Beyond the unreliability, a detection-first stance carries real costs. A false accusation can derail a student’s term and standing, and it falls hardest on multilingual and first-generation students. The process is stressful for everyone and rarely conclusive, since the evidence is only a probability.

It also shapes the classroom in the wrong direction. When the central message is surveillance, you spend your energy policing rather than teaching, and you signal distrust to the whole class to deter a few. Students respond to that climate. The more durable approach is to design work where doing the assignment is the point and outsourcing it does not get a student what they need, which is the focus of the rest of this course.