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College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

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Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#11

If AI can do the work, maybe the test should be more focused on what AI can’t do? This is like anyone still doing a traditional coding interview with leetcode problems just because they haven’t yet done the work to figure out what to test for in a world where Claude Code exists.

There are plenty of things AI can do that students still benefit from learning.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#12
post #5

When I was in college, your grade fully depended on the oral exam/debate with the professor. Everything else was but the entry ticket. Not sure anyone even attempted to cheat in that scenario. And the conversations were usually great, although very stressful for us cramming types

This sounds extremely susceptible to unconscious bias, or even just straightforward discrimination.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#13
post #9

What's interesting is that as I understand, folks are using things like Google Docs for papers, and that it's (apparently) straight forward to do analysis on a Google Doc to see, well, the life of the document. How it was typed in, how fast, what was pasted and cut back out. My understanding is that the Google Doc is not a word processing document, it's an event recording of a word processor. So, in theory, you could…

Typing as a service is a whole cottage industry on Etsy.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#14
I had a typewriter growing up and I remember thinking it was the coolest thing. I was amazed by it and tried writing several stories. Eventually my dad bought me a crappy old computer that was only really good for writing, and that was cool too. I loved that thing. It was small too, with an integrated monitor and keyboard, so it didn't take over the whole desk where I still used pencil and paper often

Imagine being able to do some writing without notifications going off every few seconds, and where you're not always one click away from a search engine and some website scientifically designed to drag your attention down a rabbit hole and keep it there

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#15

I used to make my classes 60-80% project work, 40-80% quizzes all online. I now do 50% project work, 50% in person quizzes, pencil on paper on page of notes. I'm increasingly going to paper-driven workflows as well, becoming an expert with the department printer, printing computer science papers for students to read and annotate in class, etc. Ironically, the traditional bureaucratic lag in university might actually…

I always preferred the "you get some grades along the way to gauge your progress but the lion's share of the weight went to the proctored exams" method unless the lion's share of the normal work was also proctored anyways (at which point it doesn't really matter how it's done). The reason was less for myself and more because anything group related suddenly shot up in quality when the other individual work classmates…

The things I don’t like about putting too much weight in the exams are:

* It’s sort of unnecessarily high stakes for the students; a couple hours to determine your grade for many hours of studying.

* It’s pretty artificial in general; in “real life” you have the ability to go around online and look for sources. This puts a pretty low ceiling on the level of complexity you can actually throw at them.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#16

If AI can do the work, maybe the test should be more focused on what AI can’t do? This is like anyone still doing a traditional coding interview with leetcode problems just because they haven’t yet done the work to figure out what to test for in a world where Claude Code exists.

Maybe instead of trying to teach around the abacus, we need to teach the higher level things you can reach with MATLAB.

We're doing these students a major disservice making them live in the old world. It's our fault for being inflexible, but their world is going to be wholly different and we should just embrace that.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#18
I’m confused about too many things being measured at once. Is Phelps banning AI to ensure her students are fit to pass terminal examination? And doing so to ensure that her class has a good pass rate, proving she is a good teacher and can keep her job? What if her cohort are particularly dumb? Is she incentivized to make it easy to pass her classes to get that A you paid so much for? Or hard or make that A worth something?

My mentor, a PhD in classics, told me it was never about outcomes and only about improvement. I suppose that answers my question. If your AI gets you an A at the start of the course and an A at the end, then, in the sense that you have not succeeded over anything, you have failed.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#19

If students cheat they hurt only themselves. Make sure they understand the consequences for cheating (missing out on learning) and that's about all you can do.

When i attended university (almost a decade ago i guess, time flies) we didn't have a single exam on the computer. All exams were on paper or oral, most were without notes too. Computer science does not require computers.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#20
post #9

What's interesting is that as I understand, folks are using things like Google Docs for papers, and that it's (apparently) straight forward to do analysis on a Google Doc to see, well, the life of the document. How it was typed in, how fast, what was pasted and cut back out. My understanding is that the Google Doc is not a word processing document, it's an event recording of a word processor. So, in theory, you could…

arms race....

oh look there is a llm trained on key loggers to spew slop at your personally predicted error rate; bonus if it identifies to USB as keyboard.

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