I'm pretty convinced now that grading take-home assignments is pointless with the prevalence of AI cheating. (There's surely already "innovation" going on targeted at letting people cheat on assignments while staying undetectable.)
It's probably best going forward to grade only in-person proctored exams using paper, or offline air gapped computers in the case of programming courses.
I had many classes in college that didn't administer homework or take-home assignments. All we had were just exams. Most of those professors operated on the logic that if you wanted to pass their class, then you would do the (suggested) work.
Also, I never had a computer science class where exams were administered on a computer. I only graduated like 10 years ago, too. I shit you not, even my x86 assembly class was all pen and paper too, and yes, we were graded for code accuracy.
Or don't do exams at all, focus on projects that are hard even with AI. Grade on readable and well structured code, performance and UX instead of just following the assignment point by point. The problem is just that it adds more work to teachers.
The most practical solution I know is the teacher asks you questions about your code in person to make sure your understand it. Even better when they come up with a small change and you have to implement it on the spot, or at least explain exactly how you would do it if there's not enough time.
It catches lazy vibe coders who don't even read the code but lets through those who only use AI to save time. That's exactly what you need if you want your students to learn.
We already know the solution. What did colleges have students doing to ensure they knew how to use microsoft office? Three 50min lectures and two in-person 1.5hr labs a week for 2 credits, all dedicated to using word and excel. For a normal person in the 2000s, this is ridiculous to force on all students. It was not ridiculous 10 years before. Today, students again need the forced in-person learning for office applications.
For CS, homework should be done how you want. Homework is practice. Let AI assist you, but you better learn it because you'll be coding some part of it in lab with a physical programming book as a reference. They can lock down computers for labs to prevent web access or limit only to certain websites. Since labs are weekly, it will be obvious if someone is not learning as they do the homework. It won't be an F on the final as the first sign of trouble.
Schools can do things to improve student resources. Self host llms that are not corporate controlled that every student can use. The school can provide a search engine that is useful and not google's marketing. You can offer an education proxy that caches the pages you look at when doing education work, preserving anything you cite. This can all feed into the school llms for rebuilding to keep them trained on current info.
2001zhaozhao · · focus · HN ↗
It's probably best going forward to grade only in-person proctored exams using paper, or offline air gapped computers in the case of programming courses.
hirvi74 · · focus · HN ↗
Also, I never had a computer science class where exams were administered on a computer. I only graduated like 10 years ago, too. I shit you not, even my x86 assembly class was all pen and paper too, and yes, we were graded for code accuracy.
tancop · · focus · HN ↗
The most practical solution I know is the teacher asks you questions about your code in person to make sure your understand it. Even better when they come up with a small change and you have to implement it on the spot, or at least explain exactly how you would do it if there's not enough time.
It catches lazy vibe coders who don't even read the code but lets through those who only use AI to save time. That's exactly what you need if you want your students to learn.
UncleMeat · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
roosterIllusi0n · · focus · HN ↗
For CS, homework should be done how you want. Homework is practice. Let AI assist you, but you better learn it because you'll be coding some part of it in lab with a physical programming book as a reference. They can lock down computers for labs to prevent web access or limit only to certain websites. Since labs are weekly, it will be obvious if someone is not learning as they do the homework. It won't be an F on the final as the first sign of trouble.
Schools can do things to improve student resources. Self host llms that are not corporate controlled that every student can use. The school can provide a search engine that is useful and not google's marketing. You can offer an education proxy that caches the pages you look at when doing education work, preserving anything you cite. This can all feed into the school llms for rebuilding to keep them trained on current info.