Assignments that show real understanding in the age of AI

Definition

Assignment that shows understanding: Homework that asks students to show their route to the answer, to connect it to something the tool cannot know, or to defend it to the teacher, so copying what a tool wrote is not enough to complete it.

In the US, 26% of teens aged 13 to 17 said they had used ChatGPT for schoolwork — double the share in 2023 — according to a Pew Research Center survey published in January 2025. 54% of teens said using it to research new topics was acceptable; only 18% said the same of using it to write essays. These are US figures; we know of no published equivalent for students in the Arab world.

In the UAE, the framework introduced by the Sharjah Private Education Authority lets students use tools such as ChatGPT to research topics, explore ideas and support their learning, but not rely on them to write answers or complete assignments on their behalf, according to a Khaleej Times report published on 21 October 2026. Which leaves the teacher's question: how do you design homework so the difference between the two shows?

Six common tasks, before and after

The six tasks were written for this post, across different subjects, not copied from a textbook. Take the idea, not the topic: each redesign works in other subjects too.

How to write each task, and what it costs you in time

1. 1

   The stages of the work: ask for the draft, not only the final text

   Write on the task sheet: “Outline in class (10 minutes), draft at home, final version after my comments. Hand in all three together, and write two lines: what is the most important thing you changed between the draft and the final version, and why?” What you check is the difference between the stages, not every line of each. Your comment on the draft needs two sentences; feedback phrases that still sound like you has short stems for it.

2. 2

   Their own context: tie the task to what is around them

   Ask for data the student collects themselves in the classroom or the school, then compare it with the lesson. Choose something that reveals nothing about their family: the number of bottles in the classroom bin is fine; family income or health is not. If you ask for data from home, let the student choose between home and the classroom.

3. 3

   A short oral explanation: one minute after the homework

   Set fewer problems, and say from the start that next lesson you will choose one for the student to explain in a minute. You do not need to hear everyone in one day: five or six students a lesson, or pairs explaining to each other while you move between them. The question that shows understanding: “Why did you do this step?”

4. 4

   Writing in class: make home the preparation

   Reading and notes at home, writing in class. Limit the notes to half a page, handwritten, so the student has to actually read the text to write them; then the answer is written in front of you in 15 minutes. It costs you a quarter of a lesson and gives you a text you know the author of.

5. 5

   A critique of two answers: make the tool the lesson material

   Put the question into an AI tool twice, or into two tools, and copy the two answers. Check both yourself against the textbook, and if neither has a mistake, add one whose place you know. The student underlines every correct sentence, circles every mistake and corrects it from the textbook with the page number, writes what each answer is missing, then picks the better one and explains why in three lines. Sharjah's framework itself stresses the same thing: verifying the information these tools generate.

6. 6

   A decision with reasons: put the student in front of a real choice

   Turn “list the advantages and disadvantages” into a decision in a specific situation with limits: one budget, two projects, reasons from the lesson, an objection and a reply. The strongest version ends with a minute in which the student defends the choice to a classmate who chose the other option.

Do not use all six in one unit. We suggest one or two per unit, starting with the one that suits your subject: the oral explanation for maths and science, stages and writing in class for languages, the decision with reasons for social studies.

Why we do not build on AI detectors

“AI Detectors Don't Work. Here's What to Do Instead.”, a page by MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies, says these tools have high error rates and can lead instructors to falsely accuse students of misconduct. It reports, citing a 2023 study, that 61% of TOEFL essays written by non-native English speakers were wrongly flagged as AI-generated, and that OpenAI shut down its own AI detection software because of its poor accuracy. That matters for Arab students who write homework in English as a second language.

The academic integrity principle in the TeachAI toolkit says teachers should not use technologies that purport to identify the use of generative AI to detect cheating and plagiarism. Instead, the MIT Sloan page recommends, among other things: be clear with students about if, when and how they should use AI, and design assignments in stages, with revision after feedback and connections to real-world contexts. That is what the six redesigns do.

If you suspect a piece of homework, do not start with an accusation. Ask the student to explain what they wrote in their own words, or to solve a similar problem in front of you. What is and is not allowed belongs in your classroom AI policy, together with a line in which the student says when they used a tool and what for.

What these redesigns do not do

None of the six makes using a tool impossible. A tool can write the two reflective lines in the first task, invent numbers for the second, and write a reasoned decision for the sixth. What is hard to hand over to a machine is the moment the student is in front of you: the oral minute, the writing in class, the defence of a decision. So give every homework task a moment in class where you check what was written at home.

The redesigns have a price: lesson time that was not spent before. In large classes, spread the oral explanations over a week and let pairs check each other. Younger classes need a simpler form: the oral explanation and writing in class work at any age, but we suggest critiquing a tool's answers only for students who have used one with their teacher — UNESCO's guidance, as reported by UN News in September 2023, suggests considering an age limit of 13 for using these tools in the classroom.

Written with String's editorial team: we use AI for research and first drafts, and a person checks every fact and every source before anything is published. How we write