|
A preview of an upcoming ISTE session on teaching writing in the age of AI and postplagiarism
If you've ever suspected a student submitted AI-generated work, or if you've quietly wondered whether your writing assignments are even designed to require human thinking anymore, you're not alone. These questions are at the heart of a growing conversation in education, and they're exactly what I'll be exploring at ISTE this year in my session, Rewriting the Script: Teaching High School Writing in the Age of AI and Postplagiarism.
What Is Postplagiarism? And Why Does It Matter?
We're living in what researchers are calling a "postplagiarism" era. This isn't just a catchy term; it describes a genuine shift in how we need to think about academic integrity. The old definition of plagiarism (copy-paste, word-for-word theft) no longer captures the full picture. Today's challenge is hybrid, human-AI co-created content, where the line between a student's thinking and an AI's output can be nearly invisible.
This shift means that banning AI and hoping for the best isn't a strategy. It's a gap. What we need instead is a new way of designing and evaluating writing assignments — one that makes authentic thinking visible, regardless of what tools students use.
The AI Risk Audit: A Practical Tool for Educators
At the core of my ISTE session is a practical framework I developed called the AI Risk Audit Checklist. It’s a tool teachers can use to evaluate how vulnerable any writing assignment is to AI misuse, and how well it actually supports writing as a thinking process.
The checklist examines five dimensions of an assignment:
Task Design & Cognitive Demand — Does the assignment require synthesis, judgment, and interpretive decision-making? Or can it be completed by following a predictable structure? If AI can complete the task easily, the task — not the student — is the problem.
Student Voice & Agency — Is the student visible in the work? Assignments where any submission could be swapped with another are high risk. Strong assignments require personal reasoning, meaningful choice, and authentic inquiry.
Process Visibility — Can you see how the writing came to be? Single-draft, final-product-only submissions leave no trace of thinking. Checkpoints, drafts, and reflection components change that.
AI Use Transparency — Is AI acknowledged and guided, or simply banned without discussion? High-risk assignments ignore AI entirely. Lower-risk ones define acceptable uses, ask students to explain their choices, and frame ethical use as part of learning. This doesn’t mean that AI has to be allowed, but the consideration of whether to permit it or not should be intentional and transparent.
Assessment Alignment — What are you actually grading? If your rubric rewards length, grammar, and structure alone, it rewards exactly what AI does well. Rubrics that value decision-making, growth, and reflection are far harder to game with AI.
What Does a Redesigned Assignment Look Like?
The session includes a side-by-side comparison that tends to stop teachers in their tracks. A traditional "high risk" literary analysis prompt (five paragraphs, MLA format, three quotes, submit a final draft) checks almost every red flag on the audit. It follows a predictable structure, accepts a single draft, and grades polish over thinking.
A redesigned "low risk" version of the same assignment asks students to explore a theme that connects to a question that matters to them, document their thinking in a writer's notebook, use AI transparently to generate alternative interpretations (and then critique or reject those ideas in writing), and reflect after submission on how their thinking evolved. The assessment criteria shift accordingly from thesis and grammar to analytical thinking across drafts, quality of reflection, and ethical AI use.
Same content. Completely different cognitive demand.
The Bigger Takeaway
The goal of this work isn't to make AI-proof assignments; it's to make thinking visible. When students are asked to explain why they made choices, document how their ideas changed, and engage critically with AI-generated content rather than simply consuming it, the writing process itself becomes the evidence of learning.
That's a shift worth making, and it's one that benefits students whether or not AI is in the room.
I'll be presenting Rewriting the Script: Teaching High School Writing in the Age of AI and Postplagiarism virtually at ISTE on July 1 at 10am ET. If you'd like to connect ahead of the conference, reach out at carly@learn21.org. The AI Risk Audit Checklist will be available for download at the session.
| 
