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Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

mezha.net

21–30 of 169 posts

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#21
post #8

Denmark is a very small country and what works there doesn’t necessarily work at the scale of the US or China.

The important variable is the staff/student ratio, not the size of the country. With few students per class, or many teachers, this scales fine. I'm running similar exams for my (UK) Masters modules, but colleagues are reluctant to do it for the enormous compulsory survey courses as there are several hundred students in them (vs up to about 50 in the MA ones).

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#22
post #11

This is already the case for Master's degrees and above in Denmark. I've been the opponent examining students. We ask Master's students to give US instruction on a topic (drawn randomly on a card in front of them, from a list they know a few days in advance). They do a chalk and talk on a topic for about fifteen minutes with three to five professors being "dumb students". It works fantastically and at the end it's ve…

>Of course, woe betide those with social phobias I can see this being a problem in the US when it comes to "accommodations" in general. Students with an ADHD diagnosis can claim it causes just about any difficulty and get accommodations for it. The local (top ranked, but everyone's seen all the stories coming out of the Ivies...) college here gives students with ADHD double time on exams and has them take it in a spe…

European universities also have accommodations and extra time etc. And yes it's an arms race. Though at some point it will simply inflate away the value of the degree, but educators will stand there baffled, not understanding how it could happen.

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#23
post #8

Denmark is a very small country and what works there doesn’t necessarily work at the scale of the US or China.

Piling on. Why? Are class sizes that different? US and China have many more professors too, is it not proportional?

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#24
post #4

This is a good move. I teach a summer async remote course that's ending next week, but I'm giving all the students incompletes until they come back to campus and take an in-person exam the first week of classes. All homework is worth a marginal amount, and if they fail the final they fail the class. I'm not going to spend my effort policing whether they're using AI or not in their class work because it's a losing bat…

I'd never pay to have you as a teacher, I'm sorry. Maybe your move makes a sense for the reputation of your university's degree, but as a student willing to pay to learn remotely, I'd not accept to be treated like children.

> I'd not accept to be treated like children.

What is your expectation from such a class? What are you hoping to get out of it?

If you merely want a tutor that will help you out navigate a topic you are interested in, with no strings attached, then sure, yes. No need to take exams.

But if the goal is to get a formally recognized degree in some topic, then you will need to accept that there will be oversight over how you understand that topic. Because the institutions granting those degrees need to sign them off. And if they care about their reputation, they would be interested in signing off only on those students, who actually understand the topic.

So there will need to be exams. In the AI era, it is close to impossible to guarantee that a remote exam will accurately evaluate your understanding of a topic. So the exams would need to be carried out in person.

There is nothing children-specific in using such approach. It is merely one of the few still somewhat objective ways to actually test people's understanding of some topic.

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? This is such a thought terminating statement. No actual reason.

Tell me you're not a programmer w/o telling me. What works at scale can be fundamentally different than what works in a small startup (Denmark).

Could you point out a reason why education, which can be standardized at least to a state scale¹, cannot be standardized to the state scale utilizing oral defenses? Also, can be ≠ is. Not everything is a startup lol

¹https://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#26
Oral Defences have a long established tradition in Denmark, but recently there’s been real cut back on this as a money saving exercise. So both teachers and Students are familiar with this form of examination.

So for a dane this reads like “back to the old way”, rather than anything new or novel.

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#27
post #11

This is already the case for Master's degrees and above in Denmark. I've been the opponent examining students. We ask Master's students to give US instruction on a topic (drawn randomly on a card in front of them, from a list they know a few days in advance). They do a chalk and talk on a topic for about fifteen minutes with three to five professors being "dumb students". It works fantastically and at the end it's ve…

>Of course, woe betide those with social phobias I can see this being a problem in the US when it comes to "accommodations" in general. Students with an ADHD diagnosis can claim it causes just about any difficulty and get accommodations for it. The local (top ranked, but everyone's seen all the stories coming out of the Ivies...) college here gives students with ADHD double time on exams and has them take it in a spe…

as someone with ADHD who always finished exams first or was the designated spokesperson for group presentations...

I have no idea why you'd want to be taking a test a second longer than you already have to.

Either you know the material or you don't, anything taking a lot of time is borderline stuff where you're scrapping for points you might not deserve in the first place lol

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#29
post #8

Denmark is a very small country and what works there doesn’t necessarily work at the scale of the US or China.

Top US universities actually have higher teacher/student ratios than top EU schools, and I wouldn't be surprised if this pattern holds in general, so it would be easier to do in the US than it is here.

Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? This is such a thought terminating statement. No actual reason.

Tell me you're not a programmer w/o telling me. What works at scale can be fundamentally different than what works in a small startup (Denmark).

You said it can be fundamentally different, and of course it can. But “it doesn’t scale” isn’t an argument by itself. In many areas, scale actually creates efficiencies. You’d need to explain what specifically about the larger scale makes the Danish approach unworkable in the U.S
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