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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

#311

Post by sgustard »

bkallus wrote: post #174

I have seen it firsthand in the CS department here at Dartmouth. It is bad. We're currently designing a new intro systems curriculum, and we're thinking of it as an adversarial problem. That is, we're designing the course to ensure that a student optimizing for the best grade per unit work still meets our learning objectives. That means, as everyone else is saying, paper exams, but also 1-on-1 interviews to check tha…

"best not to blame the students"

There are dozens for every one who didn't get the opportunity to attend an Ivy. The penalty for cheating should be automatic expulsion. I'll note as a hiring manager the college degree won't be worth shit unless the school can show their students have any integrity.

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

#312

Post by DANmode »

thereitgoes456 wrote: post #9
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?

Because it's an important aid to getting to a high-paying job in the US, not just a means to learn. One need only look at the resume filtering process, a once manual bias that has now been codified into algorithmic bias with AI. A degree from a good school boosts your chances immensely, and other facets such as coursework don't matter much. If you have ever seen someone filter applicant resumes, you will understand i…

If any hiring managers are reading this: make your directions super specific, or require a cover letter.

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

#313

Post by Aurornis »

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]

I think we're headed into a world where remote degrees have little value for this reason. Universities which have remote or take-home exams won't be far behind.

Which sadly only makes it more of a rich kids' game, because the name-brand universities become the only ones that can be trusted. You see an out-of-state university that isn't a household name on someone's resume and you can't tell if it's one where students are monitored or if it's just a place where people pay a lot of money to transfer questions and results back and forth from ChatGPT.

I think we're also going to see a lot of people crash out of college halfway through when they start their academic career cheating, then get hit with a dose of reality when they encounter classes that require in-person, monitored work. If this happens 2-3 years into college, the student isn't going to quickly catch up. They're going to crash out.

I don't think this is having the effect you think it does.

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

#315

Post by what »

ninalanyon wrote: post #88
BeetleB wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had such exams. It was the honor system. The idea is that a typical exam is too short to evaluate the student's knowledge and a belief that fast students shouldn't have an advantage.

How long is too short? Each exam in my BSc Applied Physics final (1977, Exeter Uni.) was three hours and we had similar exams in each of the preceding years to weed out those who weren't keeping up. I'm pretty sure that having more time would not have helped the weaker students get through the Quantum Mechanics exam. In addition I had to defend the report (120 pages of typescript and charts) of my final year project…

All of my exams were three hours as well. I don’t think there’s a single instance where more time would have helped me. If I didn’t immediately know the answer to a question, I’d just move on, then revisit. When you don’t know the material/answer, more time won’t help. But you do have to know how to take a test and manage your time.

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

#316

Post by analog31 »

atty wrote: post #263
bee_rider wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think “take home open book exam, good luck,” followed by evil laughter, is mostly a math department thing.

And physics

Yeah, many of my physics exams were take-home open-book. One that I particularly remember: "Here's your exam. There's one problem. It's due when you come back from spring break."

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

#317

Post by __d »

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?

The same logic applies.

At least where I live, universities used to run entrance exams. They didn't care about high school grades, or even if you'd ever been to high school: if you passed the entrance exam, you could enroll.

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

#318

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sgustard wrote: post #311
bkallus wrote: post #174

I have seen it firsthand in the CS department here at Dartmouth. It is bad. We're currently designing a new intro systems curriculum, and we're thinking of it as an adversarial problem. That is, we're designing the course to ensure that a student optimizing for the best grade per unit work still meets our learning objectives. That means, as everyone else is saying, paper exams, but also 1-on-1 interviews to check tha…

"best not to blame the students" There are dozens for every one who didn't get the opportunity to attend an Ivy. The penalty for cheating should be automatic expulsion. I'll note as a hiring manager the college degree won't be worth shit unless the school can show their students have any integrity.

Totally agree. The moral decay in higher education has a lot to do with it deciding to trade its integrity around cheating by students and professors in exchange for tuition cheques and grant money.

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

#319

Post by anigbrowl »

rsanek wrote: post #256
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lecture hall full of click-click-click isn't going to be conducive to concentrating on a test.

If you can't concentrate while people are working on computers near you, I don't think you'll do well in any workplace that is based around knowledge work.

This is why I prefer working alone at night and am massively more productive. In any case, what's being tested in an exam setting is one's understanding of the course material, not whether they are a good fit for your idea of a normal workplace.

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

#320

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

markus_zhang wrote: post #169
redwall_hp wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IMO many CS classes should be lab based already, except the theory heavy ones. I still wonder why MIT needs to test students of OS courses on paper when the labs cover a lot of the ground. If I can do well in the labs I wouldn’t bother to memorize stuffs for the exams.

CS is a science of computation curriculum, not programming. You can have automation do all the work for you in the labs.
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