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 checker, 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.
Look for more than one signal
A paste is not proof of misuse: students paste their own notes, quotations and drafts. A stronger concern combines several facts, such as most of the essay arriving in one paste, very little editing afterwards, and a session far shorter than the task would normally take. Record the actual observations rather than converting them into a percentage score.
Give the student a fair chance to explain
Ask the student to walk through how they planned the essay, where they changed direction and which sources or tools they used. A process-aware signal is a prompt for that conversation, not a verdict. Follow your school's policy and document the explanation before deciding whether anything needs escalating. The conversation guide covers a calm way to do this.
When you only have the finished file
There is no reliable way to reconstruct a writing timeline from a submitted document. Prose-style AI scores can be useful as a weak prompt for review, but they should not be treated as proof, especially for multilingual writers or formal academic work. For future assignments, collect the writing through a process-aware link from the start.
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.
- Is a large paste enough to accuse a student?
- No. Students may paste their own notes, quotations or a draft written elsewhere. Use multiple signals and a conversation before deciding whether there is a policy concern.
- Can I check an essay after it has already been submitted?
- Only weakly. A finished file does not contain the writing history, so a process-based tool cannot recover it after the fact.
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