26 upvotes, 5 direct replies (showing 5)
View submission: Study: 94% Of AI-Generated College Writing Is Undetected By Teachers
How about we challenge our educational institutions to test differently? In the real world, you're often asked to actually engage people in conversations that naturally exhibit your depth and breadth of knowledge on a subject (at least in the kind of white-collar careers you're going to college for). A 15 or 30-minute conversation with a teacher would do wonders to combat this problem, and probably help students retain this information much better.
I remember so many discussions I had with my best teachers and professors in school on subjects I was interested in. I can't remember a single essay I ever wrote.
Comment by Inevitable_Ad_7236 at 01/12/2024 at 07:59 UTC
18 upvotes, 5 direct replies
There are 42 students in my engineering class, that's 21 hours for a single test.
Comment by Interesting-Alarm973 at 01/12/2024 at 09:04 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
They are actually two different skill sets. I've met quite some students who can discuss the topics with depth orally - posing good questions, raising good counter-arguments, replying nicely to your replies, etc. But when they need to put their ideas and arguments into a 2000-word essay, then things didn't go well.
Writing an argumentative essay requires something different to an in-depth oral discussion of the topics.
(The same is also true for the reverse. Some of the best students in writing essay aren't nowhere near as good when they need to engage in oral discussions.)
Comment by GSV_CARGO_CULT at 01/12/2024 at 12:07 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This is how university exams worked for most of history until the mid 1800s. It's a really good system if you have very small classes, but we've all taken intro courses with 100+ students. I think the idea is great and probably better than written exams for a variety of reasons, but there's real logistical challenges.
Comment by -The_Blazer- at 01/12/2024 at 14:49 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Sure, but IMO we shouldn't exclusively tailor education to HR BS'ing your way through corporate, despite how helpful that can be (ugh). People should grow up with an all-round knowledge of things, which yes, does including knowing your multiplication tables.
Also, back at my school, this was done with the occasional oral exam anyways. We had a notorious professor who would roll a dice to decide whether on any particular day he'd ask questions about the latest lesson and give minor marks for it.
Comment by poloscraft at 01/12/2024 at 06:53 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Are you expecting professors to do actual work instead of throwing students essays to AI grading program?