College professors are going back to paper exams and handwritten essays to fight students using ChatGPT

Technology@lemmy.world – 889 points – 11 months ago

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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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.

Getting flak on social media, through downvotes, can often (though not always!) be a good thing ... means you're touching a nerve or something.

On this point, I don't think I've got any particularly valuable or novel insights, or even any good solutions ... I'm mostly looking for a decent conversation around this issue. Unfortunately, I suspect, when you get everyone to work hard on something and give them prestigious certifications for succeeding at that something, and then do this for generations, it can be pretty hard to convince people to not assign some of their self-worth to the quality/value/meaning of that something and to then dismiss it as less valuable than previously thought. Possibly a factor in this conversation, which I say with empathy.

Any links to some literature?

Used only papers in german so far, sadly.

Here is something I found interesting in english:

Testing the test: Are exams measuring understanding? Brian K. Sato, Cynthia F. C. Hill, S. Lo Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education

in general: elicit.org

really good site.

Hadn't heard of that elicit cite ... thanks! How have you found it? It makes sense that it exists already, but I hadn't really thought about it (haven't looked up papers recently but may soon).

Also thanks for the paper!!

Have found it relatively early after it was created, using it for getting a quick overview over papers when writing my own. It is sooo good for that.

Yea cool. Thanks for this!