alt Hacker NewsThe obvious way to square this circle is to go back to how things used to be: less emphasis on coursework and more on old-fashioned tests in an examination environment with just pen and paper.
You can cheat on your homework all you like, but you'll completely fail the exams. On the other hand, students who use LLMs to augment their learning will do fine
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It’s one dimension, I agree. Though, for essay-based courses I’m a little skeptical about writing under time pressure.
My thinking here is that you might want to also introduce more “viva voce” (verbal defense) style tests. These have been expensive to administer but my hunch is that you can scale these with AI administering the first round, random human review or participation. This feels like a better endpoint than essays under time pressure (but also maybe you can elect one or the other?)
My other angle is to break completely from the past. I want to see more project work. If AI makes it easier to fake or attain any given level of knowledge, we need to ask more of students, ie ask them to demonstrate mastery by building real things. More open-ended projects are harder to grade (use AI to scale grading), but more fun and engaging for students.
This doesn’t just refer to STEM of course; why not ask students to write a play, compose a symphony, etc?
My core thesis is that most students would work harder and engage with things that interest them, and the fundamental problem with Taylorized education is that one-size-fits-all is only interesting to some.
This is definitely what's going to happen. But there is still a problem - people (not just children) are fundamentally lazy and put things off. People always leave assignments until the last minute. I used to smoothly transition from "I've got plenty of time, no need to start" to "there's not enough time to do it, there's no point starting".
They will 100% just use AI for the whole year and then panic and fail the exam when the time comes.
So I think not only will we see more invigilated exams, but they'll become more frequent and shorter. Which I would say is a good thing anyway. I always hated learning a whole year of stuff for a 3 hour exam.
> You can cheat on your homework all you like, but you'll completely fail the exams
This might sound principled, but we need to recognize that school administrators are incentivised to have as few kids as possible fail their exams; and consequently, so are the teachers. Either exams will change, or the teaching will change.