{"course":{"slug":"ai-for-teachers","title":"AI for Teachers","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers","level":"beginner","track":"work"},"lesson":{"slug":"process-evidence-that-holds-up","title":"Process evidence that holds up","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/process-evidence-that-holds-up","position":38,"of":57,"minutes":9,"answer":"Version history in Google Docs or Word, an in-class first paragraph, and a short drafting portfolio make the writing process visible for every student as a matter of routine: signals of authorship, never proof.","keyIdea":"Version history in Google Docs or Word, an in-class first paragraph, and a short drafting portfolio make the writing process visible for every student as a matter of routine: signals of authorship, never proof, and used to support students rather than to trap them."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## Product tells you nothing; process tells you something\n\nThe detection lesson made the case that the finished text cannot tell you who wrote it. The process can, partly. A piece of writing that grew over four evenings, with a plan, a bad first paragraph, and a rewrite after feedback, has a shape that is hard to fake and easy to show. This lesson is about making that shape visible for every student as a routine, so that it is a support for the honest majority and not a trap for the suspected few.\n\n## Version history, and how to read it\n\nGoogle Docs and Microsoft Word both keep every version of a document automatically. In Google Docs: File, then Version history, then See version history. A timeline appears on the right with a snapshot at each save; click one and the changes since the previous snapshot are highlighted. In Word with a OneDrive or SharePoint document: File, then Info, then Version History.\n\nWhat a written-over-time document looks like: many snapshots, small additions, sentences that change, a paragraph deleted and rewritten, gaps of hours or days. What a paste looks like: one snapshot with the whole text arriving at once, or a few large blocks arriving fully formed.\n\nThe check question is about what that second pattern means, and the answer is: not much on its own. Students draft on phones, in notes apps, on paper. They paste. A single-paste document is a reason to look further, and the further look is easy: \"Show me the phone draft.\" A student who wrote it has one. A student who did not usually cannot produce one, and the conversation from the detection lesson takes over.\n\nThere are browser extensions that replay a Google Doc's history as a film of the writing. They are striking to watch, and a teacher should know they exist, but they add little to the timeline view and they can feel like surveillance if used routinely. The timeline is enough.\n\n## The in-class paragraph\n\nFor any assessed piece, the first paragraph is written in class, on paper or in the shared document, in twenty minutes. It is then the seed the rest grows from. This does three things. It gives you a sample of the student's own voice for this piece, on this day. It makes the finished essay have to connect to a beginning you watched being written. And it gets the hardest part of any essay (starting) done in a room where help is available.\n\nNothing about this is anti-AI. It is good writing pedagogy that also happens to make process visible.\n\n## The drafting portfolio\n\nFor the two or three pieces a term that carry weight, ask for a folder rather than a file: the plan (five lines), the first draft, the feedback received, the final draft, and a note of what changed and why. The assignment-redesign lesson made the process the product; this is the container for it. Marked as a whole, with the revision weighted, it rewards the thing you want and it is more work to fake than to do.\n\nThe \"what changed and why\" note is the part students find hardest and the part that tells you most. A student who cannot say why paragraph three moved did not move it.\n\n## Making it routine\n\nEvery signal here works only if it is collected from everyone, every time, as the normal shape of the course. Version history checked only for the student you suspect is an accusation. Version history glanced at for every submission, as the way you look at work, is nothing. The same for the in-class paragraph and the portfolio. Announce it in week one, do it for the whole class, and the honest student has an easy way to show her work and the tempted student knows the work will be visible.\n\n## The limits, stated plainly\n\n- A student can type a generated text in by hand over an hour and produce a plausible history. It is more effort than writing the essay, which is the point of every design in this block, but it is possible.\n- A student who drafts on paper has no version history, and must not be penalised for it. Paper drafts are process evidence too. Ask for them to be kept.\n- Version history shows where text arrived, not where it came from. It is a signal, and the lesson's title says \"holds up\", not \"proves\".\n- Students with shared devices, no device at home, or no reliable connection produce thinner histories through no fault of their own. Judge the pattern, not the gaps.\n\n## The honest limit\n\nProcess evidence makes the honest case easy to show and the dishonest case more work to construct. It does not resolve the case in the middle: the student who wrote a real draft, then fed it to a model, then pasted back a version that is half hers. That case is the ordinary one now, and it is what the disclosure line and the Level 2 rule exist for: if she declares it, it is permitted; if she does not, it is a breach of the policy, not a mystery for forensics. The evidence supports the conversation. It does not replace it."},"check":{"question":"A teacher checks version history and finds a student's essay arrived in a single edit of 1,200 words at 11:40pm. The student says she wrote it in a notes app on her phone and pasted it. What is the right reading of the evidence?","options":[{"text":"The single paste is proof of AI use, because genuine writing always shows incremental edits over several sessions in the history.","correct":false,"tempting":"Overreads the signal; plenty of students draft elsewhere and paste, and version history shows where text arrived, not where it came from."},{"text":"The paste is a reason to ask for the phone draft, and on its own it decides nothing.","correct":true},{"text":"The student's explanation clears her completely, since it accounts for the paste and there is nothing else in the history to question.","correct":false,"tempting":"Accepts an explanation without any corroboration; the phone draft, if it exists, is easy to show and should be asked for."},{"text":"Version history is too unreliable to be looked at, since students draft in many places, and the teacher should not have opened it.","correct":false,"tempting":"Discards a genuinely useful signal because it is not proof; the error is in treating it as proof, not in using it."}]},"prev":{"slug":"writing-the-class-policy","title":"Writing the class policy","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/writing-the-class-policy"},"next":{"slug":"handling-a-case-fairly","title":"Handling a case fairly","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/handling-a-case-fairly"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'Process evidence that holds up', in AI for Teachers. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/process-evidence-that-holds-up (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"Process evidence that holds up","courseTitle":"AI for Teachers","module":{"index":5,"slug":"integrity-and-ai-written-work","title":"Integrity: AI-written work and what to do about it"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"Version history in Google Docs or Word, an in-class first paragraph, and a short drafting portfolio make the writing process visible for every student as a matter of routine: signals of authorship, never proof, and used to support students rather than to trap them.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":null,"alt":null,"caption":null},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"product-tells-you-nothing-process-tells-you-something","runs":[{"text":"Product tells you nothing; process tells you something"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The detection lesson made the case that the finished text cannot tell you who wrote it. The process can, partly. A piece of writing that grew over four evenings, with a plan, a bad first paragraph, and a rewrite after feedback, has a shape that is hard to fake and easy to show. This lesson is about making that shape visible for every student as a routine, so that it is a support for the honest majority and not a trap for the suspected few."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"version-history-and-how-to-read-it","runs":[{"text":"Version history, and how to read it"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Google Docs and Microsoft Word both keep every version of a document automatically. In Google Docs: File, then Version history, then See version history. A timeline appears on the right with a snapshot at each save; click one and the changes since the previous snapshot are highlighted. In Word with a OneDrive or SharePoint document: File, then Info, then Version History."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"What a written-over-time document looks like: many snapshots, small additions, sentences that change, a paragraph deleted and rewritten, gaps of hours or days. What a paste looks like: one snapshot with the whole text arriving at once, or a few large blocks arriving fully formed."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The check question is about what that second pattern means, and the answer is: not much on its own. Students draft on phones, in notes apps, on paper. They paste. A single-paste document is a reason to look further, and the further look is easy: “Show me the phone draft.” A student who wrote it has one. A student who did not usually cannot produce one, and the conversation from the detection lesson takes over."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"There are browser extensions that replay a Google Doc’s history as a film of the writing. They are striking to watch, and a teacher should know they exist, but they add little to the timeline view and they can feel like surveillance if used routinely. The timeline is enough."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-in-class-paragraph","runs":[{"text":"The in-class paragraph"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"For any assessed piece, the first paragraph is written in class, on paper or in the shared document, in twenty minutes. It is then the seed the rest grows from. This does three things. It gives you a sample of the student’s own voice for this piece, on this day. It makes the finished essay have to connect to a beginning you watched being written. And it gets the hardest part of any essay (starting) done in a room where help is available."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Nothing about this is anti-AI. It is good writing pedagogy that also happens to make process visible."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-drafting-portfolio","runs":[{"text":"The drafting portfolio"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"For the two or three pieces a term that carry weight, ask for a folder rather than a file: the plan (five lines), the first draft, the feedback received, the final draft, and a note of what changed and why. The assignment-redesign lesson made the process the product; this is the container for it. Marked as a whole, with the revision weighted, it rewards the thing you want and it is more work to fake than to do."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The “what changed and why” note is the part students find hardest and the part that tells you most. A student who cannot say why paragraph three moved did not move it."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"making-it-routine","runs":[{"text":"Making it routine"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Every signal here works only if it is collected from everyone, every time, as the normal shape of the course. Version history checked only for the student you suspect is an accusation. Version history glanced at for every submission, as the way you look at work, is nothing. The same for the in-class paragraph and the portfolio. Announce it in week one, do it for the whole class, and the honest student has an easy way to show her work and the tempted student knows the work will be visible."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-limits-stated-plainly","runs":[{"text":"The limits, stated plainly"}],"role":"limit"},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"A student can type a generated text in by hand over an hour and produce a plausible history. It is more effort than writing the essay, which is the point of every design in this block, but it is possible."}],[{"text":"A student who drafts on paper has no version history, and must not be penalised for it. Paper drafts are process evidence too. Ask for them to be kept."}],[{"text":"Version history shows where text arrived, not where it came from. It is a signal, and the lesson’s title says “holds up”, not “proves”."}],[{"text":"Students with shared devices, no device at home, or no reliable connection produce thinner histories through no fault of their own. Judge the pattern, not the gaps."}]]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-honest-limit","runs":[{"text":"The honest limit"}],"role":"limit"},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Process evidence makes the honest case easy to show and the dishonest case more work to construct. It does not resolve the case in the middle: the student who wrote a real draft, then fed it to a model, then pasted back a version that is half hers. That case is the ordinary one now, and it is what the disclosure line and the Level 2 rule exist for: if she declares it, it is permitted; if she does not, it is a breach of the policy, not a mystery for forensics. The evidence supports the conversation. It does not replace it."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"A teacher checks version history and finds a student’s essay arrived in a single edit of 1,200 words at 11:40pm. The student says she wrote it in a notes app on her phone and pasted it. What is the right reading of the evidence?"}],"options":[{"text":[{"text":"The single paste is proof of AI use, because genuine writing always shows incremental edits over several sessions in the history."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Overreads the signal; plenty of students draft elsewhere and paste, and version history shows where text arrived, not where it came from."}]},{"text":[{"text":"The paste is a reason to ask for the phone draft, and on its own it decides nothing."}],"correct":true,"tempting":null},{"text":[{"text":"The student’s explanation clears her completely, since it accounts for the paste and there is nothing else in the history to question."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Accepts an explanation without any corroboration; the phone draft, if it exists, is easy to show and should be asked for."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Version history is too unreliable to be looked at, since students draft in many places, and the teacher should not have opened it."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Discards a genuinely useful signal because it is not proof; the error is in treating it as proof, not in using it."}]}],"order":[0,3,1,2],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"writing-the-class-policy","title":"Writing the class policy","minutes":9},"next":{"slug":"handling-a-case-fairly","title":"Handling a case fairly","minutes":9}}}