Students are relying on AI so heavily that universities are being forced to fundamentally rethink how they grade their work.
England’s higher education regulator, the Office for Students, is warning universities that they may need to replace traditional take-home essays and open-book exams with supervised assessments that prevent students from relying on artificial intelligence to do their work.
AI-detection tools are too unreliable to consistently determine whether students have used the technology, the OfS said in a report published Wednesday.
I did exams for Java and C++ with a pen and a paper. No books, laptops were too expensive, and no one was using this new wifi thing. It should be easy: a sheet of paper and a pen.
Uuugh… I hated having to write Java and C++ for tests and quizzes. That fucking sucked. Fortunately, that was only a problem during our first year. Starting our sophomore year, we submitted code projects to the server. No more having to write that shit down.
There was still writing down lots of code in our notes during lectures, though.
I once had to do two entire semesters on coding in RPG IV with only pencil and paper. We only got actual access to the school’s AS/400 server after, during the third semester. Kids and their AI slop these days… pfft
I stopped taking coding classes because we had to handwrite code and syntax was part of it. I’d be getting 60% on tests not because the code was wrong, but because I forgot to put a semicolon at the end of every line. Something that notepad++ did for me.
Actually, programming classes flipped my normal grade situation. Normally, I’d get 0% on homework (never did it) and 100% on tests, for a B/C average. My coding classes I’d get 100% on homework (I actually enjoyed it) and 60-70% on tests.
Sounds like you had trouble learning the importance of semicolons for separating statements.
I mean. Not really? I understand the need for proper sytax in separating statements, I just hate memorizing shit. That’s why I usually code with documentation open to check my syntax, and often rely on stuff like notepad++ to handle basic syntax for me. That way I can focus on doing the thing I want to accomplish, as opposed to spending time on glorified spell check.
That being said, I’m a chemical engineer, not a software engineer. I’m sure it becomes second nature given enough time.
I think the thing that annoyed me the most is that if you forgot proper syntax, you’d just lose points. In comparison, if I was taking a physics test and forgot an important formula, I could derive the formula I needed from basic principles relatively easily. No such luck with syntax. You either know it or you don’t.
Yeah, that’s part of the challenge of languages in general. I agree that physics is easier - I, too, would just re-derive forgotten formulas from first principles. But ad least language syntax shares commonalities, and is far less reliant on rote memorization than the bullshit that is biology.
Oh fuck bio.
And I agree with languages. I speak three, and that definitely came from use more than memorization and learning. First two came from cultural immersion, but I took German classes. I still learned German by switching all my videogames to German though, and playing mmos on German servers for “cultural immersion”. Not the classes.
I’m sure that the purpose of taking points off for syntax failure was my professor’s attempt to do something akin to cultural immersion for programming, but the end result was that I continually lost points on tests for reasons I considered dumb. I picked up more syntax from programming RuneScape bots back in the day than from classes, analogous to how I learned German. I’m sure more advanced classes would have focused more on the theory of programming and logic, but I just didn’t get there. It’s kind of like losing points for bad grammar on a language test.
I guess the classes just didn’t work for how I preferred to learn.
Well, you should lose point for bad grammar on a language test. And the best way to learn just about anything, but especially programming, is to do it! Make more bots.
I mean I agree. It makes sense. I guess my problem was that the intro classes I took were too focused on syntax/grammar up front, instead of more focusing on theory of programming. If there was more focus on doing, like in the homework assignments, I would have been much more successful. Might have even gone into software instead of chemistry.
Interestingly, since we’re using language as a parallel, one of the benefits of my language classes was that grammar came second after vocabulary. Sure, there was some grammar in the intro classes, but the real grammar came in 102 level courses.
This thread is more food for thought for any programming 101 professors that happen to wander by. I’m well outside of college age, so I doubt I’d ever take a class on programming. Probably just kinda figure it out as I come across a need to code stuff.