This is the way
Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating
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Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating
#72Why is everyone in this thread comparing this to a University But yeah, this is a good step. Homework is also becoming obsolete at this point. If they can't do it with pen and paper in class, there's no reliable way to evaluate work anymore.
I'm teaching a university math course next semester and I've been messing around with a solution to this that my old analysis professor used to employ. Every week, they take home a handful of theory questions. These aren't turned in for credit. But, every week, there'll be a short quiz where one of those questions are asked verbatim, along with a small follow up.
That felt like a very natural solution to me. Of course, worst case scenario, they just blindly generate and memorize the proofs without thinking. But I think the follow ups will catch them in that case. Moreover, I choose to believe that >90% of my students are willing to at least put in the work of scrutinizing those proofs which is honestly not bad exercise in its own right.
I would love to do oral exams directly, the logistics with the number of students I have just make that hard. I know we're trialing it with the less populated special topics courses.
Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating
#73This 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…
So, I grew up in the former Soviet Union. Starting with ninth grade entrance entrance and exit exams were like that. I remember I had to take university physics exam just to be able to qualify for a consideration. It was fairly rough, but I think in a way, good system because it sifted out the wannabes early on.
It does indeed sound great except that everyone was corrupt to the bone
Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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
> I have no idea why you'd want to be taking a test a second longer than you already have to.
The theory was that ADHD students have trouble sustaining concentration, so extra time allows for thought breaks and distractions. The idea was that 2 hours for the ADHD student would be similar to 1 hour of concentration for a non-ADHD student, and therefore the inequity had been partially compensated.
The teachers I know have the same observation that you do: The extra test time isn’t usually used by the ADHD students, but when other students (or maybe more accurately, parents) discover that extra test time was available, most of the high performing students suddenly got diagnosed with ADHD at the same time. They were the ones staying extra long to proofread their work.
For the elementary/junior high teachers I know the schools’ solution was to give everyone the same extended test taking time. Easiest way to remove the incentive to seek out a fake diagnosis without taking anything away from anyone.
Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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
ADHD is known to be able to affect speed and consistency of output, even of mastered material, and in a variety of ways -- hence "I have no idea..."
Standard diagnostic questionnaires commonly reference this. The last part of your comment reflects a lack of understanding of both human cognition and recall and ADHD in particular.
Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating
#76This is how higher education was done for literal centuries before moving to the written word. So it’s not exactly innovative to return to oral arguments. But what it does threaten to do is effectively abandon all the efficiencies of the written word. When higher education evolved into a mass system in the 1800s and into the 1900s, pure oral examination was looked at as super inefficient. A written paper could be han…
But even with the written exam, wouldn't the bottleneck still be there where the professors still need to read through all the papers? I guess its definitely more efficient and asynchronous, but I can't imagine by much assuming the same and equal rigor is applied.
Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is about Danish high school exams.
Oh, in that case it is actually flipped.
Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating
#78It feels like systems like the Maturita' final multi-day exam in Italy do a pretty good job at providing students with a standardized, state-supervised process for demonstrating one's competence by the end of high school. No computers, you're under the watchful eye of your teachers the whole time, nobody knows what's going to be on the exam until the day of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matura#Italy
It's time consuming and nerve-wracking, but it feels fair.
Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating
#79This 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…
64 year old nerd with social phobias here. When I was in school, I had to practice oral knowledge tests since grade one. I had my first oral exam in grade six (math) and 2-3 oral exams every year since then. If I hadn't had that experience, I would never have gotten into university. I still don't like verbal communications with people (especially in a tense situations like exam), I'm slow etc, but it's manageable because I had to practice it a lot. I don't think I would have survived in modern "the environment must be made suitable for everyone" school/university.
Re: Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating
#80This is how higher education was done for literal centuries before moving to the written word. So it’s not exactly innovative to return to oral arguments. But what it does threaten to do is effectively abandon all the efficiencies of the written word. When higher education evolved into a mass system in the 1800s and into the 1900s, pure oral examination was looked at as super inefficient. A written paper could be han…
Oral exams are still common in Germany and many European countries in case of smaller courses taken by 20-30 students in a semester, and sometimes even in larger courses, and the task of examining is then split among multiple professors and lecturers.
In Hungary it's a pipeline. You go in a room, you pick a piece of paper out of a hat, which gives you some task or topic to prepare for. Then you sit down at a desk (the room is filled with about 15 students working already), then you solve the problem or sketch out your notes to present the topic you picked for like 20 minutes, then you go to the professor and you have to, in low voice, explain your solution, the professor asks back and pokes at it to make sure you understand. The professor then gives a grade immediately and you go home.
In Germany, it's usually no random pick of a topic, you just go through the entire semester's material over 30-45 minutes and the professor stops to spend more or less time on each topic to explore your knowledge. You can explain things by making sketches on paper. A PhD student sits there quietly taking notes of what was asked and what the student answers approximately. You leave the room, the prof and the PhD student discuss the performance, decide the grade and you come back, and the professor explains the grade and what you did well and not well.