One high school in Florida which is known for hosting a highly prestigious academic program has recently informed parents that its students have been cheating on assignments by making use of ChatGPT to create their essays.
As stated in an email sent out to parents by the coordinator of the program, students taking part in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at Cape Coral High School have allegedly been utilizing the AI chat software to auto-generate essays. Both Ib program officials and members of the school district have openly condemned the use of this software, but students have stated that the software is already just commonplace.
“Your senior students are in the process of submitting rough and final drafts of their official IB internal assessments in their various subject areas,” stated Katelyn A. Uhler, the Cape Coral IB program coordinator, as part of a recently penned letter. “Recently the use of AI generators has become a major concern. The use of AI generators is a violation of our academic integrity policy… There have been some IB papers submitted that are questionable in a few ways including being very different styles of writing from previously submitted papers. I have been going into the senior Theory of Knowledge classes with CCHS administration to address this concern and outline the consequences.”
The school makes use of an automated software named Turnitin to check for and guard against plagiarism in their papers. However, Uhler highlighted that AI-generated papers get around this roadblock because they never generate the same output two times. Instead, the school is now trying to use AI detectors and is invading individual students’ laptops in order to verify their work.
Uhler claimed that she asked the students to reach out to her in private in order to deal with the issue in a timely manner, and if they choose not to, students could end up facing far more severe consequences. The teacher for the IB program need to make sure to authenticate all work from their students in order to fully complete the program, and IB students need to complete the program in order to secure their high school diploma.
Uhler then called on parents to speak to their kids at home about the dangers of using AI-created work.
Officials with both the International Baccalaureate program and the School District of Lee County have condemned the use of AI to create their work. “As part of our ongoing cybersecurity efforts, our Information Services team continues to strengthen Chromebook security features to block the use of AI from aiding any student work,” the district stated to local news outlet NBC2.
“The use of ChatGPT and any other method which results in a student submitting work that is not their own is against the IB’s academic integrity policy,” expressed the IB.
However, students at the school stated to the outlet that they are well aware of CHatGPT.
“I’ve heard a lot about it,” stated student Sophia Fallacara. “Like, all of the seniors, they’re all talking about it.”
“There’s like a whole controversy about it,” tacked on student Michael Clayton.
This past December, a professor at Furman University issued a warning that the use of AI if the future of plagiarism. “Today, I turned in the first plagiarist I’ve caught using A.I. software to write her work, and I thought some people might be curious about the details,” expressed Darren Hick, a professor of philosophy, in a Facebook post while highlighting ChatGPT in particular.
“Administrations are going to have to develop standards for dealing with these kinds of cases, and they’re going to have to do it FAST,” concluded Hick. “This is too new. But it’s going to catch on. It would have taken my student about 5 minutes to write this essay using ChatGPT. Expect a flood, people, not a trickle.
