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 don’t why so much of it is dependent on writing a long paper and having several people read through it. It’s a waste of time even before AI.
Just do a quick 10 minute oral exam and you’ll know if they understand it.
Some things take more than 10 minutes to explain, but only if you need to start from scratch, so for more advanced topics they should just ask questions from the top down and assume the basics. Anyone who fails to understand the basics will obviously fail the deeper meaning as well, or shouldn’t have been able to come to that level of exam anyway.
The point of an essay is that a person may, accurately and succinctly, convey a complex idea to a stranger across an ocean using only the written word. Which is half the point of literacy. Where I to hire a college grad who couldn’t compose an email about a complex, nuanced subject, i would think real hard about hiring any alums of theirs.
Knowing stuff isn’t enough. You have to be able to present it in a communicable fashion.
Nobody reads college student essays over the ocean.
Anyway, you misspelled “were” and forgot to capitalize “I”. I will forgive your comma mistakes, because I am not in a position to correct commas in English.
C-.
Lol. Missed the point
… They’re to practice.
In the near future or already, the skill of writing essays will be as useful as having neat hand writing or horse back riding. It’s great to know it, but it’s not going to be the industry standard outside of school.
Fuck AI and all, but it will eventually become the standard tool for anyone who wants to put a lot of words on a page for whatever reason.
Yeah, that’s a bad thing. People de-skilling themselves is like eating too much candy and getting diabetes.
You should learn how to write, bstix. It’s enriching.
If you can’t articulate why schools use long essays, perhaps you shouldn’t suggest scrapping them. One should know how a machine works before one starts tinkering with it. And a course is a machine like any other. Don’t start pulling out pieces before you know what they do.
If you don’t how a system works, it’s the perfect time to disassemble it.
Why is that?
You’ll learn from it. (which is the purpose of universities, rather than grades or papers anyway)
In this case though, it’s more because the system clearly doesn’t work, so something has to be done eiher way.
They (schools) can’t fight AI forever. It will over burden them with slop no matter what they try. It’s futile to think that it can be detected, f.i. if the students put the AI in speech mode and writes down the answers in hand etc.
It’s better to rethink the entire purpose of what they’re trying to achieve. Hundreds of pages of written paper probably isn’t it to begin with.
They’re trying to educate: To get knowledge into the head of students. A written paper won’t really show what’s inside the head of the student regardless of it being written by the student, their parents, Indian fiver hirees, AI or simply paid to pass.
IMO the validition process has to be rethought, and it’s only good that AI has broken the system.
I agree that something has to be updated. Breaking it down is a good way to Understanding what you’re breaking down helps understand why and how to improve it. Especially something as complicated as an entire education system and the resulting tech relationship. On some level I agree, something needs overhauled. But it’s also impossible to anticipate future technological leaps that would do something like this again. We as a people need to be more measured in embracing tech so wholeheartedly. I don’t know that there is a blanket response to such things that every individual school can address. This is something national leadership should be addressing. The whole scale blind adoption of ‘AI’ is the cause, it’ll take more than college boards to address
This is the way
I’m all for that, but some people will complain that they get nervous and that’s why they couldn’t state how they do the things.
The amount of accomodations in US colleges is insane to where some people are allowed to take extra time, or take their tests not in a classroom setting, or have their tests read to them because they’re illiterate or a variety of other things that just aren’t compatible with the workforce is insane.
Seems insane to not assist people learning. Reaching people you otherwise would not is a good thing.You WANT more people in the work force who can understand concepts. Who gives a shit how they demonstrate it or if they need an accommodation?
Supporting people through their weakness can help them find or reinforce their Strengths. That is absolutely something education should strive for.
The accommodations are other life skills that they are lacking in. I think oral examinations would really highlight weak points for a lot of people and they would seek exemptions that are easier.
I’m not saying that you don’t assist people with learning, but I think testing and learning are two different beasts. I think having a uniform standard for testing is a good thing, I’m all for oral examinations or proctored written tests, but I worry about all of the people that will seek exemptions from it because they can’t perform to the same standards on those tasks. It’s degrading to the letter grade of everyone else.
I do think that it is the responsibility of every student to study and find resources that best fit their learning style.
Is Education there to teach material or life skills? Yes, it’s important for Students to learn how to learn, but the institution SHOULD be trying to reach as many as possible. There should be guidance for people who learn differently. You certainly aren’t taught HOW you learn, but it is worth any institutions effort to assist.
I don’t support the idea that everyone need learn and consider topics in the same way. One Method for Everyone is how we get this Lowest Common Denominator, Min/Max bullshit.