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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

#551

Post by DonHopkins »

lmf4lol wrote: post #483
mbreese wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> barring physical limitations I think you're missing the point. This is a physical limitation. People don't write as much as they used to. I used to be able to write for hours, taking notes, writing papers, etc... Now, I try to take notes during a meeting and my hand cramps. And as a bonus, my handwriting never was great, but now it's illegible for me. Yes, we all "could" re-learn this skill, but how many people wil…

> Now, I try to take notes during a meeting and my hand cramps. And as a bonus, my handwriting never was great, but now it's illegible for me. Are you using a fountain pen, writing cursive and do you take care to hold it properly? Those three things fixed all my cramps

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

#552

Post by mrob »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #138
ant6n wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 40 and forcing students to do handwritten essays during tests has always been stupid. Typing is much faster, why bottleneck ideas by forcing handwriting?

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.

>The point of the exercise is to demonstrate the student's understanding of the material, not their WPM.

Testing for understanding requires the fastest WPM possible. Regardless of the method used, students don't all write at the same speed. To minimize the influence of this variance, they need to use the fastest writing technique possible. If a fast writer spends 30 minutes writing in a two hour test, and a slow writer needs a full hour, the fast writer gets 50% more thinking time. But if you double both their writing speeds, the fast writer's advantage drops to 17%.

The faster the writing technique people are allowed to use, the better your test can identify poor understanding.

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

#553

Post by negergreger »

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #379
sgustard wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Yes. Best not blame the technology that was specifically built to pass up automatically generated text for human work, or companies that profit from students using it, or government that won't introduce measures that would at least make it possible to comprehensively ban it on campuses.

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

#554

Post by Angostura »

walrus01 wrote: post #80
recursivedoubts wrote: post #57

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.

> 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…

In the UK the majority of exams are in person and on paper. Doesn’t seem to be a particular problem

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

#555

Post by dbspin »

haritha-j wrote: post #532

One thing I would say from the student perspective is, when you know for a fact that your fellow students are using LLMs, and you feel like you can do it honestly and earn a B, or use LLMs and get an A, it msut be a tough decision. Grades are often adjusted on a bell curve and honest students are disadvantaged when others cheat. In my undergrad I was leading in nearly all of my classes for 7/8 semesters, but the fina…

Grading on a curve is utterly irrational, unfair and cruel. I'm sorry you have to put up with such a system.

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

#556

Post by tengwar2 »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #301
tengwar2 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nothing to do with weight. It's a cramp in the muscles of the hand from holding the pen and making fine movements for hours. I'm guessing you are from a generation after keyboard use became common, so you haven't encountered it.

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

#557

Post by tgv »

theturtlemoves wrote: post #538
haritha-j wrote: post #532

One thing I would say from the student perspective is, when you know for a fact that your fellow students are using LLMs, and you feel like you can do it honestly and earn a B, or use LLMs and get an A, it msut be a tough decision. Grades are often adjusted on a bell curve and honest students are disadvantaged when others cheat. In my undergrad I was leading in nearly all of my classes for 7/8 semesters, but the fina…

> Grades are often adjusted on a bell curve and honest students are disadvantaged when others cheat. It depends per country. Here we use a grading system that isn't relative to how other students perform. You basically get a percentage score on how many questions you got right. Perfect score is 100. 55 and up is pass, below that is fail. But still, teachers can make exams easier or harder depending on last year's sco…

Grading curves have become really common practice. Can't let the poor students fail just because they didn't study. The dean doesn't like that and your career neither. So you only let a fixed percentage fail. It's sad.

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

#558

Post by tgv »

make3 wrote: post #497
tgv wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the fact that everyone knows. He just got reliable data from a natural experiment, which makes the chancellor can't just look away any longer.

People for sure have always cheated in these take home exams. This has to have been to protect rich kids with parents who give money to the university. It's insane to learn how many fancy universities have garbage blatantly unmeritocratic evaluation systems like this

That is true, and it was always a bad idea. But hey, economics. If economists should be aware of anything, it's that university financing in large parts of the world have perverse incentives.

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

#559

Post by [deleted] »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #57

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.

[deleted]

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

#560

Post by RugnirViking »

alex43578 wrote: post #45
musicale wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A master's in CS can teach you interesting and very useful things, like how OS kernels, distributed systems, networks, and microprocessors work. A master's in EE will teach you things like signal processing and analog circuit design as well. Knowing these things helps you to design, build, and evaluate systems that are reliable and efficient. A master's in science helps you understand how the physical world works and…

There should be no reason you have to jump to a master’s for that. A bachelor’s in CS or EE would be a joke if it didn’t (doesn’t) cover those things. Arguably, even the current 4 year bachelor’s is a waste compared to a focused 2 year program: looking at my college’s requirements, many classes are wasted. Business majors taking a physical science with lab component, entry level English classes being taught by a TA t…

I feel like that's quite an american phenomenon - from the universities I have experience with in Denmark and the UK, a bachelor's program consists of classes entirely focused on the topic of the degree. But then again there is no idea of a "major" and a "minor" or even that many elective classes. We had a single semester where we had a choice of three courses for my batchelors degree, and for my masters similarly a single semester where we had the choice of an entrapreurship course or doing a placement (internship) in industry. all the other semesters (3 year batchelor and 2 year master) were pre-determined classes only, all strictly relevant to the topic of the degree.
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