In an online discussion post, Alcorn State University history professor Dr. Jason Gibson posed a question that represented part of his students' midterm. It was about the...

In an online discussion post, Alcorn State University history professor Dr. Jason Gibson posed a question that represented part of his students’ midterm. It was about the…

  • WesternInfidels@feddit.onlineEnglish
    321·
    1 day ago

    I knew things were bad, but this bad?

    Earlier this month, a professor at Brown University saw midterm averages jump from the typical range of 65% to 80% to 96% after he allowed take-home exams. He estimated that all but two of his 86 students used AI to cheat.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        312·
        1 day ago

        Flight instructor here:

        I kept having to undo the damage that academia did to my flight students, because looking things up to make sure you knew it right felt like “cheating” to them. So. Many. People have acadotrauma, y’all. Do you know how often I had to resort to behaviorism models to convince grown ass men it’s okay to be seen using a checklist? I had to ask our chief pilot to watch me do ground procedures on an airplane in front of the student to establish it as a norm. You know, the way they trained Alex the parrot to talk. Because a checklist is a piece of paper with the answers on it and we hurt people for having those. Same with writing down frequencies. What? You’re going to memorize the A/FD?

        Or would it be edutrauma?

        • flubba86@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          1 day ago

          I see the same thing in the software industry. Programming is something where it’s perfectly common to need to have cheat sheets at your desk and reference the documentation regularly. But freshly graduated students think that’s cheating. They’re convinced they need to memorise all aspects of a programming language and it’s standard library. The amount of new information I take in every day, it would be impossible to remember everything. The real skill is information retrieval, being able to look up what you need to know when you need it.

          • Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            6·
            1 day ago

            Yep. I always thought open book tests are the best.

            Otherwise if you read it but can’t memorize it, gl.

            If you did the work or can find the answer quickly without having done the work /studied, you’ll do okay in the real world too, because you have those skills to figure out the correct answer quickly.

              • nickiwest@lemmy.worldEnglish
                4·
                14 hours ago

                Some professions, like ER doctor, require a high level of memorization. But that’s also part of medical training.

                Others don’t need that level of memorization, even other kinds of doctors. I’ve seen medical specialists in private practice leave the exam room to look up symptoms to help make a diagnosis. And I think that’s a good idea, since only TV doctors can “know” everything about incredibly rare diseases.

            • skisnow@lemmy.caEnglish
              2·
              16 hours ago

              I’m sure you could probably dig up an exception or two, but by and large “using tools to trace real-life objects and photographs” isn’t an accurate portrayal of the sort of thing that gets people flak online. Every tracing scandal I’ve seen on tumblr is an artist essentially plagiarising work from another artist in the same community.

              It’s the difference between “my character is shooting a bow in this panel, let’s find some references for archery poses so I can get it right” versus “oh hey that’s a cool picture someone drew of an archer, I think I’ll trace it and fill in my character’s face and colours instead and post it online and pretend like I made it all myself without crediting the person who actually did 99% of the creative process”

      • VAK@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        21 hours ago

        Depends on the exam though. I’ve got ones that made me wish they only do in class tests.