All students should have opportunity to go to national science fair: Canada Science Fair silver medallist says
Despite not having a Regional Science Fair to attend last year, Dr. Kearney student Emily Mineault, with her project Can teachers differentiate AI writing from student writing, was still able to compete in the Canada-wide Science Fair in Ottawa in June 2024, where she won a silver medal.
“It was such an amazing experience,” Mineault told the School District 60 Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday.
She came up with the project, after noting the rise of AI in the media and how it’s commonly used to help students, specifically in writing essays.
In her project description, Mineault writes:
So, I wanted to see whether teachers can tell the difference between AI writing and student writing. Because I don't know about you, but I do not want my future doctors, nurses, lawyers, and professors, to have used AI to pass their classes. I'm hoping that my project brings more attention to this issue, so that in the future, higher measures will be taken to stop students from using AI.
Mineault presented a collection of essays, what she described as real essays and AI essays, to teachers, asked them to read them and try to determine whether they were written by a student or AI.
“I had nine or ten teachers who were reading these essays, and I had 36 essays that were read,” she said.
The project showed that most of the time teachers can differentiate AI writing from student writing, but there are still times that AI is marked as real writing and student writing marked wrongly as AI, both of which can lead to problems.
Overall, Mineault’s experiment showed that teachers did a good job identifying AI writing, with 27 of the 36 essays marked correctly.
In addition to presenting her project at the Canada-wide Science Fair, Mineault had the opportunity to meet a professor from the University of Toronto, who invited Mineault to start taking one of her classes that meets every Sunday, discussing “Current issues in the world, and current political and environmental conflicts that are happening.”
Mineault, with another student who attends the Sunday classes, has also started a mentorship for students, for science fair.
They meet virtually every Saturday and teach the course they developed to close to 30 students in Grade 7 to 12 from throughout North America.
“While I was at Science Fair, it was genuinely a really great experience. I got to meet a lot of people, but I also learned a lot. It was really nice being surrounded by people who shared the same interests as me,” Mineault said.
“I really loved it, and I think it’s a very important thing for students to be able to experience, and we should have that opportunity available to any student in the district who wants it,” she said.