For faculty
In-class essays or take-home essays: what to choose now that students have AI
Many teachers moved essays back into the classroom. It works for some writing and costs a lot for the rest. Here is how to decide, assignment by assignment.
In short
In-class essays remove most AI use for that piece of writing, but they cost class time and leave little room for research or revision, and they are harder on students who need accommodations. Take-home essays keep those things but need a way to see how the essay was written. Many teachers now use both: one timed in-class piece and recorded take-home essays.
Why teachers are moving essays into class
The appeal is simple. If the essay is written in the room, in a fixed time, you know who wrote it. Teachers on r/Professors have described switching to in-class essays as their whole answer to AI, and for a short timed response it often is. The question is what the switch costs, and whether it fits every essay you assign.
What in-class writing gains
- Near certainty about who wrote the text.
- A sample of each student’s unaided writing early in the term.
- No grading time spent on questions of authorship for that piece.
- Practice for timed exams that students will face anyway.
What it costs
- Class time. A full essay can take one or two periods, every time.
- Research and sources. A timed essay rewards what a student can recall, not what they can find and weigh.
- Revision. The thing writing courses most want to teach is the thing a single sitting leaves out.
- Accommodations. Extended time, separate rooms and assistive technology all get harder to arrange for every essay.
- Length. A research paper does not fit in fifty minutes.
The third option: a recorded take-home essay
A recorded editor gives you some of the certainty of the classroom while the student writes at home. Every keystroke, paste, pause and revision is kept with its time, so you can see whether the essay was drafted and rebuilt over several sittings or arrived in a few large pastes. It is a different kind of certainty from a proctored room: it describes how text entered the editor, and a conversation still settles what a record cannot.
A recorded editor is different from a Google Docs history, which keeps snapshots, cannot separate typed text from pasted text, and can be fabricated with auto-typer tools. See can students fake a writing history.
Side by side
| In-class, timed | Take-home, no record | Take-home, recorded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who wrote it | Clear | Unknown | Shown by how the text was entered |
| Research and sources | Limited | Full | Full |
| Revision | Little | Full, invisible | Full, visible in the replay |
| Class time | One or two periods | None | None |
| Accommodations | Must be arranged each time | Built in | Built in |
How to decide, assignment by assignment
- If the goal is a sample of unaided writing or exam practice, keep it in class.
- If the goal is research, argument built over time, or revision, send it home and record it.
- If you only have time for one timed piece, put it early in the term. It gives you a baseline for each student to compare later essays against.
- Grade part of every longer essay on the process: a thesis, a draft, a short reflection. The process-based assessment guide has a simple rubric split.
High school and college weigh it differently
In high school, class periods are frequent and essays are shorter, so a timed piece fits more often, and a teacher sees each student write several times a week. The cost is mostly class time and accommodations. A common pattern is a timed response every few weeks and one longer recorded essay per unit.
In college, a course may meet two or three times a week, essays run longer, and research is the point. Timed writing in class is mostly limited to exams. Recorded take-home essays, with a draft or a short conference built into the grade, keep the research paper without giving up visibility into how it was written.
Making a timed piece fair
- Give the prompt or a short list of possible prompts in advance.
- Allow a single page of notes, written by the student.
- Arrange extended time and separate rooms before the day, not on it.
- Grade it as a sample of thinking under time, not as polished writing, and say so in the rubric.
Where EssayGuard fits
EssayGuard works for both. For a timed piece in class, students open the link on their laptops and write; the record shows any paste and notes when a student left the page and for how long. For take-home essays, the same editor records every sitting. Each essay comes back marked Approved, Needs Review or Flagged with a short summary, and EssayGuard compares an essay’s reading level and vocabulary with the same student’s earlier essays, so an early in-class piece becomes a reference point. It gives no AI percentage, and the decision about any student stays with you.
Students install nothing, and it is free for the rest of this semester. Try it on your next essay.
Limits
Neither choice is perfect. A timed essay can still be memorized from a generated draft, and a recorded essay can be retyped slowly from another screen, though that tends to look like copying in a replay. A record shows how text entered the editor, not whose ideas it carries. Pick the format that fits what the assignment is for, and keep a conversation about the work as the final check.
Questions people ask
Are in-class essays the only way to stop AI use?
No. They are the most direct way for a single piece of writing. For longer essays, a recorded editor, graded drafts and a short conference on the work protect the assignment without giving up research and revision.
Should in-class essays be handwritten?
Handwriting removes devices from the room, but it is slow to grade, hard on some students, and far from how writing is done outside school. Typing in a recorded editor during class gives you the same visibility with typed text.
Can students use AI during an in-class essay on laptops?
On an open laptop they can open another tab. A recorded editor notes when the student leaves the page and for how long, and shows any paste, which is usually enough to settle the question for a timed piece.
Do high school and college need different approaches?
The trade-off is the same, the weights differ. High school classes have more class time and shorter essays, so timed writing fits more often. College essays are longer and research-heavy, which favors recorded take-home writing.
Try it with one assignment
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