Misuse of ChatGPT: A teacher refuses to correct his students’ homework

A professor at a university in France decided not to mark the exams of his 120 first-year students because students used the artificial intelligence software ChatGPT so much.

“This is a class of about 120 freshmen […] Who must submit a written document on water treatment” explained on Monday Samuel Cruz-Laura, director of the IUT Charlemagne in Nancy (East).

“When grading the marketing assignments, the editors realized that the students used ChatGPT too much: their copy was slightly misspelled or made up of search phrases”, said Mr. Cruz-Laura continued.

“If we had more time, we could have asked the students to explain themselves, and we did some, and they realized things in half a word. Besides the fact that we’re at the end of the academic year, it’s complicated for us to react based on the calendar.

The professor in charge of the course decided jointly with his other editing colleagues, who were intervening in the module, not to correct the controversial writing test.

However, the director of IUT wanted to assure: “Students will still have marks for this subject and they will not be penalized.”

For the future, he concluded, “not to cut off access to this kind of tool from IUT,” but to “engage in a benefit-risk discussion with students and support them in using ChatGPT.”

A change is also expected in the IUT’s internal regulations: “We already have a paragraph on plagiarism, I would like to add one about artificial intelligence-type tools, the use of which will be allowed in the same way as plagiarism. .”

For its part, the University of Lorraine, of which IUT Charlemagne is a part, “has not yet taken a general decision” on the use of artificial intelligence.