Transforming the Classroom with Video Responses: A Teacher’s Journey
Key points:
Like many teachers since the release of ChatGPT, I have encountered frustration. Many of us feel like we, as evaluators, spend more time trying to figure out whether a student completed an assignment with or without AI than actually providing meaningful feedback. The number of hours I’ve spent consulting AI reviewers and combing through Google Doc version history is far more than I could have ever predicted or hoped.
The Challenge of Detecting AI-generated Work
When ChatGPT was released publicly in November 2022, detecting fraud was a fairly easy task. Most students who chose to use generative AI to cheat on one of my essays did so by pasting my prompt into ChatGPT or Google Gemini, watching the AI generate a complete essay in a few moments, and then leisurely pasting the text into their Google Doc. On more than one occasion, a student accidentally included their prompt request in the document.
However, over time, the scammers adapted. Recognizing the stress of inserting large blocks of text, they used multiple browser windows to view the AI-generated prompts on one half of their computer screen and used the other half to dictate instead of writing down their own ideas.
A Veteran Teacher’s Perspective
I’m in my fifteenth year of teaching high school and I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting fake work. But proving it is not always easy and collecting the necessary evidence takes a lot of time. Not to mention, generative AI is so easy to use and so sophisticated that students can use it for virtually any task, not just essays and end-of-unit projects. It got to the point that every time I assigned something new – comprehension questions, thought prompts, even personal narrative tasks for crying out loud – I was preparing myself for the impending and daunting detective work that I knew would follow.
Adopting New Strategies
That’s when I figured out how to use technology to defend myself.
Not through AI checkers, as this technology will take some time to become reliable guaranteed. Instead, I decided to follow Kai Cenat’s example.
If you have no idea who Kai Cenat is, that’s probably a good thing. I would be wary of most educational professionals over 30 who are intensively involved with the events surrounding Kai Cenat. But chances are your students know about him. And Mr Beast. And IShowSpeed. Maybe Logan Paul too, but he might be too old for your K-12 students. (Sorry, Logan. Happens to the best of us.)
The point is that these streamers are extremely popular among people too young to vote, which means their audience is very familiar with the streamers’ preferred method of communication: recording videos of themselves via a smartphone.
Video Responses: A Game Changer
About halfway through my The Great Gatsby lesson, I began asking students to video respond to their reactions to the last chapter they read. As I checked her answers, I felt like I couldn’t remember the last time I felt.
I enjoyed grading.
Some reactions may have been more insightful than others, and the production value of the videos won’t cause Mr. Cenat to worry about losing followers any time soon. What I saw in these video responses, however, was personality and authenticity – two things you never get when reading AI-generated content.
The braver students volunteered and had their videos shown on my classroom projector. It provided some laughs, but also gave me so many opportunities to pause the videos so the group could have a deeper discussion about a great point their classmate had made in the recording. The more we worked on these assignments, the more students wanted their videos shown in class. The class clowns had fun with questionable (albeit entertaining) editing options.
I welcomed it all. This made English lessons fun again for both the students and me.
Teaching Modern Communication Skills
However, it’s more about the fun when it comes to teaching students effective virtual communication. While most of my students will not be pursuing an English degree, the vast majority of them will be applying for a position that requires them to do so virtually. Today’s generation of candidates are already being asked to conduct live video interviews in addition to submitting recorded video responses. When teachers give their students the opportunity to capture their thoughts on video, we offer them the opportunity to communicate effectively in a modern medium, which has always been a hallmark of English language arts.
I still give my students literary analysis essays, magazine prompts, in-class presentations, and reading comprehension questions. Many of my students are still using generative AI to some extent to solve these tasks, which is something we educators will just have to deal with for now. On the bright side, I at least give students a way to share their ideas in a way that makes them less likely to ask the AI to do all the thinking for them.
Mathias Muschal, Cardinal Ritter College Prep, Archdiocese of St. Louis
Mathias Muschal teaches at Cardinal Ritter College Prep in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. He has been teaching professionally in places like Chicago, Austria and Saint Louis since 2006 and still gets nervous at the start of each new school year.
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