The Assignment Is the Crime Scene

By Carter F. Smith | carterfsmith.com

If Beyond Detection was the initial investigation, and Rewrite the Rules was the casefile review, then the Assignment Redesign Workshop was where we got into the forensics. We didn’t just ask, “Did the student use AI?” We asked, “What’s the evidence trail? What kind of assignment left no fingerprints?”

In other words: the assignment itself became the crime scene.

Now, I’m not saying students are criminals. (I’ve interviewed real ones, and most students wouldn’t last five minutes under a single overhead light.) But I am saying that when work is turned in with no drafting history, no notes, no struggle, and the voice reads like a TED Talk sponsored by Microsoft—something’s off. And instead of wagging our fingers or doubling down on detection, we need to do what good investigators do: step back and reassess the system.

That’s exactly what we did in the most recent workshop.

We built reflection rubrics. We sketched disclosure clauses. We drafted process trackers and self-audits and even rewrote tired prompts from scratch. I said it before and I’ll say it again: If an AI can do your assignment convincingly, it might not be a great assignment. That’s not a condemnation—it’s an opportunity.

Faculty brought their syllabi to the table like detectives laying out case files.

We reviewed prompts like evidence, and we asked:

Does this require voice? Does it reward process? Would it still work if I replaced the student with a language model?

If the answer was yes, we fixed it.

We talked about the shift from punishment to prevention. About how to build ethical habits instead of just writing penalties into syllabi. And maybe most importantly, we talked about trust—not the kind you assume, but the kind you build, slowly, by showing students that you actually want to hear what they think.

Some folks still want to fight AI like it’s a threat to higher ed. I see it as a mirror—reflecting our habits, exposing our weak spots, and (if we’re brave) showing us how to do better.

And for those who say “this is all too much”—I get it. I really do. But I’d remind them that people once complained about the typewriter replacing the pen. It didn’t stop folks from writing. It just made them write faster. Maybe too fast to think sometimes. Maybe this is a chance to slow down and think better.

If your assignments could talk, what would they say about what matters in your class? Would they speak like a form letter or a conversation starter?

Let’s build the kind of work that sounds like us—and like our students.

More materials are posted [here]. Use them. Change them. Share them.

—Carter

carterfsmith.com