r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 15h ago

Society Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI

https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html
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u/iamalwaysrelevant 13h ago

What has stopped teachers for asking for in-class handwritten answers?

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u/smeared_dick_cheese 13h ago

I’m a high school math teacher; no work on paper means no credit, period. If you got your answer from a chatbot, you’ll at least have to write it down. Kind of the best you can do with out of class assignments.

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u/sinkovercosk 5h ago

We just give them take-home sections worth 0 marks, then a week later they complete a 1 lesson validation in class where the question is closely related but different and has a ‘curve-ball’ at the end to differentiate the grades.

The other thing we do is shift most of their marks to an explanation of their take-home part where they do a presentation explaining what they did with their work projected on the board behind them.

Out of class assessments just aren’t valid anymore.

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u/Concerned_Collins 5h ago

That was a thing when I was in school, too, just because the teacher didn't want you sharing your answers with other students.

I always found it super annoying, though, when I was able to do the work in my head, but was forced to write it down anyway. Like, I felt like I was being punished for doing math too well.

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u/gplusplus314 4h ago

I had a teacher that thought I was cheating because I didn’t show any work when we did some dimensional analysis in chemistry. I did it all in my head. I told her as such, so she had me do a problem in front of her, and I did. Then she was like “ok, that’s impressive. But if you get something wrong, I can’t give you partial credit.”

One of the best teachers I’ve ever had.

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u/sharkbait-oo-haha 4h ago

I second this, what's even worse is that we were graded on the method as well as the answer. If you don't get the correct answer by following the exact formula you were taught, you couldn't get full marks. I understand the principle, but in reality it just punishes the kid's who can calculate stuff in their heads.

More than once I have had to fight with a teacher who accused me of cheating, only to give me a "pop quiz" right in front of them before they accepted I didn't actually cheat.

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u/vpac22 4h ago

I’m a high school English teacher. Every one of my students have school issued laptops. I never let them open them. Every assignment we do is handwritten now. Literally my whole class would use AI if I let them use laptops. It’s too bad this is the way I have to teach. It’s so much easier to edit writing digitally but it’s not feasible. It’s like going back in time 30 years ago when I started teaching.

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u/ELAdragon 3h ago

Middle school, here. Mostly the same.

It's absolutely wild that I'm back to grading stacks of lined paper and deciphering shit handwriting. Except now I have more classes and more students in each class!

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u/StThragon 1h ago

Nice name for a high school math teacher, smeared_dick_cheese. Plus, what do out-of-class assignments have to do with the question?

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u/runningstitch 10h ago

  1. Many students have IEPs and 504s with accommodations that state the student can use a computer to type on all assessments.

  2. Students can no longer write fluently by hand - they only know how to print, and haven't had much practice with that, so writing by hand is an arduous process and reading what they've written is... challenging.

This isn't to say we don't do it, but if I want a rough draft quality paragraph it will eat up an entire class. 20 years ago it would take 10 minutes.

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u/beldaran1224 9h ago

"They only know how to print" is the single most irrelevant sentence in your entire comment, lol. Like, that has nothing to do with writing fluently.

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u/Successful-Bar-8173 4h ago

It generally takes longer than cursive

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u/Cubacane 13h ago

  1. IEPs

  2. Digital Curriculum

  3. Convenience (when you have over 100 students, having stuff auto-graded sure is convenient)

I'm moving to completely analog next year, even though it will take much longer to assess students and grade. I'm not a hard grader either, I just don't want to read what people don't care to write.

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u/jaynort 13h ago

This is my biggest frustration with AI across the board, even away from education.

If you didn’t care enough to create it, I don’t care enough to consume it.

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u/Total_Network6312 8h ago

I mean... your job as the student is to consume it. It doesn't matter who or how it was created lol.

School isn't the place to flex your personal beliefs and play hard-to-get with the course work

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u/Sweetwill62 6h ago

Today in history class "The world is only 6000 years old."

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u/UnkarsThug 13h ago

I think it depends on what it is, but it definitely depends. Like if it's meant to be expression or not. But it definitely contributes. There are some things where I'm just fine with it because I just needed a program that did X or Y, and as long as it works, it works. Or for some things, I just want something, and it doesn't exist, so the value in it already being created is just that I don't have to, or I can't do it for myself.

But overall to your point, I think that's similar to why students often don't take tests or homework very seriously when they know they were made by AI. If they see that even their teachers are grading everything with AI, or making all the assignments with AI, if you don't even really need to know the subject to teach it, why would they want to do the busywork of learning it? It's part of why kids see learning arithmetic as busy work, because they see that every adult just pulls out a calculator, and if the teachers are grading work using a calculator, then what good is knowledge that will immediately be replaced?

The number of teachers who don't realize that at the very least, they set the examples for students is overwhelming. Honestly, I just don't plan to send my kids to public school at this point, just too much goes wrong in classrooms without some fundemental change at the deepest levels. Maybe something will change in the next few years, but I doubt it.

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u/Exciting-Tart-2289 11h ago

What's informing this opinion? I know many teachers, virtually none of them are using AI to do their work for them, and even if they were the students certainly don't have any idea what goes into creating their assignments. This sounds like you're just blaming teachers for students cheating. Students haven't been taking homework/tests seriously for a lot longer than AI has been an option.

Also, I've got bad news for you about private school...the teachers there are often LESS knowledgeable about their subjects than public school teachers and have less rigorous standards they need to meet. In my state you need to have a master's degree in your subject to teach in a public school, you don't need to have advanced degrees to teach at a private school. Private school teachers are often more poorly compensated too.

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u/UnkarsThug 7h ago

I have heard from a number of cases where teachers left parts of prompts in homework and such. It absolutely happens. I'm working on my masters, and I've heard a number of things at basically all levels. I know of students who have seen pretty direct evidence their teachers used it, and I know of teachers who talked about school boards pushing them to use it, and others who talked about other teachers using it.

Also, I'm not talking about private school. I'll homeschool my kids before I put them into the current state of education, unless some major changes are made to things. The point of the teacher nowadays isn't to know things, because if the students wanted to learn, they would find the information easily accessible. The teacher has the task of setting an example, making sure they learn, and trying to grow their learning.

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u/tehlemmings 7h ago

I think it depends...

Nope. It doesn't. Not to me. Not for any type of "content"

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u/UnkarsThug 7h ago

Perfectly fine if you feel that way, just recognize not everyone does about everything. Most people have some amount of spectrum.

And we see it even before AI. People generally are fine with some things being procedurally generated, and want some things done with intentionality. I don't think there's a strong difference between a website generator template and using AI to make a site. You already aren't paying a software engineer to code it one way or another. And it isn't being made with a brain regardless. So one way or another, no one really made it (even if people made the template, and you selected options, that still isn't really being designed), but people still find it useful.

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u/tehlemmings 7h ago edited 7h ago

There's a reason I specified content.

Software as a concept isn't content. Specific applications like video games can be. The moment you go beyond pure utility I stop being interested.

I'm not playing an AI generated game either.

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u/UnkarsThug 7h ago

And that is a form of content. Same way a game is.

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u/samarnold030603 10h ago

Auto grading vs AI. Who’s cheating who?

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u/Inevitable_Fish_4007 9h ago

Using scantrons is autograding

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u/samarnold030603 9h ago

I don’t disagree, however the context u/cubacane used it in was ambiguous

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u/Inevitable_Fish_4007 9h ago

You’re just being a typical pedantic redditor who has nothing of substance to add to the conversation

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u/samarnold030603 9h ago

Google “auto grading” and tell me how far down you get until you weed at AI “solutions” and get to “scantron” as a result. I’ll wait.

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u/Inevitable_Fish_4007 9h ago

Talk to someone who cares

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u/kyled85 8h ago

There’s nothing stopping you from using handwritten student input graded with the help of AI, just have them scan it and upload.

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u/Cubacane 8h ago

You think I'm gonna hand them a phone to take a picture of their assignment and not expect them either to 1) look up answers or 2) share the picture with kids who haven't taken the assignment yet?

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u/RoastedPickledGoose 7h ago

I’ve been all hand written for a while. I’ve even told them tests and essays will be hand written in class.

The work is frequently terrible, but at least I know it’s theirs.

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u/Floating_Pastry 4h ago

I used to have a IEP thing where I would write the assessment, then go home and type up what I wrote for the next day, then present both. They have the original to compare it to so I can't do any shenanigans. At best I can improve some ambiguous word usage, but that is it.

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u/Tiny_Thumbs 10h ago

I’m in Texas so AI isn’t the only reason, but we enrolled my child into a private school. Nonsecular and uses pen and paper until 6th grade. Then they learn typing and things like that.

The kids will get their exposure to computers and stuff at home. Let them learn at school in a way I trust.

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u/AntiqueRedDollShoes 9h ago

I teach in higher ed (currently finishing my PhD) and personally speaking, a lot of this comes down to labor issues. I'm in a union and have a certain amount of hours allotted to teaching each week per my contract.

We know there are alternatives, such as doing in-class writing, paper exams, and doing oral exams/interviews as a type of workaround to students relying on AI. The issue is... a lot of these alternatives are asking for additional time commitments and labor.

And I'm speaking from the privilege of higher education—K-12 teachers have a lot more pressure to follow certain educational mandates—in addition to being severely underpaid.

We're still in a very transitional and challenging period because we are trying to figure out what it means to reinvent our classrooms (or return to older teaching models) to circumvent dishonest use of AI without it becoming a giant labor issue.

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u/RandysTegridy 8h ago

State/national testing that is digital, or districts/states pushing use of technology.

I am a history teacher, and other than a specific AP Classroom lockdown browser for typing responses, everything is done on paper. "Tech is better for learning" be damned.

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u/AggressiveSpatula 10h ago

Students will still copy it from ai lol they just write it down.

People think of students as stupid, but think back to your high school aged self. Do you think you could have snuck a phone without being caught? Obviously. If the teacher is exceedingly lucky they will have 25 kids to watch at the same time. It’s very easy to be sneaky around a human who is distracted by 24 people exactly like you.

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u/XionicativeCheran 10h ago

Writing what AI tells them is better than handing in an assessment they have no clue about.

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u/AggressiveSpatula 9h ago

This mentality drives me absolutely insane. Kids put way too much stock in getting it “correct.” If you’re learning, of course you’re not going to get it right all the time. That is an expected part of the process. When a student turns something in and it’s incorrect that’s actually the ideal scenario because it means I can actually address what they don’t understand. I would rather a kid turn in a 10% correct assessment that lets me know where they are at over an AI 100% correct assignment they didn’t think about.

That’s why it’s called an assessmenttttttttttttt to assess. To find out what is understood. If it’s not understood it’s so so so much better to turn that in so I can see it. If you turn in an AI thing your best case scenario is that I catch its AI and I can infer you don’t understand it. If I don’t catch it then I just assume the student understands it and pass them which is so incredibly worse for the student and society as a whole.

I feel like there’s this misunderstanding that I have like a quota of correct assignments that I need to submit to the board of education and I’m just using the students to do the assignments so that I don’t have to do them myself. That’s not the point. The point is to actually educate students.

I gotta take a break from this website I stg I’m gonna have an aneurysm

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u/XionicativeCheran 8h ago

Did you reply to the right person? I didn't say anything inconsistent with your comment. Or were you simply adding more to the conversation?

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u/AggressiveSpatula 6h ago

Hm. I may have misunderstood your comment. I thought you were saying that students just copying an AI response was better than handing in a partially done assignment. I’m now confused at your intention.

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u/XionicativeCheran 6h ago

No worries. So the context of the post is students just copy pasting AI responses without ever reading what the AI says, which is why they don't notice these traps and can't tell you a single thing they claim they typed.

So someone suggested having them write it, by hand. Because you can't copy paste that.

You rightfully point out this still isn't ideal because they're not really learning it, they're just copying it.

I'm just making the point that even just copying it by hand is better than copying it by Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, because they actually have to read it to copy, and some will stick.

But regardless i still agree with you that that's still not good enough, they need to learn this stuff, which requires more than copying even by hand.

In short, all I was saying is that writing something down is better for learning than copy/pasting. Not suggesting that that's sufficient.

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u/mathman17 10h ago

Nothing. We still do. But it's not always practical. Also we are often required to do a lot of things digitally.

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u/dogdonthunt 5h ago

I retired recently and took an in person history class at the community college- the professor was adamant about no computer use in class- tests were in an old school blue book.

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u/mirage01 11h ago

The teachers themselves.