College professors are going back to paper exams and handwritten essays to fight students using ChatGPT::The growing number of students using the AI program ChatGPT as a shortcut in their coursework has led some college professors to reconsider their lesson plans for the upcoming fall semester.

  • neptune@dmv.social
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    1 year ago

    This isn’t exactly novel. Some professors allow a cheat sheet. But that just means that the exam will be harder.

    Physics exam that allows a cheat sheet asks you to derive the law of gravity. Well, OK, you write the answer at the bottom pulled from you cheat sheet. Now what? If you recall how it was originally created you probably write Newtons three laws at the top of your paper… And then start doing some math.

    Calculus exam that let’s you use wolfram alpha? Just a really hard exam where you must show all of your work.

    Now, with ChatGPT, it’s no longer enough to have a take home essay to force students to engage with the material, so you find news ways to do so. Written, in person essays are certainly a way to do that.

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Or you have the classic, “you can write anything down that you’d like, but it won’t tell you how to answer the questions”.

      And, in fact, it doesn’t help at all beyond a few formulas. I was ChemE, our cheat sheets never saved us.

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hate to break it to you, but you picked probably the one law in physics that is empirically derived. There is no mathematical equation to derive newton’s law of gravity.

      • neptune@dmv.social
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        1 year ago

        Yes but you can still start with Kepler and newton’s three laws and with basic math skills recreate the equation. I know, because it was on a physics exam I took ten years ago.