151–160 of 771 posts
"take home, closed book" This is a trap. I understand they've done this in the past, but profs are paranoid now. I don't believe he's 100% correct on each incident of fraud and he's going to ruin students [academic] lives because of it.
In the AI era, tests are going to have to be in person and hand written. I have written an article on how I have adjusted my classes to the situation: https://htmx.org/essays/universities-and-ai/ Ironically, I think the AI era may make university degrees a better signal of the intellectual abilities of students due to the presence of pre-computer infrastructure like large lecture halls, industrial-scale copiers, etc.
Computer Science classes were all on paper for exams, and low level ones did the old "here's a Javadoc, write some code with a pencil."
The only online exams I had were for 100 level electives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the AI era, tests are going to have to be in person and hand written. Forcing hand written should really not be necessary. It would be very cheap in terms of old computing hardware to set up a test room with old desktop PCs that have wired only NICs (with a network connection that goes to a switch in the same room with no uplink, connected to a decent size laser printer only), running something like lubuntu and…
how do you make sure they are not using their mobile phone with llms while the exam? I have seen that happening.
The problem isn't AI, it's that you gave a take-home exam expected no one to cheat.
AI enables a completely different level of cheating than any prior method. It’s more accessible, better at cheating, faster
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These days pretty sure computers are cheaper than typewriters.
Computers good enough to run libreoffice writer or the equivalent and print to a networked laser are thrown in the ewaste trash all the time , the cost really would be in the labor and somewhat custom software setup. Could also reuse old flat panel displays that have been decommissioned from office use.
(Where do you even get ribbons these days)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you fit a decent LLM on a thumbdrive?
It can fit on augmented reality glasses, eventually.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being hand written would be silly theatre that excludes perfectly capable people (like me) who cannot sustain writing more than a few minutes. Edit: I think we’re actually all agreeing. That a typed exam as an option is perfectly cromulent. I’m just saying the idea that it must be written is silly.
Gen Xer here: we coped with hand written exams just fine. Accommodations (extra time and/or a scribe) were available for those who needed them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There should be no computer at all just give students a typewriter. It could prompt a resurgence of the typewriter :)
These days pretty sure computers are cheaper than typewriters.
A college instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work and teach life lessons - https://apnews.com/article/typewriter-ai-cheating-chatgpt-co...
I was very fortunate to attend Brown University for grad school, and consider it a great place.
Why would many people who were also fortunate to attend there not honor that opportunity?
...
"But it also hurts him that the one time in 34 years that he decided to offer a take-home exam, for highly justified reasons, the response was wide-scale fraud."
-----------------
Not to in any way defend or condone academic misconduct, the fact that this was his teaching-career-first take-home exam is probably relevant. Take home exams can be fiendish. I remember having one in grad school where we were given a very insufficient 36 hours to complete it, and many people just didn't sleep. That was from a prof who knew what he was doing. This guy may have accidentally made his exam absolutely sadistic.
Couple this with the fact that students often have other exams they need to be studying for in the same time window. The pressure can be immense. The temptation to use AI to help is going to be hard for many to resist unless the penalties are severe and strictly enforced.
AI cheating is probably going to be a problem going forward in all situations, but open-book, take-home tests are going to bring it out more strongly than other test formats.