A professor at IUT Charlemagne in Nancy has decided not to correct the papers of her 120 first-year BUT students (university bachelor of technology) because of excessive use by students of artificial intelligence software ChatGPT. “This is a class of about 120 first-year students, enrolled in the BUT technical marketing diploma, who had to submit a written document on thermalism, as part of the Nancy Thermal project,” Samuel explained on Monday. Cruz-Lara, the director of the IUT Charlemagne, confirming information from the local press.
“When grading the marketing assignments, the teachers in charge of the correction realized that the students had misused ChatGPT: their papers did not include any spelling mistakes, or were composed of searched phrases” , continued Mr. Cruz-Lara. “If we had had more time, we could have asked the students to explain themselves, which we did with some who half-acknowledged things. Except that we are at the end of the university year, and, in terms of the calendar, it is complicated for us to react. »
The professor responsible for the subject decided collectively, with her other corrector colleagues who intervene in the module, not to correct the disputed written test. However, the director of the IUT wants to be reassuring: “The students will still have a mark in this subject, they will not be penalized. “All of this is taking on proportions that I did not expect, because we are not the only ones or the first,” said Samuel Cruz-Lara, in view of the reactions aroused after the first articles from the local press.
For the future, the director of the IUT has decided “not to cut off access to this kind of tool from the IUT”, but to “engage with the students in a benefit-danger discussion and to accompany them in using ChatGPT”. A modification of the internal regulations of the IUT is also envisaged: “We already had a paragraph on plagiarism, I will ask to add one concerning artificial intelligence type tools, the use of which will be sanctioned in the same way as plagiarism . For its part, the University of Lorraine, of which the IUT Charlemagne is a component, “has not yet taken a general decision” on the use of artificial intelligence.
