Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

english.elpais.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 771 posts

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#731

Post by cesarb »

wtrwqyw wrote: post #702
cesarb wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fill the room with typewriters. Playing devil's advocate: one reason I'm good at typing on computers is that I learned on typewriters, which need much more force for each key press, especially the little fingers. Someone who learned on computer keyboards won't have trained the muscles on their fingers as much, and will have a hard time pressing the outer keys strongly enough (and if you press the keys too lightly,…

Electric typewriters were pretty widespread by the 60-70s or so it’s just that they don’t have quite as much “retro” appeal these days ( eg like cassettes vs vinyl)

I saw plenty of mechanical typewriters by the 80s/90s, when I learned typing at school. A relative of mine also taught a typewriter course, with several different mechanical typewriter models. Everyone I know who had a typewriter had a mechanical one. I don't think I've ever seen an electric typewriter in person; I've only read about them in the Internet. They don't seem to have been that widespread to me.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#732

Post by cyberax »

tpoacher wrote: post #662
cyberax wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are studies showing that cursive is better for some purposes: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.... But the results are quite weak. What's really important is handwriting itself. Block letters are honestly fine. Writing in a good cursive (like the Spencerian script) is a bit faster and much easier on your hands, as you don't have to lift the pen as often. But that matters only when you…

> Writing in block letters was seen as a sign of illiteracy How interesting. I've always thought the cyrillic block letters look beautiful, whereas the cursive variant not so much. I learnt some russian and I've never bothered writing cursive because of this perception. Odd to realise now that the average russian seeing my writing would be dismissive instead of impressed!

Cyrillic block letters are mostly the same as Latin letters :)

> Odd to realise now that the average russian seeing my writing would be dismissive instead of impressed!

There's a HUGE difference between learning Russian as a native and as a foreign language. Especially if you can write! Russian spelling rules are quite opaque.

People will absolutely be impressed by your writing.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#733

Post by mlazos »

In the 2010s all of my exams were still hand written and I went to Brown.. has everything really been computerized that much?

I think the tricky part here is essays, but maybe they should be replaced with an oral exam + essays? A lot of the humanities and classics courses I took were pretty small.

Overall I don’t think these problems are that hard, I just don’t know if the incentives of universities align with fixing them. If their reputation is all that it’s for, grades don’t really matter as long as the $$$ is coming in.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#734

Post by Dannymetconan »

jnwatson wrote: post #602
nneonneo wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a special computer works too. I do my exams with our institution's Computer-Based Testing Facility, a bank of computers with fixed software and firewall rules that only permit connections to the exam site. As a result, I've been able to challenge students to solve interactive software security challenges on the midterm and final with automatic grading - something that would have been impossible with pen and pap…

But what's wrong with pen and paper?

I personally find it hard to read my own handwriting sometimes and I really have tried to improve for years. In an exam situation though its extra pressure to write quickly so its very hard to make it legible.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#735

Post by pvaldes »

jnwatson wrote: post #602
nneonneo wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a special computer works too. I do my exams with our institution's Computer-Based Testing Facility, a bank of computers with fixed software and firewall rules that only permit connections to the exam site. As a result, I've been able to challenge students to solve interactive software security challenges on the midterm and final with automatic grading - something that would have been impossible with pen and pap…

But what's wrong with pen and paper?

Unless you do a test type exam, Handwriting gets worse when you are out of time or the space is limited. It also adds a lot of stress because ink can be stuck on the pen or the pen can roll out of the table or be lost.

People perfectly smart, but with cryptic handwriting will have much worse results for the same exam on pen and paper vs with a keyboard.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#736

Post by no-name-here »

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #379
sgustard wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"best not to blame the students" There are dozens for every one who didn't get the opportunity to attend an Ivy. The penalty for cheating should be automatic expulsion. I'll note as a hiring manager the college degree won't be worth shit unless the school can show their students have any integrity.

Yes. Best not blame the technology that was specifically built to pass up automatically generated text for human work, or companies that profit from students using it, or government that won't introduce measures that would at least make it possible to comprehensively ban it on campuses.

Couldn't a similar criticism be made against calculator companies if students used calculators to avoid learning addition, multiplication, etc?

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#738

Post by account42 »

rtpg wrote: post #257
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 30 and “we can’t do tests in paper” seems _insane_. Just how metastatic has ed tech been in what, 9 years since my undergrad?

I had to do "write code on paper" stuff as part of french engineering school entrance exams. It's fine (tho annoying when you lose points to "typos"), but it limits what kinds of problems you can reasonably put on the exam. You'll definitely lean a bit more into theoretical stuff than practicals. Which is fine for some courses, I think a bit less interesting in other courses. Remember, the hand written code is also h…

> tho annoying when you lose points to "typos"

IME, that kind of nitpicky grading mostly happens when the exam was designed too easy and does not depend on the medium.

> Remember, the hand written code is also harder for reviewers to grade! You have to manually run the code in your head, for example

Which you really need to do anyway because code that is broken due to a brainfart and code that is broken because of a fundamental misunderstanding should not receive the same grade.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#739

Post by account42 »

ant6n wrote: post #106
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 30 and “we can’t do tests in paper” seems _insane_. Just how metastatic has ed tech been in what, 9 years since my undergrad?

I’m 40 and forcing students to do handwritten essays during tests has always been stupid. Typing is much faster, why bottleneck ideas by forcing handwriting?

If the writing part is anywhere close to being a bottleneck then the exam is just too easy.

Re: Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown

#740

Post by account42 »

rsanek wrote: post #256
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lecture hall full of click-click-click isn't going to be conducive to concentrating on a test.

If you can't concentrate while people are working on computers near you, I don't think you'll do well in any workplace that is based around knowledge work.

Not every company is an open office hellscape.
Post reply on HN