Since AI has been more readily available one of the biggest and hardest problems for schools to solve has been:

What do we do about cheating?

Many AI detection tools were released quickly, aiming to bring teachers peace of mind. But with reports of higher-than-expected false positive rates and stories of students being wrongfully accused of AI cheating, teachers have been left wondering again: What do we do about cheating? 

Skill Struck has spent many hours talking with and supporting educators in adjusting to AI’s availability to students and these are the effective solutions we have found. 

01 AI Education

Educating teachers and students about AI is crucial to ensure they understand the opportunities and risks involved with its usage. With AI becoming increasingly integrated into our lives, educators need to have a solid understanding of AI to guide students effectively. We can inspire innovation and creativity by teaching them about AI applications and their potential benefits. 

Simultaneously, educators must emphasize the ethical considerations and potential risks associated with AI, such as bias and privacy concerns. It’s also important for students to understand the limits of AI and where it falls short. By fostering a well-rounded understanding, we enable teachers and students to harness the power of AI responsibly and respectfully.

02 AI Professional Development

With AI in the classroom teachers have so much to wonder about such as how to introduce it, how to get students to see past the idea of AI doing work and thinking for them, how to ensure the information AI provides is correct, and much more.

AI Professional Development will help teachers answer these valid questions and concerns. Currently, within Skill Struck’s AI Solution: Chat for Schools, there are 19 lessons to train teachers on various aspects of AI use. Some of the PD lessons we offer include:

• Clarity around Cheating
• Tips for Writing Prompts
• Using Chat Ethically
• Let Chat for Schools Do The Busy Work

AI professional development is crucial for teachers to confidently navigate the complexities and possibilities of integrating AI in the classroom.

03 Use AI Tools that offer Chat History Capabilities

AI tools such as Skill Struck's Chat for Schools provide districts with a safe introduction to AI, avoiding the potential risks of unregulated ChatGPT. Chat for Schools ensures AI use transparency by offering features like Chat History Logs, allowing educators to monitor each student's platform usage. This resource is invaluable for teachers who suspect any form of cheating, allowing them to review the prompts given to Chat for Schools and examine the corresponding outputs.

04 Introduce AI into Writing Assignments

Because an area in which tools like ChatGPT excel is writing content, writing assignments have been the most affected by this new technology.  A good way to eliminate the opportunity for students to cheat with AI in a writing assignment is to implement AI into the assignment. 

When introducing AI into an assignment an important question to keep at the very top of mind is: “How can I integrate AI into this assignment while still encouraging critical thinking and problem-solving?” 

The volume of which AI  is part of an assignment is all up to the teacher, but here are some ideas:

• Let students ask AI to come up with an outline for a writing essay and then have the students fill out the essay on their own from there.
• Have students brainstorm with AI to decide on an essay topic.
• Have students write an essay all on their own. Then, ask the students to put all but the concluding paragraph into an AI tool and prompt AI to create a concluding paragraph for the essay. Then have the students compare between their concluding paragraph and the AI-generated one. Ask them to answer questions like: “What are the strengths of your concluding paragraph?” “What are the strengths of the AI-generated concluding paragraph?” “What aspects from the AI-generated conclusion can you add to your essay’s conclusion to make it stronger.” ‍
• To test comprehension in an English class a teacher could prompt an AI tool to write a three-page essay on a book the class has been assigned to read. Give the essay to your students and ask them to read through the essay and spot the errors. Ask them to answer a series of questions like: “What main themes of the book did AI leave out, that you would add?” “What part of the AI essay would you get rid of?” “What were the strengths and weaknesses of the essay?”  

Then have students write their essay using what they learned from the AI-generated draft. Allow them to choose up to three paragraphs they liked and disclose their use of them on their paper and then add their perspectives and unique voice to the rest of the paper. 

As you can see from these examples, the priority remains on developing human thought and critical thinking skills.  At the same time, students are learning about AI, its strengths and weaknesses while learning how to utilize it as a helpful tool. 

Teaching students how AI can be used responsibly is vital to mitigating cheating because they now understand how to use AI appropriately for the class. When AI is used responsibly in the classroom it can aid in student learning, not hinder it. 

05 Openness and transparency leads to responsible AI use

When educators have access to tools like Skill Struck’s Chat for Schools and Learning Studio they become far more effective at not only spotting cheating but also preventing it from happening in the first place. We have seen that students are going to use these shiny new AI tools whether they understand how to use them or not. Chat for Schools has many resources to help educators have open conversations with their students on the ethics regarding AI use and appropriate use behaviors. 

To learn more about Chat for Schools and how to encourage students to use AI responsibly schedule a demo here.