Redesigning Assignments for the AI Era – What’s Actually Working
Spent the entire last weekend making my essay assignments AI-resistant. When do we get time to actually teach.
That said – it’s working. Here’s what I changed and what the results look like after one term.
Process documentation now required: students submit a planning document, two draft stages, and a reflection on changes made between drafts. You can’t fake a messy first draft that looks authentically confused in the right ways.
In-class writing components: 20 minutes of the final essay happens in class, on paper. It’s not the whole essay but it has to be consistent with what they submitted. Students who didn’t write their own essay can’t reproduce the voice.
Oral defense for anything that looks off: just a five minute conversation where the student talks through their choices. This is where everything becomes clear.
I’ve been teaching since 2008 and used Turnitin since early days. Process over detection is the only approach that actually works long-term. Detection is always one step behind.
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the messy first draft point is the key insight. AI generates clean first drafts. humans don't. requiring visible process is smarter than trying to detect the end product.
wait so the in-class writing component - do you tell them in advance that part of it happens in class? or is it a surprise? lol i can see arguments either way. genuinely asking because i want to try this but my students would probably freak out if it was a surprise.
process documentation is the design shift that matters. if the assignment requires a research journal, annotated draft, or reflection log, AI-generated final products become visible immediately because theres no process to match them. at my school we piloted this in grade 11 and it cut suspected violations in half - not because students used AI less but because it forced the work to be theirs regardless.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED to bring to my department head. I've been arguing for process-based assessment for months and getting pushback because "we've always done it this way." The oral defense piece is something I hadn't thought of - going to propose that for our next term.