recent semester, and I was at a loss. Either my freshman-composition students\u2019 writing had gotten mysteriously, miraculously, markedly better, or a large minority \u2014 easily one-third \u2014 of them were using AI to write their papers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":244980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3078],"tags":[1733,550,258],"class_list":["post-264517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-corruption","tag-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264518,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264517\/revisions\/264518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}