After moving exams online during COVID19, I’ve moved them back to the classroom. AI has rendered the online take-home exam useless. In a few years, the high-school students who are using AI to fabricate their assignments will reach my (college) classroom and the value of assessing and giving feedback on their essays and research reports will also be minimal.

Until then, I’ve adopted a policy that students must include a link to their drafts’ histories so I can confirm the work is their own. I just finished reviewing the final essays from a 30 person course. I noted:

1. Getting students to properly share the links to their drafts’ history (from SharePoint or Google Docs) is a major nuisance: understandably, they forget or don’t set the permissions correctly.
2. Many students take only a few (2–5) hours the night before an assignment is due to write it—though they have the advantage of starting from a proposal.
3. The best work shows a progression from outline, to prose, and a pass or two of revision, over a few days.
4. Weaker students leave obvious AI tells in their work; sophisticated use would be undetectable.
5. I wonder if the cogent two-hour essays might be a transcription of already fabricated content.
6. This semester I had a handful of false-positives; that is, I thought prose was generated but I could see it was not in their revision histories. I’m relieved this policy prevented me from making false accusations.