It is of all times that students try to outsmart their teachers. Nowadays, ChatGPT is popular, a piece of software that writes complete essays, papers or other assignments by itself. Teachers do not always realize that submitted work was not written by the student, but three IT students from Fontys have created an app that solves this problem.
It is not known how often students use ChatGPT. The fact that homework assignments are made by the text generator is apparent from a survey of the NOS. The students indicate that they are not caught by their teachers because they do not know their writing style.
Complete papers and theses are written by ChatGPT. For example, students enter a text from another student and a rewritten version of ChatGTP rolls out. The program creates a unique version of it so that it is not recognized that it has been copied.
‘More and more difficult’
According to Niek van Dam (22), ChatGTP is getting better at creating smooth and unique texts. “It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to determine whether a text has been written by a human being.”
Robert Chamalaun is a Dutch teacher and chairman of the Dutch department of the Living Languages trade association. He tells NOS that some schools are already thinking about measures and are afraid of writing skills. “Students will then have to write texts at school, for example.”
Test knowledge
Niek and two other students sought a solution to this problem. “There are already several programs that see whether a text has been written by a computer or by a human being. A student who is caught can then be punished.”
The three students came up with a different approach. “We wanted teachers to be able to test whether someone has knowledge about the content of the piece of text.”
Questionnaire
The trio made a program that comes up with questions about the text. “Our software reads a paper at lightning speed and then comes up with a questionnaire that teachers can use to test their knowledge of the content of the papers submitted.”
If a student can answer the questions, he or she has actually learned something. If the questions remain unanswered, the student falls through the basket. Niek: “The point is that students learn something. Who or what writes a text is less important.”
To assure
The students still have a challenge. Their app currently works especially well with English texts because there are many more of those. “The program is self-learning, but it does need Dutch texts to get better.”