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Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

(www.bloomberg.com)
427 points JumpCrisscross | 2 comments | 20 Oct 24 17:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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lwhi ◴[21 Oct 24 08:16 UTC] No.41901852[source]▶
It is no longer effective to solely use a written essay to measure how deeply a student comprehends a subject.

AI is here to stay; new methods should be used to assess student performance.

I remember being told at school, that we weren't allowed to use calculators in exams. The line provided by teachers was that we could never rely on having a calculator when we need it most—obviously there's irony associated with having 'calculators' in our pockets 24/7 now.

We need to accept that the world has changed; I only hope that we get to decide how society responds to that change together .. rather than have it forced upon us.

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gklitz ◴[21 Oct 24 10:58 UTC] No.41902805[source]▶
Written assay evaluation is not and has never been an effective evaluation. It was always a cost saving measure because allocating 30min face to face time with each individual student for each class is such a gigantic cost for the institution that they cannot even imagine doing it. Think about that the next time you look at your student debt, it couldn’t even buy you 30min time per class individually with the teacher to evaluate your performance. Instead you had to waste more time on a written assignment so they could offload grading to a minimum wage assistent.
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ninalanyon ◴[21 Oct 24 11:47 UTC] No.41903100[source]▶
When I studied physics at Exeter University they still used the tutorial system and finals. Tutorials were held fortnightly; the tutorial groups were typically three or four students. There was no obligation to turn up to lectures or even tutorials. You just had to pass the end of year exams to be allowed to continue to the final. The class of degree that was awarded depended on the open note final exam and the report of the final year project. That report had to be defended orally. Previous years exam papers were available for study as well but the variety of questions that could be asked was so vast that it was rare that any questions were repeated in the finals.

It seems to me that this is pretty much immune to plagiarism as well as being much better for the student.

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noodlesUK ◴[21 Oct 24 14:51 UTC] No.41904819[source]▶
Fellow UK person - the style of exam that you describe is pretty hard to cheat unless you can find another person to go in your place. I think various institutions have tried digital invigilation but have had little success (and I think this is just a bad idea anyway).

However, you also mentioned a final project. You’d be shocked how much commissioning exists where people have their projects produced for them. I’m not talking an overly helpful study group, I mean straight up essay mills. Tools like ChatGPT make the bar for commissioning lower and cheaper. I don’t know how you can combat this and still have long-term projects like dissertations.

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1. dayvid ◴[21 Oct 24 15:08 UTC] No.41905021[source]▶
Had a good friend who tutored college students and a rich middle-eastern student paid him to do a lot of his work for him.
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2. ninalanyon ◴[21 Oct 24 19:44 UTC] No.41907741[source]▶
That won't work in a tutorial system, the student will be quickly discovered to know nothing about the subject. And in open note finals, as in the Exeter Uni. Physics department of the 1970s, regurgitation of course material was of very limited utility because you were never asked for that kind of response. The quantum mechanics final didn't ask a single question that had been directly answered during lectures, it asked us to extend what we had learnt. That exam was what I think Americans might call a 'white knuckle ride'. Open note finals really sort those who understood the subject from those who thought they could just look up the answers, the invigilators spent a lot of time shushing people searching through rucksacks full of notes.

Many years later I took a course in C# at a university in Norway and that was not merely open note but also open book (you could take the set book in). Again that gives the exam author the possibility to really discover who knows what.

I doubt that your rich middle-western student would have passed either of these