Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

I’ve been teaching in higher education for 30 years and am soon retiring. I teach math. In every math course there is massive amounts of cheating on everything that is graded that is not proctored in a classroom setting. Locking down browsers and whatnot does not prevent cheating.

The only solution is to require face-to-face proctored exams and not allow students to use technology of any kind while taking the test. But any teacher doing this will end up with no students signing up for their class. The only solution I see is the Higher Learning Commission mandating this for all classes.

But even requiring in person proctored exams is not the full solution. Students are not used to doing the necessary work to learn. They are used to doing the necessary work to pass. And that work is increasingly cheating. It’s a clusterfuck. I have calculus students who don’t know how to work with fractions. If we did truly devise a system that prevents cheating we’ll see that a very high percentage of current college students are not ready to be truly college educated.

K-12 needs to be changed as well.

Personal take: Education / pedagogy needs to pull itself up finally and actually learn to modernize and change the fact that its absolute core model hasn't changed for hundreds of years.

Rote memorization and examinations as being the basis of modern education is the problem here, and frankly I'm glad that many academics are struggling because it should show how terrible most educational programs truly are at actually teaching students and developing knowledge.

Sorry, I'm tired to hear about the crocodile tears from instructors who refuse to adapt how they teach to the needs of students and instead lashing out and taking the easy road out by blaming students for being lazy or cheaters or whatever.

When you can read about a classroom in the 1800s and in 2024 and you realize the model is exactly the same, then this should tell you that your entire model is broken. All of it. The rote lectures, the memorization, the prompting students to demonstrate knowledge through grading. All of it is useless and has been a cargo cult for a long time because (and this is especially bad in higher education) there's no interest or effort in changing the way business is done.

Yeah sorry, no sympathy from me here.