Some context. I am a visiting assistant professor in physics at a liberal arts college, who is also on the ai taskforce. The average grade point average in high school and college is a 3.7. Somewhere between a B+ and an A-.

To address the latter, when I was in high school, the average gpa was a C, with A = excellent, B = good, C = average, D = below average, F = fail. The gradual increase of the gpa is what is called grade inflation. I personally don’t see a problem with grade inflation, as washing out grades deemphasizes their value. But 3.7 is only the global average. Business students and pre-meds, the latter being the students I primarily teach. My students find nothing below an A unacceptable, and this is where a lot of cheating comes from.

In my classes, we employ a model called The Flipped Classroom, which goes back to the mid 80’s. In the flipped classroom, the presumption is the best use of the (alleged) expert is with, in my case, working directly on problems with students. I give a short lecture, and I give students problems to work on. This is hardly busy work. I walk around the room critiquing students work, and addressing questions they have in real time. I grade every day providing students feedback on their work. Both the correctness and the quality of the way they format their answer and demonstrate their thought process (different from showing their work). I also give take-home exams which students are allowed to come to my office or see the physics tutors to engage in Socratic Dialog.

Students like this form of class for several reasons. Most importantly they feel like they are actively developing skills that transcend our class, the way to prove their logic. They also feel like it is low stakes. Yes, I grade, but I use a system where they earn points up rather than have percentages of percentage. I give a personal questionnaire at the end and middle of the semester. There are a few questions which have absolutely unanimous positives. The first is this way of grading. They go so far as to say they wish other professors graded this way. The second is using Microsoft OneNote Class Notebook (yea… I know…). It’s OneNote with the ability for me to distribute classwork, their ability to write it, and my ability to have very quick turnaround on their work. Oh. And I’m a real stickler. Most of them get 4/10 the beginning of the semester, and it works up to an 8 or a 9. Seldom a 10.

Accessibility is built into my courses. I follow a philosophy called Universal Design, one element is the idea that accessibility for those who need it benefits everyone. Think rams on sidewalks. They are placed at every intersection to aid folks with mobility issues. They benefit everyone because, as an example, if you are an “able bodied” person, you can more easily move rolling luggage. I approach the design of my class in the same way. Every semester, we get forms from students who need extra time on exams. ADHD, anxiety issues. Stuff like that. I always hated the fact that we needed to treat students differently, so the way my exams work, is they are take-home, and students have a week and a half to do then. Starting on a Monday and ending on a Friday. But here’s where Universal Design comes in. I don’t know, when students have sporting commitments, are sick, have multiple exams etc. And I really don’t care from an instructional standpoint. I give them all a week and a half to do the exams, they can take as much time as they want, and they can start and stop as many times as they want. It burned me a bit when I realized this, but of any of the things in students’ lives, my class could very well be the least important. Number 8 in a stack of 10. But that’s ok. I’ve adopted a philosophy of “You should plan my exam around your life, and not your life around my exam.”

And with all of these policies, students seldom cheat on the exam (and if they do it’s so painfully obvious you almost laugh when you confront them about it). They enjoy the class. One student told me “physics isn’t my favorite subject, but this is my favorite class”. I had one student at the end of last semester musing on the write-up for a project (rather than a final) that her other classes should do the same thing. And on the official course evaluation, after finding out due to austerity reasons my contract wasn’t renewed one student wrote, “Professor XXX is one of the best professors I’ve had (I’m tearing a bit writing this). It’s professors like him that I came to a Liberal Arts College. You screwed up not renewing him. I hope you don’t make mistakes like this again”

So physics isn’t a course where students are typically going to cheat (yet), and I’m old school about it. I want students to work without ai so I design my course so you really can’t. Other (most) faculty have different approaches. They have one of two approaches police it or capitulate/use it as a learning opportunity for a tool. Last one first. As if students don’t know how to use ai. I walk my room every single day and ask them about it. (part of how I build community) And I can’t even begin to explain what they are doing. If faculty, some of whom have only recently had the “first talk” where you are impressed how friendly it is, have absolutely nothing to teach the students. It would be for another generation that will become a reality. Most of us are too set in our ways. And personally, I don’t care.

Now the second. Oh boy. This is the one most people expect. Punishment. And it doesn’t work. Not only are students using ai to write papers, they are getting good at proofreading it so professors can’t tell. Or if we can, it ends up on this blurred line where it would be a coin toss to accuse a student. So fight fire with fire. There are a number of ai tools discussed for detecting ai. Expensive ones. But a panacea. We can stick to the old ways, without really having to change. A computer does that for us. I mentioned I was part of the ai task force. Those conversations were a bit more nuanced, but I was the radical in the room (as you might expect reading this). Not only was I directly suggesting we should adopt teaching styles like mine, I was flinging every argument for why chatgpt and copilot et. al were bad. (that’s a post longer than this one) And why we should locally train (again another very long one.)

But for adopting different teaching strategies, if you are concerned about students cheating on papers for an english class, why not teach less Jane Eyre (for the love of god please do). Don’t make them read it, don’t lecture on it. Give broad thematic ideas (revenge, star crossed lovers, the coming of age etc.) lay them out, have a general discussion and let them frame a paper with you talking with them. Tell them you want something anything done by the Nth class. Have discussions on them. Repeat. Do you think students would cheat in that scenario? Why even bother. Most of these complaints of cheating are in the intro, gen-ed courses. Leave the deeper content to the majors who choose to learn it

The ai task force put on a symposium. There were faculty speakers, a faculty panel, and a student panel. Why there weren’t student speakers I couldn’t have the foggiest, but the faculty were incredibly demeaning. One of them LITERALLY said “I’m allowed to use ai because I have a graduate degree. You don’t so you need to learn the old fashion way first” Holy shitballs batman… The panel was about as bad except a librarian who talked about how often students come for help. It was interesting and I hadn’t considered it. She didn’t know what to do because she didn’t know what professors expectations/rules were (given they haven’t been updated in 30 years) It was an interesting perspective. I hope, but doubt they listened to her.

The student panel was much better. They had a broader set of opinions ranging from ai is going to enslave the human race to my best friend is dead to me now that I found a better one to I will harness it to go to venus. Everything. But unlike the faculty panel which didn’t have a student moderator. There was a faculty moderator. Students were having a great conversation. They didn’t need a moderator. But every once in a while he would interrupt to ask the same dumbass question: “would you use it to cheat if you could get away with it” Completely out of touch. Eventually a student said he would because it would be a competitive disadvantage. Faculty member hadn’t thought of that, so he shut up. Until a student mentioned that you can use ai for citations for a paper, then he nodded in agreement and emphatically said he did the same thing. One of the ABSOLUTE WORST places to use it! Fucking fuck

All that said to end on a self-serving personal note. I mentioned I don’t presently have a job. I had an interview last tuesday and many of the points above came up (minus the shitting on faculty) I also mentioned hugging face and how you can tune pre-existing models, and that as an experienced computational physicist, I can help get students over the hurdle of learning terminal, text editor, git etc. You know if you are a real programmer, the things that really slow you up and can take months to learn on your own. Weeks if someone teaches you.

I liked them a lot personally, but they didn’t get it. They truly didn’t get it. It’s status quo with faculty. As “professional learners” they prefer to put their head in their research and never come up for air. This is literally my last chance at a job regardless. I have 60 applications out, and there hasn’t been anything new posted for the last month. Cross your fingers for me or everything above doesn’t matter in the slightest.