What is the point of incorporating formative assessments into a course if they are simply delivered to an LLM? Suddenly, it’s a waste of time for both the student and the instructor. Mini quizzes are great study tools to help students check their own understanding, if they take them at all. now you can direct an LLM “agent” browser to complete all quizzes for a complete course with a single frictionless message.
Should teachers keep these types of assignments for students who want to benefit from them and accept cheating, or should they eliminate the opportunity to learn just to avoid cheating?
Evolution, natural selection.
Many professors are trying to adapt to this crisis by returning to the only assessment tools that are virtually LLM-proof: tests like oral exams or handwritten assignments created under classroom supervision.
None of these solutions are available for teachers of asynchronous online classes. That sucks, since the availability of those classes is important. They may serve students with physical disabilities, students in rural areas far from a campus, or students trying to earn a degree while working full-time or caring for dependents. If we have to simply give up on the idea of online classes, those are the victims.
But even in the case of in-person classes, adaptations to avoid cheating in the LLM are often trade-offs that reduce pedagogical quality. For example, labor-intensive oral exams did not become an endangered species just because of increasing student-to-instructor ratios. Pen-and-paper (or keyboard-and-mouse) exams make it easy for every student to have the same experience and eliminate some of the potential for grading bias.
Writing tasks that may have previously been excellent teaching tools have obviously become the first things to end up on the chopping block. I used to have students in a natural disasters class write a plot for a big-budget Hollywood disaster movie, using precise and implausible physical processes. It was good practice for his writing skills; The students found it fun and it forced them to skillfully apply much of what they had learned.
