Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

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.

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.

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.

What about those of us who can explain our ideas and thinking clearly and in great detail in writing but would struggle to even prove we've heard of the topic orally?

I'm not going to sugar coat it and it may sound harsh, but I doubt this is ever truly an issue outside of the minute edge cases.

Yes, there are people who have trouble with public speaking to a debilitating degree, but it would be excessively rare for someone to not at the very least in a one on one with their professor/teacher be able to be so badly affected as to not seem they've even heard of a topic or at least be able to prove they've worked on it to a certain degree.

I would be immediately skeptical of any student who claims they are completely unable to explain their knowledge unless they are allowed to work in complete isolation with nobody to monitor they aren't cheating in some way.