ChatBot forces teacher to carefully revision instruction of student writing

As of recently, questions about plagiarism with students’ work have risen. Because of a popular website called ChatBot, students have the opportunity to use the site to do their work for them.  With minimal prompting, this AI software will create requested writing results in seconds. The invention of this AI software has been in the news  quite often as of lately, with many teachers wondering if their students are being original with their work, so how can teachers ensure that their students are not copying their work with these innovations in technology?

In regards to how she distinguishes originality from plagiarism, high school English teacher Brenna Griffin said, “I try to do a lot of writing in-class with many writing conferences and process checks along the way. This makes me aware of where students are, what their voice sounds like and also provides students with the support they need. I find that most student plagiarism occurs when students are in a time crunch and they feel like they have to take the easy way out, so I try to make sure they don’t back themselves into that corner. I also use Turn It In for all final draft submissions as a final check. In some cases, I’ll move the work to in-class writing on pencil and paper to make sure I know what the student can do.”

Speaking on how often she has to worry about work being plagiarized, Griffin said, “I think most students want to grow as thinkers and writers and do their own work. Last spring, we saw an uptick in sophomore plagiarism on a difficult assignment. As a team, we retaught citation and paraphrasing, which really helped the rest of the semester. Before the invention of ChatGPT, I didn’t worry about most kids taking the easy way out of doing the work of learning to think through writing. Now, I worry that there are new temptations that we’ll have to face and figure out.”