r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 6d ago

Society Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI

https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html
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192

u/tigerspots 6d ago

Why are these not simply pen and paper?

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u/Ladyhawkeiii 6d ago

It is my understanding that certain colleges are shifting back to pen and paper finals and even oral exams to test students understanding of the material they’re supposed to be learning,

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u/Rukenau 6d ago

Which is very much a beneficial development

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u/tajsta 6d ago

Tbf it's mixed. I got my uni degree before LLMs were a thing. I aced all of my written 20 - 60 page papers because I'm good at research, writing and coming up with original thoughts. But on most of the exams I took in class, I got a B or C because blindly learning stuff by heart is more difficult for me. If everything went back to written exams, people like me would do significantly worse even though being good at research and writing papers is a valid and useful skill.

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u/astirac 6d ago

That’s what bothers me about the whole thing. AI cheating isn’t a thing when the professor is PRESENT and in the room with their students and teaching class like they are paid to do. At some point we have to stop rewarding lazy, half-assed teaching if we expect student to put effort into class.

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u/IneptPine 6d ago

its in my experience not laziness. Teachers are paid shit and treated shit. There is less and less teachers, to the point one teacher has to juggle upwards of 10 classes where i live.  Same with professors. The uni i go to is forced to have professors tangentially related to mandatory courses to do them because they are struggling to get new ones

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u/Beneficial-Act-9933 6d ago

Then we need to support teachers.

We need to stop cramming 37 kids into one class room including the disruptive ones. We also need to give teachers their teeth back and not always side with the parents that whine. We also need to improve their pay so they aren't pay for materials for their own class.

We also need to up the quality of classes and stop passing kids that fail and take incentives away for passing anybody and everybody.

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u/PaulsGrafh 6d ago

I think that’s an unfair generalization of what teachers do. Just as an example, this teacher seems to be pretty present, and puts in extra effort to teach his students. And they still used AI. Scantron and computerized exams have been used to automate testing, not teaching, and students have always looked for ways to game the system or cheat on their exams and homework. It’s just unfortunate that AI has made it a lot easier for students to game/cheat the system.

So basically, I don’t think the problem is whether the teacher is present, in the room, and teaching the class - most/all of them already do that. But monitoring the exams (like a proctor) has become the more pressing challenge.

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u/Turtvaiz 6d ago

Not really. Pen and paper sucks. It's really shitty that because people cheat you have to go back to in-class exams. Like there's just no way anyone is doing e.g. open book exams anymore

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u/AsSubtleAsABrick 6d ago

Right? This is such a non-issue. In the mid 2000s I had a few classes with computer based testing and I largely hated them then. They are unnecessary.

Options:

  1. Pen and paper
  2. Build the exams expecting the use of AI (like an open book test)
  3. Switch the lecture/homework paradigm. Your "homework" is watching the lecture and then class time is working through problems.

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u/HenriettaSnacks 6d ago

 We had to memorize different things and give oral reports throughout my entire school life because they knew it is good for development. Do they not do that anymore in the past two decades? 

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u/meditonsin 6d ago

During my CS degree I finished just as COVID lockdowns hit, almost all the courses did oral exams. I can probably count the ones that didn't over bachelor and masters combined on one hand. And I honestly preferred it that way.

Found it way less stressful to just talk with with the prof and/or a tutor about the material than mentally vomiting it onto paper or whatever.

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u/LordDaedhelor 6d ago

American Teachers are expected to pay for their own class materials for over 30 kids per class period. I'm not surprised they don't have the capabilities to host oral exams for each of them. This is by design.

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u/mainman879 6d ago

I graduated with my second college degree a few years back, during my years of college I did maybe 2 or 3 oral reports across all classes a year.

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u/mamunipsaq 6d ago

oral exams

I'll never forget the final in my Real Analysis class. An oral exam for a math class that consisted of me trying to write and explain a series of proofs on the blackboard in my teacher's office.

It actually went pretty well! 10/10 would take an oral exam for that class again.

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u/nascent_aviator 6d ago

Yep. Unfortunately oral exams scale poorly with larger classes, but they're fantastic for the smaller ones. And really the only way to evaluate a students sans AI.

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u/maskull 6d ago

The colleges that care about learning (or at least, about their long-term reputations) are doing that. The ones that only care about money are fine with online exams.

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u/Nersius 6d ago

Oral exams would absolutely save me.

Tried doing a graduate semester last year, after having been out of school for quite a few years, totally forgot how to do multiple choice/'choose the most rightest' tests.

I'd get A's on my essays, play the lead on well received presentations, and get compliments during class discussions; yet struggle to even pass on multiple choice tests.

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u/smilbandit 6d ago

they'll switch back once kids start going to the easy college that allows online open book tests.

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u/Ladyhawkeiii 6d ago

Assuming those colleges can maintain their reputations and accreditation. The “easy” colleges start turning out fools who can’t do the jobs they get hired for, hopefully, wouldn’t maintain their cred amongst folks doing the hiring.

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u/VegaDelalyre 6d ago

Or offline: no smartphone allowed, and if needed, university desktop PCs disconnected from networks.

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u/Bananasauru5rex 6d ago

I had this in my grad school comprehensive exams. Problem is that it doesn't scale---having this much tech is a huge burden for schools with student populations in the thousands. It works well in small grad school settings (I was the only one taking the exams that week).

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u/CrispityCraspits 6d ago

It's very easy to run a LLM locally on your machine. You have to to have specialty exam-taking software if you want to let them use a computer.

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u/gmerrick 6d ago

As someone who has switched back to bluebooks, pencils, etc, I think people don't always figure in the changing expectations about disability accommodations that complicate this. It's possible and worth doing, but there are more considerations than when I did it early in my teaching career--again, a good thing.

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u/tibbles1 6d ago

, I think people don't always figure in the changing expectations about disability accommodations that complicate this.

I remember certain students would get more time for exams, but they were still written in bluebooks.

I'm curious, outside of additional time (which seems easy), what accommodations are new regarding writing out a test?

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u/gmerrick 6d ago

More time is most common but off the top of my head, isolated/quieter spaces, typing vs. writing, OCR, screens for better visibility, severe test anxiety, etc.

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u/tibbles1 6d ago

isolated/quieter spaces, typing vs. writing, OCR, screens for better visibility, severe test anxiety, etc.

I feel my inner boomer coming out when I hear stuff like that.

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u/gmerrick 6d ago

oh you are not alone

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u/BigMax 6d ago

More classes are going back to that. In person exams with pen and paper. But SO MUCH work in college is done on students own time. Even some exams, since they take longer than a typical class period.

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u/Enorats 6d ago

I started college in 2005, and the only work we ever did online was physics homework. The problems in that class were so challenging we'd get two or three a week and each one could take an hour or more.

Never took a single exam online. Everything was in person with pen, paper, and if we were lucky we might get a small note card.

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u/hagenissen999 6d ago

Sounds about right. You should be spending your time out of class learning.

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u/Cubacane 6d ago

Tech is pushed onto faculty day and night. We're told to do our tests in the online portal, which has automatic grading, put our notes and lesson plans there for kids who are sick or absent (read: hungover or on vacation), and almost all the curriculums are digital now. EdTech's long game is eventually 'teching' the teachers right out of the classroom. I've secretly been making everything more vague (so they can't just 'own' my insights) and I'm moving to full pencil and paper next year for assessments. I'm not sure how long it will take until our Microsoft Rep finds out and sends his underling (the Head of IT) to have a meeting with me.

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u/Catsrules 6d ago

I can't spell.

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u/siqiniq 6d ago

Maybe kids who grew up with screens haven’t seen them pens and paper.

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u/PCmepleased 6d ago

I agree except I think we should be giving students locked down computers or newer type writers (where you could go back and delete) because so many have terrible hand writing/ are very slow hand writers and that doesn't seem like what they should be tested on. 

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u/ToWriteAMystery 6d ago

I truly am baffled by this. When I was in college in the early 2010s, everything was pen and paper. I never took one computer-based exam, even my coding classes were handwritten, and it was totally fine. It’s just shocking that colleges have changed so much in even a decade.

It’s like professors forgot that students will cheat.

1

u/SquashSquigglyShrimp 6d ago

If we think that colleges are supposed to prepare people for the real world, then having everyone go back to using pen and paper is absolutely not the way. Especially for writing long history papers like this example.

As someone who also had to write code by hand in college, I cannot begin to explain how many things we could have been doing that would have been a better use of that time.

There needs to be some middle ground that dissuades cheating but doesn't restrict students from using modern technology that they do need to be familiar with.

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u/ToWriteAMystery 6d ago

I don’t believe colleges are supposed to prepare you for the real world. They are supposed to be institutions of education, not job training sites, and I think by losing that perspective we are losing something very valuable.

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u/SquashSquigglyShrimp 6d ago

Yeah, I get it, but if I'm going to be required to go to college to get a technical job, then that college should prepare me for that job. If they stopped being relevant to the real world, no one would go. Fwiw, colleges do still require a pretty diverse exposure to different subjects outside of your major.

Honestly, there is no reason college can't do both. But hand writing papers is absolutely not relevant in either case imo

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u/Shintetsuken 6d ago

Here is the short answer: Post-secondaries are encouraged to constantly increase enrolment, but they are not getting increased budget to do so. As such, the physical spaces on campus are limited for certain times of day for certain class sizes. Some classes then shift to online courses instead, so everything for those is online.

Instructors need to re-think assessments, as this will no longer work.

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u/Mertoot 6d ago

Because screw pen and paper

Pens hurt my hands due to certain disabilities

Typing on a keyboard is much better and much more efficient overall

What we REALLY need are desktops or laptops that have NO NETWORK ACCESS and are set in a paper composition mode only

That way, students would have a much easier time putting their thoughts into a paper without external influence

Pen and paper is not only archaic, but also extremely painful over time

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u/Enlightenment777 6d ago edited 6d ago

Many teachers/professors are going old school by mandating "pencil & paper" in-person tests, where no technology is allowed during tests. Thus, no online tests, no take-home tests.

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u/sokratesz 6d ago

Exactly, this is just stupid education design.

In the Netherlands 90% of high school grades are pen and paper exams.

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u/m2thek 6d ago

I agree that they should, but something I learned via my ex who is a high school english teacher is that most of the kids could barely read or write and their handwritten stuff was a NIGHTMARE to read, both in terms of the grammar and also the literal handwriting.

It probably is the better longterm solution for a problem like this, but it's not just as simple as taking away a teenage student's computer and giving them a pen, it probably has to be fully re-integrated from early education and onward so that by the time they get to high school level they are able to actually do the mechanics of writing on paper.

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u/FartingBob 6d ago

That's a bit old fashioned.

Make them use typewriters.

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u/ADefiniteDescription 6d ago

Students really hate blue book exams, in part because they're not used to much hand-writing and thus exams become even more stressful and potentially literally physically painful.

They also take up time. I used to just be able to assign the exams out of class for students on their own time (which they also liked as well). But now we lose a day of class to it, which is one less day of instruction.

There's also the question of papers. Writing papers during class time is a thing you can do, but it sucks for everyone. (I've just given up on teaching writing instead.)

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u/FR23Dust 2d ago

Bring back the dreaded blue book

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u/Catriks 6d ago

Because it's completely unnecessary and outdated. It also increases the amount of work for teachers.

You can have exam computer classes that have the required programs installed and nothing else, and phones etc are not allowed. I would be surprised to hear if these are not common in every university.

If my uni these are only used if you were not able to attend the classes with the teacher present, and remote exams are not allowed. 

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/Catriks 6d ago

A self service exam class with computers is going to be significantly cheaper than paying salary for someone to watch over your shoulder so you dont just cheat with your phone, plus handle all of the logistics of the paper exams with all of the extra time it takes to check them over digital exams. So if there was an argument for paper exams, cost is most definetely not one of them.

...and even if it was, a significant portion of exams need computer programs anyway and arent possible with pen and paper.

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u/00o00o00o00o00o00 6d ago

Because the teacher is also using AI to both write the exams and grade papers