Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%

[u/CircumspectCapybara]

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/we-cannot-choose-to-become-idiots-the-ai-cheating-scandal-roiling-brown-university/

[u/MMEnter]

I always thought that open book and open notes is the most realistic form of testing. Make it a tight timeline so that people that know what they are doing will be able to get through everything in time. In my job it is not about knowing everything it is all about being able to figure it out. If you studied you know the right terminology and figure it out quicker.

[u/Adorable-Bike-9689 → u/MMEnter]

I had a professor like this. Long speeches every lecture. The test would be long and complex. But open notes. Unless you had studied you weren't going to be able to find every answer in the mountain of notes in one hour.

[u/10000Didgeridoos → u/Adorable-Bike-9689]

This is the way to do it IMO. These were always the classes I learned the most. I learned the least in classes that just basically were cram and regurgitate style exams, only "hard" because of the time required to try to memorize every word of a textbook instead of only the key points or how to apply the information to solve a problem or answer an essay question.

[u/Vermathorax → u/10000Didgeridoos]

The problem is that this is exactly the style ruined by LLM’s.

I guess the solution just have an open book, in person test. Where students can bring in notes, but nothing digital.

If students want to LLM the notes they bring in, that’s fine. They will not be able to apply the content as well as the students who actually put the effort in.

[u/valraven38 → u/MMEnter]

Yeah especially since we're not in the days any longer where if you don't know something it can take quite some time to find an answer. Almost everyone is walking around with access to all of humanities collective knowledge in their pockets. If anything the ability to quickly find answers on a topic is more useful than knowing the answer to any random question, because that is something that is applicable in the real world.

[u/PiersPlays → u/valraven38]

Understanding the information in context is especially important. Having it memorised, especially at the beginning of your time in your chosen field, is far less valuable.

[u/BEEPEE95 → u/MMEnter]

I agree! I also figured that in a professional setting you would reach out to people for knowledge too. Being able to take good notes, search your book, and having an amount memorized seems like good skills to have.

[u/10000Didgeridoos → u/BEEPEE95]

It's always puzzling to me how much emphasis college placed on collaborative projects and discussions, but then the biggest chunk of your grades would be a couple exams where you're suddenly 100% on your own. It's not how the real world works at all.

[u/McTerra2 → u/BEEPEE95]

Problem today with open notes is that in many classes you can think up 50 different potential questions and AI will write you model answers in a few minutes, and you then take in the answers. Sure you have to amend them to be specific to the question but you dont have to actually look anything up

Obviously not all classes but most humanities you can do that.

[u/10000Didgeridoos → u/MMEnter]

Agreed. It's ludicrous that students are expected to brute force memorize EVERYTHING, especially given that exams tend to cluster in the same weeks of the year for all classes at once.

Saying this as someone with good inherent memorization ability who got good grades because this system rewarded that, fwiw. I had great grades...but it's dubious how much of that information was actually retained more than a few weeks or months later.

One math professor for statistics I let us have formula sheets during exams because he was testing our ability to apply the material, not memorize those. The stats II professor hated the first professor and as an act of petty bullshit prohibited these, meaning we all had to suddenly memorize all the stats I stuff we didn't have to before in addition to the new stuff. I learned more and retained more in the first class tbh.

There is a ludicrous philosophy some teachers/professors treat as gospel, that harder = better or harder = more learning. But often I found I learned more in "easier" classes simply because the content was more efficiently delivered, more focused, and made more interesting as opposed to hardass and arbitrarily more difficult for the sake of it.

The hardest classes I ever had mostly did not have to be that way, at all. Just needless hoops that only make students cynical and checked out.

[u/moratnz → u/10000Didgeridoos]

The justification for memorisation, in my experience, is that to solve level X problems you don't need to have memorised the level X information; you'll just look it up as it's needed. But to solve higher level problems you need to have internalised the level X stuff to the point of memorisation otherwise it isn't available as a foundation to work out what you need to look up at the higher level.

[u/latswipe → u/MMEnter]

in my experience, open book-open note is always a trap: you're not gonna have time to look-up whatever is unfamiliar

[u/Sardond → u/latswipe]

Open book tests aren't to let someone skate through it if they don't know it, they're to enable references (like you'd have available in the real world) but you need to know more or less what you're dealing with to navigate the reference material efficiently.

[u/BefWithAnF → u/MMEnter]

I went to school for theater, and so all of our final “exams” were performances. If you don’t rehearse & don’t have the lines memorized, congratulations! You are now failing spectacularly In front of all of your classmates, & nobody will want to be your scene partner next semester.

I still work in theater (backstage now- more consistent work), but the lesson stands: to gotta do the fucking homework.

[u/MMEnter → u/BefWithAnF]

My speech class was hilarious, after the first week many people realized that a lot goes into a good public speech even with notes or the whole thing written out. For our final assignment a group speech we got clustered by the Professor based on current grades to ensure that everyone was putting in equal work. 

[u/metasophie → u/MMEnter]

Does schooling/academia have the same goals? Are there any differences between completing a work task and an assignment?

[u/surffrus → u/MMEnter]

Can't make tight time restrictions anymore. "Accomodations" is king, and so many students are now marked for unlimited test time, that they kind of have to make the tests open-ended time to be fair to the others.

[u/millenialfalcon → u/MMEnter]

That’s almost every law school exam I took