How to check if an essay was written by AI
To check if an essay was written by AI, look at the writing process: was it typed gradually with natural pauses and revisions, or did large blocks appear via paste with little editing? Process evidence is fairer and more defensible than running the prose through an AI text detector, which can wrongly flag legitimate work.
Collect the essay through a process-aware tool
If you only have the final document, you've lost the most useful evidence. Collecting work through a tool that records entry behaviour (like Learnaway) preserves the timeline of how it was built.
Read the timeline, not just the text
A genuine draft shows typing bursts, pauses, deletions and edits spread over time. A pasted essay shows a big insertion with little surrounding activity. Compare the writing time against the word count.
FAQ
- Is checking the essay text enough?
- It's the least reliable approach. The writing process is far harder to fake and fairer to students.
- What does a ChatGPT-generated essay look like in the process data?
- Typically a large single paste event covering most of the final word count, with minimal editing after. The writing time is often implausibly short. These signals together are far more reliable than analysing the prose.
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