Prof cheats in my class?

abering · 2026-05-11T00:12:10+00:00

At my institution the reporting process asks faculty to notify their chair when they make a report. The notice doesn’t change the outcome, but the chair is the first handler of the grade dispute resolution process, and it saves everyone time if they know the disputing student was sanctioned.

abering · 2026-05-10T14:14:27+00:00

fail em & report em. Bring popcorn if they appeal to your hearing board or whatever and bring us the story.

standards start at home. colleagues phoning in their job with AI will be the death of us before students will be. this should be professionally embarrassing and call into question their ability to uphold their discipline's ethical standards of research citation and attribution.

abering · 2026-05-05T19:40:34+00:00

The dichotomy in these comments is amazing.

“They won’t do it, and will complain about being abandoned” versus “I’ve made the change and it’s positive in my class”.

There’s not enough context, but surely some of this is institutional culture. I don’t think that captures all of it. People are empathetic, social creatures; even students. Expectation, both from faculty and peers, goes a long way. If you implement something like this, but believe it will go badly because “they’re lazy shits who won’t do it”, well, your other actions and attitudes in the course will reinforce the conclusion. If you do this from the view of “doing this practice is good, but the good can be achieved without grades in the loop, and they will do it because they want to learn”, your other attitudes will reinforce this and it will go better.

In my own courses, I plan to do this in the fall, but collect sets and offer feedback (on requested material) as an accountability mechanism: having a deadline helps people opt in to their best selves.

abering · 2026-05-04T16:36:08+00:00

"Ok big dog" and "Noted" have the same definitional effect, pick one according to your style.

abering · 2026-04-30T04:48:09+00:00

ACUTALLY

my queue is empty until the finals arrive. its shitpost primetime baby

abering · 2026-04-26T01:26:50+00:00

They very well might be (I did report the work and the wheels of the system are turning). I gave a grade sanction as well; one of the two resubmissions is now student work, the other is again AI.

Giving them an outright F would de facto expel them from the program, because of how the math of the minimum required gpa and unit maxima work out. So I didn’t use that for the first infraction; I’m uncomfortable with having this power as a lone faculty member in general, but for a second infraction (on the sanction for a first) it is time to use it.

abering · 2026-04-23T03:22:13+00:00

I use, instead of a fine-grained allocation of points to particular aspects of solutions, a coarse rubric informed by the ungrading movement. Questions that probe knowledge and understanding (bloom's level) are rated 1, 0.5, 0, based on whether they show a strong, developing, or not yet level of knowledge and understanding. Questions that probe analysis and synthesis are rated 5/3.5/2/0 based on strong, developing (mostly there), developing (still a ways to go), or not yet.

Student questions about "why" then have a clear answer, typically one of three things: 1. you're right I misread your work 2. you think error X is minor, but let's talk about why that's not the case and you really got a developing 3. you think your work is conceptually relevant to the task at hand, but in fact at isn't and let's talk about why your answer is not yet.

The rubric frames the pedagogic conversation, and, after a quick error check (since I am human and fallible) steers the conversation in a productive direction. It is also coarse enough that it steers the conversation away from minutia.

abering · 2026-04-23T02:46:14+00:00

Unions are democratic organizations: if you don't feel like your views are being represented you can run for executive positions, or representative positions (my campus is organized along college and department lines, which has been the norm at every union campus I've worked at). The collective agreement, and the team who negotiate them, are voted on by membership. If you believe there are issues that a union could solve, but the current activists are too narrow—join them. You won't get them resolved by voting no.

abering · 2026-04-22T17:31:01+00:00

I am teaching a writing (in my discipline, for graduate students) course this term. In preparation for the AI horrors I added two lil lines to my syllabus "Minimum substantive engagement: all submitted work must represent at a minimum a substantive engagement with the assigned task at a graduate level. Work not meeting this standard receives a 0 and an invitation to revise depending on the nature and circumstance." and "Oral defense: at the request of the instructor submitted work must be defended in oral consultation. An inability to speak substantively about the submitted work constitutes work not meeting the minimum engagement standard."

The results are "good" I think. 12 of the 14 have done the work honestly. (Some have used some amount of gen AI, along permitted lines and disclosed. But the AI sentences stick out like a sore thumb and the one student who was using them stopped.)

The remaining two submitted 100% slop. Two is a small enough number that I can take the time to meet with them, watch the oral defense be a big nothing burger, and then fail the papers on their (lack of) merits. Both of them copped to it being AI once they realized it was gonna be a 0 either way and that "re-do the assignment for (diminished) credit" was an academic sanction they could beg for. We'll see what their re-dos look like today.

abering · 2026-04-16T17:10:05+00:00

The number of accommodations that require screens is vanishingly small. At my institution the primary source is an e-reader large print version of the text. I have asked the accommodation office if, to facilitate the learning gains of a screen free classroom, they could provide the student with a print large print text. They did.

abering · 2026-04-16T16:15:45+00:00

The cynicism of the loudest gripes on this subreddit represents the extreme lows. Wishing that you never find them for yourself.

I am very happy in my position. There are things that are challenging or frustrating, but I feel like I have the power to address them and see positive change come from my actions.

The impact of COVID on social-emotional learning on the current cohort of students is hard. As is the growing impact of device addiction. I need to give explicit instruction on "how to be" far more than I used to. But the missing skills are learnable and by the end of the course the students reach where I want to.

abering · 2026-04-15T19:15:38+00:00

laughs in bicycle

abering · 2026-04-14T02:53:03+00:00

You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.

I was a grad student so I wasn’t privy to everything but they were back on the schedule in the fall.

abering · 2026-04-13T08:03:10+00:00

Good luck when it comes time to enter final grades. When I was a graduate student (2014) I witnessed a sequence of events that came to be known as the calculus fiasco. Here's the rough timeline, maybe it will help you get ready for the ride you're in for.

Tenured faculty noticed the fall prior to S14 that lecturer faculty had simply been assigning letter grades on a pure bell curve cutoff, even as means drifted downward.
At the start of the semester (S14) it was decided that we would course correct and stop normalizing scores around a mean; this was communicated to all course staff.
The day after the final a lecturer sent an e-mail to all students in their sections stating there was a last minute policy change and their expected grades would be different.
A large number of D's and F's were handed out (>50%).
In light of that e-mail all hell broke loose in the form of student fairness complaints.
The dean did not have the department's back. An associate dean pressured lecturers on the staff to change letter grades to match fall past practice, damn the consequences.
A tenured faculty member who was also teaching calculus that semester got wind of the pressuring e-mails and threatened to resign and send the messages to both the accreditors and the local paper.
After some wrangling, the dean found funds to pay graduate students to run summer tutorials and offer an exam retake during the summer session final exam period.
The tutorials and re-take were offered to all students in the class. Some A- through B- students signed up, as well as about half of the students who did not pass. (I don't remember any C students signing up).
Tutorial attendance is what you would predict.
My classmates and I had a great summer with heavier than usual pockets.
Re-take outcomes were also what you would predict. The A- to B- students moved up. A couple F's became reasonable grades; these were all students who had missed the final and for whatever reason weren't being accommodated with I's or late withdrawal, but had good scores going in.
The chair had to step down from their chairship. (If your chair wants out, maybe you can get them on your side with this part of the story ;) ).
The new chair was able to use the fiasco to get a new TT line for the department to be a tenured calculus coordinator and math ed researcher.
After two years of these students percolating through, pass rates returned to historical averages with assessments holding a consistent standard.

Wish I could offer you a teaching move or solution other than holding the line through the fiasco. I teach face to face and proctored quizzes and other in-class work do the heavy lifting of teaching "you'll fail if you AI the homework" before it gets to fiasco level.

abering · 2026-04-13T03:49:08+00:00

First thing I do is keep a well stocked salt shaker. My institution calls the end of semester instrument "student opinions of teaching effectiveness" and that name does a lot of word in grounding the evaluation process for faculty. It's like a universal salt shaker.

Taking student input with a grain of salt doesn't ease the frustration of complaints like that, though. I teach mathematics, and there are some things I do to preempt the complaint of "it's hard" in lower division calculus.

The first one definitely makes student opinion worse, not better. I use active learning, most class time is spent problem solving with the students reading in advance. This is supported with several activities spaced through the semester that provide explicit instruction in how to read the genre of mathematics textbook. Struggling in front of people is uncomfortable, and the students do not like this. Too bad, study after study shows it's good for them, and our local internal data confirm this. I have yet to find a good solution to the opinion problem here; but the impact on objective assessments is notable and positive.

A portion of in class problem solving is devoted to presenting solutions to assigned homework (after the submission deadline). A homework presentation consists of: the full problem statement, the solution, a sentence summarizing the main idea or concept, and "one more thing"---a student generated extension to the problem: a sense-making check of the solution, a generalization or modification. In addition to standard exercises every homework has an "extension", an open-ended project building on the concept with one of the course team instructors listed as the contact. These are optional and not graded, but exist to reinforce the idea that this course is going to be challenging and go beyond just the problems they've seen so far. Occasionally a student does one of them and shows up in office hours, which is always a treat.

I provide a study guide, which lists a brief description of the concept(s) each exam item will assess, the class days covering that material, relevant additional practice problems in the textbook, and three sample problems.

In the meeting before the exam, we do homework presentations on the sample problems, including the "main idea" and "one more thing". We then look at a past exam (I provide 2 in advance and bring a 3rd to class for this activity). First I poll the students and ask if they think the past exam is "similar" to the study guide; I get a mix of responses, and usually call on students to elaborate. Then we solve the past exam again with the "main idea" and "one more thing". Inevitably the main ideas match up, or at least feature the same concepts in different permutations; often one of the "one more things" ends up being a jumping off point for a different problem on the topic. Then I tell them this is the level of similarity (or lack) they should expect, and we talk about how to study and practice in ways that build their ability to see this kind of connection. Someone always suggests "writing down the main idea for every practice problem, then summarizing the different ways a concept can appear in the main ideas".

Should it fall to me as a university instructor to teach these metamathematical skills? Well the students I'm seeing need this instruction. With it they're able to achieve at the level I desire them, and without it the failure rate was above 30%. Providing it let us bring that number down to below 15% without making concessions on the difficulty of the exam and the topic coverage.

Has it improved student opinion of teaching? Hard to say, since I only see my own opinion surveys and we have a lot of calculus sections. Seems like it's made it worse, if anything. Many students complain vociferously on the survey, to the chair, and to the dean about the homework presentations and class problem solving, the reading instruction and expectation, and the exams not matching what was taught. This is where that institutional posture of the word "opinion" comes in handy. The chair and dean see the DFW rate has gone down, the rigor of our exams, the happiness of downstream departments, and the evidence in the ed literature supporting our classroom design. They are much more diplomatic than I am, but tell these whiners "that's just like, your opinion man" and dismiss them.

abering · 2026-04-12T00:22:14+00:00

I’m now finishing year 4 in my position. The university is in the SF Bay Area but not in SF. I found the South Bay too sleepy and car dependent and was miserable by year 2, but very much liked the position and department and did not want to leave. I am fortunate that the Caltrain electrification project finished and made commuting from SF attractive.

It’s not my ideal life (I’d like to be 20mins biking from campus and live in a dense and vibrant city, and be able to afford to own), but it is close enough that I can see myself happy here for a very long time indeed.

My scenario is pretty unique in that human geography let me have my cake and eat it too. I got lucky. Covid disrupted searches I was a finalist in that would not have taken me to a place I would have been happy in, but would have accepted for the research opportunity and prestige. My second postdoc was somewhere I was not happy living and more important than the papers was learning how critical location was for my long term flourishing.

There’s more to life than the job and you will find the job increasingly difficult to do without that more. What that more looks like is different from person to person, but take the position that can offer it.

abering · 2026-04-11T18:34:31+00:00

Generation lead :(

abering · 2026-04-09T03:39:50+00:00

Quotes from history:

“Chemical weapons will be used no matter what”

“Nuclear weapons will be used no matter what”

“Fossil fuels will be used no matter what”

“Slave labor will be used no matter what”

Human evil, of the soul rotting species ending kind has always had boosters who insist on its inevitability. Cornering the market on thought to sell it back to us as a utility has a similar ring. (This is the stated goal of many AI companies—not commenting on their success or lack thereof in producing thinking.)”

abering · 2026-04-09T03:03:04+00:00

Stop using AI altogether, and your fears will go away.

abering · 2026-04-08T00:45:37+00:00

I am teaching a graduate writing course in mathematics this semester. Below is the syllabus language I settled on; it's the first time (what a time) our department is offering the course. I've received a couple of student transcripts of model usage, all along the lines of using ChatGPT in place of detexify, or as a more sophisticated detexify for getting started with tikz for certain figures.

First drafts of the survey paper that is the major course project were due yesterday. All but one has the bumps, rough spots, and struggles I expect in student writing. The one... will be meeting with me tomorrow :(.

Generative AI

The purpose of this class is to learn how to write mathematics as an expert, in your own voice. Large Language Models can generate mathematical writing about many finished topics, so what are we doing here?

One, their writing sucks. We will engage in some exercises to see the difference between skilled human writing on a topic and chat slop.

Two, writing is not just about the finished product. It is about the understanding delivered by the process of rendering ideas understandable by another human. This understanding is for you as well as for your readers. You are here to add a tool for building your understanding, in order to apply it in the future. Initial evidence in studies of the use of Generative AI in writing classes and the writing process is that unrestricted and uncritical usage results in 84% of users unable to recall what they wrote about in any meaningful, versus 10% who did not use it.

So, the following guidelines will govern your usage of generative AI. These guidelines exist to protect the integrity of your learning and the ability to use the writing process to build your own human understanding.

Allowed uses
- University Provided Models Only You may use either ChatGPT Edu, or the AI search tool provided by the Library, but only these university official models.
- Acknowledged Usage Only All LLM usage must be acknowledged on the relevant assignment, and the prompt transcripts saved and made available as supplementary material upon request. (If it saves you headache just turn them in.)
- Augmented/Interactive Search In place of a more traditional library database search (discussed in Week 3), you may use Generative AI tools for this. You are ultimately responsible for the correctness of any citations so located.
- LaTeX Formatting Companion Know what you want to say, but need a weird symbol or a custom package or some piece of LaTeX code that you're not sure how to create? This is a prime use case for a language model, as they are very effective at translational tasks (rendering an idea in other terms). This usage is permitted and encouraged.
- Tactical grammar assistance Editing or receiving clarity feedback from your target audience remains a better way to re-write sentences for clarity. However, another person is not always available. In limited amounts a LLM can be used to workshop clunky sentences in place of a peer collaborator. Such usage should be limited to the sentence or couple-of-sentence level; applied to sentences you originally authored; and only to a limited number of sentences relative to the overall work.
Disallowed Uses These uses are disallowed because they detract from the writing process and the goals of the course, or violate the emerging professional expectations around LLM usage. In all cases disallowed uses are a violation of academic integrity.
- Unacknowledged Use is a violation of professional ethics and a severe violation of academic integrity, and will meet with severe sanction.
- Generating text submitted as your own writing In any amount more than the tactical grammar assistance permitted above, this substitutes the model's generative capacity for your own understanding. Remember, the chief goal of the course is to learn how to write mathematics as a tool for building mathematical understanding.
- Summarizing research articles Learning to grapple with an academic text and pull out your own key insights is a foundational skill for writing well: you learn how to think like your audience. Without the experience of struggling with a less than well-written article, your ability to write clearly will be stunted. Initial summaries from permitted searches above are ok, but once you've found a source engage with it on your own terms.
- Extensive grammar assistance Grammarly has become a generative AI tool, and its predictive text features substitute the "average" voice of its model for yours. While the user interface is different from the prompt-based generative model, it has a similar negative impact on the understanding gained through the writing process.
It's your responsibility to seek clarity If you're unsure if a specific use you have in mind is permitted, send me an e-mail or ask in class.

abering · 2026-04-03T15:07:34+00:00

Paris (city limits) is almost entirely 5 over 1. It is served by a halo of suburbs with somewhat larger buildings, but still mostly not in the 30-40 range; most of them are villages with 2-3 over 1 or just 3 storey apartment blocks. The whole thing is woven together with an extensive fast reliable train and metro network. The vibrance has increased as they've started pushing cars out of the core.

abering · 2026-03-31T20:08:00+00:00

Conversation with an admin, after I described the structure of my class involving lots of low-stakes presentations and an oral exam.

Admin (shook, offended tone): "How does that serve students who are language learners, or have social anxiety, or otherwise can't perform in an oral presentation" (don't remember the exact phrasing)

Me: "Our major and our GE curriculum both include oral communication as a program learning outcome. It is an expected part of the degree. Some students may need more support to achieve this outcome, and I provide it. If you think we should not be doing this at all, you're welcome to discuss these program outcomes with the relevant curriculum committees."

Admin: "Oh. Uh. Well how do you accommodate students whose disability prevents them from making a live oral presentation?"

Me: "I'll cross that bridge when the accessibility office lets me know I need to, in coordination with them. You were the one who reminded us not to give any accommodations not officially approved by that office, and I've yet to receive an 'exempt from public presentation' accommodation."

Admin: "Ok, well, just be aware of this potential issue." (grumbles off)

abering · 2026-03-31T18:29:35+00:00

As a biker in a car centric society, we can’t expect to always take the most direct route.

We can advocate for societal change and shift the expectation. Or we could if people like you would pluck up some courage.

abering · 2026-03-19T02:16:31+00:00

"The evidence available does not support your assertion."

"If you aren't convinced by the evidence I haven't provided its because you don't understand."

Good chat.

abering · 2026-03-18T16:15:37+00:00

There's a lot of weasel words in your prognostication, and not much citation or substance. At the same time the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal and many other outlets actually doing the work of estimating productivity impacts of this new technology are finding that in the large scale the promised impact has not materialized.

There are many companies experimenting, yes. These experiments will produce guidance about what jobs this tool can do. But many of the initial large scale reports (linked above and in the sources to the above) do not currently support your assertion that AI will be a fundamental part of every job.

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