Yeah. When I was a student, I got sent to an academic misconduct panel just suspected of cheating, and was told I absolutely could be expelled if they found out I had actually done it.

And sure, in reality somebody had copied my work and I could prove it, so I was fine - but at least they bothered to actually investigate in my example!

I know policies are different between institutions, but these students got caught red-handed not just plagiarising, but outright faking coursework submissions. Why is there no investigation into their previous coursework, no misconduct panel interviews, literally nothing apart from failing the specific part of the mid-term they were caught cheating on.

No wonder they don't give a damn when the punishment for being caught has so little teeth!

As you say, times have changed for the worse.

Colleges have become profit obsessed and students are the cash cows. Expulsion is bad for revenue.

Policy where I teach is that it's up to the professor's discretion, though that's mostly because it's not always as easy to prove as this. There's a boilerplate anti cheating section we have in our syllabus that says it's a reportable offense that may lead to academic probation or expulsion.

Honestly, it's also a ton of paperwork so I've just opted to fail them since usually my papers aren't so easily answered via an LLM and rather than tell them I caught them cheating, I simply point out they missed rubric item 2, 5 and 6 so it's something solid, not my speculation. But I also haven't white texted them yet, lol.

Well you see, we don't have DEI any more.

Instead we simply have literally no standards, for anyone!

That's how meritocracy works, right?

I presume that the use of gen AI is not considered plagiarism.

They probably have some kind of lame policy around "responsible use of gen AI" or something.

That makes a lot more sense. Having almost all your students proven cheaters would be catastrophic, and I can't imagine he would have remained so relatively calm and matter-of-fact.

It's also important to remember that that's 32 college students who didn't proofread. How many more noticed his shenanigans when highlighting the text, or simply used LLMs for only part of their essay?

“Thirty-two of my 35 students between two classes failed a portion of their midterm because they all used AI to generate their entire response,” he explained in a viral TikTok, sounding incredulous. “And apparently they didn’t proofread it.”

In don’t know, that sounds like only three people passed that portion the mid-term.

I hoped it was obvious when I said "all those students" I was talking about the ones that were caught blatantly cheating.

Because my guess is that you don't understand why you're being downvoted:

You don't have to cheat to fail a test. Some people take a test and fail. That happened for three people.

I went to high school in the '80s. I cheated in my German class by inventing my own runic-sort-of script and declining conjugating all the verbs on the cover of my notebook, hiding it in a drawing of a big obelisk or spaceship or the like. I would have this notebook on the floor during the test and I could easily read whatever I needed right off of it. Teacher never suspected a thing.

And now ... I can't fucking speak German. The teacher did throw a board eraser at my head one time, but that was only because I kept speaking German with a thick Texas accent.

could be... they made me programa python on paper.

for introduction to programming, basically you had to try to run the program on your head lmao.

this, they can do this in a computer lab, where a lab moniter employee can watch all the students computers from her computers. they do this at our CC computer labs, 1 moniter hired to watch whatever the students are doing on thier computers, from her computer which moniters all the students comps at once.

If having access to basic technology like the internet is considered cheating, then your test need to upgrade to the 21st century.

This is ridiculous, in my uni is pen and paper, and people with physical or mental disabilities get accommodations so they can perform as good as other people, I myself have some due to autism.

What is not OK is just to give a medium to enable cheaters like this.

Or we do like the current days and give reasonable accomodations for those that need them while still preserving the integrity of the exam?

That's what accommodations are for

why do people keep using this accessibility argument for AI? Is it cause y'all can't 'think of the children' your way to getting the ignorant to agree?

US universities maybe.

My experience with high school is that they would want you to cheat so the school's numbers look good. The consequences of No Child Left Behind will be felt for a long time.

Did a paper with a 20-year old. Intelligent, well-spoken girl. She was absolutely astonished that there are keyboard shortcuts for Cut and Paste.

been that way for almost two decades.

Well they aren't teaching themselves. They're learning from their predecessors like every generation before them. You think they're all struggling academically by choice?

Soon the slop will just start dropping words and making typos because it’s learned that’s what we prefer.

Right, they're supposed to mean something

Ok, but just to play daivels advocate: If you can't tell they are cheating without tricks, can't they do that learn+read+apply thingie using AI just as well???

No, that's the point of the credential for the employer. For the student, the credential is just a box you need to check that lets employers filter out the people they don't want, and why would the student give a shit about that?

Most people are learning about the Industrial Revolution in college because they need a credit for their degree. A few people are learning history because it's actually something they're interested in, everyone else is interested in other classes that have nothing to do with this one. It's just another tedious box they need to check so they don't have to work until they die.

if you don't mind, what field are you in that you were examined in ochem but you don't use ochem? last time i've checked, chatbots crap the bed constantly when asked about anything that you can deduce (easily, by analogy) but can't find, especially as text, the mistakes were either glaring or sneaky but never correct. it's much easier to express what you mean by drawings in ochem anyway

But would you have been able to? Ochem wouldn't give access to laptops and just be a paper and pencil exam.

External devices would be banned from the get go so attempting to use your phone or laptop would get you a 0 for cheating.

These professors seem pretty dumb allowing all sorts of open access to devices during exams that are completely open to view and run anything and get surprised people are using AI. Why does a history exam need a computer with open access anyways. This isn't a programming course.

eachothers

each other's

and quite frankly, a lot of them don’t know obvious shit because, well, they’re young.

Being young or being a student doesn't mean you're dumb. Also even if you haven't it's still something you think about and discuss. Especially by your third and fourth years, it's something you should be actively thinking about more and more.

I finished school two years ago by the way. Not trying to give you hope for the future or anything because a lot of people are dumb but they should know better.

This has been common practice in schools for several years now. Students are well aware of this tactic.

Im surprised that some students were caught off guard, because anyone in Dark mode can easily see the white font.

They can't get a master's if they don't graduate with a bachelor's first.

depends how universitiy grad programs calculate your gpa, some with take Ws, and 0s into consideration when it comes to calculating it.

FWIW in-state students are usually just as lucrative for universities, since the tuition discount is paid by state grants.

No it won't. What the professor did illustrates this. You have to have a human proof reading AI. No matter how smart computers get, they'll always be dumb as shit.

You can live in the AI designed house and I’ll live in the architect designed house. I live by a fault line so I’m a little more sensitive to niceties like not having it fall on me.

Try 386 real-mode / protected mode some day.

I have always liked the idea of assembly languages being able to program so close to machine speed.

But working with assembly has always felt like trying to build a mansion with what was left over after several Category 5 hurricanes flattened an area… and with zero power tools and machinery, to boot. Just hand tools and no supplies except that which you can salvage.

Ah yes, then they can spend thousands more on an even fancier sheet of paper. It’s a shame they are devaluing their degrees like this, because as the world catches on about how common this is, they will not garner much respect for having completed one.

Certainly when I’m hiring I have usually expected that someone with a university education might have good written communication or language skills. But now I’m realizing that this may no longer be sensible.

Does it show that?

I think it was weirdly worded and meant that the 2 had no shame and that everyone else did.

Gibson shared some of the most examples

The author doesn’t know how to spell egregious, and didn’t use AI to add it in.

why did they contest it, they wernt going to pass the class anyways, its better to drop in anonymity, then to out yourself. or they had something else riding on it, like they needed it for grad school, or to take the next higher level class?

I think it's not so steep if students are told beforehand. Tell them what counts as cheating. Tell them the consequences. Tell them it's serious.

In university I always had to sign a little text that informed us that we are not allowed to cheat and that doing so would lead to failing the test and potentially getting expelled.

even copy and pasting templates and changing words around is at least effort too.

School is now taught in a way that the objective is to get the correct answer. That's what teaching to the test and refusing to fail kids leads to. Students think that once they pass the test and the course is done then you have hit a check point and never have to think about it ever again, just like a video game. This is a philosophical attitude that there is zero point in thinking for yourself and that the magical addictive rectangle will guide you through all of life's adventures.

That's a nice sentiment, one that I agree with, but in the real world anyone who cheated their way to a diploma and wasn't caught still has that diploma, and still gets the job the diploma is for.

Sure, sometimes karma get them back, but if it's not an applied field they often fail upwards until they learn on-the-job enough to stick around and collect a decent paycheck, or they become a thorn to other around them who are actually competent, but not enough that they get fired.

I don't have a solution, it's more of a rant, but I wish I knew how to hold people accountable for things like this.

Exactly! 96 out of 35 would have been caught.

Shit is supposed to be hard. That’s called learning.

Now here is the thing. I’m terrible at writing. Plus I have ADHD. English has never been my strong suit. I’ll start a thought, get sidetracked, start another thought, leave out words, etc. I’m an engineering, math, science kinda guy. Case in point, back in the day (like 40 years ago) my SATs were very skewed. My math score was like 780 but the verbal was 200 points lower. If AI had existed back then, I would have written the paper or whatever outline of my own ideas, and then had the tool make it coherent. LLMs are good at language. That’s what they really are. They are not smart, they don’t have original ideas. They are word guessers. I’d treat it like a spell/grammar checker on acid. Having the LLM ( I really don’t like calling it AI because it really isn’t AGI.. at least not yet) do the entire assignment is just short cutting the entire process of what the university is there for.

Just my 2¢

They were gonna be stupid either way. That was the point of ruining the education system. This actually helps the system, because now employers can justify once again raising the requirements of a job posting "because look at how badly all these college graduates are performing", and then the next generation is going to be told they won't get a good job with just a bachelors degree, they need a PhD. Then more student debt - more money for parasitic organizations and the gov't.

If they're not all's good but damn do they look similar. That there's parts looking like camera lenses (which is what I hyper focused on) really doesn't help at all. Just further proof all this AI is just trash though, it just turns everyone into a suspect.

The funny part is it would have been less effort to just study for the exam.

I know cheating was a thing, but now devices that people would have loved to have access to when internet was a thing like phones and laptops being allowed in exams makes prep like yours not even necessary. In some schools teachers collect people's phones for instance and dont allow people to bring out other electronics.

It's why I don't even get why professors are even upset at AI use during exams if they are allowing these devices to begin with.

Its like giving a math exam and telling students calculators aren't allowed to be used, but you may bring and use your calculator for non calculation purposes. Then being surprised they dared to use the calculator for calculating.

You don't even have to try to be sneaky and try to hide that you are cheating anymore with how easy some schools make it now.

Yeah I didn't like it so ran it on an old laptop just for exams and not my personal one.

But, if schools really wanted to it is possible to have digital exams where the usual browser bypasses aren't a thing, and the laptops cant be used for internet searches, AI queries, etc.

Without that you might as well just go with an open book, open internet, open ai, group messages, use whatever is at your disposal type exam. Because rules at that point is pretty pointless.

Its not a browser that locks down. It actual software that completely hijacks the computer so you cant exit the program until it is done. Can't get into the desktop at all like some malware.

You are making it seem more difficult than it is. Problem is already solved. By making it something open hardware and Internet might as well just give everyone a pass at that point and not complain about whatever tools are used when full access hardware is allowed to be used.

Watch the video. The text was "hidden" in the sense that it was the same color as the background. Meaning it would get caught by assistive devices like screen readers or anyone copy/pasting the instructions into a word processor in which they would actually construct their response. Too many possibilities for false positives without the students having any sort of evidence to back up their claims if they were to contest it.

I had just one test in my whole school career that had intentional nonsense like that. But I definitely heard all sorts of stories of tests like that. And I am sure kids these days are very familiar with those stories as well. If I read an instruction that told me so "Say some nonsense about Madagascar", I would assume the teacher is expecting the students who skimmed the instructions to not mention Madagascar, so you bet I'm going to say the weirdest thing I can come up with about Madagascar.