I've seen college professors instituting a system where the take-home essay is followed by an oral examination without any notes, a kind of debriefing, asking questions about the reasoning behind such or such part of the essay. Seems like a decent system; it ensures that even if the student used AI, they actually understand what the AI spat out on a more than surface level.
I think you could treat take-home essays like a coding interview where you log into a portal and type live and keep any electronic notes in the same portal (if you use note cards, you can turn them in as well). Obviously, you can't make sure they always keep their writing window focused, and they will have to sign-in and out frequently over several weeks, but it would make AI cheating harder and more nerve wracking. At the very least, they'd have to type from the AI window instead of copy and pasting, which makes it enough more work you might as well just write it in many cases. That and in class pop quizzes to make sure they can answer basic questions about what they're writing about.
1. When my daughter was attending Univ. some years ago (long before AI) one of the classes required for freshmen was a two-part survey of the historical cultural development of western thought. I am not sure of the exact title of the course, but it was something similar. The first semester was sort of like that. I tend to think the course was meaningless because you can't rush from Plato one week with no background and then all the way to Seneca and then to Descartes. She says she remembers none of it, and frankly it wasn't even a good introductory course. After Descartes it was all the way back to Aristotle and then Marx before a couple of lessons later Hegel. Basically there were no lectures, and she met th. Prof once during the semester. They made 15 minutes twice a week in an auditorium where they were handed their assignment of who they had to write a paper on before the next class. And the next group were ushered in to get their assignment. Well how else would one prof be able to have 2500 students in 2 hrs? And naturally there was no way any one prof could read 5000 papers in one week, so each group of students would have a candidate who they turned in their work and read and graded it. Well I lied, I don't know who was before Plato but I believe it began with Locke. She dutifully went to the online Encylopdia of
Actually, and to the point of your article Well I lied, I don't know who was before Plato but I believe it began with Locke. She dutifully went to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Knowledge Andrea's an article and then attempted to paraphrase it in her own words and promptly got a 0 for plagiarism. She came to me in tears claiming she had not plagiarized. I read her article and it certainly presented the perspective of Locke and was arranged more or less in the order presented in the article. But not a single sentence was word for word, only the outline. Her article was certainly of poor quality, but it was not plagiarized except for the format of the outline, but she had not written it (she didn't' have her own home computer as of yet in her dorm and she misremembered several points, they were simply wrong. She had copied the outline and try to address the points as she recalled them.
I told her thereafter to tell me who she would be writing about and I would give her what I knew. She would listen and try detailed notes, and if she was confused I would try to correct her. She got steady B's thereafter.
Until we came to Kant. As a doctor in philosophy, you may be aware Kant is often considered difficult, you may not consider him difficult, but many do, and I think for laypersons with little background comprehension would be extremely difficult. Our discussion went on until almost five the next morning. Her paper was not returned at the next assignment setting as usual, instead she was told to meet with the professor. We were both worried she was going to be dinged and a second plagiarism offense would have meant her expulsion. I was nervously awaiting that meeting fearing I had over explained Kant and ruined her future.
As soon as the meeting was over she called ."He gave me an A" she exclaimned and I could hear the smile in her face.
"He didn't think you had plagiarized?' "No, he said it was certainly my style but they thought it was way beyond any capacities I had previously shown and he wanted to know I could be so knowledgeable about Kant and explain him in such detail."
""Oh, well you didn't tell him you'd been studying with me, did you.?'
"But I did! I told him you had studied philosophy at university and had been helping me."
"He just asked if you'd been writing my papers, and I said no, and he said your father outdid himself and this is an excellent paper, then handed me the paper after marking a big A."
It was a proud moment in my life because she was really proud of me, if anyone who has had a daughter might recognize,
2. Do you have stake in AI.? You keep promoting it. I tried using it as a shortcut and found it primarily useless and offering nothing to aid my own research that I hadn't known. about the topic already.
I'd have been screwed by any implementation of 2, I have never drafted an essay nor even made an outline, at least not one that I actually followed. This is not a brag, it's some kind of scrupulosity disorder. I write *very* slowly, I will not move on from a paragraph unless I feel it's exactly the right one to follow the previous, I might type one out and alter it a bit but rarely would I go back and do much more than correct a typo, replace repeated words, or add a little clarifying language. So every essay I've ever written, thank god there haven't been that many because my style is frankly not great, has been composed in a single sitting and roughly linearly. I empathize with LLM personas in more ways than one, they don't have an easy job and we give them so much crap for it.
It's hard to see this as a problem, at least within academics itself. There may be effects on industry, as diplomas will be a less reliable indicator of competence (though, if we're honest, that's already the case) but, if you're actually going into grad school, isn't it, like, a day before you get caught? Especially in small and intimate teams, incompetence shines like a beacon. Do I have this totally wrong?
I've seen college professors instituting a system where the take-home essay is followed by an oral examination without any notes, a kind of debriefing, asking questions about the reasoning behind such or such part of the essay. Seems like a decent system; it ensures that even if the student used AI, they actually understand what the AI spat out on a more than surface level.
I'm really hoping ChatGPT wrote this blog post
I think you could treat take-home essays like a coding interview where you log into a portal and type live and keep any electronic notes in the same portal (if you use note cards, you can turn them in as well). Obviously, you can't make sure they always keep their writing window focused, and they will have to sign-in and out frequently over several weeks, but it would make AI cheating harder and more nerve wracking. At the very least, they'd have to type from the AI window instead of copy and pasting, which makes it enough more work you might as well just write it in many cases. That and in class pop quizzes to make sure they can answer basic questions about what they're writing about.
1. When my daughter was attending Univ. some years ago (long before AI) one of the classes required for freshmen was a two-part survey of the historical cultural development of western thought. I am not sure of the exact title of the course, but it was something similar. The first semester was sort of like that. I tend to think the course was meaningless because you can't rush from Plato one week with no background and then all the way to Seneca and then to Descartes. She says she remembers none of it, and frankly it wasn't even a good introductory course. After Descartes it was all the way back to Aristotle and then Marx before a couple of lessons later Hegel. Basically there were no lectures, and she met th. Prof once during the semester. They made 15 minutes twice a week in an auditorium where they were handed their assignment of who they had to write a paper on before the next class. And the next group were ushered in to get their assignment. Well how else would one prof be able to have 2500 students in 2 hrs? And naturally there was no way any one prof could read 5000 papers in one week, so each group of students would have a candidate who they turned in their work and read and graded it. Well I lied, I don't know who was before Plato but I believe it began with Locke. She dutifully went to the online Encylopdia of
Actually, and to the point of your article Well I lied, I don't know who was before Plato but I believe it began with Locke. She dutifully went to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Knowledge Andrea's an article and then attempted to paraphrase it in her own words and promptly got a 0 for plagiarism. She came to me in tears claiming she had not plagiarized. I read her article and it certainly presented the perspective of Locke and was arranged more or less in the order presented in the article. But not a single sentence was word for word, only the outline. Her article was certainly of poor quality, but it was not plagiarized except for the format of the outline, but she had not written it (she didn't' have her own home computer as of yet in her dorm and she misremembered several points, they were simply wrong. She had copied the outline and try to address the points as she recalled them.
I told her thereafter to tell me who she would be writing about and I would give her what I knew. She would listen and try detailed notes, and if she was confused I would try to correct her. She got steady B's thereafter.
Until we came to Kant. As a doctor in philosophy, you may be aware Kant is often considered difficult, you may not consider him difficult, but many do, and I think for laypersons with little background comprehension would be extremely difficult. Our discussion went on until almost five the next morning. Her paper was not returned at the next assignment setting as usual, instead she was told to meet with the professor. We were both worried she was going to be dinged and a second plagiarism offense would have meant her expulsion. I was nervously awaiting that meeting fearing I had over explained Kant and ruined her future.
As soon as the meeting was over she called ."He gave me an A" she exclaimned and I could hear the smile in her face.
"He didn't think you had plagiarized?' "No, he said it was certainly my style but they thought it was way beyond any capacities I had previously shown and he wanted to know I could be so knowledgeable about Kant and explain him in such detail."
""Oh, well you didn't tell him you'd been studying with me, did you.?'
"But I did! I told him you had studied philosophy at university and had been helping me."
"He just asked if you'd been writing my papers, and I said no, and he said your father outdid himself and this is an excellent paper, then handed me the paper after marking a big A."
It was a proud moment in my life because she was really proud of me, if anyone who has had a daughter might recognize,
2. Do you have stake in AI.? You keep promoting it. I tried using it as a shortcut and found it primarily useless and offering nothing to aid my own research that I hadn't known. about the topic already.
I'd have been screwed by any implementation of 2, I have never drafted an essay nor even made an outline, at least not one that I actually followed. This is not a brag, it's some kind of scrupulosity disorder. I write *very* slowly, I will not move on from a paragraph unless I feel it's exactly the right one to follow the previous, I might type one out and alter it a bit but rarely would I go back and do much more than correct a typo, replace repeated words, or add a little clarifying language. So every essay I've ever written, thank god there haven't been that many because my style is frankly not great, has been composed in a single sitting and roughly linearly. I empathize with LLM personas in more ways than one, they don't have an easy job and we give them so much crap for it.
It's hard to see this as a problem, at least within academics itself. There may be effects on industry, as diplomas will be a less reliable indicator of competence (though, if we're honest, that's already the case) but, if you're actually going into grad school, isn't it, like, a day before you get caught? Especially in small and intimate teams, incompetence shines like a beacon. Do I have this totally wrong?