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Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

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Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#11

Post by viccis »

azalemeth wrote: post #3

This is already the case for Master's degrees and above in Denmark. I've been the opponent examining students. We ask Master's students to give US instruction on a topic (drawn randomly on a card in front of them, from a list they know a few days in advance). They do a chalk and talk on a topic for about fifteen minutes with three to five professors being "dumb students". It works fantastically and at the end it's ve…

>Of course, woe betide those with social phobias

I can see this being a problem in the US when it comes to "accommodations" in general. Students with an ADHD diagnosis can claim it causes just about any difficulty and get accommodations for it. The local (top ranked, but everyone's seen all the stories coming out of the Ivies...) college here gives students with ADHD double time on exams and has them take it in a special disabilities proctoring center where it's a struggle to get the staff there to even enforce those time limits. Obviously this also makes it infinitely easier to outright cheat as well.

Not a chance you will get past the "my ADHD makes it hard for me to think about these things verbally" challenge at institutions like this.

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#12

Post by pjmorris »

glimshe wrote: post #4
ModernMech wrote: post #2

This is a good move. I teach a summer async remote course that's ending next week, but I'm giving all the students incompletes until they come back to campus and take an in-person exam the first week of classes. All homework is worth a marginal amount, and if they fail the final they fail the class. I'm not going to spend my effort policing whether they're using AI or not in their class work because it's a losing bat…

I'd never pay to have you as a teacher, I'm sorry. Maybe your move makes a sense for the reputation of your university's degree, but as a student willing to pay to learn remotely, I'd not accept to be treated like children.

Do you think 'At the end of the day, they can either demonstrate mastery of the material at an exam or not' is a reasonable expectation for an adult?

If so, how would an adult be treated while still expecting them to demonstrate mastery?

If not, what do you think a reasonable expectation for an adult should be?

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#13

Post by cortesoft »

glimshe wrote: post #4
ModernMech wrote: post #2

This is a good move. I teach a summer async remote course that's ending next week, but I'm giving all the students incompletes until they come back to campus and take an in-person exam the first week of classes. All homework is worth a marginal amount, and if they fail the final they fail the class. I'm not going to spend my effort policing whether they're using AI or not in their class work because it's a losing bat…

I'd never pay to have you as a teacher, I'm sorry. Maybe your move makes a sense for the reputation of your university's degree, but as a student willing to pay to learn remotely, I'd not accept to be treated like children.

If you only care about the learning, then you could just take the incomplete. You don’t somehow lose the knowledge you gained.

The only cost of an incomplete is it doesn’t help towards a degree, but a degree is just a signaling mechanism. If you want to be able to use their degree to signal something to someone, you will have to jump through their hoops.

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#14

Post by majormajor »

glimshe wrote: post #4
ModernMech wrote: post #2

This is a good move. I teach a summer async remote course that's ending next week, but I'm giving all the students incompletes until they come back to campus and take an in-person exam the first week of classes. All homework is worth a marginal amount, and if they fail the final they fail the class. I'm not going to spend my effort policing whether they're using AI or not in their class work because it's a losing bat…

I'd never pay to have you as a teacher, I'm sorry. Maybe your move makes a sense for the reputation of your university's degree, but as a student willing to pay to learn remotely, I'd not accept to be treated like children.

Adults don't have to prove things?

As AI eats up the need for half-assed "I googled a few things and wrote something up and then slacked off for five hours" white-collar-paperwork jobs, it's gonna be pretty hard for people not willing or able to demonstrate that they can do anything that couldn't just be fully done with an "agent" instead.

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#15

Post by majormajor »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #6
glimshe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd never pay to have you as a teacher, I'm sorry. Maybe your move makes a sense for the reputation of your university's degree, but as a student willing to pay to learn remotely, I'd not accept to be treated like children.

Well that's part of the issue with for profit education, if the student pays significant money for tuition, is he a customer or a student?

"The student is the customer" is a stupid metaphor that only caught on because a lot of people would rather just bring in dollars than worry about "are we actually teaching anything?"

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#16

Post by bonoboTP »

glimshe wrote: post #4
ModernMech wrote: post #2

This is a good move. I teach a summer async remote course that's ending next week, but I'm giving all the students incompletes until they come back to campus and take an in-person exam the first week of classes. All homework is worth a marginal amount, and if they fail the final they fail the class. I'm not going to spend my effort policing whether they're using AI or not in their class work because it's a losing bat…

I'd never pay to have you as a teacher, I'm sorry. Maybe your move makes a sense for the reputation of your university's degree, but as a student willing to pay to learn remotely, I'd not accept to be treated like children.

Regular graded assignments is the "treated like children" version. The adult treatment is that you can come to class if you want, you can do the assignments if you want, but if not, that's fine too. There is one test at the end, and it's your responsibility to prepare for it as you want. You manage your own time, we offer consultation, lectures, assignments, tutorials etc. but you can reject all of this and learn the material from some other textbook, and as long as you've mastered the material, you'll get a good grade at the exam. This is how German universities work, for the most part.

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#18

Post by behnamoh »

toad_tyrrant wrote: post #17
behnamoh wrote: post #8

Denmark is a very small country and what works there doesn’t necessarily work at the scale of the US or China.

Why not? This is such a thought terminating statement. No actual reason.

Tell me you're not a programmer w/o telling me. What works at scale can be fundamentally different than what works in a small startup (Denmark).
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