r/byuidaho • u/P15T0L_WH1PP3D • 15d ago

STOP CHEATING!

I am attending online through the Pathway predictable, and it is truly disheartening to see such rampant cheating with the use of AI. The discussion board for my class as of this writing is, other than my post, 100% AI generated. That includes replies. And it's awful because these people don't know how obvious it is, how to make it less obvious, or at the very least how to make their posts different from the other posts already on the board.

Is embarrassing to be associated with this school and for that matter, the church, when so many are sitting here scamming their way to a degree that others have to actually work for. That we are connected to a religious institution should be a point of pride, or at the very least a neutral point. She bringing shame to it. My degree feels cheapened. It's disgusting.

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u/FriedTorchic 15d ago

I agree with your statement wholeheartedly, but it is not a problem limited to Pathway or the Church schools. This is a worldwide issue.

5

u/P15T0L_WH1PP3D 15d ago

That's a hollow comfort. I'm very aware of the prevalence of cheating, especially of this type. My wife is a teacher and we have a few teachers in our ward. I hear all the stories.

I would hope that our school would have far less of it than the rest of the world.

2

u/pfknone 14d ago

It is really bad. The worst part is the students no longer think for themselves. If you put pen and paper in front of them they have no idea what to do.

I teach Juniors and Seniors and I had them write what they wanted to do after high school and some of them turned in AI copy/paste responses.

I really love when they don't even reformat it, leave in the citations, or "on the website....."

1

u/Plus-Huckleberry-740 13d ago

Gotta agree with FriedTorchic. it's everywhere. It sucks but some of the teachers use it themselves. They can decry it all they want but at the end of the day, they're mostly apathetic.

1

u/P15T0L_WH1PP3D 13d ago

I'm sorry but this is the opposite of what we should be saying. You're saying ignore it because it's prevalent? Why don't we say that about every other sin?

1

u/Plus-Huckleberry-740 13d ago

you misunderstand me. I never said that we should ignore it. Im currently at a college that has a rampant problem with this and it's infuriating. Colleges have policies against it, but unless they are willing to enforce it, nothing will be done. All i can do is choose not to use it as other students have. Lazy professors + Lazy students = poor outcome.

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u/P15T0L_WH1PP3D 13d ago

Well, I'm actively doing something to slow it down and ideally to eliminate it, or at least to catch it and actively penalize it. I've added prompts that would generate a response that at first glance appear to be part of the content, but in reality have nothing to do with it. I change the font to the smallest font and put it between paragraphs so it just looks like a line break, after I change the font color to white. I also chance the font to wingdings, so that a human, even if they did see it, wouldn't read and understand it. When a cheater copies and pastes my discussion board post into a chatbot to generate a reply, the chatbot will translate it even though the human didn't see it or understand it. Having done that, I've already caught one response with an unusual mention of the current shortage of bananas in Madagascar and a contemplative thought about what effect that will have on the creation of Madagascar 3, since it's being filmed on location. The completely out-of-nowhere ramble appears to have meaning in a discussion about economics, but only to a reader who isn't absorbing anything that they're supposed to have learned. Screenshots have been shared with professor, who has passed it on to a disciplinary team.