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Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

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Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#91

Post by Someone1234 »

lich_king wrote: post #82
Someone1234 wrote: post #6

I've started do this on social media. I got "called out" after using big words or using a - in a sentence. So now I write less good on purpose, so whatever I commented doesn't get drawn into a sidetrack off-topic witch-hunt. As soon as someone yells "witch" you cannot disprove you're not one, and I've even had people put my handwritten comments through "AI detector" websites that "proved" they were AI (they weren't).…

[flagged]

No, I do not post a lot about AI. I am talking about normal social media comments on various topics. Perhaps your writing style doesn't lend itself to such accusations.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#92

Post by ipcress_file »

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #67
abathur wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you that a reasonable way to cope with the current problems is to ensure everything that "counts" is done in a controlled environment, but pedagogy and its goals are vast. There are things you learn from spending several days structuring a 20-page argument that you will not learn (and cannot assess) from oral examination or a 5-paragraph essay written in a blue book.

If you have spent several days structuring a 20 page argument in October on any topic you'll have learnt a great deal about the subject matter. When you get to the exam hall in, say, May it will stand to you. That knowledge will show up in the blue book vis-a-vis the other exam candidates.

This assumes that the assignments and the exam cover the same material. That's not always the case.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#93

Post by kayo_20211030 »

jupp0r wrote: post #78
jazzyjackson wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have end of semester grades be determined by work that is done by the student, not through weekly assignments where it’s trivial to cheat

And what would the goal of that be? I thought the goal of education was... education. The grading is not goal in itself. Will this really motivate kids to do better?

It's to prove that a student is actually educated and has a firm grasp of the course material. If one gets an A every week on AI-assisted submissions, can one make such a claim? And can a teacher make the claim that they've achieved any actual education of the student?

A grade, on a single proctored test, is a crude metric, but at least it would be a brutally fair one.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#94

Post by khazhoux »

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #76
khazhoux wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one exam at the end of the term where the student has an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of the course's subject matter. The resulting grade depends on that, and that alone. I love this idea. And if a student is having a really bad day, or their dog just died, or they have bad cramps, or they have a hard time dealing with the intense stress of your entire grade being decided in one exam... well, those loser stud…

Would you design a system to assess knowledge, avoiding the distortions of AI on weekly submissions, according to the general case or the exceptional case? Accommodations are part of the fabric already. It doesn't seem inconceivable that we couldn't deal with them in exceptional circumstances in a similar way to how it's done today.

How do you propose to avoid "distortions of AI" in your mega-examination?

... well then, why not use those same protections (proctoring, monitoring, auditing) in continuous examination?

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#95

Post by heddycrow »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #79
heddycrow wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one vote for just be the witch if that's what people need from you. Just make it be what you want to say and how you want to say it. And when they come after you, shame them to the best of your ability or treat them like they are not there.

That strategy didn't work out well for the witches of the past...

So what? There's all kinds of things that didn't work in the past that at some point began to work.

It wasn't someone who was primarily motivated by fear of the past that made it work the first time.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#96

Post by reshlo »

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #76
khazhoux wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one exam at the end of the term where the student has an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of the course's subject matter. The resulting grade depends on that, and that alone. I love this idea. And if a student is having a really bad day, or their dog just died, or they have bad cramps, or they have a hard time dealing with the intense stress of your entire grade being decided in one exam... well, those loser stud…

Would you design a system to assess knowledge, avoiding the distortions of AI on weekly submissions, according to the general case or the exceptional case? Accommodations are part of the fabric already. It doesn't seem inconceivable that we couldn't deal with them in exceptional circumstances in a similar way to how it's done today.

How it’s done today is that they rely on your other marks from earlier in the semester to inform how your exam grade should be adjusted. That doesn’t work if there are no other marks to use.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#97

Post by tliltocatl »

Define "worse". I absolutely hated this formal essay style even before LLMs were a thing. All these "on the other side", "in conclusion" patterns with loads of generics of doesn't convey anything useful. And they make it really hard to tell if the writer is pretending to know anything or actually knows their shit but don't know how to write so that doesn't sound like an essay assignment. Good riddance.

On a side note: the fixed-pattern essay thing seems to be an American invention, or at least popularized by the American education system.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#98

Post by jccc »

We’re also training young people to get used to being surveilled by automated black-box tools, and to accept serious real-world consequences from their judgements.

These kinds of things are novel to us and deserving skepticism, but become just the world we live in to them.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#99

Post by varjag »

snyp wrote: post #84
kayo_20211030 wrote: post #40

Perhaps we should not grade students on weekly, or other occasional, writing during the term or semester. How about going back to the old system where, apart from experimental lab work, nothing is graded until the end of the term? All weekly assignments should just be considered prep for one exam at the end of the term where the student has an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of the course's subject matter. They ca…

This approach does not really solve the core issue. In practice, students often do poorly when evaluation is concentrated in one end of term exam. It also pushes many students to cram at the end of the term instead of learning steadily. A better approach is to rethink what we assess and how we assess it. Research shows that the design of assessments plays an important role in academic integrity. Assignments that requ…

It's a noble motivation (and not even unrealistic in 2015) but what you'll get would still be generative output.

If the only remedy is monitored end of term exams, so be it.

Re: Training students to prove they're not robots is pushing them to use more AI

#100

Post by kayo_20211030 »

ipcress_file wrote: post #92
kayo_20211030 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have spent several days structuring a 20 page argument in October on any topic you'll have learnt a great deal about the subject matter. When you get to the exam hall in, say, May it will stand to you. That knowledge will show up in the blue book vis-a-vis the other exam candidates.

This assumes that the assignments and the exam cover the same material. That's not always the case.

That would be really poor course design :-)
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