This high school teacher found an unstoppable technique to embarrass students who used chatGPT to do their homework.
An English and Russian teacher at Pori High School in Finland, Laura Salonen, 31, caught about five students in three years for using AI to cheat. Indeed, artificial intelligence has quickly revolutionized education, both for good and for bad. Often, students cheat with AI and teachers seek to prevent this fraud. Dozens of teachers have said they suspect students of cheating with AI. Typically, students ask the AI to write an analysis, essay, or presentation.
Cheating has become easier with AI. Laura Salonen thinks schools were caught off guard. Previously, students used Google Translate to translate their homework into English. Now they have AI write all the text. Salonen caught cheaters by asking them to rewrite their text in front of her. It is suspicious that a student does not remember a text that he claims to have written the day before.
Some students admit to cheating, often out of shame. Others deny it or get angry, because the consequence of their cheating can be exclusion. In some cases, parents become angry with the teacher. However, not all students cheat intentionally. Salonen distinguishes three types of AI users: those who use it correctly, those who cheat intentionally, and those who cheat by accident. AI can be legally used as inspiration, but some students do not know how to apply it correctly and end up copying the text produced by AI through negligence.
Laura Salonen explains that there are other details to watch for in students’ homework to detect AI such as examining the language used. AI often uses complex structures and word choices that are unfamiliar to high school students. Additionally, in long texts, the AI language may be inconsistent. To prevent her students from cheating, she also indicates that she can modify the instructions. AI struggles to understand large data sets and often cannot correctly interpret images, videos, maps or graphs.