[threemux]

In person, proctored blue book exams are back! Sharpen those pencils kids.

I've been wondering lately if one of the good things to come out of heavy LLM use will be a return to mostly in-person interactions once nothing that happens online is trustworthy anymore.

[bambax]

Yes! This "problem" is really easy to fix with in person exams and no computers in class, ever.

[armchairhacker]

There should be computers, just locked down ones that don’t leave the classroom. With today’s tuitions, colleges can afford a computer for every student.

Writing code on paper is frustrating to the point where, beyond small algorithms, it’s probably not an effective metric (to test performance on real-world tasks). I think even essays may not be as good a metric for writing quality when written vs typed, although the difference is probably smaller. Because e.g. being able to insert a line in the middle of the text, or find-and-replace, are much harder. Also, some people (like me) are especially bad at handwriting: my hand hurts after writing a couple paragraphs, and my handwriting is illegible to most people. While some people are especially bad at typing, they get accommodations like an alternative keyboard or dictation, whereas the accommodation for bad handwriting is…a computer (I was fortunate to get one for exams in the 2010s).

[meroes]

This is the “back to office” of education. It is not a one size fits all solution. There are so many remote and hybrid classes now you guys sound outdated.

[analog31]

That’s fair, but at the same time, expecting any learning to occur in remote classes, when fair evaluation is impossible, may also be outdated.

[kbelder]

Learning is just as easy remote and with AI, maybe easier. It's testing and evaluation of that learning that's difficult.

Universities make money not by teaching, but by testing and certifying. That's why AI is so disruptive in that space.

[analog31]

Universities don’t make money.

Granted, I’m 62, so I’m from the old world. I attended college, and taught a couple of college classes, before the AI revolution. There was definitely a connection between learning and evaluation for most students. In fact most students preferred more evaluation, not less, such as graded quizzes and homeworks rather than just one great big exam at the end. Among other things, the deadlines and feedback helped them budget their efforts. Also, the exercise of getting something right and hitting a deadline is not an overt purpose of education, but has a certain pragmatic value.

Again, showing my age, in the pre-AI era, the technology of choice was cheating. But there were vanishingly few students who used cheating to circumvent the evaluations while actually learning anything from their courses.

If teaching and certifying could be separated, they would be. In fact, it has happened to some extent for computer programming, hence the “coding interview” and so forth. But computer programming is also an unusual occupation in that it’s easy to be self taught, and questionable whether it needs to be taught at the college level.

[bambax]

You don't need uni to watch youtube; you can do that on your own, for free. "Remote classes" are obviously a scam.

[meroes]

I don’t think there’s a way to claim remote classes are a scam without saying college as a whole is a scam with your logic. So why single out remote classes?

[seanmcdirmid]

Until they need to start learning how to use them to get a job in the modern world?

There should be a class that teaches you how to use AI to get things done, especially judging on how many even on HN admit they aren’t good at it.

[Ekaros]

Is there even a point until field properly stabilise? Even with more fundamental stuff there is complaints that material is outdated. And even AI proponents seem to tell that things are still evolving and you need to do something in new way regularly.

[seanmcdirmid]

If the tech is already good enough to cheat with? Ya, I think the kids are ready to learn it, even if just keeps improving in the coming years. It also helps you reflect on the process of doing something when you instruct someone else to do it for you. Writing a good essay and getting AI to write a good essay for you are both useful things to do as students.

[idle_zealot]

But is that webscale?