\u201cThe cheating is off the charts. It\u2019s the worst I\u2019ve seen in my entire career,\u201d says Casey Cuny, who has taught English for 23 years. Educators are no longer wondering if students will outsource schoolwork to AI chatbots. \u201cAnything you send home, you have to assume is being AI\u2019ed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question now is how schools can adapt, because many of the teaching and assessment tools that have been used for generations are no longer effective. As AI technology<\/a> rapidly improves and becomes more entwined with daily life, it is transforming how students learn and study and how teachers teach, and it\u2019s creating new confusion over what constitutes academic dishonesty.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe have to ask ourselves, what is cheating?\u201d says Cuny, a 2024 recipient of California\u2019s Teacher of the Year award. \u201cBecause I think the lines are getting blurred.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuny\u2019s students at Valencia High School in southern California now do most writing in class. He monitors student laptop screens from his desktop, using software that lets him \u201clock down\u201d their screens or block access to certain sites. He\u2019s also integrating AI into his lessons and teaching students how to use AI as a study aid \u201cto get kids learning with AI instead of cheating with AI.\u201d<\/p>\n In rural Oregon, high school teacher Kelly Gibson has made a similar shift to in-class writing. She is also incorporating more verbal assessments to have students talk through their understanding of assigned reading.<\/p>\n \u201cI used to give a writing prompt and say, \u2018In two weeks, I want a five-paragraph essay,\u2019\u201d says Gibson. \u201cThese days, I can\u2019t do that. That\u2019s almost begging teenagers to cheat.\u201d<\/p>\n Take, for example, a once typical high school English assignment: Write an essay that explains the relevance of social class in \u201cThe Great Gatsby.\u201d Many students say their first instinct is now to ask ChatGPT for help \u201cbrainstorming.\u201d Within seconds, ChatGPT yields a list of essay ideas, plus examples and quotes to back them up. The chatbot ends by asking if it can do more: \u201cWould you like help writing any part of the essay? I can help you draft an introduction or outline a paragraph!\u201d<\/p>\n Students say they often turn to AI with good intentions for things like research, editing or help reading difficult texts<\/a>. But AI offers unprecedented temptation, and it\u2019s sometimes hard to know where to draw the line.<\/p>\n College sophomore Lily Brown, a psychology major at an East Coast liberal arts school, relies on ChatGPT to help outline essays because she struggles putting the pieces together herself. ChatGPT also helped her through a freshman philosophy class, where assigned reading \u201cfelt like a different language\u201d until she read AI summaries of the texts.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes I feel bad using ChatGPT to summarize reading, because I wonder, is this cheating? Is helping me form outlines cheating? If I write an essay in my own words and ask how to improve it, or when it starts to edit my essay, is that cheating?\u201d<\/p>\n Her class syllabi say things like: \u201cDon\u2019t use AI to write essays and to form thoughts,\u201d she says, but that leaves a lot of grey area. Students say they often shy away from asking teachers for clarity because admitting to any AI use could flag them as a cheater.<\/p>\n Schools tend to leave AI policies to teachers, which often means that rules vary widely within the same school. Some educators, for example, welcome the use of Grammarly.com, an AI-powered writing assistant, to check grammar. Others forbid it, noting the tool also offers to rewrite sentences.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether you can use AI or not depends on each classroom. That can get confusing,\u201d says Valencia 11th grader Jolie Lahey. She credits Cuny with teaching her sophomore English class a variety of AI skills like how to upload study guides to ChatGPT and have the chatbot quiz them, and then explain problems they got wrong.<\/p>\n But this year, her teachers have strict \u201cNo AI\u201d policies. \u201cIt\u2019s such a helpful tool. And if we\u2019re not allowed to use it that just doesn\u2019t make sense,\u201d Lahey says. \u201cIt feels outdated.\u201d<\/p>\n Schools are introducing guidelines, gradually<\/p>\n Many schools initially banned use of AI after ChatGPT launched in late 2022. But views on the role of artificial intelligence in education have shifted dramatically. The term \u201cAI literacy\u201d <\/a>has become a buzzword of the back-to-school season, with a focus on how to balance the strengths of AI with its risks and challenges.<\/p>\n Over the summer, several colleges and universities convened their AI task forces to draft more detailed guidelines<\/a> or provide faculty with new instructions.<\/p>\n The University of California, Berkeley emailed all faculty new AI guidance that instructs them to \u201cinclude a clear statement on their syllabus about course expectations\u201d around AI use. The guidance offered language for three sample syllabus statements \u2014 for courses that require AI, ban AI in and out of class, or allow some AI use.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the absence of such a statement, students may be more likely to use these technologies inappropriately,\u201d the email said, stressing that AI is \u201ccreating new confusion about what might constitute legitimate methods for completing student work.\u201d<\/p>\n Carnegie Mellon University has seen a huge uptick in academic responsibility violations due to AI, but often students aren\u2019t aware they\u2019ve done anything wrong, says Rebekah Fitzsimmons, chair of the AI faculty advising committee at the university\u2019s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy.<\/p>\n For example, one student who is learning English wrote an assignment in his native language and used DeepL, an AI-powered translation tool, to translate his work to English. But he didn\u2019t realize the platform also altered his language, which was flagged by an AI detector.<\/p>\n Enforcing academic integrity policies has become more complicated, since use of AI is hard to spot and even harder to prove, Fitzsimmons said. Faculty are allowed flexibility when they believe a student has unintentionally crossed a line, but are now more hesitant to point out violations because they don\u2019t want to accuse students unfairly. Students worry that if they are falsely accused, there is no way to prove their innocence.<\/p>\n Over the summer, Fitzsimmons helped draft detailed new guidelines for students and faculty that strive to create more clarity. Faculty have been told a blanket ban on AI \u201cis not a viable policy\u201d unless instructors make changes to the way they teach and assess students. A lot of faculty are doing away with take-home exams. Some have returned to pen and paper tests in class, she said, and others have moved to \u201cflipped classrooms,\u201d where homework is done in class.<\/p>\n Emily DeJeu, who teaches communication courses at Carnegie Mellon\u2019s business school, has eliminated writing assignments as homework and replaced them with in-class quizzes done on laptops in \u201ca lockdown browser\u201d that blocks students from leaving the quiz screen.<\/p>\n \u201cTo expect an 18-year-old to exercise great discipline is unreasonable,\u201d DeJeu said. \u201dThat\u2019s why it\u2019s up to instructors to put up guardrails.\u201d<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The book report is now a thing of the past. Take-home tests and essays are becoming obsolete. Student…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-151295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Artificial](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/DDY6Z6JSWFH6RJ54Q37PEEYGV4.jpg\")
Casey Cuny, an English teacher at Valencia High School, works on his computer as he prepares for class in Santa Clarita, Calif., Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025. (AP Photo\/Jae C. Hong)APStudents are uncertain when AI usage is out of bounds<\/p>\n![\"Artificial](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/QI3ES2EMQZHLBBAMWF5C3AB3BM.jpg\")
A student types a prompt into ChatGPT on a Chromebook during Casey Cuny’s English class at Valencia High School in Santa Clarita, Calif., Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025. (AP Photo\/Jae C. Hong)AP<\/p>\n