We’re in our FOURTH email of FIVE in a series: How to Keep Students Thinking in the AI Age.
PART 1 (read it here): We talked about how 🧠 THINKING is going to be key in the AI age — and how teachers are perfectly positioned to prepare students to think.
PART 2 (read it here): We looked at how AI literacy can actually 👩🏫 HELP YOU TEACH — and a workflow you can follow.
PART 3 (read it here): We saw a ⏰ NO-PREP ACTIVITY that gets students thinking AND teaches them a bit of AI literacy.
PART 4 (below) focuses on academic integrity in the AI age.
Part 4: AI cheating: a better way to handle it
Since ChatGPT was released in November 2022, there’s one place teachers have felt the impact the most in the classroom …
Academic integrity. (AKA: “AI cheating.”)
When the topic of AI comes up in department meetings or the teacher’s lounge, it always comes back around to cheating.
And that’s fair!
We have students writing essays that don’t sound anything like them.
Students turn in comprehensive answers to classwork — but then can’t answer simple questions about them afterward.
There’s a lack of detail and depth in classroom discussions.
We’ve tried everything — banning tools, AI detectors, eyeballing writing for “stuff that sounds like AI.”
We’ve tried creating policies and rules, but they end up being vague (“Write this yourself — and don’t use AI to cheat.”) without solving the problem.
And honestly? None of it is really working.
It’s time to try a new approach
Spoiler alert: No one single approach is going to solve the tangled academic integrity mess we’re in today. No tool. No policy statement. No “AI-resistant” approach to assignments.
We need to think about this more like climbing a mountain.
There isn’t one solution waiting at the summit.
There are milestones along the way that move us in the right direction.
One milestone that can move us in the right direction is this:
Co-creating norms and expectations around artificial intelligence WITH your students (and not for them).
There’s an approach to this that I really, really like …
How to co-create norms around AI with your students
You can jump right into: “What should and shouldn’t we do with AI in our classwork?” But there are problems with that approach …
Students might answer very strategically to set themselves up for easier classwork (instead of doing things the right way).
They might not understand the implications of AI on their work yet.
This process will take a bit more time — but it really sets the stage for better decisions AND norms that actually work.
STEP 1: Discuss AI use in professional fields — What do artists think about AI use in their fields? What seems fair and unfair to them? What about journalists, or doctors, or lawyers? When students discuss professional fields, they can judge objectively without thinking about “how will this impact how hard my classwork will be?”.
STEP 2: Discuss impact of AI on academic tasks — With the discussion about AI and the workforce behind them, pivot to classwork in general (not just in your class). Have a general discussion about the impact of AI on student essays (or science labs, world language translation, or reading comprehension). What’s fair? What is overreach? How do you know? 💼 RESOURCE: My student classwork AI use spectrum can help guide this discussion.
STEP 3: Start to form some norms, guidelines, and rules for class — Now that students have some context, talk about how they should handle their business in your class. Ask questions like:
How have you seen AI impact classwork in the past?
How might AI impact the work we’ll do in THIS class?
How can you tell that AI use is constructive and responsible?
What are the real reasons that your classmates shortcut learning with AI?
What can your teacher do to reduce the temptation to overuse AI?
Think about norms (how students do their work), guidelines (practical suggestions), and rules (non-negotiable requirements).
Work through some steps to create class norms.
Why this approach works
First, it’s a real AI discussion. They’re talking about the impact of AI on their learning. This is a conversation most teachers just aren’t having — either because they don’t want to or they don’t know how to structure it.
Second, it gets the order right. It gets students thinking about what’s right and fair BEFORE talking about how it applies to their classwork. It gives you the best chance of objective student decisions.
Third, it’s student-driven. The STUDENTS are the ones creating the norms, guidelines, and rules. A top-down approach feels like they’re being punished — and not being heard. This way, they understand the process and have a voice in it.
Fourth, they understand the WHY. Someone (you!) is finally helping to explain the implications of AI on their learning — and helping them to set themselves up for success.
Want to know how to apply all of this?
In this series, we’ve covered several ways to keep students thinking in the AI age, including …
how to use timeless thinking skills that teachers already teach to prepare students to think and grow in an AI-saturated world (read it here)
how critiquing AI when it creates content about your work can actually help you teach (and, secondarily, build student AI literacy) (read it here)
a practical no-prep activity you can use in any grade level or content area to get students thinking (and learning important lessons about AI) (read it here)
steps to take to strengthen academic integrity — and help students understand the impact of AI on their learning (above in this email)
Right now, these ideas might feel like individual strategies you could try in your classroom … helpful ideas, but still separate pieces.
They’re actually part of something bigger.
If you’re like me, you see that students need to be better prepared for this upcoming AI age so they can be responsible, safe, and productive.
If you’d like to move from one-off teaching ideas to a comprehensive framework for incorporating AI literacy into what you teach (while also strengthening how you teach your class content!) …
It’s coming later this week.
In our next email …
In the next email, I’ll share the full framework I use to help teachers build AI literacy through the small day-to-day moments of class — the framework behind my upcoming book AI Literacy in Any Class, which releases later this week.
Until then, be sure to check out the video series I’ve been sharing (see the purple box below!).
See you then!
Matt
