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College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

sentinelcolorado.com

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Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#161

Post by Aurornis »

nsyne wrote: post #55
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #30

When I did my Computer Science degree the vast majority of courses were 50% final, 30% midterm - even programming exams were hand written, proctored by TAs in class or in the gymnasium - assignments/labs/projects were a small part of your grade but if you didn’t do them the likelihood you’d pass the term exams was pretty darn low. We already had AI proof education.

I personally dislike placing a heavy emphasis on exams. Assignments/projects have been consistently the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of the courses I've taken so far in university. It's a shame that they are also way more susceptible to cheating with AI.

> It's a shame that they are also way more susceptible to cheating with AI.

They were more prone to cheating before AI, too.

Cheating has always existed at some level, but from talking to my couple of friends who teach undergrad level courses the attitudes of students toward cheating have been changing even before AI was everywhere. They would complain about cohorts coming through where cheating was obvious and rampant, combined with administrations who started going soft on cheating because they didn’t want to lose (paying) students.

AI has taken it further, with students justifying it not as cheating but as using tools at their disposal.

I was talking to my friend about this last week and he was frustrated that several of his students had submitted papers that had all the signs of ChatGPT output, so he asked them simple questions about their papers. Most of them “couldn’t remember” what they wrote about.

It’s strange to me because when I went to college getting caught cheating was a big problem that resulted in students getting put on probationary watch and being legitimately scared of the consequences. Now at many schools cheating is routine and students push the boundaries of what they can get their classes to accept because they have no fear of any punishment. YMMV depending on the institution

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#162

Post by resident423 »

lombasihir wrote: post #154
resident423 wrote: post #152

Is there really much point though? I think AI will keep improving, and there will be more and more incentive to use an AI which costs $20/month, instead of a human writer that costs $30/hour. If someone want's an article written, and if people like the AI article as much as the human one, what stops anyone everyone using AI? The only answer I can think of is that people must believe AI writing will stay below human l…

i dont think that way, ai will became better, but human-taste writing just feels different. like hand-made furniture vs factory-made furniture. they have different class.

I think the AI writing becoming better means it will appear more human rather than like better AI writing. I think the difference in feeling is similar to early attempts to generate faces with AI, which also seemed wierdly wrong in ways which were hard to describe, but now it's very hard to tell them apart.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#163

Post by zoom6628 »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #30

When I did my Computer Science degree the vast majority of courses were 50% final, 30% midterm - even programming exams were hand written, proctored by TAs in class or in the gymnasium - assignments/labs/projects were a small part of your grade but if you didn’t do them the likelihood you’d pass the term exams was pretty darn low. We already had AI proof education.

When I did tertiary studies in programming there wasn't AI but we did our programming exams in pencil and paper. The "beneficial" prep we had and I had since high school was using punch cards. And 24h turnaround time for compiles. That really makes you think. And you learn how to desk check even thousand line programs. Intense focus, structuring for readability (to catch typos) and simplicity (catch logic errors) helped enormously. Was not unusual to change hundred lines of code and submit knowing that it wouldn't compile but will throw up the other errors I couldn't find. Our exams would give us 4-6 attempts for clean compile AND correct output. The only space where I experience same challenge now (40+ yrs later) is embedded code. Desktops and web stuff have LSPs and dynamic reloads and interpreted code (not a thing for me when learning) with instant feedback.

Lots of skills from those old days that have been lost/ignored in the pretence of productivity.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#164

Post by Aurornis »

whartung wrote: post #9

What's interesting is that as I understand, folks are using things like Google Docs for papers, and that it's (apparently) straight forward to do analysis on a Google Doc to see, well, the life of the document. How it was typed in, how fast, what was pasted and cut back out. My understanding is that the Google Doc is not a word processing document, it's an event recording of a word processor. So, in theory, you could…

This would take about 1 day for some student to realize you can instruct one of the LLMs to operate the computer screen for you and have it type and fake edit a document for you. The tip would spread among the cheaters and the metric would become harder to judge by itself.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#165

Post by zoom6628 »

FWIW my Dad taught me how to type at 4yo on a huge Imperial typewriter. My spelling took an enormous leap in capability in a few weeks. Primary school teachers were amazed at the words I could spell correctly. (Didn't help my handwriting though which was still like intoxicated chicken scratch on a good day).

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#167

Post by malux85 »

zoom6628 wrote: post #163
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #30

When I did my Computer Science degree the vast majority of courses were 50% final, 30% midterm - even programming exams were hand written, proctored by TAs in class or in the gymnasium - assignments/labs/projects were a small part of your grade but if you didn’t do them the likelihood you’d pass the term exams was pretty darn low. We already had AI proof education.

When I did tertiary studies in programming there wasn't AI but we did our programming exams in pencil and paper. The "beneficial" prep we had and I had since high school was using punch cards. And 24h turnaround time for compiles. That really makes you think. And you learn how to desk check even thousand line programs. Intense focus, structuring for readability (to catch typos) and simplicity (catch logic errors) hel…

Yeah i really valued learning to code when I didn't have the internet available, if taught me patience and deep thinking, problem decomposition and organic (brain) execution

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#169

Post by sarchertech »

llbbdd wrote: post #147
sarchertech wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No wasted time You just said that it was a waste of time. So was it or not? > that option is also trivially available outside of college, it's called “email”. How many experts have you cold emailed over the years and how much of their time have you taken?

It would have been more wasted time had I continued after a single year. I went to my first year of college on the advice of my well-meaning parents who are old and like most old people thought it was still important, and yet they agreed with my decision to leave after the first year on an offer for a real six-figure job because there was nothing to learn that I hadn't or couldn't have learned on my own. At least one…

> At least one of my own professors also openly wondered why I was there at all.

I think you completely misunderstood this interaction.

There are 2 possible explanations.

1. You are so smart/knowledgeable that the professor thinks you are beyond college.

2. You were acting like such an arrogant know-it-all that the professor was being sarcastic.

I’ve seen #1, but I’ve seen #2 many times.

You sound like you have a huge chip on your shoulder about not having a degree. I had the same issue at one point before I went back and finished (after working as a professional developer for a while), so I recognize it.

When I did go back, I asked questions in class, I went to office hours to ask questions, and I did research projects with professors. Some back of the envelope math says it would have costs me about twice what I got out owing if I’d paid for an equal amount of time with whatever experts I could find.

My strong suspicion based on the few posts I’ve read is that your attitude is the reason you had such poor interactions with instructors.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#170

Post by pesus »

ninjahawk1 wrote: post #122

In one of my classes the approach was the opposite, I’m expected to do Ph.D level work as an undergrad and am expected to use AI. In a different one she just said so long as you say AI was used you’re fine to use it. In the rest of them AI is considered cheating. To say we have discrepancies in the rules in an understatement. No one seems to have the exact answer on how to do it. I personally feel like expecting Ph.D…

I'm really not seeing how you can do PhD level work as an undergrad. You wouldn't have the foundational knowledge necessary to do PhD level work, and you have no idea how much of what you're learning is accurate.
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