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Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

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Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#211

Post by coderatlarge »

math_dandy wrote: post #28

I teach math at a large university (30,000 students) and have also gone “back to the earth”, to pen-and-paper, proctored and exams. Students don’t seem to mind this reversion. The administration, however, doesn’t like this trend. They want all evaluation to be remote-friendly, so that the same course with the same evaluations can be given to students learning in person or enrolled online. Online enrollment is a huge…

is it ok for students to submit images of hand-written solutions remotely?

seriously it reminds me of my high school days when a teacher told me i shouldn’t type up my essays because then they couldn’t be sure i actually wrote them.

maybe we will find our way back to live oral exams before long…

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#212

Post by dehrmann »

DrillShopper wrote: post #122
valiant55 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism and the constant thirst for growth is killing society. Since when did universities care almost solely about renevnue and growth?

> Since when did universities care almost solely about renevnue and growth? Since endowments got huge.

Could you explain this more? At first glace, a large endowment should either free you from worrying about revenue or move your focus to managing an endowment with a school as a side hustle.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#213

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

It's not that hard to save remote education accreditation. You just need a test pod.

Take one of those soundproofed office pods, something like what https://framery.com/en/ sells. Stick a computer in it, and a couple of cameras as well. The OS only lets you open what you want to open on it. Have the AI watch the student in real time, and flag any potential cheating behaviors, like how modern AI video baby monitors watch for unsafe behaviors in the crib.

If a $2-3000 pod sounds too expensive for you over the course of your child's education, I'm sure remote schoolers can find ways to rent pods at much cheaper scale, like a gym subscription model. If the classes you take are primarily exam-based anyway you might be able to get away with visiting it once a week or less.

I'm surprised nobody ever brings up this idea. It's obvious you have to fight fire with fire here, unless you want to 10x the workload of any teacher who honestly cares about cheating.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#214

Post by nsagent »

dehrmann wrote: post #205
math_dandy wrote: post #28

I teach math at a large university (30,000 students) and have also gone “back to the earth”, to pen-and-paper, proctored and exams. Students don’t seem to mind this reversion. The administration, however, doesn’t like this trend. They want all evaluation to be remote-friendly, so that the same course with the same evaluations can be given to students learning in person or enrolled online. Online enrollment is a huge…

I attended Purdue. Since I graduated, it launched its "Purdue Global" online education. Rankings don't suggest it's happened yet, but I'm worried it will cheapen the brand and devalue my degree.

I remember sitting with the faculty in charge of offering online courses when I visited as an alum back in 2014. They seemed to look at it as a cash cow in their presentation. They were eager to be at the forefront of online CS degrees at the time.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#215

Post by rixed »

AI for classical education can be an issue, but AI for inverted classes is perfect.

Going to school to listen to a teacher for hours and take notes, sitting in a group of peers to whom you are not allowed to speak, and then going home to do some homework on your own, this whole concept is stupid and deserves to die.

Learning lessons is the activity you should do within the confort of your home, with the help of everything you can including books, AIs, youtube videos or anything that float your boat. Working and practice, on the other hand, are social activities that benefit a lot from interacting with teachers and other students, and deserves to be done collectively at school.

For inverted classes, AI are no problem at all; at the contrary, they are very helpful.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#216

Post by rKarpinski »

sshine wrote: post #69

I teach computer science / programming, and I don't know what a good AI policy is. On the one hand, I use AI extensively for my own learning, and it's helping me a lot. On the other hand, it gets work done quickly and poorly. Students mistake mandatory assignments for something they have to overcome as effortlessly as possible. Once they're past this hurdle, they can mind their own business again. To them, AI is not…

> But every year a small handful of dum-dums made it all the way to exam without having connected two dots, and I have to fail them and tell them that the three semesters they have wasted so far without any teachers calling their bullshit is a waste of life

Wow.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#217

Post by coderatlarge »

grogenaut wrote: post #155
wisty wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't stop people hiring someone who looks similar from sitting the exam, or messages in morse code via Bluetooth. It's hard to stop a palm card. But it stops a casual cheater from having ChatGTP on a second device.

You can. I did a remote proctored exam for the NREMT last year. They had me walk the camera around the room, under the desk, etc. All devices had to be in my backpack. No earbuds. They made me unplug the conference tv on the wall, lift picture frames etc. I had to keep my hands above the table the whole time, I couldn't look down if I was scratching an itch. They installed rootkit software and closed down all of the…

wow, that’s intense. i wonder how much actual cheating they must have caught to arrive at such a draconian model. it would be interesting if they published their statistics to make it clear whether all these things are truly necessary.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#218

Post by userbinator »

grogenaut wrote: post #196
userbinator wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather go take the test in person than subject myself to such extreme surveillance of my own premises.

I'd agree, but I did it at work in a conference room. And I was able to schedule a day out virtually instead of a month out for in person, and I didn't want them taking my fingerprint. I used a spare laptop I wipe.

Making them surveil your employer instead is not a bad idea either.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#219

Post by bee_rider »

timr wrote: post #195
eru wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see why this is so hard, other than the usual intergenerational whining / a heaping pile of student entitlement. You know that grading paper exams is a lot more hassle _for the teachers_? Your overall point might or might not still stand. I'm just responding to your 'I don't see why this is so hard'. Show some imagination for why other people hold their positions. (I'm sure there's lots of other factors tha…

...and yet, somehow we managed? > Show some imagination for why other people hold their positions. I say that as someone who has also graded piles of paper exams in graduate school (also not that long ago!) I don't believe the argument you are making is true, but if the primary objection really is that teachers have to grade , then no, I don't have any sympathy.

It sorta depends on the material… I always thought paper programming tests were dumb: when I was taking them and when I was proctoring/grading them. It is not that similar to writing a program in an IDE where it will tell you if you make a little mistake, and often help you work your way through it.

We made it. But, that’s survivorship bias, right? We can’t really know how much potential has wasted.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#220

Post by dataflow »

rtkwe wrote: post #186
directevolve wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs. The main kind of cheating we need them to prevent is effective cheating - the kind that can meaningfully improve the cheater's score. Requiring cheaters to put their belongings in a locker, using proctor-provided resources, and being monitored in a proctor-provided room puts substantial limits on effective cheating. That's pretty much…

Remote proctoring programs at least are pretty rough these days. Their environment conditions are pretty exacting and then they expect you to just stare at the screen and think for basically the whole exam. Minor normal webcam problems can invalidate the entire exam through no fault of the examee or if you look around or fidget a lot it can trigger their cheat detection as well. I'm glad I finished my test taking tim…

What do they do if you don't have a webcam? Or if your webcam is broken? Or if you don't feel comfortable sharing your video?
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