Damn that's crazy. Guess the take home test is dead now. I never understood this behavior from undergrads though, you're paying so much for an education and then you just skip the education part? Why bother?
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Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
21–30 of 771 posts
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
>you're paying so much for an education and then you just skip the education part? Why bother? Because you are viewing the motivation of college wrong for most people. For most people, the purpose of college is to get piece of paper that will open up higher salary opportunities. Ergo, they are just doing whatever required to get said piece of paper with least amount of effort. Until degrees, in particular, degrees fr…
That motivation isn't necessarily inherent in the attendees though. That has been formed by corporations increasingly placing pressure on universities to be their personal training grounds, without any actual investment. Corporations don't want to train anymore. They want universities and other companies to do their training for them. It's why we're seeing the death of the liberal arts majors. It's sad, because usual…
> That [motivation] has been formed by corporations increasingly placing pressure on universities to be their personal training grounds, without any actual investment. Corporations don't want to train anymore. They want universities and other companies to do their training for them.
I don't think so.
The problem rather is that corporations very often want some very different knowledge of employees than what universities teach to the students.
If what the universities teach was very important for the job, applicants who have not invested serious effort into getting a deep understanding of the topics of the courses would nearly all fail in the job interviews.
The problem rather is that for many jobs the knowledge that you could have gotten from the university typically does not matter, and thus investing minimal effort into the courses does not get you rejected in a job interview.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#23Administration needs to eschew "technology" and demand analog solutions: hand written exams in proctored rooms, no devices out in the classroom, no take home work, etc.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#24These articles consistently fail to acknowledge students were cheating in large numbers prior to these AI tools being available.
It was certainly not difficult to cheat at a "closed book" take home exam before.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#25When you're a student in a competitive program at a top university, graded on a curve, and you know your fellow classmates are cheating with AI, you have little choice but to do the same. Especially when jobs for new grads are harder to come by and there's more pressure to also go above and beyond with internships and side projects during your time in school. There's no way to compete without cheating.
After retiring at 65 from a university teaching and research science career (all pre-AI), I went back to teaching, but this time teaching high school science, mostly AP STEM courses at an A-ranked public high school. The cheating/AI problem is now a crisis greater than COVID. My experience: very few students in advanced and AP classes do not cheat — largely for the reasons given above — and it takes enormous resource…
Personally I believe AI has made exams and high stakes testing unworkable. Even before AI I would argue teaching to the test made high stakes testing unworkable. How grades are assigned IMO will be more like how employees are evaluated in the workplace: some metrics, some oral exams, some peer feedback, but mostly on what they produced.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#26> This year, the economist decided that both the midterm and the final exams for his course would be of the take-home, closed-book type (there is a certain tradition of this at Ivy League schools).
These news articles are just tiresome at this point. Obviously folks cheated previously, obviously it's easier now, obviously the answer has been to not have take homes all along.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#27the professor has all the power in the classroom. If you don't want cheating, define better conditions for the exam. You allowed a take-home exam which means students are able to use any and all resources.
> You allowed a take-home exam which means students are able to use any and all resources. It was a closed-book exam. The professor shouldn’t have to hold students’ hands for them to act with integrity, they are all adults. In this particular class, the professor made the final exam in-person, and didn’t count the take-home midterm because the score distribution wasn’t consistent between the two exams. I think that’s…
When the highest offices of the land are packed to the gills with liars and grifters and anyone with a brain can observe there’s no downside to such behavior, "just be honest" rings rather hollow
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#28When you're a student in a competitive program at a top university, graded on a curve, and you know your fellow classmates are cheating with AI, you have little choice but to do the same. Especially when jobs for new grads are harder to come by and there's more pressure to also go above and beyond with internships and side projects during your time in school. There's no way to compete without cheating.
The Lance Armstrong defense
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#29As of now chatgpt subsidies its consumer subscription-I wonder if cheating on exams will be still promiment once students are forced to pay $30 a month
Since students are notorious for being cheap
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You allowed a take-home exam which means students are able to use any and all resources. It was a closed-book exam. The professor shouldn’t have to hold students’ hands for them to act with integrity, they are all adults. In this particular class, the professor made the final exam in-person, and didn’t count the take-home midterm because the score distribution wasn’t consistent between the two exams. I think that’s…
When the highest offices of the land are packed to the gills with liars and grifters and anyone with a brain can observe there’s no downside to such behavior, "just be honest" rings rather hollow
Maybe I have too optimistic a mindset, but “just be honest” in academia isn’t about being a rule-follower, it’s about not short-changing yourself by coasting though on autopilot instead of learning to think and solve problems for yourself.
Whether that really matters if your goal is to climb the social ladder and have power and influence, I don’t know.