Students scoring high on Turnitin AI detector
Hi everyone,
I’m an adjunct faculty member working with a group of graduate nursing students. Our institution has started using Turnitin to detect AI-generated writing, and the policy requires students to revise their work until their AI score is below 20%.
The issue is that many of my students are receiving AI scores between 27% and 72%, even though they are submitting writing that I would describe as original and thoughtful. I have read their drafts closely, and the work does not strike me as AI-generated. It is clearly in their voice, with the kind of imperfections, specificity, and depth I would not expect from AI writing.
I raised my concerns, but my faculty lead responded that I’m being “too trusting,” and that students must keep rewriting until they reach the threshold. This approach feels punitive and potentially misguided. It also seems especially problematic given the growing evidence that Turnitin and similar tools can produce false positives and may not be a reliable measure of whether AI was used.
Has anyone else run into this? How are other institutions handling AI-detection policies, particularly in writing-intensive programs? I would really appreciate hearing from other faculty about what strategies are working, or not working, in practice.