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Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

dailyprincetonian.com

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Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#461

Post by novok »

silver_silver wrote: post #451
nradov wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize with the instructors to an extent, but the reality is that LLMs will be a pervasive part of life going forward. Schools need to completely reinvent their curriculum around that new reality. It's going to be a painful process for instructors accustomed to the old way of teaching.

The reality is that it’s not possible to learn if one offloads the work itself to an LLM

Just like how you significantly increased the difficulty of exams in "open book" exams in the past where the only way to pass the open book exam was to know the material well, you similarly need to increase the difficulty of other work where it won't matter if you have an LLM, because you won't pass without knowing your shit either!

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#462

Post by isaisabella »

Wait, Princeton NEVER have faculty proctoring exams??? Really shocks me but is reasonable for the ivy league. Nowadays, academic integrity is indeed a problem. Almost all students are using AI in their assignments, though it violates the honor code.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#463

Post by bluegatty »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #435
marsten wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. Gone are the days when you could get a C+ average at Harvard and still land a good job or a spot in a prestigious law program – purely by virtue of having gone to Harvard. Everyone is in competition now. Everyone has to prove their worth, all the time. It's more egalitarian but it also creates a lot of stress.

I'm skeptical that it is really more egalitarian in practice, anyways. There is still a lot of bias and in -group preferences present in hiring. Not to mention that most places will weight candidates who are recommended by employees higher than unconnected external applicants. That might be a reasonable filter but it unquestionably is not egalitarian

It's vastly more egalitarian than it was before- - that said, it's still a bit closed, but the manner in which it is closed is more related to 'hyper competition' than anything.

Admissions for elite schools is just crazy - they can't go purely by 'scores', they have gender/national/racial issues which are actual quite real, even if it becomes unfair - there is just no way to do it in the ultra egalitarian way in which some would want.

It's a very scarce resource and that's it.

If it were a 'common' thing - like local state college, then it takes a different form. But the acute nature of the situation really brings out some ugly dynamics.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#464

Post by culi »

busyant wrote: post #346

I was a grad student @ Princeton a handful of decades ago. I was a TA for a few classes and, given the honor code, we did not proctor the exams for undergrads. We just handed them out (left the room) and returned to collect them at the end. - One of the exams in a course that I TAed had 5 free-response questions. - There were also 5 TAs in that class, so we un-stapled the exams and each TA graded one question (for co…

I wish I as a student had this power. I took an exam once for a class I had taken before (transfer student woes). I went into the hall, took the easy exam, turned it in, and left. They lost my test.

I had no idea until 3 weeks later when exam scores were finally uploaded and mine was missing. The quarter was over and what the hell could I possibly do at that point? I had no possible evidence to give to show that I not only took the test but definitely passed because I've already taken the class

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#465

Post by spuz »

porknubbins wrote: post #396
rayiner wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want rage bait, read the proceedings of honor code committees at your school. At least at Northwestern they were public record (sometimes with redaction of identities). The number of people who got off with obviously bullshit excuses was maddening even to read about.

I once was accused and brought before the honor counsel for a really stupid innocent mistake. Basically it was a history worksheet requiring written paragraph answers and I swapped around answers under the wrong questions so the teacher thought I cheated. It was a careless mistake I made because I had lost the original worksheet and was working off a loose leaf copy in the cafeteria at the last minute but it made it…

What is this honour council I've heard in a few comments? I thought Princeton was unique in having and honour system as opposed to strict academic integrity rules.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#466

Post by contubernio »

As professor I see little evidence of an increase in cheating. Microscopic earpieces and remote assistance we're problems already ten-fifteen years ago and copying has always been an issue (I teach mostly engineers who tend to be ahead of the curve at cheating).

What has perhaps changed is that now it is easier to detect cheating because AI assisted cheating is much higher quality. As such it stands out as obvious. The mere fact that a student writes a coherent sentence and a well structured argument normally puts one on alert.

That Princeton has never proctored exams strikes me as farcical. Those honor codes don't work except to support the myth that we are above all that.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#467

Post by contubernio »

twoWhlsGud wrote: post #44
john_strinlai wrote: post #5

huh, i had no idea princeton specifically disallowed proctors, and instead relied on an honor system. seems... like a poorly thought out system, especially given: " 29.9 percent of respondents reported that they had cheated on an assignment or exam during their time at Princeton. 44.6 percent of senior respondents reported knowledge of Honor Code violations that they chose not to report. " crazier is the people prote…

As someone who went there (albeit many decades ago) I can tell you FWIW when I was there folks took it seriously. I literally knew of no one who ever cheated on an exam. And I'm pretty sure that anyone I knew who observed cheating would have taken it seriously enough to bring it to the process. It was pretty much a fixture of how students thought about things. So it worked (near as I could tell) back then. But instit…

I'd guess this is selection bias and naivete more than anything else.

I went to a school with an honor code and cheating was rampant among the premeds and future Obamas.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#468

Post by rapidaneurism »

an0malous wrote: post #370
busyant wrote: post #346

I was a grad student @ Princeton a handful of decades ago. I was a TA for a few classes and, given the honor code, we did not proctor the exams for undergrads. We just handed them out (left the room) and returned to collect them at the end. - One of the exams in a course that I TAed had 5 free-response questions. - There were also 5 TAs in that class, so we un-stapled the exams and each TA graded one question (for co…

She’s probably a banker or VC pulling in $10M a year now

Or started a company, and eventually ended up being convicted for lying to the investors? Who am I kidding? She is probably giving ted talks.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#469

Post by grey-area »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #383
marsten wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academic integrity committees at prestigious schools are horribly lax. They want these types of issues to go away quietly. I have a friend who in college had another student take his test from the "complete" pile, erase my friend's name, and put on his own instead. It was only through blind luck that my friend figured it out. He, the TA, and the professor reported it – with smoking gun proof – but nothing happened. T…

I went to a school that actually tried to enforce it, and unfortunately it ended up being enforced wildly disproportionately along racial lines. My school had a very simple rule: if you were caught cheating, you were expelled. No strikes, no exceptions. That is a massive burden to put on an educator. Getting expelled from your university is a very serious, mandated fork in the road for anyone it happens to. So what d…

The obvious answer would be to make the punishment more proportionate. Caught cheating in an exam? Lose half the marks for that exam (for example).

Expulsion is far too harsh if cheating is widespread but there should be some penalty.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#470

Post by riknos314 »

silver_silver wrote: post #451
nradov wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize with the instructors to an extent, but the reality is that LLMs will be a pervasive part of life going forward. Schools need to completely reinvent their curriculum around that new reality. It's going to be a painful process for instructors accustomed to the old way of teaching.

The reality is that it’s not possible to learn if one offloads the work itself to an LLM

A more accurate phrasing is: It's significantly less likely that one learns the portion of the work they offload to an LLM.

A random anecdote is that most of the people I know who went very far in theoretical math are relatively poor at basic mental arithmetic, because they always think in the abstract and offload addition and multiplication to the calculator. It doesn't mean they can't do it, they just aren't as practiced or as fast at it.

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