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Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

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Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#301

Post by forgetfreeman »

tengwar2 wrote: post #191
forgetfreeman wrote: post #138

Earlier 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.

I'm 60+. I'd be more concerned about the student's physical ability to write for several hours continuously. Writer's cramp used to be a problem, and that was when we were used to hand-writing everything. Legibility is also a consideration: I have to hand-write a lot(keyboards would not be socially acceptable for some of my work), and even with decades of practice and a hand that I designed for legibility, sometimes…

I have absolutely no concern over a 20 yr old's ability to weather the rigors of manipulating a 7 gram pencil. It's not like we're talking about getting them to spend a week on a roofing crew or swap their gaming mouse for a set of post hole diggers here. If someone needs an accommodation then that should absolutely be made available.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#302

Post by throwaway152321 »

walrus01 wrote: post #262
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #96

Earlier 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…

> I would struggle to do it by hand.

If you did it before then, barring physical limitations which have occurred since then, you would struggle for a short while and then you would be fine. I also did coursework purely on paper, got out of practice, and then once my kids were in school got back into the habit of handwriting. I can even write cursive again. Cursive makes it much easier on the hand and wrist. There's a reason it was invented. :)

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#303

Post by __d »

encomiast wrote: post #198
WalterBright wrote: post #184

Earlier 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.

That's been my experience as well. I'm just curious about cursive writing specifically.

I'm hopeless at pure cursive writing. My default writing is a joined-up-ish kind of printing. Writing using it works really well for retaining information for me.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#304

Post by overtone1000 »

nekusar wrote: post #238
willis936 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in your day education was not sold as a financial transaction to a prosperous life. The honor system is idyllic and requires idyllic circumstances: people who pursue education for no reason other than curiosity or self improvement. If you want the honor system back then you need to offer more stable safety nets. It's not "kids these days", it's the natural result of the systems adults have made.

[flagged]

If one of these clients of yours became an engineer, doctor, or lawyer, would you want their services for yourself or your family?

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#305

Post by jaggederest »

rsanek wrote: post #260
yiyingzhang wrote: post #199

As 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.

Let's play this out further. How about high school, should there be grades there? Tests at all levels also typically involve a grade / metric -- are those included too?

To play devil's advocate, evaluations and scoring should probably be used at the systemic or team level rather than stack ranking individual employees... I mean students. Improve the educational system rather than blame the individuals.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#306

Post by hidroto »

mrkeen wrote: post #71
danny_codes wrote: post #7

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?

* I am in the state of not knowing about something * This is brought to my attention by an exam question * I have an oracle in the form of a textbook, an LLM, the internet, or all of the above Which action is skipping the education: looking up the answer, or not looking up the answer?

Not understanding the answer.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#307

Post by zabzonk »

While I am in no way a supporter of AI cheating, or whatever we want to call it, I can tell you from experience that there is nothing more tedious or soul destroying than invigilating a written multi-hour exam. It put me off teaching in higher education.

IMHO to solve many problems we should go with Ivan Illich's ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society and make education about education, not testing and certification.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#308

Post by __d »

dekdrop wrote: post #147
walrus01 wrote: post #80

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.

At my child's high school, phones are "off and away all day", and the punishment for being caught with a phone in your pocket (or hands) is pretty severe.

During an exam, it's an instant zero mark, on top of the after-school detention (the punishments escalate to suspension and expulsion for repeat offenses).

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#309

Post by throwaway152321 »

metalcrow wrote: post #135
customguy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forcing hand written should really not be necessary. I do think it's necessary. And I felt unsure at first of how extremely strong I feel about this -- I think everybody should be able to write cursive, and even doctors should be able to write legibly, which ALL of them could learn in one single day, an afternoon, if they had to -- but then I did a simple search for "the benefits of writing by hand studies" and now…

What's the benefit of cursive over standard writing?

When each word is a smooth continuous line I can write faster and with less effort. The short up and down motions of printed letters tires out my hand.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#310

Post by steve_taylor »

beloch wrote: post #160

"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). “It’s a very nice kind of exam, because as you’re giving students practically unlimited time to complete it, it lets you make it harder than normal, to see how far they can go.” ... "But it also hurts him that the one time…

It was closed-book. Take-home, closed-book seems like an oxymoron anyway.

A lot of the cheating students would have concluded that other students are going to cheat and get a much better result, so they might as well do the same.

The fault lies squarely with the professor.

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