A similar thing happened in a first-year CS class at Purdue this year: https://thecheatsheet.substack.com/p/432-cheating-at-purdue-....
Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
291–300 of 771 posts
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
It helps with fine motor skills at a time that people are capable of learning them. ... And there are jobs that use those skills. Correlation between handwriting, drawing skills and dental skills of junior dental students - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22269191/ My dentist, while teaching dentistry commented that if the student did not learn cursive in school, it takes them another 3-4 months of practice in order…
So the logical entailment here is what? That everyone should have the dexterity of a dental surgeon so we can save the 7000 dental surgeons 3 months of training? Am I missing something?
Learning cursive won't automatically give you the dexterity of a dental surgeon, that's just a silly conclusion you have drawn from one example.
What is the downside of learning cursive?
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#293> 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…
and there's also the Ivy League grade inflation...
https://jamesgmartin.center/2025/11/harvard-admits-that-grad...
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Seems easy to counter all of this. I study at a German remote university, and they require, next to the front camera, a second camera to record the screen + hands and arms of the student while taking exams, and before the exam starts a complete video of the room, below desk areas, ears, etc. I don't see an angle how to reliably cheat in such conditions, and have seen nothing mentioned by any other student. So I would…
In-ear Bluetooth earbud with TTS.
There's also TI-84 mods that add esp32 and can hook up an LLM.
There's always a defeat.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
In his generation, only cheating cyclists could stay in teams. He was the one who created the situation, but in fact, cyclists had two choices - stop being cyclist or cheat.
You yourself are on drugs if you think Lance Armstrong "created the situation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Tour_de_France#D... Note the quantity that actually got caught and with enough evidence. Lance won it 6 times without getting caught. Looking at it systematically there's no way all of the top finishers were not taking drugs (how else could they compete with the world's best who were? The advant…
If Armstrong still absolutely makes you want to vomit, that's fine.
https://quotefancy.com/media/wallpaper/3840x2160/2503086-Lan...
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s fine to erase or use scratch paper on an essay test. You don’t write the test to fill the 60 minute slot. You time it so students are able to finish early if they’re really good. Slow ones need the whole time but can still do well if they understand the material being tested.
I don't generally get why tests are designed to rush a student. Is speed a proxy for understanding?
Speed is part of fluency. Fluency and understanding feel related
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
> challenge "hand writing is harder to revise" What? Suppose you want to fix the opening of your essay. Best case it's pencil and you can erase some, but worst case you have a longer sentence you want to put in there so you can't do it without scribbling all over and making a mess of the page. Word processors let you edit. How is this controversial? > why is the speed it takes to write it at all relevant? Okay, so fr…
Re "hand writing is harder to revise", I never had an issue with erasing words or parts of the text and using asterisks, end footnotes, the margins and whatever free space available (with arrows or not) to do revisions in written exams. Nobody complained and afaik it was fairly standard to do where I studied, as long as your exam itself was actually legible. Granted, I refer to math-related exams not essays on litera…
I would often do a bullet point summary/outline of my answer on the paper. That would have arrows and insertions and crossed-out stuff everywhere -- it was usually a mess.
But then I'd use that to write the actual text answer, and consequently, it was mostly clean. I'd still have to cross stuff out or add a phrase between the lines every so often, but once the basic structure was done, that was mostly unnecessary.
And if I was ever pressed for time, I'd usually get part marks for the outline anyway. Depending on the subject, I'd sometimes race through the questions doing just the outlines, and then come back to write the full text as a complete second pass.
To be fair, this wasn't creative writing. I think it'd be harder when the expression is the content.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
1-on-1 interviews with a LLM sounds like it'd go over about as well as AI customer service.
Do you mean very well? Lots of proof out there that it works; Fin, Sierra and others already operate on a value based pricing model where they only get paid if the AI actually resolves issues.
It works about as well as replacing your barista with an iPad.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
For nearly any subject of learning at a level above high school, multiple choice is a terrible way to assess knowledge. Multiple choice can only tell if you reached a final answer (or guessed it). It cannot tell anything about how you reached that conclusion.
However, it is a fast and simple method of assessment.
Measuring what is easy to measure instead of what actually matters is a classic fallacy.
Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think everybody should be able to write cursive As someone who has hated both reading and writing cursive since middle school, I'm curious what is significant about cursive specifically?
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.
It's been clearly shown to be beneficial for some people. I too happen to be one of them.
For others, hearing stuff (and saying stuff) out loud is more useful. I had a friend who'd make nonsense songs of stuff to learn: just doggerel, but by singing it to himself when revising, he had a massive uptick in retention. He was so happy when he worked that out.
I imagine there might be other modes that work for other people too?