Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly changing the way students study, with nearly half of young students, around 50%, already using it to help with their schoolwork.
But not every professor feels comfortable with students relying on AI, especially when entire assignments are written using it.
Because of this growing concern, many instructors have started checking student work to spot any signs of AI-generated content.
The way they go about it can vary. Some follow school policies, while others use personal judgment or specific tools.
In this article, a teacher shares real-world experiences with AI detection tools in the classroom, highlighting how we use these AI content checkers as well as other techniques to check students’ homework, assignments, or any other work.
The post, along with insightful discussion from both educators and students, explores challenges of relying solely on AI for academic assessments, the answer related to how do teachers check for AI, and calls for a more nuanced, process-based approach to evaluating writing.
Table Of Contents 👉
How Do Professors Check For AI?
Teachers and professors usually spot AI-written work using both digital tools and personal judgment. Here’s how they often figure it out:
- AI Detectors: These tools are mainly for spotting copied text, but they sometimes catch AI content if it uses repeated phrases or popular online sources.
- Consistency Check Up: If the tone jumps from formal to casual or ideas switch without smooth transitions, it could be a sign that the text wasn’t written by a human.
- Fancy Common Words: AI tools can mix fancy terms like “revolutionizing, delve, embark, leverage, offering, etc,” with basic ones in ways that sound strange. This weird blend can make a paragraph feel awkward or unnatural.
- Shallow Thinking and Fluffy Information: When the writing barely touches the topic or misses deeper ideas, it might be because the content was created by an AI that doesn’t fully understand the subject.
- Sudden Improvement In Writing: If a student turns in something way better than usual without clear reason, like tutoring or lots of revisions, teachers may question if the student got help from AI.
- Double-checking the facts in the content: If the essay includes wrong or outdated information, that’s another clue it might have come from an AI, since these tools sometimes mix facts or use old data.
- Pattern in Students’ Work: Most educators know their students’ typical writing styles. When something feels off or out of character, they often sense that the work might not be genuine.
Using this mix of observations and tools, teachers find out whether the assignments is written using AI and respond properly.
Sometimes, they might talk with students about honesty, give feedback to improve real writing, or apply school rules when necessary, and sometimes they punish. Students should use AI for betterment, productivity, and learning fast, not for cheating or avoiding hard work.
A Teacher’s Experience with AI Detection Tools
A teacher shared their personal experience with using new AI software that is supposed to tell if a student’s work was written by an AI. T
he software says it is “98% confident” when it believes a paper was partially or fully created by AI.
However, the teacher found that sometimes even work written entirely by a person gets flagged as AI-generated.
This means the computer program isn’t perfect and can sometimes make mistakes.
Main Points from the Teacher’s Post
1. False Alarms:
- The software often flags pieces of writing as AI-generated even if they aren’t. For example, when teachers tested it by using their own writing, it sometimes mistakenly labeled it as created by an AI.
- Tools like Grammarly—a program meant to correct grammar and improve writing—can also cause a paper to be flagged because the improvements they make can look like the work of an AI.
2. Proof of Human Work:
- One way to help prove that a student’s writing is their own is by showing the work process. The teacher suggested using tools like Google Drive, which saves a history of edits. This way, if the software wrongly flags a paper, the student can show the steps they took while writing.
3. A Call for Careful Judgment:
- The teacher emphasized that teachers should not rely only on the AI detection score. Instead, the score should be considered as one piece of extra information. Teachers are encouraged to look closely at the actual work and even talk with students to understand how the writing came about.
- The teacher also pointed out that trying to go back to writing everything by hand (like in the old days with blue books) is not a practical solution. Instead, the focus should be on adapting assignments to include both the use of AI and the student’s own ideas.
What Students Had to Say
- Skepticism About the Technology: Many students agreed that AI detection tools are not yet reliable. Some students shared personal stories—for example, one mentioned that even a paper written in high school got flagged incorrectly by tools like Grammarly, GPTZero, Originality AI, Copyleaks, Turnitin AI, and ZeroGPT.
- The Challenge of Blurred Lines: Educators discussed that, with major companies like Google and Microsoft integrating AI into everyday tools, it will become even harder to tell the difference between human-written and AI-assisted work. Many believe that in the near future, all writing might involve some help from AI, making detection even more difficult.
- A Need for New Ways to Learn: Some educators in the discussion noted that instead of trying to catch every piece of AI-written work, schools might need to change how they teach and assess writing. For example, teachers might ask students to explain their work in person or include parts of the writing process as evidence of their learning.
- Concerns About Mistakes: A recurring worry in the discussion was that false positives (mistakenly identifying human work as AI work) could harm students. One person highlighted that even if the software is “98% accurate,” over many assignments, many students might get wrongly accused, which can affect their grades and future opportunities.
The overall conversation shows that while AI can be a helpful tool, both teachers and students need to be cautious about trusting detection software blindly.
Many agree that it is more useful as a suggestion rather than a final verdict. Educators are encouraged to adjust their methods and help students learn how to integrate technology in a way that supports genuine learning and creativity rather than just trying to outsmart the software.
In Short
Teacher’s Advice: Do not rely solely on AI detection scores. Instead, use other methods (like checking the work history) to make sure the work is genuinely the student’s own.
Student Advice: Keep a record of your writing process so that if doubts arise, you can show how you arrived at your final draft.
Future of Education: The blending of human and AI work is inevitable. Schools need to evolve their teaching and assessment methods to focus more on understanding and creativity than on whether a tool helped along the way.
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