To catch a supposed plagiarist

I don't often read IHE, but when I do it usually bubbles up from my Twitter feed 😂. The gem that popped up this morning is one professor's lament about how ChatGPT bested him and his Critical Pedagogy practices. While I am happy that someone's attitudes have been adjusted by this experience, I was surprised to read, near the end of the opinion piece that he was familiar with at least some of the principles of critical pedagogy...🙄.  Getting sucked into the paranoia of "Cheaters! Cheaters everywhere!" doesn't sound like someone who's been practicing critical pedagogy for very long.

Anyway - I thought I'd share some of my reactions to the article which I jotted down as I was reading it...(sometimes  I feel like these would be better as TikTok Takes 😂)

"I shared with colleagues that “All we have to do is ask ‘Did you write this?’” and then copy and paste the student work into the prompt box."

My first question is: did you actually research how ChatGPT works? With follow-up questions about the ethics of using a student's submission to feed to the system? And...why did you share with your colleagues that you're doing this experiment as if it's a done deal? I mean, I'd personally run the experiment first and see what happened before broadcasting something potentially embarrassing...🙄

"My inkling was that somebody created a shared study guide using ChatGPT and then, one by one, students took pieces word for word that they included in their short essays. Was this an issue of plagiarism or crowdsourcing—and is there a difference?"

If you don't have a good and solid definition of academic dishonesty, then that's your first problem. Crowdsourcing is (most likely) not the same as plagiarism (depending on what your definition of plagiarism is).  You really should know for yourself what you're looking for before you go looking for it because you also need to clue in your learners as to what is and is not academically dishonest in your setting.

"While I was wrestling with the haste of my initial response, I received six frantic student emails, each professing their honesty, fear and dismay. Another student stopped by in tears. She rushed out of her house to catch me early in order to explain that she’d worked really hard on her study guide and the subsequent essay question. Yet another student sent me an example of how ChatGPT took credit for writing an article that we read as a class. By now, I knew that the tools at my disposal were flawed. Those 20 students in my class did not cheat on their essays, despite my confidence in my sleuthing skills."

Congrats my man! You managed to instill in students the fear of God, for no reason. You brought students to tears.  I. Hope. You're. Happy! 🙄 You have no sleuthing skills, I think that's now a given.  Listen, I don't mean to be harsh on this person, but before you accuse anyone of anything, you best get your facts straight (unless of course, you're Fox "news" and have money to burn in courtrooms and settlements). I genuinely feel bad for the students, and I hope you do too!

"I lamented to the students that I had made a mistake. Instead of focusing on student growth and innovation, I invested too much time into surveillance strategies. Instead of focusing on my commitment to developing strong personal relationships with students, I let a robot tell me what I should believe. Instead of trusting my students, I had trusted an online tool."

I think hindsight is 20/20, and I am glad you've learned from this experience, but did you really have to put students through this so that you could learn? Why not start with care and believing students, and working on mentoring rather than trying to catch supposed plagiarists?🤔

"The scenario in my class, however, also reminded me of some basic principles of critical pedagogy that we must consider as we are ushered into the new AI era. First, we must trust students, foremost because they are real people. They bring to the classroom their values, livelihoods and traumas. We must be mindful of the ways in which academic surveillance dehumanizes the very people we signed up to nurture"

We've been through this (at least) once before with remote proctoring "solutions" during the three years we were in the height of COVID and people were not in classrooms.  Why did we need to re-learn this lesson so soon?  It begs the question - did we really learn it the first time around? or did we just pay lip-service?

"if I were to continue to subscribe to the belief that it’s an educator’s job to catch and punish plagiarists, then everyone in the class would lose."

I don't get paid to be on the lookout for potential plagiarists and cheaters.  That's not the job of the faculty member. Yes, I think if you voluntarily find yourself in that position (because you'd have to consent to doing it), it would be a lose-lose proposition. So...why bring yourself into that position to begin with? 🤔