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submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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.

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[-] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 131 points 1 year ago

Prof here - take a look at it from our side.

Our job is to evaluate YOUR ability; and AI is a great way to mask poor ability. We have no way to determine if you did the work, or if an AI did, and if called into a court to certify your expertise we could not do so beyond a reasonable doubt.

I am not arguing exams are perfect mind, but I'd rather doubt a few student's inability (maybe it was just a bad exam for them) than always doubt their ability (is any of this their own work).

Case in point, ALL students on my course with low (<60%) attendance this year scored 70s and 80s on the coursework and 10s and 20s in the OPEN BOOK exam. I doubt those 70s and 80s are real reflections of the ability of the students, but do suggest they can obfuscate AI work well.

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 30 points 1 year ago

Here's a somewhat tangential counter, which I think some of the other replies are trying to touch on ... why, exactly, continue valuing our ability to do something a computer can so easily do for us (to some extent obviously)?

In a world where something like AI can come up and change the landscape in a matter of a year or two ... how much value is left in the idea of assessing people's value through exams (and to be clear, I'm saying this as someone who's done very well in exams in the past)?

This isn't to say that knowing things is bad or making sure people meet standards is bad etc. But rather, to question whether exams are fit for purpose as means of measuring what matters in a world where what's relevant, valuable or even accurate can change pretty quickly compared to the timelines of ones life or education. Not long ago we were told that we won't have calculators with us everywhere, and now we could have calculators embedded in our ears if wanted to. Analogously, learning and examination is probably being premised on the notion that we won't be able to look things up all the time ... when, as current AI, amongst other things, suggests, that won't be true either.

An exam assessment structure naturally leans toward memorisation and being drilled in a relatively narrow band of problem solving techniques,^1^ which are, IME, often crammed prior to the exam and often forgotten quite severely pretty soon afterward. So even presuming that things that students know during the exam are valuable, it is questionable whether the measurement of value provided by the exam is actually valuable. And once the value of that information is brought into question ... you have to ask ... what are we doing here?

Which isn't to say that there's no value created in doing coursework and cramming for exams. Instead, given that a computer can now so easily augment our ability to do this assessment, you have to ask what education is for and whether it can become something better than what it is given what are supposed to be the generally lofty goals of education.

In reality, I suspect (as many others do) that the core value of the assessment system is to simply provide a filter. It's not so much what you're being assessed on as much as your ability to pass the assessment that matters, in order to filter for a base level of ability for whatever professional activity the degree will lead to. Maybe there are better ways of doing this that aren't so masked by other somewhat disingenuous goals?

Beyond that there's a raft of things the education system could emphasise more than exam based assessment. Long form problem solving and learning. Understanding things or concepts as deeply as possible and creatively exploring the problem space and its applications. Actually learn the actual scientific method in practice. Core and deep concepts, both in theory and application, rather than specific facts. Breadth over depth, in general. Actual civics and knowledge required to be a functioning member of the electorate.

All of which are hard to assess, of course, which is really the main point of pushing back against your comment ... maybe we're approaching the point where the cost-benefit equation for practicable assessment is being tipped.


  1. In my experience, the best means of preparing for exams, as is universally advised, is to take previous or practice exams ... which I think tells you pretty clearly what kind of task an exam actually is ... a practiced routine in something that narrowly ranges between regurgitation and pretty short-form, practiced and shallow problem solving.
[-] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 69 points 1 year ago

Ah the calculator fallacy; hello my old friend.

So, a calculator is a great shortcut, but it's useless for most mathematics (i.e. proof!). A lot of people assume that having a calculator means they do not need to learn mathematics - a lot of people are dead wrong!

In terms of exams being about memory, I run mine open book (i.e. students can take pre-prepped notes in). Did you know, some students still cram and forget right after the exams? Do you know, they forget even faster for courseworks?

Your argument is a good one, but let's take it further - let's rebuild education towards an employer centric training system, focusing on the use of digital tools alone. It works well, productivity skyrockets, for a few years, but the humanities die out, pure mathematics (which helped create AI) dies off, so does theoretical physics/chemistry/biology. Suddenly, innovation slows down, and you end up with stagnation.

Rather than moving us forward, such a system would lock us into place and likely create out of date workers.

At the end of the day, AI is a great tool, but so is a hammer and (like AI today), it was a good tool for solving many of the problems of its time. However, I wouldn't want to only learn how to use a hammer, otherwise how would I be replying to you right now?!?

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

So ... I honestly think this is a problematic reply ... I think you're being defensive (and consequently maybe illogical), and, honestly, that would be the red flag I'd look for to indicate that there's something rotten in academia. Otherwise, there might be a bit of a disconnect here ... thoughts:

  • The calculator was in reference to arithmetic and other basic operations and calculations using them ... not higher level (or actual) mathematics. I think that was pretty clear and I don't think there's any "fallacy" here, like at all.
  • The value of learning (actual) mathematics is pretty obvious I'd say ... and was pretty much stated in my post about alternatives to emphasise. On which, getting back to my essential point ... how would one best learn and be assessed on their ability to construct proofs in mathematics? Are timed open book exams (and studying in preparation for them) really the best we've got!?
  • Still forgetting with open book exams ... seems like an obvious outcome as the in-exam materials de-emphasise memory ... they probably never knew the things you claim they forget in the first place. Why, because the exam only requires the students to be able to regurgitate in the exam, which is the essential problem, and for which in-exam materials are a perfect assistant. Really not sure what the relevance of this point is.
  • Forgetting after coursework ... how do you know this (genuinely curious)? Even so, course work isn't the great opposite to exams. Under the time crunch of university, they are also often crammed, just not in an examination hall. The alternative forms of education/assessment I'm talking about are much more long-form and exploration and depth focused. The most I've ever remembered from a single semester subject came from when I was allowed to pursue a single project for the whole subject. Also, I didn't mention ordinary general coursework in my post, as, again, it's pretty much the same paradigm of education as exams, just done at home for the most part.
  • Rebuilding education toward employer centric training system ... I ... ummm ... never suggested this ... I suggested the opposite ... only things that were far more "academic" than this and were never geared toward "productivity". This is a pretty bad staw man argument for a professor to be making, especially given that it seems constructed to conclude that the academy and higher learning are essential for the future success of the economy (which I don't disagree with or even question in my post).
  • You speak about AI a lot. Maybe your whole reply was solely to the whole calculator point I made. This, I think, misses the broader point, which most of my post was dedicated to. That is, this isn't about us now needing to use AI in education (I personally don't buy that at all for probably much of the same reason you'd push back on it). Instead, it's about what it means about our education system that AI can kinda do the thing we're using to assess ourselves ... on which I say, it tells us that the value of assessment system we take pretty seriously ought to be questioned, especially, as I think we both agree on, given the many incredibly valuable things education has to offer the individual and society at large. In my case, I go further and say that the assessment system is and has already detracted from these potential offerings, and that it does not bode well for modern western society that it seems to be leaning into the assessment system rather than expanding its scope.
[-] Landrin201@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

OK Mr Socrates how else would you assess whether a student has learned something?

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[-] CapeWearingAeroplane@sopuli.xyz 16 points 1 year ago

I think a central point you're overlooking is that we have to be able to assess people along the way. Once you get to a certain point in your education you should be able to solve problems that an AI can't. However, before you get there, we need some way to assess you in solving problems that an AI currently can. That doesn't mean that what you are assessed on is obsolete. We are testing to see if you have acquired the prerequisites for learning to do the things an AI can't do.

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago
  1. AI isn’t as important to this conversation as I seem to have implied. The issue is us, ie humans, and what value we can and should seek from our education. What AI can or can’t do, IMO, only affects vocational aspects in terms of what sorts of things people are going to do “on the job”, and, the broad point I was making in the previous post, which is that AI being able to do well at something we use for assessment is an opportunity or prompt to reassess the value of that form of assessment.
  2. Whether AI can do something or not, I call into question the value of exams as a form of assessment, not assessment itself. There are plenty of other things that could be used for assessment or grading someone’s understanding and achievement.
  3. The real bottom line on this is cost and that we’re a metric driven society. Exams are cheap to run and provide clean numbers. Any more substantial form of assessment, however much they better target more valuable skills or understanding, would be harder to run. But again, I call into question how valuable all of what we’re doing actually is compared to what we could be doing, however more expensive and whether we should really try to focus more on what we humans are good at (and even enjoy).
[-] ZzyzxRoad@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

Here's a somewhat tangential counter, which I think some of the other replies are trying to touch on ... why, exactly, continue valuing our ability to do something a computer can so easily do for us (to some extent obviously)?

My theory prof said there would be paper exams next year. Because it's theory. You need to be able to read an academic paper and know what theoretical basis the authors had for their hypothesis. I'm in liberal arts/humanities. Yes we still exist, and we are the ones that AI can't replace. If the whole idea is that it pulls from information that's already available, and a researcher's job is to develop new theories and ideas and do survey or interview research, then we need humans for that. If I'm trying to become a professor/researcher, using AI to write my theory papers is not doing me or my future students any favors. Ststistical research on the other hand, they already use programs for that and use existing data, so idk. But even then, any AI statistical analysis should be testing a new hypothesis that humans came up with, or a new angle on an existing one.

So idk how this would affect engineering or tech majors. But for students trying to be psychologists, anthropologists, social workers, professors, then using it for written exams just isn't going to do them any favors.

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

I also used to be a humanities person. The exam based assessments were IMO the worst. All the subjects assessed without any exams were by far the best. This was before AI BTW.

If you’re studying theoretical humanities type stuff, why can’t your subjects be assessed without exams? That is, by longer form research projects or essays?

[-] dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

As they are talking about writing essays, I would argue the importance of being able to do it lies in being able to analyze a book/article/whatever, make an argument, and defend it. Being able to read and think critically about the subject would also be very important.

Sure, rote memorization isn't great, but neither is having to look something up every single time you ever need it because you forgot. There are also many industries in which people do need a large information base as close recall. Learning to do that much later in life sounds very difficult. I'm not saying people should memorize everything, but not having very many facts about that world around you at basic recall doesn't sound good either.

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[-] tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk 5 points 1 year ago

It's an interesting point.. I do agree memorisation is (and always has been) used as more of a substitute for actual skills. It's always been a bugbear of mine that people aren't taught to problem solve, just regurgitate facts, when facts are literally at our fingertips 24/7.

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Yea, it isn’t even a new problem. The exam was questionable before AI.

[-] Spike@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In my experience, the best means of preparing for exams, as is universally advised, is to take previous or practice exams … which I think tells you pretty clearly what kind of task an exam actually is … a practiced routine in something that narrowly ranges between regurgitation and pretty short-form, practiced and shallow problem solving.

You are getting some flak, but imho you are right. The only thing an exam really tests is how well you do in exams. Of course, educators dont want to hear that. But if you take a deep dive into (scientific) literature on the topic, the question "What are we actually measuring here?" is raised rightfully so.

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[-] Phoebe@feddit.de 9 points 1 year ago

Sorry but it was never about OUR abilility in the firts place.

In my country exams are old, outdated and often way to hard. In my country all classes are outdated and way to hard. It often feels that we are stucked in the middle of the 20th century.

You have no change when you have a disability. When you have kids, parents to take care of. Or hell: you have to work, cause you can't effort university otherwise.

So i can totaly understand why students feel the need to use AI to survive that torture. I don't feel sorry for an outdated university system.

When it is about OUR abilility, then create a System that is for students and their needs.

[-] kromem@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Is AI going to go away?

In the real world, will those students be working from a textbook, or from a browser with some form of AI accessible in a few years?

What exactly is being measured and evaluated? Or has the world changed, and existing infrastructure is struggling to cling to the status quo?

Were those years of students being forced to learn cursive in the age of the computer a useful application of their time? Or math classes where a calculator wasn't allowed?

I can hardly think just how useful a programming class where you need to write it on a blank page of paper with a pen and no linters might be, then.

Maybe the focus on where and how knowledge is applied needs to be revisited in light of a changing landscape.

For example, how much more practically useful might test questions be that provide a hallucinated wrong answer from ChatGPT and then task the students to identify what was wrong? Or provide them a cross discipline question that expects ChatGPT usage yet would remain challenging because of the scope or nuance?

I get that it's difficult to adjust to something that's changed everything in the field within months.

But it's quite likely a fair bit of how education has been done for the past 20 years in the digital age (itself a gradual transition to the Internet existing) needs major reworking to adapt to changes rather than simply oppose them, putting academia in a bubble further and further detached from real world feasibility.

[-] SkiDude@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

If you're going to take a class to learn how to do X, but never actually learn how to do X because you're letting a machine do all the work, why even take the class?

In the real world, even if you're using all the newest, cutting edge stuff, you still need to understand the concepts behind what you're doing. You still have to know what to put into the tool and that what you get out is something that works.

If the tool, AI, whatever, is smart enough to accomplish the task without you actually knowing anything, what the hell are you useful for?

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[-] orangeboats@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As an anecdotal though, I once saw someone simply forwarding (ie. copy and pasting) their exam questions to ChatGPT. His answers are just ChatGPT responses, but paraphrased to make it look less GPT-ish. I am not even sure whether he understood the question itself.

In this case, the only skill that is tested... is English paraphrasing.

[-] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

I'll field this because it does raise some good points:

It all boils down to how much you trust what is essentially matrix multiplication, trained on the internet, with some very arbitrarily chosen initial conditions. Early on when AI started cropping up in the news, I tested the validity of answers given:

  1. For topics aimed at 10--18 year olds, it does pretty well. It's answers are generic, and it makes mistakes every now and then.

  2. For 1st--3rd year degree, it really starts to make dangerous errors, but it's a good tool to summarise materials from textbooks.

  3. Masters+, it spews (very convincing) bollocks most of the time.

Recognising the mistakes in (1) requires checking it against the course notes, something most students manage. Recognising the mistakes in (2) is often something a stronger student can manage, but not a weaker one. As for (3), you are going to need to be an expert to recognise the mistakes (it literally misinterpreted my own work at me at one point).

The irony is, education in its current format is already working with AI, it's teaching people how to correct the errors given. Theming assessment around an AI is a great idea, until you have to create one (the very fact it is moving fast means that everything you teach about it ends up out of date by the time a student needs it for work).

However, I do agree that education as a whole needs overhauling. How to do this: maybe fund it a bit better so we're able to hire folks to help develop better courses - at the moment every "great course" you've ever taken was paid for in blood (i.e. 50 hour weeks teaching/marking/prepping/meeting arbitrary research requirement).

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[-] MNByChoice@midwest.social 6 points 1 year ago

Case in point, ALL students on my course with low (<60%) attendance this year scored 70s and 80s on the coursework and 10s and 20s in the OPEN BOOK exam. I doubt those 70s and 80s are real reflections of the ability of the students

I get that this is a quick post on social media and only an antidote, but that is interesting. What do you think the connection is? AI, anxiety, or something else?

[-] Kage520@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

That sounds like AI. If you do your homework then even sitting in a regular exam you should score better than 20%. This exam being open book, it sounds like they were unfamiliar with the textbook and could not find answers fast enough.

[-] adavis@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not the previous poster. I taught an introduction to programming unit for a few semesters. The unit was almost entirely portfolio based ie all done in class or at home.

The unit had two litmus tests under exam like conditions, on paper in class. We're talking the week 10 test had complexity equal to week 5 or 6. Approximately 15-20% of the cohort failed this test, which if they were up to date with class work effectively proved they cheated. They'd be submitting course work of little 2d games then on paper be unable to "with a loop, print all the odd numbers from 1 to 20"

[-] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

It's a tough one because I cannot say with 100% certainty that AI is the issue. Anxiety is definitely a possibility in some cases, but not all; perhaps thinking time might be a factor, or even just good old copying and then running the work through a paraphraser. The large amount of absenses also means it was hard to benchmark those students based on class assessment (yes, we are always tracking how you are doing in class, not tp judge you, but just in case you need some extra help!).

However, AI is a strong contender since the "open book" part didn't include the textbook, it allowed the students to take a booklet into the exams with their own notes (including fully worked examples). They scored low because they didn't understand their own notes, and after reviewing the notes they brought in (all word perfect), it was clear they did not understand the subject.

[-] joel_feila@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Oh an open notes test. Man i never use my notes on those. I try not to use the book on open tests.

[-] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Curious to know your take on why you avoid using the notes - a couple of my students clearly did this in the final and insights onto why would be welcome!

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[-] Spike@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

We have no way to determine if you did the work, or if an AI did, and if called into a court to certify your expertise we could not do so beyond a reasonable doubt.

Could you ever though, when giving them work they had to do not in your physical presence? People had their friends, parents or ghostwriters do the work for them all the time. You should know that.

This is not an AI problem, AI "just" made it far more widespread and easier to access.

[-] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

"Sometimes" would be my answer. I caught students who colluded during online exams, and even managed to spot students pasting directly from an online search. Those were painful conversations, but I offered them resits and they were all honest and passed with some extra classes.

With AI, detection is impossible at the moment.

[-] Smacks@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Graduated a year ago, just before this AI craze was a thing.

I feel there's a social shift when it comes to education these days. It's mostly: "do 500 - 1,000 word essay to get 1.5% of your grade". The education doesn't matter anymore, the grades do; if you pick something up along the way, great! But it isn't that much of a priority.

I think it partially comes from colleges squeezing students of their funds, and indifferent professors who just assign busywork for the sake of it. There are a lot of uncaring professors that just throw tons of work at students, turning them back to the textbook whenever they ask questions.

However, I don't doubt a good chunk of students use AI on their work to just get it out of the way. That really sucks and I feel bad for the professors that actually care and put effort into their classes. But, I also feel the majority does it in response to the monotonous grind that a lot of other professors give them.

[-] mrspaz@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I recently finished my degree, and exam-heavy courses were the bane of my existence. I could sit down with the homework, work out every problem completely with everything documented, and then sit to an exam and suddenly it's "what's a fluid? What's energy? Is this a pencil?"

The worst example was a course with three exams worth 30% of the grade, attendance 5% and homework 5%. I had to take the course twice; 100% on HW each time, but barely scraped by with a 70.4% after exams on the second attempt. Courses like that took years off my life in stress. :(

[-] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

If you don't mind me asking - what kind of degree was it, and what format were the exams?

[-] garibaldi_biscuit@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Student here - How does that cursive longhand thing go again?

[-] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

"Avoid at all costs because we hate marking it even more than you hate writing it"?

An in person exam can be done in a locked down IT lab, and this leads to a better marking experience, and I suspect a better exam experience!

this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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