Over the past few years, ChatGPT usage has skyrocketed in schools, causing administration and teachers to keep a tight watch on students who are using the AI chatbot. Here at Lake Oswego High School, teachers along with vice principal Aaron Hollingshead have been in charge of monitoring student ChatGPT usage on school-issued devices. 

“The primary tool we use is GoGuardian. Teachers on GoGuardian are able to see what screens students are on. From an administrative point of view, we are able to see search queries including websites that students might use,” said Hollingshead. 

Hollingshead noted that, “Anything a student searches on a school-issued Chromebook I can see. On a personal computer, we cannot access search history.” Because GoGuardian monitoring does not exist on personal computers, a student who uses ChatGPT on their personal computer cannot be monitored by teachers or administrators. 

English classes are often at risk for plagiarism via ChatGPT. With its almost instant results and long responses, ChatGPT has become a website that some students may have turned to in order to plagiarize English assignments and other larger assessments. Ninth-grade English teacher Ellen King stated that “ChatGPT and other AI, because they’re drawing from language on the internet, lean heavily on what sounds good, but the substance is often amiss. It’s usually very polished and uses academic words, but when you read for something deeper, it’s often not there.” With practice, it becomes increasingly easier to distinguish between the voice of a student and the voice of a chatbot. 

Although it depends on the teacher and policy, Hollingshead said that typically students will have “a rewrite by hand, as well as a discussion with parents about AI usage” as a consequence. 

With there being thousands of AI websites and chatbots all over the internet, it is hard to tell whether or not a student will use AI with dishonest intentions, but Hollingshead said to make sure that “AI is always being used in the right way.” The English department will continue to implement their department wide zero-AI policy.