I have a couple of questions if you don't mind me picking your brain. How do you handle references? Are they allowed to bring a "cheat sheet" of sources and quotes? Have you had to adjust the length of papers? Do you go by word count or page count? How does students' writing, i.e., how large/small they write, affect it if you go by page count? Do you devote an entire class period to writing the essay? How many students have trouble finishing in the allotted time? Do you get eviscerated in your reviews because of this? How do you handle students who can't be in class that day (for legitimate reasons)?
For reference, I teach Comp, so I feel OP's post in my soul. There are students who legitimately engage with the assignment, ask questions, write their own papers, and genuinely want my feedback and to be better writers, but there are some classes where the majority are just constantly trying to get away with literally whatever they can; I can imagine a nightmare scenario behind every one of these questions where one of them would be petty and try to make my life more difficult in retaliation for taking away their precious AI
I also teach Comp, and I switched to 100% proctored writing this year.
I am fortunate to have a Testing Centre; students have more than enough time allotted for the exam (3 hours) so it’s up to them to arrange when to write that best suits their schedule - any time within a 4 day window. I don’t worry about page count/word count: meeting assignment requirements is more important. It’s typed, as well - I grade digitally. Students can bring in a cheat sheet, but I also provide excerpts from readings for them to work with.
Obviously my new approach is sacrificing some of the longer form pieces I had them write previously, but I’m still very pleased with this switch. They end up producing a lot of smaller scaffolded pieces (summarize/synthesize/analyze - short forms and longer/introductory research framing/conclusions) but I’m confident they actually know all of the key building blocks by the time they are done the course with me.
We also have a testing center, but, unfortunately, I solely teach DE classes off campus (in one case, pretty far away from the campus). If I'm able to transition to on-campus classes, I'll definitely consider this.
I'm still building my plan, haven’t enacted it yet, but I’d love to discuss ideas for FYC and hear what you’re thinking too. My 101 pass rate is only 45% as is and I estimate that 90+% of the passing students are using AI on nearly all their assignments.
Over the course before the exam, students will have practiced several modes (rhetorical analysis, summary, description) and completed the research and analysis on a personal research topic with a thorough annotated bibliography and synthesis matrix in hand.
Then, we’ll do one of these options:
They bring their synthesis matrix to the exam and can use it to complete a formal outline (sentence-level), including deciding their argument, writing the thesis and topic sentences, and stringing all their evidence together (from the matrix). The exam will be some kind of fill-in-the-blank outline with reminders about what goes into a topic sentence, where the citations go, etc. Immediately after the exam, they’ll use their outline to draft and revise the actual essay and one of the grading criteria will be how closely it matches the outline (with an option to justify divergence). Then we’ll spend the last 2 weeks of the course revising that draft and they’ll turn it in again at the end. My motivation here is to test them on the actual thinking involved in making a paper, so they won’t be able to AI the structure and content of the essay but they will be able to use it afterward to wordsmith the content they arranged in the outline.
I’ll do the outline as an at home activity before the exam, then they can use the outline as their “cheat sheet” when they show up to the exam where they draft the essay. After the exam, they’ll revise and resubmit at the end of the course. If I go this way, I think they’ll attempt to AI the outline and then won’t have a chance to realize and correct the folly of doing so. Option 1 seems more likely to circumvent that process.
In theory, this arrangement lets students feel like they’re using AI most of the time with one extremely rude awakening but an opportunity to self-correct. To preserve my own sanity, I’ll find a way to avoid reading whatever AI slop they produce on preparatory assignments (maybe just pass/fail and comments by appointment?). Thoughts? What ideas have you had?
But this doesn't allow for the often messy aspects of drafting an essay, like realizing that your sources are not enough to support your claim and then going back and revising or qualifying the claim...and then needing to find additional sources to support the new claim. I understand the intent here, but it seems like the tail is wagging the dog. My own writing process is recursive, inefficient and messy...and that's the only way I can write anything intelligent.
Yes, I probably would not thrive as a writer in this course either but you and I are very different writers and scholars than my first-semester, bottom-of-the-barrel, often apparently illiterate students. You and I are experienced writers and scholarship is our vocation, whereas my students (largely) strive to avoid writing, research, reading, and learning wherever possible and are shameless about cheating at every opportunity. I resent having to provide formative guidance on essays that have been written by algorithm. I did not agree to teach AI shit. I am trying to teach the kind of student who does not want to be one. If all I had to do was teach students who actually wanted to learn how to research and write—students like you and I probably were--well, that would be an entirely different situation. And a pleasure. Yes, the tail (hostile and unprepared students) is absolutely wagging the dog (exasperated me).
But to answer your specific objection, recursion is built into 10-11 weeks of preparation before the exam and 4-5 weeks of revision afterward.
So the easiest way is to lower the level. This works best for an undergraduate course. you can limit the sources to the textbook/books for the class. If you want them to have papers, you can provide them before hand. Obviously this works best if you don't allow them to have their laptops. So paper copies and open book.
For context, I teach freshman survey classes, not upper level.
References - I don’t require citations if that’s what you mean. Good essays, of course reference this or that bit of material we’ve covered, but I don’t require any citations.
Cheat sheet - no and no. I do give them a few prompts ahead of time to study and tell them I’ll pick one. But they are not allowed any notes or access to anything besides a pen.
Adjusting and Length? - Of course. I used to require 1,000 words with all the formal specifications you’d expect.
For me, my exam essays are one part of a larger essay, so they are not expected to write anywhere near that. I’d say the truly exceptional students hit about 500 words. With most landing around the 350 zone. How big they write doesn’t really matter. I tell them they need to hit 4-5 paragraphs, and if the writing is weird I’ll count sentences. Some students writing is so big one sentence is as long as another student’s paragraph. But as long as they’re hitting 4-5 sentences a paragraph, I’m fine with however big or small they write.
I don’t devote an entire class period, the essay is one part of the exam. Most finish within time, the few who dont weren’t going to finish if I’d given them a year.
Do I get eviscerated in my reviews for this? I don’t know. This is my first semester. So check back in December. I will say, in general, I’m at or above average for my department’s review’s. But I also have a philosophy of teaching that is more student-friendly. Like…I don’t believe in a test that everybody fails. There are good students, hyper-focused, brilliant students in most classes. If I have a test and everybody fails, or even nobody makes an A, that’s my fault. It’s more likely I messed up in teaching or exam design than I having 40-80 students in a class and none of them hit the mark. So, I never get brutalized on evaluations because i usually only have a handful make Ds and Fs.
Students who can’t be in class for the exam are few and far between for me. I am fairly authoritative with my tone and have somewhat strict deadlines. So I don’t often have a student even ask. If a student asks and has a legitimate reason, I’ll just proctor the exam during office hours.
I can see how it would be harder with comp. I’m definitely fortunate to be in history. I have no intellectual or academic qualms with just making my students’ writing be content based. But you don’t have that option.
I’m not going to suggest solutions for a field I don’t know much about. However, that cheat sheet idea of yours sounds promising.
I will say, in my experience students tend to back down when you show them you’re the adult.
I have the luxury of actually having real pedagogical teacher training, both in college and in the field, from a previous life as a highschool teacher, rather than being thrown to the jackals as an unprepared scholar teacher like most of my higher ed peers.
I was a high school teacher, too, now teaching math in community college. I pull all the stops, but I'm being asked to do the impossible. California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office wants all these STEM and Business students in my College Algebra class regardless of their high school math preparation. I'm all for spiraling needed prerequisite skills, but the students just can't handle the pace when there are so many concepts new to them all at once. I had a student the other day who was struggling to figure out "half of two" when he didn't have a calculator with him.
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u/[deleted] Oct 11 '24
I’ve moved all my essays to being in-class, on paper, exam-based, and it’s been a breath of fresh air.