College professors are going back to paper exams and handwritten essays to fight students using ChatGPT::The growing number of students using the AI program ChatGPT as a shortcut in their coursework has led some college professors to reconsider their lesson plans for the upcoming fall semester.
I think that’s actually a good idea? Sucks for e-learning as a whole, but I always found online exams (and also online interviews) to be very easy to game.
Really sucks for people with disabilities and handwriting issues.
It’s always sucked for them, and it always will. That’s why we make accommodations for them, like extra time or a smaller/move private exam hall.
And readers/scribes! I’ve read and scribed for a friend who had dyslexia in one of her exams and it worked really well. She finished the exam with time to spare and got a distinction in the subject!
Yep, my girlfriend acted as a scribe for disabled students at a university. She loved it, and the students were able to complete their written work and courses just fine as a result.
My handwriting has always been terrible. It was a big issue in school until I was able to turn in printed assignments.
Like with a lot of school things, they do a shit thing without thinking about negative effects. They always want a simple solution to a complex problem.
My uni just had people with handwriting issues do the exam in a separate room with a writer for you to narrate answers to.
People have been going to universities for millennia before the advent of computers, we have lots of ways to help people with disabilities that don’t require computers.
What should they do then?
deleted by creator
Still need to proctor them because people have phones
It does, but hopefully thats what competent accomodation policies are for
They can accommodate those people
I did my undergrad 2008-2012, we had zero online exams. Every exam was in person and hand written. People with disabilities were accommodated, usually with extra writing time for those that need it, or a separate room with a writer for you to narrate to.
It’s really not a terrible issue, and something universities have been able to deal with for centuries.
I agree, I think a good compromise like school owned, locked down devices would still achieve the same thing
Handwriting an essay means I’m giving 90% of my energy and time to drawing ugly squiggles and 10% to making a sensible argument. If I’m allowed to use a computer, it’s 99% sensible argument and 1% typing. Surely this will not have any impact on the quality of the text the teachers have to read…
deleted by creator
AI was never about making our lives easier. It’s been a corporate tool out of the gate.
But this kind of thing really should be handled by Washington, and maybe it would be if we had a functional Congress. Make it illegal for AI companies to sell their services to people for the purpose of cheating or impersonation.
Make it illegal for AI companies to sell their services to people for the purpose of cheating or impersonation.
How would that work? How do you know someone is cheating? AI can be a great studying tool and those same functions could be considered cheating based on the context that the user is using them in. There’s no way to tell what the user’s intent is.
has led some college professors to reconsider their lesson plans for the upcoming fall semester.
I’m sure they’ll write exams that actually require an actual understanding of the material rather than regurgitating the seminar PowerPoint presentations as accurately as possible…
No? I’m shocked!
We get in trouble if we fail everyone because we made them do a novel synthesis, instead of just repeating what we told them.
Particularly for an intro course, remembering what you were told is good enough.
The first step to understanding the material is exactly just remembering what the teacher told them.
Thats a shitty system from both sides.
Meh. I haven’t been in Uni in over 20 years. But it honestly seems kind of practical to me.
Your first year is usually when you haven’t even settled on a major. Intro classes are less about learning and more about finding out if you CAN learn, and if you’ll actually like the college experience or drop out after your first year.
The actual learning comes when the crowd has been whittled to those who have the discipline to be there.
I’m glad you had a better experience than mine on academia. Still wanting that time back.
if you CAN learn
I always found this argument completely unsatisfactory…
Imagine someone coming up to you and saying “you must learn to juggle otherwise you can’t be a fisherman” and then after 14 years of learning to juggle, they say “you don’t actually need to know how to juggle, we just had to see if you CAN learn. Now I can teach you to fish.”
You’d be furious. But, because we all grew up with this nonsense we just accept it. Everyone can learn, there’s just tons of stuff that people find uninteresting to learn, and thus don’t unless forced; especially when the format is extremely dry, unengaging, and you’ve already realized… You’re never going to need to know how to juggle to be a fisherman… ever.
The show “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?” (IMO) accurately captures just how worthless 90% of that experience is to the average adult. I’ve forgotten so much from school, and that’s normal.
The actual learning comes when the crowd has been whittled to those who have the discipline to be there.
Also this is just ridiculous, “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
You do realize you get to choose which courses to take in undergrad right? Universities aren’t forcing you to take any of the courses, you choose ones in subjects you are interested in, and first year is to get you up to speed/introduce you to those subjects, so you can decide if you want to study them further.
once you have a major or specialist, then yeah, you have some required courses, but they do tend to be things very relevant to what you want to do.
You do realize you get to choose which courses to take in undergrad right? Universities aren’t forcing you to take any of the courses, you choose ones in subjects you are interested in, and first year is to get you up to speed/introduce you to those subjects, so you can decide if you want to study them further.
That’s not true at all, every degree has a required core curriculum at every university I’ve ever heard of (e.g., humanities, some amount of math, some amount of English, etc). It also says nothing for the K-12 years.
In my university you had breadth requirements, but it was 1 humanities course, 1 social science, and 1 science, and you could pick any course within those areas to fulfill the requirement. So you had a lot of choice within the core curriculum. Man, if other unis aren’t doing that, that sucks.
My favourite lecturer at uni actually did that really well. He also said the exam was small and could be done in about an hour or two but gave us a 3 hour timeslot because he said he wanted us to take our time and think about each problem carefully. That was a great class.
IME, a lot of professors liked to write exams that specifically didn’t cover anything from the PowerPoint presentations lol
There are places where analog exams went away? I’d say Sweden has always been at the forefront of technology, but our exams were always pen-and-paper.
Same in Germany
Norway has been pushing digital exams for quite a few years, to the point where high school exams went to shit for lots of people this year because the system went down and they had no backup (who woulda thought?). In at least some universities most of or all exams have been digital for a couple years.
I think this is largely a bad idea, especially on engineering exams, or any exam where you need to draw/sketch or write equations. For purely textual exams, it’s fine. This has also lead to much more multiple-choice or otherwise automatically corrected questions, which the universities explicitly state is a way of cutting costs. I think that’s terrible, nothing at university level should be reduced to a multiple choice question. They should be forbidden.
Covid forced the transition to electronic exams in many areas.
Here we went back as quickly as possible because electronic exams are hell
The university I went to explicitly did in person written exams for pretty much all exams specifically for anti-cheating (even before the age of ChatGPT). Assignments would use computers and whatnot, but the only way to reliably prevent cheating is to force people to write the exams in carefully controlled settings.
Honestly, probably could have still used computers in controlled settings, but pencil and paper is just simpler and easier to secure.
One annoying thing is that this meant they also usually viewed assignments as untrusted and thus not worth much of the grade. You’d end up with assignments taking dozens of hours but only worth, say, 15% of your final grade. So practically all your grade is on a couple of big, stressful exams. A common breakdown I had was like 15% assignments, 15% midterm, and 70% final exam.
They’re about to find out that gen Z has horrible penmanship.
Millennial here, haven’t had to seriously write out anything consistently in decades at this point. There’s no way their handwriting can be worse than mine and still be legible lol.
Same and times I’ve had to write my hand cramped up so quickly from those muscles not being active for years
Actually that is a sign of dysgraphia.
You’d be so surprised. From my interactions with my younger cousins and in laws, they can’t even write in cursive.
As much as I like using cursive, it’s not a necessary writing style and wasn’t taught to me in elementary. I’m 32, so it’s been out of the curriculum here for quite some time.
If you’re going to write, by hand multiple essays in a blue book/exam format throughout a 4-10 year post high school period. You need cursive. It’s faster, easier on the wrist and fingers and easier to read.
I’m in the weird in between gen z and millennial. I only use cursive to sign my name and read grandma’s Christmas card. Frankly, it’s not useful for me. I’m glad we spent the time in school taking typing classes instead of cursive.
What is crazy to me is that my youngest cousins (in their early teens) use the hunt and peck method to type. Despite that, they’re not super slow. I was absolutely shocked when I found that out. I think it was all the years of using a phone or tablet instead of an actual keyboard that created a habit.
What is crazy to me is that my youngest cousins (in their early teens) use the hunt and peck method to type.
They don’t have typing classes anymore. Crazy I know. But my gen Z relatives do the same thing.
Last week of school i found out my history teacher took all my handwritten things too the language teacher and had her copy it into legibility i felt so bad for that lady.
I block print and vary caps and lowercase fairly randomly. I have particular trouble with the number 5. I guess it’s legible, but it sure ain’t pretty. It’s also fucking torture, and I would walk right out of school if this were done to me. Oh yeah, I’m Gen X.
You’d be surprised. My daughter (13) has better penmanship than I do (46). Although I’m sure my left-handedness doesn’t help there.
I have horrible penmanship as a millennial, I was typing from around 6 on
Am I wrong in thinking student can still generate an essay and then copy it by hand?
Not during class. Most likely a proctored exam. No laptops, no phones, teacher or proctor watching.
Only if you memorize it. In which case, why not just memorize the test material?
My first thought was exactly this.
Sounds like effort, I’m making a font out of my handwriting and getting a 3d printer to write it
Obviously that is the next step for the technically inclined, but even the less inclined may be capable of generating them copying to save time and brain effort.
When I was in College for Computer Programming (about 6 years ago) I had to write all my exams on paper, including code. This isn’t exactly a new development.
So what you’re telling me is that written tests have, in fact, existed before?
What are you some kind of education historian?
He’s not pointing out that handwritten tests are not something new, but that using handwritten tests over typing them to reflect the student’s actual abilities is not new.
I had some teachers ask for handwritten programming exams too (that was more like 20 years ago for me) and it was just as dumb then as it is today. What exactly are they preparing students for? No job will ever require the skill of writing code on paper.
What exactly are they preparing students for? No job will ever require the skill of writing code on paper.
Maybe something like, a whiteboard interview…? They’re still incredibly common, especially for new grads.
A company that still does whiteboard interviews one I have no interest in working for. When I interview candidates I want to see how they will perform in their job. Their job will not involve writing code on whiteboards, solving weird logic problems, or knowing how to solve traveling salesman problem off the top of their heads.
And what happens when you run into the company that wants people who can prove they conceptually understand what the hell it is they’re doing on their own, which requires a whiteboard?
I program as a hobby and I’ll jot down code and plans for programs on paper when I am out and about during the day. The fuck kind of dystopian hellhole mindset do you have where you think all that matters is doing the bare minimum to survive? You know that life means more than that, don’t you?
The ability to conceptually understand what they’re doing is exactly what I’m testing for when interviewing. Writing a full program on a whiteboard is definitely not required for that. I can get that from asking them question, observing how they approach the problem, what kind of questions they ask me etc.
I definitely don’t want them to do just the bare minimum to survive or to need to ask me for advice at every step (had people who ended up taking more of my time than it would’ve taken me to do their job myself).
I’ve never needed to write more than a short snippet of code at a time on a whiteboard, slack channel, code review, etc. in my almost 20 years in the industry. Definitely not to solve a whole problem blindly. In fact I definitely see it as a red flag when a candidate writes a lot of code without ever stopping to execute and test each piece individually. It simply becomes progressively more difficult to debug the more you add to it, that’s common sense.
Which is equally useless. In the end you’re developing a skill that will only be used in tests. You’re training to be evaluated instead of to do a job well.
deleted by creator
I personally never had a problem performing well in those tests, I happen to have the skill to compile code in my head, and it is a helpful skill in my job (I’ve been a software engineer for 19 years now), but it’s definitely not a required skill and should not be considered as such.
Education is not just for getting a job, you dink.
Same. All my algorithms and data structures courses in undergrad and grad school had paper exams. I have a mixed view on these but the bottom line is that I’m not convinced they’re any better.
Sure they might reflect some of the student’s abilities better, but if you’re an evaluator interested in assessing student’s knowledge a more effective way is to make directed questions.
What ends up happening a lot of times are implementation questions that ask from the student too much at once: interpretation of the problem; knowledge of helpful data structures and algorithms; abstract reasoning; edge case analysis; syntax; time and space complexities; and a good sense of planning since you’re supposed to answer it in a few minutes without the luxury and conveniences of a text editor.
This last one is my biggest problem with it. It adds a great deal of difficulty and stress without adding any value to the evaluator.
You can still have AI write the paper and you copy it from text to paper. If anything, this will make AI harder to detect because it’s now AI + human error during the transferring process rather than straight copying and pasting for students.
Noooo. That’s a genious countermeasure without any obvious drawbacks!!1! /s
Can we just go back to calling this shit Algorithms and stop pretending its actually Artificial Intelligence?
It actually is artificial intelligence. What are you even arguing against man?
Machine learning is a subset of AI and neural networks are a subset of machine learning. Saying an LLM (based on neutral networks for prediction) isn’t AI because you don’t like it is like saying rock and roll isn’t music
I am arguing against this marketing campaign, that’s what. Who decides what “AI” is and how did we come to decide what fits that title? The concept of AI has been around a long time, like since the Greeks, and it had always been the concept of a made-made man. In modern times, it’s been represented as a sci-fi fantasy of sentient androids. “AI” is a term with heavy association already cooked into it. That’s why calling it “AI” is just a way to make it sound high tech futuristic dreams-come-true. But a predictive text algorithm is hardly “intelligence”. It’s only being called that to make it sound profitable. Let’s stop calling it “AI” and start calling out their bullshit. This is just another crypto currency scam. It’s a concept that could theoretically work and be useful to society, but it is not being implemented in such a way that lives up to its name.
Who decides what “AI” is
Appearently you.
Who decides what “AI” is and how did we come to decide what fits that title?
Language is ever-evolving, but a good starting point would be McCarthy et al., who wrote a proposal back in the 50s. See http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html
Techniques have come into and gone out of fashion, and obviously technology has improved, but the principles have not fundamentally changed.
The field of computer science decided what AI is. It has a very specific set of meanings and some rando on the Internet isn’t going to upend decades of usage just because it doesn’t fit their idea of what constitutes AI or because they think it’s a marketing gimmick.
It’s not. It’s a very specific field in computer science that’s been worked on since the 1950s at least.
The issue is to laypeople the term AI presents the idea of actual intelligence at a human level. Which computer science doesn’t require for something to qualify as AI
Leads to lay people attributing more ability to the llm than they actually posses.
Agreed. That said, I am uncomfortable with the idea that policing language is the correct or only solution to the problem.
Do the LLMs of the current craze meet that specific definition?
But then the investor wont throw wads of money at these fancy tech companies
Maybe machine learning models technically fit the definition of “algorithm” but it suits them very poorly. An algorithm is traditionally a set of instructions written by someone, with connotations of being high level, fully understood conceptually, akin to a mathematical formula.
A machine learning model is a soup of numbers that maybe does something approximately like what the people training it wanted it to do, using arbitrary logic nobody can expect to follow. “Algorithm” is not a great word to describe that.
Please let’s not defame Djikstra and other Algorithms like this. Just call them “corporate crap”, like what they are.
This thinking just feels like moving in the wrong direction. As an elementary teacher, I know that by next year all my assessments need to be practical or interview based. LLMs are here to stay and the quicker we learn to work with them the better off students will be.
And forget about having any sort of integrity or explaining to kids why it’s important for them to know how to do shit themselves instead of being wholly dependent on corporate proprietary software whose accessibility can and will be manipulated to serve the ruling class on a whim 🤦
wholly dependent on corporate proprietary software
FLOSS would want a word with you.
The way we have allowed corporations to take over the internet as a whole is deeply problematic for those reasons too, I agree with you. And it’s awful seeing what we’ve become.
Good luck doing one on one assessments in a uni course of 300+
This isn’t exactly novel. Some professors allow a cheat sheet. But that just means that the exam will be harder.
Physics exam that allows a cheat sheet asks you to derive the law of gravity. Well, OK, you write the answer at the bottom pulled from you cheat sheet. Now what? If you recall how it was originally created you probably write Newtons three laws at the top of your paper… And then start doing some math.
Calculus exam that let’s you use wolfram alpha? Just a really hard exam where you must show all of your work.
Now, with ChatGPT, it’s no longer enough to have a take home essay to force students to engage with the material, so you find news ways to do so. Written, in person essays are certainly a way to do that.
Hate to break it to you, but you picked probably the one law in physics that is empirically derived. There is no mathematical equation to derive newton’s law of gravity.
Yes but you can still start with Kepler and newton’s three laws and with basic math skills recreate the equation. I know, because it was on a physics exam I took ten years ago.
as someone with wrist and hand problems that make writing a lot by hand, I’m so lucky i finished college in 2019
deleted by creator
Well if i go back to school now im fucked i cant read my own hand writting.
Chat GPT - answer this question, add 4 consistent typos. Then hand transcribe it.
