Seems like these youths are doing exactly what their future employers will expect them to.
Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
281–290 of 771 posts
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why hand written? Wouldn't a one-on-one interview be a better way to establish a broad evaluation of competency.
> Wouldn't a one-on-one interview be a better way to establish a broad evaluation of competency. 1) Possibly, depending on the material, but most classes aren't looking for a "broad evaluation of competency", they're looking for the specific material taught. It'd make more sense as a graduation requirement: the equivalent of a dissertation but for undergraduate work. 2) Even in small classes (e.g. 20-30 students) tha…
I think suspected cheaters should be subjected to an interview.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the benefit of cursive over standard writing?
What is "standard writing"? Isn't cursive the standard you're taught and then everyone writes however they want?
In 2nd grade I was assured by my teachers that all adults wrote cursive and you had to relearn the alphabet again. Then in 3rd grade the teachers all said they couldn't read anyone's handwriting and to print everything.
In high school the most difficult part of the SAT was the honor pledge that you didn't cheat that you had to write in cursive. Nobody writes cursive.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m 30 and “we can’t do tests in paper” seems _insane_. Just how metastatic has ed tech been in what, 9 years since my undergrad?
I'm quite a bit older than you, old enough that I remember learning to touch type in elementary school on Apple IIe and IIgs desktop computers. It's not reasonable these days to expect people to hand write a 4, 6, 8 page length essay on paper and pen with a finite time limit in a classroom. Being able to edit and revise things in a word processor type interface is an essential part of writing an academic paper. Addit…
My child's high school is doing the same thing: all exams are now handwritten on paper in a supervised room. Phones and smartwatches are always banned during the school day, but laptops are banned during exams. This is standard at state-funded high schools in Australia.
There will likely be a period where those who went through high school with computers struggle with hand writing stuff, but the next generation will have done it all their lives.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doing work with handwriting helps in learning the material. I don't know why that works, but my experience (and others') clearly shows it does.
And I strongly disagree. The moment I have to write stuff down my focus is gone and I might as well be taking a nap. And having to read my own handwriting assures I’ll never look at that page, again. Different strokes
Having to write stuff down made it impossible for me to pay attention to the lecture. But I was definitely more likely to remember what I did write down. Bit of a catch 22
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#286> In the AI era... Back in my day, you could also just Google the problems and find the solutions. What mitigated cheating at UVA was the honor code and each professor's faith and trust in our integrity. That culture was enough to not cheat. Imo, the fix should be to work on culture. Cheating should always be a tempting choice, so that the student may challenge their integrity, which is a muscle that can atrophy.
> What mitigated cheating at UVA was the honor code and each professor's faith and trust in our integrity. That culture was enough to not cheat.
The decline of actual consequences for cheating has played a big role.
When I was in college, people who got caught cheating found themselves in a world of trouble. Repeat offenders faced severe consequences like failing courses, which could delay their graduation date if it was a critical-path course. This has a real dollar amount attached to it because you start working later.
Now it seems universities avoid addressing cheating problems at all costs. The professor in this article complains about how hard it was to draw attention to the cheating problem, with no response within his own department.
Students know this. As cheating gains critical mass and you see that nothing bad is happening to the cheaters, you start feeling like you're at risk of falling behind if you aren't cheating. The cheaters are getting higher grades (100% for many in this case) and they get to go out partying while you're still working through the material. You're really screwed if grades are distributed on a curve.
So temptation spreads. Anecdotally, I've seen a few young people lie to themselves and think that they're just going to use ChatGPT to check their answers and learn from it, but they don't realize how superficial it is to have ChatGPT fix your problem and then skim the correct answer. They put less effort into checking their work because they know they have a button to push to check it for them. When they get put into a situation where they can't rely on that button, it all falls apart
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm 50. Optimizing testing for speed is goofy. The point of the exercise is to demonstrate the student's understanding of the material, not their WPM.
You should definitely take speed into consideration. If your're writing an essay, being able to type it out and still have both the opportunity and time to edit it is great. If you're writing it on paper, you likely have neither. What comes to you first is what's submitted.
And yet strangely this hasn't proved a major impediment to the species at any point in the last ~5000 years...
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#288In 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.
It's news to me that they weren't already. My exams were all in person and on paper in the early 2020s, and even my physics homework was a "do it on engineering paper and drop it in a mail slot" affair. The professors would forbid computers and phones during lectures and would stop to shame anyone who thought they were being sneaky. Computer Science classes were all on paper for exams, and low level ones did the old…
Mine were like this is 2005. The math classes also didn't allow calculators, engineering classes did, but not graphing ones that could store information.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#289As a university professor, I honestly don't understand the point of grading. Who will look at and care about grades? Likely company HR. But then why should we (professors) do the screening for companies for free? Also, grades have long been inflated to a point we might as well just give everyone an A and let companies figure out how to select people.
>grades have long been inflated to a point we might as well just give everyone an A and let companies figure out how to select people. Between this and a decline in junior hiring, this is sorting itself out in the form of sharply declining CS enrollment. Which is fine, except for anyone with an interest in keeping enrollment high.
CS enrollment is declining, but not demand. Everyone is citing the numbers from UC Berkeley showing a 26% percent decline in enrollment. What they fail to mention is that the CS department reduced their admit slots by 25% because the TAs negotiated an $80/hr rate, and they can't afford as many, so they can't open as many classes.
But the number of students applying for CS is actually up slightly.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#290These 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.
I would argue the barrier to cheating has become lower just by virtue of how easy it is to do it now. You open an app and type your question. Rue if different from Brit where you had to basically have either a skill in cheating to find and adapt the right resources or you would have to have money to pay someone to do it for you. AI as the great equaliser I suppose.
In Serrano's class and other introductory classes like it, cheating has been widespread before AI and after. The truth is that the social stigma around cheating has gone away (perhaps this is only a post-remote-schooling phenomena) so cheating is trivial. All you have to do is go text a friend in the class (most people will have many friends in any large intro class they're taking).
Source: am student @ Brown