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Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

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Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#81

Post by kkylin »

ipcress_file wrote: post #39
Syzygies wrote: post #36

One can't have an informed opinion on this without witnessing how grading a college exam takes place, first hand. Grading a stack of blue books is a "just kill me now" brutal experience. A majority of cognitive effort is just finding the page for the next problem to grade, with finding the answer another delay; any programming language with this kind of access latency would stay a "one bus" language. So of course pro…

I think problem number one is that you had 200 exams to grade.

This is not an uncomon situation in e.g., math departments across the US. Luckily I've not had to grade more then 60-70 in a single term, or ~200 but a select number of problems in a large course.

Also, second stapled exams with prescribed spaces for answers. So much time wasted just looking for where the answer is.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#82

Post by spike021 »

twic wrote: post #70
OptionOfT wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They come to me after passing a challenging online test that has controls to check for browser focus lost, opening new tabs etc. These are the absolute worst. You're taking people out of their comfort zone (highly customized IDE like JetBrains / VSCode / Vim) which cause them to lose shortcuts and decently working intellisense. Yes, my TypeScript in my projects is configured in such a way that I get way more inform…

The flip side is that the expectation is not very high. The interviewer knows you're not working in a proper professional coding environment, so they don't expect proper professional code. They do expect you to be able to produce basic working code without those tools, and to think about the problem, which does not require tools.

>The interviewer knows you're not working in a proper professional coding environment, so they don't expect proper professional code

Everyone says this over the years, even before AI, and I've never felt it made the slightest difference in how they rate me.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#83

Post by kkylin »

mlpoknbji wrote: post #64
Syzygies wrote: post #36

One can't have an informed opinion on this without witnessing how grading a college exam takes place, first hand. Grading a stack of blue books is a "just kill me now" brutal experience. A majority of cognitive effort is just finding the page for the next problem to grade, with finding the answer another delay; any programming language with this kind of access latency would stay a "one bus" language. So of course pro…

This problem is solved by software like gradescope. Makes grading extremely fast and much more consistent (because of easy rubric adjustments on the fly). This is more concerning a STEM exam, admittedly I don't know how well this works on humanities essays.

Gradescope partially solves the problem. There are certain kinds of questions that are more amenable to rigid rubrics (e.g., techniques of integration in a beginning calculus course) where the space of correct solutions is rather limited. Once the material gets more advanced, the space of correct (and partially correct) solutions gets really large, fast. One could design exam questions to restrict the solution space, but sometimes at the cost of testing real understanding. Also, at that point giving partial credit with Gradescope-style rubrics is not always straightforward (not impossible, but not trivial).

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#84

Post by bigmattystyles »

refulgentis wrote: post #67
mlpoknbji wrote: post #12

The commenters lamenting this trend presumably have not given a takehome assignment to college students in recent years. The problem is huge and in class tests are basically the only way to test if students are learning. Unfortunately this doesn't solve the problem of AI assisted cheating on in-class exams, which is shockingly prevalent these days at least in STEM settings.

I'm curious, how is AI assistance on an in class exam even possible? I can't picture how AI changed anything from, say, post-iPhone. i.e. I expect there to be holes in security re: bathroom breaks, but even in 2006 they confiscated cell phones during exams. I guess what I'm asking is, how did AI shift the status quo for in class exams over, say, Safari?

Kaplan (?) seems to have this figured out. When I went in for GREs 15ish years ago, it felt like going into a minimum security prison. I could see those being popular as interview centers. Big company pays some company certified to provide AI free certified interview rooms.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#85

Post by msgodel »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #43
ipcress_file wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never stopped using them, with the exception of the pandemic year, when we were forced to run online exams. Why replace a system that generally works well with one that introduces additional potential problems?

Same here. Online instruction / learning can work for some people, and that's good. I don't understand how anyone ever thought that an online exam could be made secure. There's just no way to ensure that the person who registered for the course is the one taking the exam when you don't control anything about the hardware or location, when students have a wide variety of hardware that you must support, and any attempt…

The way you do online exams is by contracting other universities proctored test centers and making students attend the nearest one on exam day.

There's a whole system for this, it already works very well if people actually wanted to make online exams work. Of course it's not "social distancing" so it didn't help with covid.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#86

Post by djoldman »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #68
refulgentis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, how is AI assistance on an in class exam even possible? I can't picture how AI changed anything from, say, post-iPhone. i.e. I expect there to be holes in security re: bathroom breaks, but even in 2006 they confiscated cell phones during exams. I guess what I'm asking is, how did AI shift the status quo for in class exams over, say, Safari?

People bring in second phones: one to have confiscated, one to use on the exam. A common mode I have seen is phone in lap, front-facing camera ingests an exam page hung over the edge of the desk. Student then flips the page and looks down for the answer.

It's relatively straightforward to immediately suspend test takers for a semester and expel them on a second infraction.

Administrations won't allow it because they just don't care enough. It's a pain dealing with complaining parents and students.

In any case, cheating has existed since forever. There is nothing much new about cheating in in-class exams now with AI than before without.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#87

Post by ramenbytes »

rubidium wrote: post #77
hollandheese wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Blue books are typically used for essays and are graded whole. I've never seen anyone attempt blue books for anything else.

I used them in graduate physics courses 2008-2010

And I used them in a graduate physics course last fall.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#88

Post by op00to »

sarchertech wrote: post #24
nxobject wrote: post #8

As someone whose college papers always went through multiple drafts, I genuinely hope that the "joy" the author feels doesn't get in the way of teaching writing skills. And, as someone who got paid minimum wage to proctor tests in college, I couldn't keep a straight face at this: > The most cutting-edge educational technology of the future might very well be a stripped-down computer lab, located in a welcoming campus…

We had a math lab where you could go do your math homework and the majority of the student assistants were great. Same with the undergrad lab assistants in physics labs.

Writing labs exist. What’s the existence of tutoring and assistance have to do with anything?

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#89

Post by djoldman »

It's hard to have any substantial sympathy for the troubles of teaching private US college and university students.

Given the absolutely wild increases in tuition, administrations should have massive resources to bring to bear to solving this and other problems.

The reasons they don't feel more like excuses than legitimate explanations.

Re: Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

#90

Post by refulgentis »

djoldman wrote: post #86
i_am_proteus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People bring in second phones: one to have confiscated, one to use on the exam. A common mode I have seen is phone in lap, front-facing camera ingests an exam page hung over the edge of the desk. Student then flips the page and looks down for the answer.

It's relatively straightforward to immediately suspend test takers for a semester and expel them on a second infraction. Administrations won't allow it because they just don't care enough. It's a pain dealing with complaining parents and students. In any case, cheating has existed since forever. There is nothing much new about cheating in in-class exams now with AI than before without.

I am amenable to this argument (am GP), however I do think this is unique.

AI is transformative here, in toto, in the total effect on cheating, because its the first time you can feasibly "transfer" the question in with a couple muscle-memory taps. I'm no expert, but I assume there's a substantive difference between IDing someone doing 200 thumb taps for ~40 word question versus 2.

(part I was missing personally was that they can easily have a second phone. same principle as my little bathroom-break-cheatsheet in 2005 - can't find what's undeclared, they're going to be averse to patting kids down)

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