Chatbot cheating¶

"Chatbot cheating" is not making people more illiterate, these assessments were simply never testing literacy in the first place, let alone building it. People used to literally pay to get essays written for them. Is the complaint that cheating is now less cost-prohibitive? I'm old enough to remember when in-person learning was shut down for the pandemic, and people were crying crocodile tears over how easy it was for students to cheat virtually.

I never had that problem with my students, because my assessments weren't about rote memorization. In fact, I encouraged my students to look up any facts they couldn't remember -- just like they would be able to in real life. Looking up information and assessing its veracity is a critical aspect of literacy. Assessment of that literacy is about assessing the application. If your students are motivated to cheat, it doesn't matter how empowered they are to actually do so -- you have already FAILED to teach them. The outcome they are trying to achieve is a grade, not an understanding of the material. This has been the issue for HUNDREDS of years. Crack down on cheating all you want. It will never change the core dynamic of the education system: it's a class filter, not a tool for learning. The fact that people would even cheat in the first place should tell you more about the true role of the system than about the people.