Students Using AI to Complete Homework: What Should Teachers Do?

If we teach today’s students with yesterday’s methods, we rob them of their tomorrow.

The Dilemma

As a necessary means of teaching evaluation, teachers often assign homework or final papers. However, many students are now turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to complete these tasks, which has become a headache for educators.

A friend of mine recently faced this issue.

He teaches a course that requires students to submit a case report related to the subject at the end of the semester. In the past, grading assignments was relatively straightforward and enjoyable for him, as he could easily tell whether students had put in effort. But this year, he noticed that some assignments were exceptionally well-written — so much so that he began to suspect they were AI-generated.

This left him in a tough spot: If these assignments were indeed written by AI, would it be fair to give them high marks, especially when compared to students who worked hard but produced slightly lower-quality work? On the other hand, penalizing students solely because their writing was too polished and assuming it was AI-generated didn’t seem appropriate either.