I personally dislike placing a heavy emphasis on exams. Assignments/projects have been consistently the most enjoyable and rewarding parts of the courses I've taken so far in university.

It's a shame that they are also way more susceptible to cheating with AI.

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Aurornis a few seconds ago | parent | next [-]

> It's a shame that they are also way more susceptible to cheating with AI.

They were more prone to cheating before AI, too.

Cheating has always existed at some level, but from talking to my couple of friends who teach undergrad level courses the attitudes of students toward cheating have been changing even before AI was everywhere. They would complain about cohorts coming through where cheating was obvious and rampant, combined with administrations who started going soft on cheating because they didn’t want to lose (paying) students.

AI has taken it further, with students justifying it not as cheating but as using tools at their disposal.

I was talking to my friend about this last week and he was frustrated that several of his students had submitted papers that had all the signs of ChatGPT output, so he asked them simple questions about their papers. Most of them “couldn’t remember” what they wrote about.

It’s strange to me because when I went to college getting caught cheating was a big problem that resulted in students getting put on probationary watch and being legitimately scared of the consequences. Now at many schools cheating is routine and students push the boundaries of what they can get their classes to accept because they have no fear of any punishment. YMMV depending on the institution

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kcexn 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The problem with exams is that everyone has a bad experience with a poorly written one. Well-written exams will have questions that test students at different levels of understanding across the whole curriculum.

So a student who only understands the basics should be able to answer most of the easy questions and students who have a deeper understanding can answer the harder ones.

Well-written exams should feel pretty fair and leave students feeling like the result they got is proportional to the effort they put into studying the material (or at least how well they personally felt they understood the material).

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syntaxing 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I went to college as a MechE so unsure if compsci was different. But overall, all the “fun” projects were labs. We have three semesters of hell and all 3 semesters had 2-3 labs, and we write 20 pages or so for EACH lab a week (usually a team of 2-3).

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gpm 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Also way more susceptible to cheating in traditional non-AI ways. And your mark ends up depending a lot on how much time you have to invest independent of how good you are at the course material.

Assignments and projects are great for learning, but suck for evaluation.

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lokar 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I really appreciated classes where there was rapidly demising returns to time spent :)

Another example, lit classes where the grade is based on time limited, open book exams, hand written in "blue books"

Read the book, pay attention in class, spend 90 min writing an essay, and you are done.

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jason_zig 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

is evaluation that important? ultimately if you can't do the work you're only cheating yourself in the long run...

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antonymoose an hour ago | parent | next [-]

You say that but I was a Class of 2013, aka during the massive hiring boom of the teens. I tutored a friend of mine with a Ds get Degrees mentality who eventually graduated and now works an ass-in-seat job for Booz Allen or one of those types. I used to joke about it with another friend, that his diploma ought to include an asterisk and a half dozen other names for how much we ultimately did on his grades take homes. I’m pretty sure he makes about the same as me by now purely on tenure.

Personally, I dropped out despite a full ride+ becuase why would I put in work for a no name state school when I already has an FTE job as a developer out of high school anyway.

Turns out fraudulent action can still get the bag.

	▲	WoodenChair 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I agree with your premise about why accurate evaluation matters, but your post comes across as pretty bitter. Unless you’re at the job with him, you really don’t know that it’s a “I just need to show up” job he has at Booz Allen. Perhaps he has other great traits like a high social or emotional intelligence that make him good at his job beyond whatever was being evaluated on those projects you helped him with.

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musicale 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That is the traditional view, the view of those who want to improve their own knowledge and abilities, and presumably the view of those who would like to consider the degree to be a meaningful credential.

However I suspect that there are many who 1) are more concerned about the short term outcome, 2) consider the degree/diploma to be little more than a meal ticket or arbitrary gatekeeping without any connection to learning, 3) view the work as a pointless barrier to being handed said diploma, and/or 4) don't see the value of human learning in a world where jobs are done by AI and AI systems routinely outperform humans on complex tasks.

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II2II 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Part of the purpose for evaluation is to provide feedback. I'm not going to claim that the form of feedback is great, but it does offer motivation to improve.

The other thing that feedback feeds into is credentials. I realize that some people are dismissive of this aspect of the degree, but it is important to pursue further studies or secure a job. While you can argue that these people are only cheating themselves, and some of them are cheating themselves, a great many will continue to cheat as they advance in academia or the workforce. In other words, they are cheating others out of opportunities.

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jmye 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes. I care that the work I've done and what I've learned is actually good and correct. Vibes-based learning/anything is valueless.

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fma 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Then I suppose we can go back to having computer labs that can only access white listed domains and other study materials. Students code there to ensure no cheating.

	▲	zdragnar 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The labs I was in weren't connected to the Internet at all, only a local intranet. Though, they were all running pre-oracle solaris if memory serves, so I'm probably dating myself a bit.