4 ms·

... or Blue Book exams? We did tons of those, way before ChatGPT was a twinkle in anyone's eye. Do they not do those anymore? Or is this just for remote learnin

... or Blue Book exams? We did tons of those, way before ChatGPT was a twinkle in anyone's eye. Do they not do those anymore? Or is this just for remote learning or to supplement grading things like term papers?

Clent 4y ago
That's what replaced oral exams. The color of writing material's binding is irrelevant. Oral exams offer a fluidity not possible in written forms and the rationale for a written exam -- whether by the stroke of fingers to key or hand to paper bound in Blue, it is now muted by the ability to video record the oral exam for later grading. Thus the performance of the exam can be recorded; allowing for a leisurely assessment. With the performance itself capable of a far more robust introspection of one's unaided knowledge.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm actually in favor of oral exams regardless, I'm just not getting how they address ChatGPT cheating any better than in-person written exams, unless we're mainly talking about online courses.
- asdff 4y ago
  Oral exams were tough if you were nervous. You are facing the teacher feeling like they are getting pissed at your lack of preparedness. On the other hand, if you record them yourself, who is to say you don't have a teleprompter just behind the camera? You'd have to make people come on campus into a testing center to ensure fidelity. Its probably a lot more expensive to build out AV facilities for each and every student at a massive college taking an oral exam than it is to just have a 1foot folding desk and a few sheets of paper.
- francisofascii 4y ago
  Some profs offered a choice, oral or written.
asdff 4y ago
They still do those. However in the years before remote learning and increasingly after, schools started buying services like blackboard or canvas. These are academic websites that manage homework assignments, deadlines, store the syllabus, announcements, etc for each class where the teacher bothers to use the system (most of them at least have a syllabus if nothing else posted). They also allow assignment submissions, even timed testing environments where the browser is locked down. They also link with turnitin to check submissions for plagiarism. Courses that have grown reliant on these third party tools will have to simply turn the clock back to 2010 or so and go back to in person assignments. I wouldn't be surprised if it got to the point of otherwise fully remote classes booking a room on campus 3x a semester to conduct exams, because a paper exam seems so much simpler than fighting an arms race with chatgpt and electronic submissions. This might not actually hurt companies like blackboard or canvas that much, because universities are like these big cows where once they have an institutional license they will probably maintain it forever, even if they are also buying the competing product (typical to pay for microsoft business and google cloud services both even though they are entirely redundant for example).
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > I wouldn't be surprised if it got to the point of otherwise fully remote classes booking a room on campus 3x a semester to conduct exams This is exactly what the otherwise-fully-remote courses that I took did, about a decade ago. The school had arrangements all over the country (indeed, all over the world, IIRC) for testing locations, often at other universities (or at their own primary campus or a handful of satellite campuses), so as long as you lived within once-a-semester commute distance of one of those locations so you could do the final exam (I don't think they did a mid-semester exam at those, but it's been a while, maybe they did) you could take the courses, no problem. They had a proctor or two in the room to make sure no-one cheated and to help with basic issues that might come up, and the proctor collected your work at the end, to submit it.

Clent 4y ago

That's what replaced oral exams. The color of writing material's binding is irrelevant. Oral exams offer a fluidity not possible in written forms and the rationale for a written exam -- whether by the stroke of fingers to key or hand to paper bound in Blue, it is now muted by the ability to video record the oral exam for later grading. Thus the performance of the exam can be recorded; allowing for a leisurely assessment. With the performance itself capable of a far more robust introspection of one's unaided knowledge.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Yeah, I'm actually in favor of oral exams regardless, I'm just not getting how they address ChatGPT cheating any better than in-person written exams, unless we're mainly talking about online courses.
asdff 4y ago
Oral exams were tough if you were nervous. You are facing the teacher feeling like they are getting pissed at your lack of preparedness. On the other hand, if you record them yourself, who is to say you don't have a teleprompter just behind the camera? You'd have to make people come on campus into a testing center to ensure fidelity. Its probably a lot more expensive to build out AV facilities for each and every student at a massive college taking an oral exam than it is to just have a 1foot folding desk and a few sheets of paper.
francisofascii 4y ago
Some profs offered a choice, oral or written.

asdff 4y ago

They still do those. However in the years before remote learning and increasingly after, schools started buying services like blackboard or canvas. These are academic websites that manage homework assignments, deadlines, store the syllabus, announcements, etc for each class where the teacher bothers to use the system (most of them at least have a syllabus if nothing else posted). They also allow assignment submissions, even timed testing environments where the browser is locked down. They also link with turnitin to check submissions for plagiarism. Courses that have grown reliant on these third party tools will have to simply turn the clock back to 2010 or so and go back to in person assignments. I wouldn't be surprised if it got to the point of otherwise fully remote classes booking a room on campus 3x a semester to conduct exams, because a paper exam seems so much simpler than fighting an arms race with chatgpt and electronic submissions. This might not actually hurt companies like blackboard or canvas that much, because universities are like these big cows where once they have an institutional license they will probably maintain it forever, even if they are also buying the competing product (typical to pay for microsoft business and google cloud services both even though they are entirely redundant for example).

yamtaddle 4y ago
> I wouldn't be surprised if it got to the point of otherwise fully remote classes booking a room on campus 3x a semester to conduct exams This is exactly what the otherwise-fully-remote courses that I took did, about a decade ago. The school had arrangements all over the country (indeed, all over the world, IIRC) for testing locations, often at other universities (or at their own primary campus or a handful of satellite campuses), so as long as you lived within once-a-semester commute distance of one of those locations so you could do the final exam (I don't think they did a mid-semester exam at those, but it's been a while, maybe they did) you could take the courses, no problem. They had a proctor or two in the room to make sure no-one cheated and to help with basic issues that might come up, and the proctor collected your work at the end, to submit it.