How Seneca stops cheating and AI in online homework

Here's how Seneca stops students cheating and using AI on homework.

What we do

Our systems detect automated completion of student work, and they're advanced. We've spent a lot of time developing them, and we have dedicated engineers working against automatic homework completion sites.

Where we identify automated work, it isn't counted as completed. We block the accounts and services behind it, and we use protections against automated traffic. We also stop copying and pasting in exam questions.

We keep the details of how this works to ourselves, because the tools that target homework platforms change quickly.

What we're building

We're building a way to flag suspected automated completion to teachers, inside the assignment and reporting views you already use. Each school would see its own flags.

What teachers can do

The DfE says schools may wish to review homework policies because of generative AI. Here's what helps alongside any platform.

• Check in class. Follow online homework with a short, supervised task on the same topic.
• Set exam questions as well as topics. They ask students for an answer, and Seneca marks it.
• Look for changes. A sudden jump in a student's scores, or in how quickly they finish, is worth a conversation.
• Say what the homework is for. Students are more likely to do it themselves when they know it's practice, not a mark. Durham School Dubai set weekly homework for Year 9 and saw average test results rise from 41% to 71%.

You can set exam questions as part of an assignment in Seneca.