Re: ChatGPT

Hello all,

I am perhaps an outlier here, but I have found it useful to ban all use of Chat GPT for my courses, particularly for my recent Engl 113W class, and I will continue to do so.

Out 100-level W credit courses are designed and intended for students to learn and practice writing. And Chat GPT, although it does not spit up perfect gems of stylish, sophisticated prose, is able to produce grammatically correct, essentially correct content, if that content is available elsewhere on the internet. While I have been honing my essay topics for years to make it difficult or impossible for students to use online cheat sites, it is sometimes difficult to do that perfectly, especially when one teaches, as I often do, authors such as Shakespeare, for whom there is a lot of content found online. Chat GPT is a new obstacle, though.

As far as tutors go, using a tutor or a service who changes your writing (i.e., corrects your grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, etc) rather than simply pointing out errors and teaching you how to correct them is forbidden by SFU Academic Honestly policy, although there appears to be a provision allowing instructors to override the policy, which I choose not to do. I've copied the provision here:

2.3.5 Unauthorized or undisclosed use of an editor, whether paid or unpaid. An editor is an individual or service, other than the instructor or supervisory committee, who manipulates, revises, corrects, or alters a student’s written or non-written work. Students must seek direction from the instructor about the type of editor and the extent of editing that is allowed in the course. Students may access authorized academic support services such as the Student Learning Commons, Centre for English Language Learning, Teaching, and Research, and WriteAway, which do not provide editing.

I had a case of a student cheating using Chat GPT this past semester in my Engl 113W class. This is a "W" class--the students are getting credit for working on their writing as well as for understanding the literature that we study. My TA input several chunks of prose from the student's essay and asked Chat GPT if it had produced them. Chat GPT said it had. I went through the paper thoroughly and found many instances for which Chat GPT confessed it had produced the text. (In some cases I had to switch a pronoun to a literary character's name or vice versa--it appears it had to be the exact text.) Now this is not a fool-proof way of discovering whether or not the text was generated by Chat GPT, as Chat GPT will sometimes tell you it generated content that it did not generate, as I tested it with a few chunks of writing from a published article of my own. So I met with the student in question. The student said that he had used Chat GPT to "proof read" his essay after he had written the essay himself. That was enough to give the student a 0 on the assignment, as I had explicitly forbidden, in writing, on the assignment, all use of Chat GPT. I also asked the student to send me his notes and drafts. Perhaps it was no surprise to discover that included in the rough work he sent me was no sign at all of an essay that was written before plugging it into Chat GPT, which is what he claimed he had done.

Sure, Chat GPT didn't write every word of the essay. The essay required the student to write 1000-1300 words and Chat GPT generally can only spit out about 400 words at a time (in my experience with experimenting with it). So the student had to craft a series of questions to ask Chat GPT and then piece together the bits. Nevertheless, the student did not do the work of putting his own thoughts into writing, which requires cognitive functioning that I continue to believe is an important skill to learn and develop.

I suspect I will have to incorporate more in-class essays into my "W" courses for units for which there is a fair amount of online content available, as I am simply not ok with students getting credit for writing they did not do.

Best,

Ronda

Dr. Ronda Arab

Associate Professor of English

Simon Fraser University

pronouns: she/her

From: Gerardo Otero <otero@sfu.ca>
Sent: 04 August 2023 19:28:33
To: Nicky Didicher; academic-discussion@sfu.ca
Cc: Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor
Subject: Re: ChatGPT

Thanks, Nicky. Very useful suggestions in that Google Doc, with all the range of approaches, from prohibition to totally free access without acknowledgment.

Best regards, Gerardo

From: Nicky Didicher <didicher@sfu.ca>
Date: Friday, August 4, 2023 at 5:50 PM
To: Gerardo Otero <otero@sfu.ca>, "academic-discussion@sfu.ca" <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
Cc: Andres Cisneros-Montemayor <a_cisneros@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: ChatGPT

Hello, Gerardo and others,

Should you wish to see a large range of different AI policy statements for many different disciplines and from many different institutions, here is a google doc curated by Lance Eaton: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RMVwzjc1o0Mi8Blw_-JUTcXv02b2WRH86vw7mi16W3U/edit?pli=1#heading=h.1cykjn2vg2wx

I completely agree that forbidding the use of generative AI is futile! And the main way to go for me is to include it the examples I give for how to write the "Assistance Acknowledged" paragraph I already ask for with essays and creative projects.

I'm planning to adjust the wording of my syllabi policies depending on the course. For example, for my quantitative analysis of poetry class this Fall, I've drafted the following:

"• you are permitted to use text-generating AI such as ChatGPT, Grammarly, or Quillbot for your written assignments, provided you acknowledge it at the end of the assignment and specify what you used it for (e.g., grammar and style corrections, organization, suggestions for an effective title); note: ChatGPT writes terrible metrical poetry and isn’t good at scansion--it can find stressed syllables most of the time, but not divide lines into feet successfully; however, it’s useful for fixing grammar errors and revising for clarity"

In the instructions for their term paper, I will also note that when ChatGPT writes English essays it usually paraphrases cheater sites such as gradesaver and shmoop, and, when asked to used peer-reviewed sources, it fabricates evidence.

Nicky

From: Gerardo Otero <otero@sfu.ca>
Sent: August 4, 2023 4:47:38 PM
To: academic-discussion@sfu.ca
Cc: Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor
Subject: ChatGPT

Dear Colleagues:

In September, I’ll be teaching for the first time since ChatGPT became available. So, I’m rather dreading how I will handle this issue, but have no intention of forbidding it (that would be like stopping gravity). Earlier in the year, we had a very interesting conversation on this topic in this list. At that time, I wrote a brief insert for my syllabus based on ideas from other colleagues’ posts. I would like share that short text, asking you for any ideas, criticisms, or suggestions you might have. Here’s the text from the section pertaining to mid-term and final essays (this is a grad course):

“You are required to insert an “acknowledgments” section in mid-term and final essays. You can say whether you began with Wikipedia and engaged with ChatGPT to do your initial research, got idea X from a peer in class, and had your mother or father proofread your paper. Bear in mind that ChatGPT can yield false responses and provide references that do not exist. You must double check anything you use from this tool, and preferably stick to our required readings to write your essays. They should provide you with more than sufficient material.”

Best regards, Gerardo

Gerardo Otero

Professor and Graduate Chair

School for International Studies
Simon Fraser University
7200-515 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC Canada V6B 5K3

Tel. Off: +1-778-782-4508

Website: http://www.sfu.ca/people/otero.html

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