We’re not going to find a foolproof way to keep our students from using ChatGPT or detect it when they do: ChatGPT is a better writer than many students who have come through our doors. What we can do, however, is require students to include enough specific elements in their writing assignments that ChatGPT will be unlikely to provide a perfect response.
We’re sharing the guidelines we’ve developed for our remarks for student performance, both as a result of completing many forms ourselves and from seeing the feedback, useful and not so useful, provided at years of meetings.
For any attempt at goal setting with students to be meaningful, they need guidance. They need to know how to accurately and honestly reflect on their past performance and habits. They need help narrowing their personal goals down to something specific enough to achieve.
Sometimes it’s helpful to stop and think about another group who often doesn’t get the thanks they deserve: the students who quietly hang in there, day after day, not giving up despite the constant pull telling them they can and should, and that there are minimal consequences for doing so.
An essential foundation for any successful strategy addressing academic honesty is a direct discussion with students about cheating in your classroom. You might be tempted to assume we all have the same working definition of cheating. We do not.
The student with chronic absences is an entirely different situation altogether. This type of absent student is not the one who misses a week of class because of a particularly bad case of the flu, one with chronic absences tends to miss at least one, if not more, day every.single.week. It’s like they’re on a completely different calendar than the rest of us.