Process evidence that holds up

Product tells you nothing; process tells you something

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.

Version history, and how to read it

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.

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.

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.

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.

The in-class paragraph

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.

Nothing about this is anti-AI. It is good writing pedagogy that also happens to make process visible.

The drafting portfolio

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.

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.

Making it routine

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.

The limits, stated plainly

• 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.
• 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.
• 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”.
• 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.

The honest limit

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.