I’m not sure if I’m asking because I want this or because I don’t 
, but will GhostWriter be available in Teams for Education?
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I do not know. I think it should be available to teachers with no restrictions. But with students… I do not think they should be able to use it unless the teacher enabled a setting allowing Goastwriter to be used in projects. Though students can do it in their own repls then copy and paste the code. And I don’t think students should be disallowed from it completely since some students may sue the same account for school and personal use.
Can you clarify about the GhostWriter in Teams status? I’m a faculty member trying out Teams, hoping to use it for the spring, and I was able to activate a GhostWriter trial in my account and use it. I’d like to make sure that my students will not be able to use GhostWriter in Teams for Education.
Hey @anthonybarbara, welcome to the forums!
It’s still not been decided if teams will have Ghostwritter. Students have a normal account, meaning that to have Ghostwriter they would need to buy it! You could see the history of a student repl if a bunch of code appears, that could be Ghostwriter.
Depending on the course, GhostWriter could either be a boon or a curse. In an intro course, I think it would be a hindrance to learning, just like any other auto-completion system. In some other courses it might be an advantage.
f you do decide to add it, it’d be cool if the teacher could toggle it, either per team or on a project-by-project basis.
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We’ve been talking about AI coding for a few years now in my circles. I’ve moved to basically assuming the code could be plagiarized or not written by the student. While I still send bulk current and past major assignments to MOSS, I’ve been altering how I assess the core skills.
I’ve moved to closed book exams for each unit for authentic assessment. First half is multiple choice, etc on Brightspace (using respondus lockdown software). Then second half is old school. I give them code “snipits” as ask them to hand write code to solve a basic problem (be it basic conditions, arrays, or classes). Surprisingly most of the kids like this.
Alternatively for the 2nd part I’ll given them a couple screen shots of code (similar to their assignments or code in tutorials) and ask them to explain in english what is happening with lines 18-20 for example.
Feedback from students has been positive as they like mix of questions knowing details (MC portion) and the showing understanding in the 2nd half.
That said having a toggle to engage/remove GhostWriter would be great, but we’re never going to prevent its use. Altering assessments I think is the way to go.
Cheers
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@McDowell_ND I agree that for assessments I do many of the things you’ve described. And it works out well for students who do the right thing when writing their code. But I’d love to minimize the temptation of GhostWriter so that students are more likely to then be able to succeed on these closed book paper assessments.
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Just adding my voice to this: I teach interaction design and creative coding in non-CS courses. I decided at the end of last semester that I would be incorporating AI coding into my classes because a) they’re tools just like anything else that everyone will have access to and b) I’m more concerned about my students being able to make things than understand every bit of code. I would rather see them assemble chunks of code from AI prompts than play Mad Libs with templates. At least with the former, they still need to formulate and articulate their ideas and requirements.
I’ve been using Teams for Edu for the last year and a half and love almost everything about it. I think providing Ghostwriter access to Teams for Edu (with the ability for instructor’s to turn it on/off on a per-project basis) would be extremely beneficial, especially since competing tools are already free for students (presumably, Copilot X will follow suit when released).
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Annoyingly this feature has appeared for free in my students education projects and absolutely wrecked the assessments and learning pathways I had set for GCSE classes.
This should absolutely be able to be managed by the teacher in education teams. Cannot believe this has been opened to all students by default. It literally shows solutions to all the problems I have set. Not impressed