r/Purdue • u/King_Kong678678 • Apr 20 '26
Academics✏️ CS240 - Solution!
Turkstra announced in lecture Monday, that due to concerns with drops, bad timing, and the overall view of the situation, that the form will not be used, and no one will be punished for any potential AI use due to the newly developed tool.
The tool will be used on all future assignments going forward starting with HW12, but any past assignments, including any submissions by students in the form, are being ignored.
Turkstra refused to get into detail about the process of the tool, or exact specifics and details, he also refused to comment on the accuracy of his tool.
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u/polarfang21 Apr 20 '26
Nice so this situation will happen again in a week I’m excited for the memes
Punished for potential AI use? I guess he’s gonna make everyone record their screen doing the assignments to show they wrote it all un assisted
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u/sjrotella BSAAE '12, MSAAE '14, D. Eng. ? Apr 20 '26
Funny thing is that students who cheated the whole first 11 assignments are going to need to cheat again cause they didn't learn anything. It's just delaying the inevitable.
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u/GapStock9843 Apr 20 '26
Its their loss. Their cheating will catch up to them in future courses, as it always does
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u/polarfang21 Apr 20 '26
I’d hope this at least encourages them to take a step back and review how they design their homework’s, too many classes just have homework assignments meant to eat up time and make students suffer without a big enough return on the “learning” part of it
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u/sillygoose183683 Apr 20 '26
I can’t speak on CS240 in particular but honestly the best way to learn hard programming concepts is to solve hard problems using them. There’s only so much “teaching” you can do.
I do think that in the age of AI instructors are going to have to fundamentally change how they asses programming skills. Honestly a CS159 style timed lab might be a viable solution.
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u/GapStock9843 Apr 20 '26
I think using AI as a guide to assist you in that seriously helps though. Its like a TA thats there on demand 24/7 to answer your questions and walk you through concepts. I think its perfectly fine as long as you’re having it teach you and not just giving it the assignment instructions, saying “solve this problem”, and copying its code back to the assignment without a second thought about how the code does what it does
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u/sillygoose183683 Apr 20 '26
I agree, however
I believe the majority of students who cheat with AI say “solve this problem” and copy the code. (Source: Personal experience as an ECE TA)
I still think really learning something requires some amount of “banging your head against it”. AI usage in the way you described it avoids that entirely
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u/GapStock9843 Apr 20 '26
I agree, but I dont think banning “ALL AI” is the right move. Even when I use AI to teach me coding I still spend hours banging my head against it because I refuse to let it do all the work for me. I just ask it clarifying questions and stuff
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u/sillygoose183683 Apr 20 '26
I agree but until there is a way to discern between the copy/pasting and the more noble use case you’ve described It probably just needs to be banned entirely. If you give the majority of students an inch toward doing less work, they will take it a mile.
Like i said elsewhere, I do think AI is just going to fundamentally change the way instructors assess programming skills, we’re just fortunate enough to be in the weird middle ground right now.
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u/AntagonistOne Computer Science '10 Apr 20 '26
Are they actually banning “all ai”? If you use ai instead of stack overflow to help understand the concept, nobody will know if you then apply your understanding of the concept to create your own code. If you copy and paste code from ai for your assignments then yeah don’t do that.
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u/sjrotella BSAAE '12, MSAAE '14, D. Eng. ? Apr 20 '26
I used to think this way when I was doing undergrad. Now that I'm back (my 4th Purdue go around) in grad school (again), the reality is these foundational courses, while seemingly useless and not worth the time and "grit" (meme required) needed to complete, actually really do serve a purpose.
Being in industry and having time pressure to get projects done means that you need to actually have the grit and determination to get your stuff done without distractions. Reuse old code/stuff when you can. But you can't shortchange the learning you're going through, or your career is going to suffer.
College is the hardest i ever had to work. Industry is NOT nearly as hard as Purdue. BUT, if you don't put the effort in now, it's not going to be this way for students when they leave Purdue. Yes, industry lets you use AI, but if you don't understand how the AI code works, how are you able to verify it did what you actually needed it to do?
My suggestion to Purdue would be to cut out the "gen ed" classes that every degree seems to require once a semester. The time to complete is fine, the workload overall is fine. Purdue is hard, and it's ok for not every student to be up for it. But those who aren't willing to do so need to stop devaluing the Purdue degree name.
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u/polarfang21 Apr 20 '26
I can agree with that, it wasn’t like every class I took was like that either, but some really did feel like the homework’s were redundant. I could so get behind removing some of the gen ed requirements
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u/DesiGouda2001 Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
As an alum, after seeing the short phone recording in the other post. Turkstra handled this fall out fairly well and he made a very critical point. Even though it was his fault for organizing this clusterfuck of an academic integrity investigation, the students who used AI are cheating themselves and in this day and age where companies program AI agents to do their programming for them there is less of a need for junior developers (at least in the US) hence getting a good grasp on the fundamentals will compound and make you more competitive in the job market.
Even though this semester was handled poorly, you can bet that during next semester when he teaches 240 he'll be more upfront and blunt about implementing and flagging assignments he uses AI and not notify students super close to the drop deadline again.
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u/King_Kong678678 Apr 20 '26
I highly doubt it, the department definitely forced his hand on this one and this is not what he wanted or anticipated.
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u/httyw27 Apr 20 '26
I heard him mention both forwards from HW11 and HW12, do we have confirmation it is only starting from HW12 and forward?
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u/Low_Butterfly2232 Apr 20 '26
Shouldn't Profs be transparent with what AI detection process they are using? This goes without saying as when you are accusing someone of potentially cheating, you gotta disclose the entire process, including the efficacy of the tool that is used to flag. Otherwise there is a lot of muddy waters and ODOS should take this into account before coming to the final decision.
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u/King_Kong678678 Apr 20 '26
Considering he let everyone go, he didn't have to disclose it for those specific students.
But going forward if someone is accused then I would assume so.
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u/xparadiisee Animation 2020 Apr 20 '26
Lol, I wish. I transferred to IU, and in my last semester I had a professor who literally let an AI grade his entire class and write the comments of those grades for him. It's pretty crazy that this AI policy really goes one way, super harsh consequences for the students but the professors are able to do whatever.
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u/SadPlumx Apr 20 '26
Power, rules etc always only flow downwards. It's like this everywhere in academia, industry etc
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u/Dry-Bug-9214 Apr 20 '26
Because learning something and doing a menial job like grading are two different things. And professor do have rules when using AI. Obviously they are not the same because again being a student and professor are two different things. They already did what you did. They passed the classes and did more by going further than a bachelor degree.
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u/xparadiisee Animation 2020 Apr 20 '26
Interesting take. But what about the fact that I’m paying them to do this job? And it’s not cheap. Also, the class wasn’t for computer science or anything with quantitative data. It was literally an art class.
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u/Dry-Bug-9214 Apr 20 '26
You are paying them to facilitate your learning. In order to grade through AI they should have put in rubrics that they make and they review the feedback to update it. It allows professors to be quicker and more detailed. No professor should just not read it and cut and paste...thats not right. They should use it as a tool.
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u/xparadiisee Animation 2020 Apr 20 '26
No lol I’m paying them to teach me what they know. They make the class structure. If they rely on AI to do all the grading for an entire class, then what are they teaching me? I got my grade back and I see the project was a B, I read the comments and I tailor the next project to fit what was wrong. More hours were spent, and my grades got lower and lower. When an AI grades, especially in a studio art class, it’s not taking into consideration my growth as an artist in the class as a whole. It’s not looking at how my project is against my peers. It’s not even subjective.
I’m all for AI as a tool, but it’s extremely one way currently. No wonder students don’t even care about the consequences anymore if professors can use it but not even tell their students lol
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u/Dry-Bug-9214 Apr 20 '26
You are not paying them to teach you. You are paying them to facilitate your learning. High school teachers are paid to teach. They are different.
Sorry but growth is appreciated but its not necessarily part of a grade. Assignment have requirements that are pretty straight forward. Thats how they can be graded across the board without bias. You want that so grades ate standardized. What works for one assignment might not work for another. You are graded for what you produce not how many hours you put in.
Have you been trained as a professor? Im assuming no because you are a student. You have a singular lens here and it shows.
Students have a different scope than a professor. The professor already did what you are doing. Compare that. You cannot compare what you are doing to their job. It is apples and oranges. As I said...they should not just cut and paste. If they create their own rubric and feed that in they are just utilizing AI to help speed the process. Again, they should review it and update it. They are still grading ypur assignment they are just having something put it into an easier form to review. If they dont review and update it then yes, AI is grading and its not good pedagogy.
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u/xparadiisee Animation 2020 Apr 20 '26
Yo Art School is graded completely different than other courses. Also, I’ve graduated I’m not a student anymore. And- I didn’t just get a bachelors, I got a BFA. In a Fine Arts program, professors ARE paid to genuinely teach you. My classes at max had 10 students in the program. You spend so much time with these professors, 7 hours a week in a studio with them, they are supposed to be a mentor. I don’t think you understand how important that perspective is here.
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u/Dry-Bug-9214 Apr 20 '26
At the college level, the balance shifts noticeably toward facilitation. By the time students are in a university studio, they've usually got some foundational skills. They don't need to be shown how to stretch a canvas from scratch. What they need is someone who can help them figure out what they're actually trying to say. So college professors should spend less time at the front of the room demonstrating and more time moving through the studio, asking questions, poking at ideas, pushing students to articulate their intentions. Critique becomes less about the instructor delivering a verdict and more about creating a conversation where students learn to defend their choices and evaluate each other's work. The professor is still in the room to bring expertise, context, and the occasional hard truth but the posture is different. It's less "let me show you" and more "let's figure this out together." That shift isn't just pedagogical preference; it reflects what college-level art education is actually supposed to be, which is helping students develop an independent creative practice they can sustain long after they leave the classroom. If you are not doing this, its not a true college level class and more like high school.
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u/xparadiisee Animation 2020 Apr 20 '26
Lol wow you’re just making so many assumptions here it’s not even worth my energy. Yes, ai is a tool. It should work both ways, is all I’m saying.
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u/Radiant-Month-1168 Apr 20 '26
No. If they have actual evidence of cheating then you are done.
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u/Low_Butterfly2232 Apr 20 '26
Agree with that. But if you are using a black box tool that potentially has high false positives, I am not sure how you justify while flagging. Students will contest due to vagueness of the tool, hence leading to way more interviews, and they cannot apply the no contest less penalty with this. If you need to collect all evidence and submit to Dean, they you might as well reveal the entirety and be transparent and not waste people's time.
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u/bunnysuitman Apr 21 '26
I’ll add, he published on this…and that publication doesn’t contain any statement of irb approval. That would be research misconduct and possibly a ferpa violation.
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u/Morpheus_MD Apr 20 '26
I agree with you in general and I have no skin in this game (didn't even go to Purdue, not a computer scientist, just here for the drama because Reddit sent me).
However in this particular case, it seems like the professor was using the tool to flag suspicious code that was then reviewed by a human.
AI being what it is, I'm guessing an LLM is not going to give you very parsimonious code and will have tells. But I do think a student should have the opportunity to explain anomalous code before being labeled as a cheater.
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u/sonsuka Apr 20 '26
Why should he tbf. Just dont cheat you shouldnt need learn to circumvent it. If u get caught false flagged you should be able clearly explain anyway.
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u/GRex2595 CS 2017 Apr 20 '26
For an actual accusation, evidence should be provided. For this case, since nobody is being accused anymore, no evidence necessary. For future cases, the prof should be providing evidence, but that evidence doesn't have to be proof of how the tech works, only the evidence they get from the tech. I assume the tech will provide a confidence rating and references to the actual evidence. They'll provide the actual evidence rather than the tool output. The evidence will either be enough or not. No need to explain the tool unless the evidence is not available or not enough to justify the accusation.
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u/AlmightySinnohRemake CLA, '26 Apr 20 '26
Some of my professors have simply said what you will need to have to prove innocence if you are accused of using AI. The things that are needed aren’t really replicable if you used AI but also don’t really show up in original submissions either. Refusing to give clear instructions on how to prove innocence from the start is very goofy imo.
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u/King_Kong678678 Apr 20 '26
Turkstra sorta acted without ODOS, the department or anything else, he literally told us he hardly consulted outside opinion before making this decision.
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u/delatti_mocha Apr 20 '26
There’s people that will be banging their heads against the wall for dropping the course
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u/knf28 Apr 20 '26
They will allow them to re-enroll.
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u/sonsuka Apr 20 '26
On one hand good they should be allowed to undo. On otherhand they basically admitted they cheated in all but word so all professor at purdue will scrutize their work anyway.
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u/thegoodson-calif Boilermaker Apr 20 '26
According to some previous posts, people will be given a chance to reverse that decision.
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u/King_Kong678678 Apr 20 '26
They should be allowed to reenroll according to the department head email.
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u/jpfarrow Apr 20 '26
I just feel lucky I got my degree already and can experience this from the outside. College was already stressful enough for me, I don’t know if I could have handled getting that email, I really don’t. Learning the basics is super important, we all get that, but I use AI every day in development at my job and it is very much not my choice. Weird times man. Do not envy these kids, any they had to deal with Covid in high school and middle school? No bueno.
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u/Avlatlon Apr 20 '26
does it feel weird to use the very tools that will make your job become increasingly obsolete in the not too distant future?
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u/jpfarrow Apr 20 '26
In my professional opinion, I would be more concerned about overseas outsourcing than AI.
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u/henare Apr 20 '26
yup. nobody is going to pay full US salaries when they can get someone in a lower cost economy to run their AI queries for them.
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u/SamuraiJack0ff Apr 20 '26
It's this, I barely even do any development anymore. I just babysit teams of Indian devs. Been like that everywhere I've worked for a number of years now. It sucks that I don't really get to use any of my skills from my early career or school anymore, but you need to have them to run the team I guess. I've walked onto projects to clean up the mess you get when your company lets a business-side dude try to handle managing them and it's always a huge shitshow for the first few months
Sometimes it's Filipinos or Mexican guys instead but the principle is the same; companies can hire like 6 of them for the cost of a single entry level stateside developer so they're eating up a shitton of the market.
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u/jpfarrow Apr 20 '26
Used to work under UHG. They signed a deal with one of the larger contracting companies to get kick back per hour, I was the last US based developer on the team by the end of the year.
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u/SamuraiJack0ff Apr 20 '26
Ughhhh that sucks to hear, I had a similar thing happen. Big PE firm bought out this company that had acquired the startup I was working for and slashed like 40% of the workforce with 0 notice - if you didn't get an invite to the all-hands that day you were gone. Within a few months I was the last US dev in my entire department, and it turned out they had just kept me on so that I could handle the sale of its assets to some regional company that had been using us.
We were still contractually obligated to keep things running for a year during that time but I literally had nothing to do during the day because every other position had been sent overseas lol, even then though it was still super fuckin annoying because none of the suits were willing to stay up to do onboarding or check-in with these guys and they'd fired all of their management staff so I would be getting daily calls from like, the VP of Product for this 5000-person Frankenstein nightmare holdings company asking about how things were cracking on
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u/qdog0 CompE 2027 Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
I don’t like the lack of info around this tool. It seems a little fishy to me. If he actually made something that could detect AI I think it would get a lot of traction outside the University.
Edit: I’d also argue that he does actually owe an explanation to the students about what this tool is, how it works (from a high level), and what he’s planning to do with the data given the havoc that was caused. Due to the high level of false positives (according to what I’ve read) and that this tool will be used on future assignments, I think students should be aware of some (not necessarily all) of the things that would flag their code as being generated by an LLM.
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u/thegoodson-calif Boilermaker Apr 20 '26
Seems completely fair. He owes an explanation to the department and the administration but he doesn’t need to give students a road map for how to get around his AI checks.
Regardless, it will eventually leak out as students get caught. At that point I would expect they’ll be presented with evidence and have a chance to explain themselves.
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u/qdog0 CompE 2027 Apr 20 '26
I don’t think he needs to share an entire roadmap of how it works, but when he was asked about the tool in general he just brushed off the question. I’m wondering if he shared more about it, the student body would start to question the validity of it.
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u/Particular-Ad-7338 Boilermaker Apr 20 '26
I suspect he intends to publish and/or copyright/patent it. CS240 may have been a test data set. Big enough for a statistically significant sample, small enough that they can look at the data flagged and see if it was accurate.
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u/qdog0 CompE 2027 Apr 20 '26
Wouldn’t using a class as a training set go against some sort of Purdue policy? I saw another post suggesting something like that.
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u/Particular-Ad-7338 Boilermaker Apr 20 '26
Possibly. Perhaps there is some fine print somewhere that says it is ok. Or something said early in class that ok’s it, but no one picked up on.
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u/qdog0 CompE 2027 Apr 20 '26
What I’m also not clear on is the accuracy of it. It doesn’t seem to be close to 100% at all, so if he’s going to use it on the future assignments what’s to say things won’t be back in the same situation in a week.
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u/thegoodson-calif Boilermaker Apr 20 '26
I doubt anyone, probably including the professor, can definitively say if it’s close to 100% accurate or not at this point. Anyone who cheated would have a major incentive to lie or downplay how much they cheated.
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u/Humble-Principle-878 Apr 20 '26
You can look it up - I'm sure it's based on the project he published about 4 years ago. Not sure how you could even guess to the accuracy. Even most of the students are saying that at least 50% were cheating/using AI.
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u/AkitoApocalypse CMPE '22 Apr 20 '26
Probably the kicker is that we didn't see any posts on Reddit from the falsely accused, only the truly accused.
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u/Humble-Principle-878 Apr 20 '26
I was reading one thread where a student seemed legit - and because he said he did't use AI, he wasn't sure which of his assignments had been flagged so wasn't sure which one he would be defending
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u/GRex2595 CS 2017 Apr 20 '26
The risk of explaining how cheat-catching technology works is that now the cheaters have a roadmap for beating the technology. I also don't think that students are entitled to this information unless he actually submits to the dean or fails the assignment. Since nothing is happening as a result of the tech, nobody is owed any explanation.
Also, I think too many people hear that it is able to identify AI usage and are assuming that it works like other AI detectors on a single sample. Whatever tech is being used has access to historical data for the student and potentially the work history for the assignment. AI detectors only work off a single sample. The two are fundamentally different, and the evidence of seemingly very few false positives seems to indicate that. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that any evidence is fairly strong.
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u/King_Kong678678 Apr 20 '26
On his personal website, he does have a Google form for access to the tool, I assume for other instructors and institutions to gain access to it, so he is distributing the tool.
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u/Humble-Principle-878 Apr 20 '26
So now even the cheaters who admitted it are off the hook? This is a bad look for Purdue.
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u/AkitoApocalypse CMPE '22 Apr 20 '26
If you got falsely accused for cheating using a cutting edge tool in a random class, you would also want leniency. I hate that people are cheating as much as the next person, but shotgunning everyone like this out of the blue would have caused a meltdown. And as others said, people who cheated before will still get screwed on the next assignment.
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u/Humble-Principle-878 Apr 20 '26
Not fair to the ones who put in the real work all semester. And to be clear - most were not innocent. MANY admitted to other students and all over social media to using AI because the homework were so hard and time consuming. This just reflects weak character.
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u/GapStock9843 Apr 20 '26
I think thats the right move tbh. Let this class off because they werent properly informed of the situation, but let it serve as a warning against plagiarism going forward.
I do think he should be more transparent with what exactly is being used to track AI though, as if its really as good as he says it is he shouldnt have a problem with students knowing how it works (and if it isnt good enough that he cant trust them to know that, it shouldnt be used)
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u/GRex2595 CS 2017 Apr 20 '26
No, the reason you don't explain a tool isn't always because it isn't good. It might be that the explanation is enough to know how to bypass it. Same reason cheating software from video games is rarely explained. If you know what it's looking for, you just hide better. It takes longer to defeat the software if you don't fully understand its workings. Since software isn't being installed on students' machines to identify cheating, we're probably looking at software that is very easy to bypass if explained. You would want to keep as quiet as possible in that case.
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u/SadPlumx Apr 20 '26
But if a tool isn't explained, it could very well be not as good as the person who made it thinks it is. I mean, how does anybody verify it works, at least sometimes, without peer review?
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u/GRex2595 CS 2017 Apr 20 '26
A tool not being explained to you is not the same as a tool being explained to administrators or other professors or TAs. In addition to that, the tool may be only one data point by which they make their decision. It seems the assumption is that it outputs a positive/negative and nothing else. The more likely output is positive/negative confidence and the things that were flagged. Then a manual review of the cases with a high confidence value is done on the flagged pieces of code or commit history.
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u/SadPlumx Apr 20 '26
Clearly the tool wasn't good enough in this case then, considering the outcome
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u/GRex2595 CS 2017 Apr 20 '26
That conclusion doesn't seem grounded in the facts presented on any of the Reddit posts I've seen. Everything I've seen seems to suggest that the tool is good enough to keep using and the reason for dismissing the accusations is due to the timing and volume of accusations.
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u/SadPlumx Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
I mean if it was really good enough, there wouldn't be so many disagreements no? If your tool is foolproof, this becomes a very clear academic integrity violation. It isn't even good enough for everyone to agree that SOME students come in for a code review. So even if it outputs a 90 percent "AI-used" probability for some students, clearly many people that aren't the prof seem to disagree.
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u/Popular-Bicycle-4424 Apr 20 '26
Ppl were pissy bc they think theyre entitled to cheat and stay in the cs program at purdue
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u/SadPlumx Apr 20 '26
Nobody's entitled to cheat. That's not really the issue.
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u/Popular-Bicycle-4424 Apr 20 '26
They all got away with it lol so in a sense they are. Out of everyone i talked to, I only heard of a single false positive case. The tool plus manual review seems very accurate, he even showed testing data of cheaters vs non and it was -10 pts and -15 pts comparing their medians for the midterms. Ppl really dont grasp how lucky they are for not being expelled for this extent of cheating. I hope my partners in future group projects are able to code 🙏
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u/GRex2595 CS 2017 Apr 20 '26
Let's say you're the department in charge of reviewing cases of academic dishonesty. Some professor shows up with 200 cases of academic dishonesty a day before the withdrawal deadline and some questionable messaging to the students on what will happen next. You going to just accept the professor's word that his automated tool identified all these people as cheating and trigger disciplinary action for all of them? Or will you review every case to see if there's actual academic dishonesty? Or will you work with the professor on some compromise?
The third thing is what happened. The school didn't want to handle all these cases and didn't want to unfairly treat some students, so they decided to dismiss the cases but allow continued use of the tool. It doesn't say anything about the tool, just about the University.
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u/provider14 Apr 20 '26
What happens to the people (if any) who chose to self-report because of the original email?
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u/King_Kong678678 Apr 20 '26
Supposedly nothing, but knowing turkstra, he will make sure your life is hell for the remainder of the term and do everything he can to catch you some other way.
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u/AliveAndNotForgotten Boilermaker Apr 21 '26
When they say all previous assignments are being ignored does that mean they’re not being graded or that it doesn’t matter if cheating occurred?
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u/manifesto8508 CS 2027 Apr 20 '26
I feel like in addition to using the tool, 240 could benefit from doing one-on-one interviews with randomly selected students each week, where TAs can ask students questions about the homework. They could ask questions about their approach, how and why they implemented something the way they did, etc. Obviously, this approach has its own limitations, the main one being that they can't reasonably interview everyone each week, and there will be cases where some students cheat in some weeks but genuinely do the assignments in others.
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Apr 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/King_Kong678678 Apr 20 '26
I think they are trying to balance it with their dual cutoff system, but overall its just pissing everyone off.
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u/minecon1776 Apr 20 '26
TACO!!! (Turkstra always chickens out)
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u/King_Kong678678 Apr 20 '26
We need to push for more then just an "oops sorry nevermind" we need to push for him to be removed
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u/cvspharmaccy Apr 20 '26
Thank you for the tldr 🫡