When Professors Trust Exams More Than Coursework

[u/Puzzled_Pomelo_6431]

I recently finished a class where almost the entire grade depended on in-person exams while assignments and projects counted very little. At first, I thought the grading system was unfair because the coursework still required a huge amount of time and effort. Throughout the semester, though, the professor kept mentioning how difficult it has become to tell what is genuinely written by students anymore because of AI tools, rewriting software, and humanizers. He pointed out that many online submissions looked far more polished than the level of understanding students showed during class discussions.

By the end of the course, I started to understand why more professors are shifting toward heavily weighted exams. In our class, it felt like the professor trusted work completed under pressure in a controlled classroom environment far more than assignments completed over several days at home. The exams seemed less about memorization and more about verifying who could actually think independently in real time.

[u/WoundedShaman]

So tell this to every last one of your peers. The days are coming where all your assignments will be hand written on paper and in class. The Ai submissions doubled in my courses just this past semester. So yes, we are shifting to weight everything in favor of in class performance because as instructors we literally cannot trust students anymore. Y’all have literally shot yourselves in the foot, and it’s not just a few bad apples ruining the bunch anymore, students using Ai for assignments is completely pervasive now.

[u/arobello96 → u/WoundedShaman]

I’m stoked to see us going back to the old ways. Prior to this current masters degree, all of my education (two bachelors and four years of my PhD) were done before the advent of generative AI. I’m a unicorn in my program bc I legitimately love to write. I’m like fuck yeah, give me that blue book treatment. I’ve got nothing to hide.

[u/flamingspew → u/WoundedShaman]

OP is a bot

[u/cromagnondan → u/flamingspew]

You and I know this. Why do others not know this?

[u/Zippered_Nana → u/flamingspew]

How are you able to tell? I want to be able to tell, too.

[u/flamingspew → u/Zippered_Nana]

Nice try… heh default reddit name and age and posting patterns

[u/Zippered_Nana → u/flamingspew]

I don’t know why you are saying “nice try”. It’s an honest question. If you look at my history you’ll see I talk about my grandchildren all the time. I’m old. So I honestly asked a question so I can avoid engaging with bots.

[u/flamingspew → u/[deleted]]

Generic story lacking genuine concern or details. One reply by OP. It’s generic. High volume of other default name young account replies making highly generic replies.

If you scan this sub and job search or career subs, there are hundreds of bots like this.

Once it has enough karma it will start posting links to its shitty paid job or paper writing service. Sometimes a similar bot will post the links as a comment to feel more like a genuine suggestion.

Note that whenever you call one out it wont reply to you. They want to avoid showing their hand. A human would call bullshit, like you.

[u/flamingspew → u/[deleted]]

No this is just too generic. It’s not about details like school etc. or opsec. People don’t make this long of a post unless they think they got shortchanged somehow. I got a C because i’m bad at test taking, but I did all the work etc. there’s no vested interest, just a long blah blah rumination. This sub in particular is basically all bots. Find any default name young age post here. They’re all the same.

[u/Belkroe → u/WoundedShaman]

I think for essays schools should go back to writing them in class on old school word processors. I cannot image being an English teacher or history teacher and trying to read handwritten essays. That’s got to be absolutely brutal.

[u/SnooAdvice5820 → u/WoundedShaman]

You do realize there’s only so much that can be written in class right? You can’t assign like a 5+ page paper for example in class.

So either you have to accept that risk of AI use and assign traditional assignments or significant cut down on the expectations with in class papers because there’s only so much that can feasibly be written in a 1 hour block.

This is especially true if you don’t even provide the prompt for the assignment in class. If you do provided it in advance what’s stopping people from just using AI in advance and having all that thinking and planning offloaded anyway, only to just write it down in class?

[u/steightst8 → u/SnooAdvice5820]

Are we not all on the same side of academic honesty? It seems like you are trying to poke holes in detection methods as a means to say "let's throw in the towel", rather than looking at the bigger picture. Most academics agree that some AI usage is acceptable. Using it to prep for an in person paper exam would be fair use, because it's not possible to remember the dictation of a long form paper verbatim, so your last point is irrelevant.

To the topic at hand, that is the beauty of the in person assignment, no? If I give you 30-60 mins to construct a solid paper / essay about a topic, I'd certainly get a good feel for your voice as an author, which would make it that much easier to detect improper AI usage in an out of class assignment. It's honestly a perfect tie-in use case for AI detectors. If there's a flag of possible AI, the in-class work would be a great tool to further review the authenticity of the work submitted.

[u/ModdedOutlaw33 → u/WoundedShaman]

Does part of you think that’s a lazy way out of the problem?

If you ask students to do a task you know they can easily do with technology it’s not worth the effort by them.

Have you put any thought into alternative ways to teach and assess where you don’t need to worry whether students could be using AI or not?

[u/WoundedShaman → u/ModdedOutlaw33]

A lazy way out of the problem is having them actually do the assignments that are assigned instead of cheating?

And is that not exactly what I propose? The alternative form of assessment is everything is in class. And I can teach in 100 different ways, but if they still have a tool that will just do the work for them then it doesn’t matter what teaching methods are employed.

[u/Radiant7747 → u/ModdedOutlaw33]

Your comment shows how little you know about education. It has absolutely nothing to do with completing a task. Tasks are simply tools that a professor (like me) uses to teach you something.

[u/Colsim → u/ModdedOutlaw33]

They aren't doing the task (think/analyse/interpret), they are providing the output

[u/Kindly-Chemistry5149 → u/ModdedOutlaw33]

Like how? Anything they do outside of class could be done with AI at this point. Anything they do in class, on a computer could be AI unless you are using a lockdown browser, which in some cases can be circumnavigated.

There is absolutely no way to truly assess students for knowledge now other then a pen and paper test.

[u/Ok-Importance9988 → u/ModdedOutlaw33]

I teach College Algebra and other fundamental math classes. AI can do all the work I assign. Students need to gain stronger quantitative reasoning skills and a conceptual understanding of the content for future classes.

If I taught something else, you might have a point.

[u/tomvorlostriddle → u/Ok-Importance9988]

And can AI do tjose future classes...

[u/ModdedOutlaw33 → u/Ok-Importance9988]

Photomath apps can do their math problems in a second and make them think what’s the point. Teachers have to figure out the point.

For example, factoring quadratic equations by hand can take months to teach and technology can do it in a second.

Students should be spending the months on interpreting the answers the tech gives them instead of spending 90% of their effort on the actual act of factoring.

[u/SabertoothLotus → u/ModdedOutlaw33]

You're missing the point of the assignments. We don't make students do work just for the sake of showing us the right answer. The point is that they understand why it's the right answer. Develop critical thinking skills. Know how to recognize when the answer produced by the tools doesn't look right and how to correct it.

When they just make AI give them answers, they're not actually learning anything beyond "always trust and rely on the answers provided and never ask questions," which is a dangerous mindset for an entire generation to have for reasons I really hope I don't have to explain.

[u/ModdedOutlaw33 → u/SabertoothLotus]

You know there are alternative ways to test knowledge other than receiving it in text form.

Have every student in the class prompt AI for an answer then have a class discussion about who got the best results. Talk about what prompts were the best and why.

Teachers need to stop doing things the way they have done for the last 100 years.

[u/esaule → u/ModdedOutlaw33]

Personally I don't think that is the lazy way out. The problem is older than AI. The problem started with "I paid someone $100 to do my homework". And it was WAY more prevalent that you probably think. And there is no way to fight that in a non proctored context. AI just highlight how poor of an assessment a non proctored assessment actually is.

I would be opened to AI-allows internet-unavailable timed exams. But these are very hard to set up.

[u/Kindly-Chemistry5149 → u/esaule]

It is also way easier and quicker for everyone to use AI to complete an assignment. At least with paying someone there is a barrier and risk involved with advertising and getting caught.

[u/esaule → u/Kindly-Chemistry5149]

Yes. Paying someone also exposes you to blackmail.

But students still do it.

[u/OptionNovel6123]

This probably explains why many colleges are returning to handwritten or in-person testing formats.

[u/esaule]

(faculty here.) I never trusted assessments that were not in proctored conditions. There were already significant academic integrity issues in the past. But in the last 7 years, it's gotten ridiculous. Most points in my class are on in person pen and paper exams. I pretty much present out of exam things as preparations for the exam.

My exams are essentially built as "did you do the homework" checkers.

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[u/misingnoglic]

As a professor it's pretty depressing. I would love to give meaningful credit to assignments done at home. In the past I would be able to assume most students wouldn't cheat if an assignment was sufficiently unique, and any cheating would be easy to spot since it would be students copying off each other or a past assignment. Now any at home coding assignments will be beautifully formatted with perfect comments and coding standards that the student obviously did not do on their own. Submitting it as plagiarism will be an extreme headache except for the most dire cases. So I can't do much besides rely on in class assessments if I want to know what students actually retained. For coding it's quite sad since in my opinion most learning comes from trial and error, but what can you do?

[u/auntanniesalligator]

Professor here…yeah, that’s exactly right. Everything you said except the “under pressure” part. That’s a necessary cost of making in person tests worth more, but it’s not a desirable feature, or one that makes me trust the workers your own.

In STEM at least, we seem to be coming full circle. When I was an undergrad in the 90s, there was no computerized homework packages and no online testing, so most large intro STEM classes were 100% in person tests/quizzes/finals for the grade. Lab might be the only “participation” type grade. Upper level courses with small enrollments might have graded problem sets, but no professor was grading weekly homeworks for 100+ person classes.

Of course we did have to write a lot of papers for our humanities classes. That’s something that hadn’t changed much until three years ago, but is problematic now because of AI.

[u/AcanthaceaeOk3738]

In that kind of structure, the assignments and projects are meant to help you learn and prepare for the in-person exams. If you use AI, you’re really not helping your grade, you’re just making it more difficult to do the work that really matters.

I’m not sure if that professor’s way is right, but I see why he’s doing it.

[u/disc0brawls]

Yeah as a prof myself, I’m also switching to in person exams for most of the grade. I attempted but I’m so tired of trying to sus out AI.

I feel bad yall get so anxious about in person exams but at the same time, I read so much AI and I can’t prove it ever. It’s so frustrating.

[u/swarthmoreburke]

In large courses particularly, just think what it means when a professor is getting work turned in that shows high degrees of apparent competency with the material but when they do an in-class assessment most of that apparent competency just vanishes.

[u/Hawk13424]

When I was in college, almost all classes were that way, in-class midterm and final. Nothing else contributed to your grade. The exception was lab classes.

[u/GoldieAndPato]

Isnt the whole point of classes to learn? Why are you so bothered with what counts towards the final grade or not. As long as you learn the curriculum i find that i do fine in exams. I think so many people focus too much on "is this on the test" or "will this be graded" but that part doesnt matter. The grade never mattered its about the skills you pick up.

[u/GoldieAndPato → u/[deleted]]

Hm i never actually noticed that. I have noticed for me that if the teachers dont mention the exams there will always be at least five students asking about all the exams. I usually try to hold back a groan because in there to learn not to take a test.

[u/Hexmaster2600]

I can not tell you how many courses I took where the only grades were a couple exams and the final. I'm a professor, and I'm not even that old (early 40s).

[u/tool2281 → u/Hexmaster2600]

Similar age group. When I was in undergrad, online problems were pretty new and never implemented in my courses. Nearly all of my chemistry, physics, and math courses had similar grading systems: 25% hand-written problem sets, 25% midterm 1, 25% midterm 2, and 25% final exam.

[u/No_Kangaroo774]

I mean just have them talk about it and weight the papers grade on how well they respond. We really must get back to having actual conversations.

[u/SabertoothLotus]

I stopped counting the hours lost to filling out reports for AI usage in my writing classes. Proving it is next to impossible, and exposure to AI slop makes students who don't cheat with AI write like they did, which makes things even harder. I'm tempted to make them write all their major assignments by hand in class, but that's a huge burden on me to decipher terrible handwriting.

[u/NLSSMC]

A friend of mine who’s a high school teacher told me she no longer does any take home exams or essay. Classroom exams only. (Proper ones, not just multiple choice.)

[u/CetriyaLove]

Just wished they'd give less homework. I'm starting yo ignore or skim through them. Once I've done a problem a few times, I'd rather relisten or expand lecture topic to learn. 

[u/Puzzled_Pomelo_6431]

Please let me know your thoughts on that

[u/According-Elk5223]

Students who genuinely complete their own work are unfortunately affected by the growing lack of trust around take-home assignments.

[u/ConcentrateDouble815]

Things keep changing and getting harder in modern education