Live data from Hacker News

Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

english.elpais.com

601–610 of 771 posts

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

#601

in time, student tests will consist entirely of in-class written essays to avoid AI usage, which professors will then grade primarily with AI tools to handle the workload. this will be deemed ‘fair’.

Interestingly, here in Italy a substantial part of grades in Italian classes is exactly in-class written essays.

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

#602

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.

Using a special computer works too. I do my exams with our institution's Computer-Based Testing Facility, a bank of computers with fixed software and firewall rules that only permit connections to the exam site. As a result, I've been able to challenge students to solve interactive software security challenges on the midterm and final with automatic grading - something that would have been impossible with pen and pap…

But what's wrong with pen and paper?

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

#603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good, the grader should hone that skill at pace then.

The student has to submit one exam. The grader has to grade N exams.

Which is literally what graduate students get paid to do.

How do you think English, philosophy, or history tests get graded?

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

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a special computer works too. I do my exams with our institution's Computer-Based Testing Facility, a bank of computers with fixed software and firewall rules that only permit connections to the exam site. As a result, I've been able to challenge students to solve interactive software security challenges on the midterm and final with automatic grading - something that would have been impossible with pen and pap…

But what's wrong with pen and paper?

The grading cannot be automated easily and becomes time consuming.

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

#605

> When he reported the case to high-ranking officials at Brown, he got a cold reaction. The response from the president, he said, was absolute silence. The dean did not comment either until Serrano took the case before the Academic Code Committee. At that point, he received a note acknowledging that what had happened in his classroom was “a wake-up call.” Serrano, a Madrid-born economist who has been at Brown for 34…

Are you asking for the president to make a snap decision undermining the authority of the Academic Code Committee? How to teach and test students who have to start work under the current AI frenzy let alone who will still be working alongside whatever it becomes in forty years is an extreammly under-researched and unanswerable question. Even an interim answer will require the full consideration of the faculty and beyond; a good leader facilitates that not replaces it. Yes the should probably _some_ discipline for students who broke the rules written in a past and very different world; but I certainly would not want to hire any who didn't challenge them.

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

#606
I was born in 1970. My teenage years were in the 1980s, in coincidence with the emergence of the home computer. I had a Timex-Sinclair 1000, then a C64, then a C128. One of my main forces that drove myself to learn computers was (besides games) the ability to produce text that was clearly written and readable, thanks to word processors and printers, because my handwriting was abysmal, and I got tired very quickly while writing by hand. In the computer, instead, I got to type exactly what I wanted, I could edit and correct my spelling and grammar mistakes, and then produce very readable and clean output. A win in my book.

Now, I require of students to submit written assignments done by hand. That way, I can at least be certain that there's some learning involved, even if they resort to AI to produce the relevant written part, because evidence points out that writing by hand reinforces learning.

I read that other professors resorted to requiring manual typewriters, which I also hate with a passion.

That is, AI is negating decades of enablement achieved by technology.

Honestly, between these circumstances and the fact that we are "enjoying" (?) brave new prices for RAM and SSDs, I'm finding AI increasingly harder to like.

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

#607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what's wrong with pen and paper?

The grading cannot be automated easily and becomes time consuming.

Should anything more complicated than what could be automated with a paper ScanTron form really be subject to automated grading anyway?

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

#608
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fill the room with typewriters.

Typewriters are an expensive and niche item these days, due to no longer being manufactured, and the good ones being collected by weird nerds. Sort of like buying a 40-year-old vinyl turntable that is in good and usable condition.

Manual typewriters are no longer being manufactured. Several brands of electric and electronic typewriters are still are being made.

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

#609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good first step, a pre-filter to more demanding questions.

There's no such thing as "filtering" in academics. You don't get to kick out the students who didn't do well on the multiple choice and only proceed with the ones who scored highly.

I had classes in school that had multiple-choice quizzes every couple of weeks. It helped students figure out if they knew the material just covered and it helped the prof know how well he did teaching. They acted as checkpoints.

The mid-term and final exams were not multiple choice (at least not entirely).

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

#610

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…

Without a hint of irony, wouldn't a Voice AI solution help better manage the 1-1 interview process?

The voice thing didn't work well enough, in Dutch at least. I've done an in-between. We instructed an AI as the client. Then as the teacher, I'd represent the client and would type. Students would form project groups, and each group would get 15-30 minutes to ask questions from the "client".
Post reply on HN