I teach a tech class to marketing students, and it definitely works very well. They are allowed to use ChatGPT and other tools, with one caveat: you remain responsible for the output. I hide white-text prompt injections in specs or longer task instructions (usually in PDFs, works well enough there with copy and paste), and sometimes place a phrase near the end of the text that prompts the LLM to append something like, "I submit this assignment without checking its output, and I accept point deductions as agreed."
I used to do this for a laugh and not deduct points, next year, I showed them this before class as an introduction to working with AI and kind of as a warning, I'll deduct points, expecting nobody falling for it, then they fell for it over and over again. Well.
Good. I wouldn't like cheaters to compete with honest students on the job market.
In my kid's school (American high school equivalent) being caught on using LLM in papers is a failed subject. Students must pass all the subjects to finish the school. Some of these subjects won't be taught the next year so effectively they lose year, two, three....
Prompt injecting homework assignments is a funny idea, but doesn't seem very productive.
Either the teacher needs to adjust how they are teaching new concepts or the student needs to ask themself why they are attending college in the first place.
I am in my final year of my bachelors in Software Engineering. I was (mostly still am) very interested in both SWE and CS in various angles - I studied a decent bit of PL theory, I tried to get into systems programming, I've built a bunch of "portfolio crud" software and had a short internship in a real company, with all of the above being roughly equally interesting to me. All this is to say I genuinely love the field so far.
However, the only benefit I've got from my local university is that it saves me from military while I study. Past year 2 (out of 4, country-specific quirks) there was roughly one subject actually worth paying attention to, so I also have switched to a "just get a decent grade at any cost" mode, as most of the material we're studying (and especially most of the assignments we've done) has negative value in real world.
Most of my peers consider me both more enthused and more knowledgeable than the average student, which mostly makes me realise that roughly 95% of my peers don't care about the contents of the courses.
All this is to say that, while grading is hard, the only thing that might get people to actually care is a proper course, no matter what threats you make.
It's pointless. Just an arms race of gimmicks. There's really no option besides making homework all optional, and putting 100% of the grade into in-person exams. I basically don't trust that any new graduate has earned their degree, and won't until schools do what's necessary to crush cheaters.
I agree with you in spirit, but the last meta pre-LLM was that exams were bad at measuring student skill and that students felt more fairly treated when their grade was the result of multiple assignments and projects. I think it's a shame we have move away from that
They are. I have a friend who was significantly more smart and thorough in our studies but often get bad scores on exams not being able to concentrate under the pressure.
Exams also rarely measured skill in the course. Often just a subset. We would often spend the last month of each semester cramming exams instead of studying the curse material because it wasn't that useful.
I rarely felt I got a lot out of courses, but I often felt I would if I got to study it properly
I teach a tech class to marketing students, and it definitely works very well. They are allowed to use ChatGPT and other tools, with one caveat: you remain responsible for the output. I hide white-text prompt injections in specs or longer task instructions (usually in PDFs, works well enough there with copy and paste), and sometimes place a phrase near the end of the text that prompts the LLM to append something like, "I submit this assignment without checking its output, and I accept point deductions as agreed."
I used to do this for a laugh and not deduct points, next year, I showed them this before class as an introduction to working with AI and kind of as a warning, I'll deduct points, expecting nobody falling for it, then they fell for it over and over again. Well.
Good. I wouldn't like cheaters to compete with honest students on the job market.
In my kid's school (American high school equivalent) being caught on using LLM in papers is a failed subject. Students must pass all the subjects to finish the school. Some of these subjects won't be taught the next year so effectively they lose year, two, three....
i wonder why the labs don't put a small model for detecting prompt injection in front of the main llm.
it's 20b at most and it can work quite well.
for now you can proxy http through llama guard. 'luxury' security if you can build and pay.
is there an architectural limitation?
Prompt injecting homework assignments is a funny idea, but doesn't seem very productive.
Either the teacher needs to adjust how they are teaching new concepts or the student needs to ask themself why they are attending college in the first place.
The student is attending college to get a job. Most students don't care about the course.
Probably around 50% of students in my year were only in it for the well paying jobs a prestigious degree like that could give them.
This has to be part of the threat model for cheating.
I am in my final year of my bachelors in Software Engineering. I was (mostly still am) very interested in both SWE and CS in various angles - I studied a decent bit of PL theory, I tried to get into systems programming, I've built a bunch of "portfolio crud" software and had a short internship in a real company, with all of the above being roughly equally interesting to me. All this is to say I genuinely love the field so far.
However, the only benefit I've got from my local university is that it saves me from military while I study. Past year 2 (out of 4, country-specific quirks) there was roughly one subject actually worth paying attention to, so I also have switched to a "just get a decent grade at any cost" mode, as most of the material we're studying (and especially most of the assignments we've done) has negative value in real world.
Most of my peers consider me both more enthused and more knowledgeable than the average student, which mostly makes me realise that roughly 95% of my peers don't care about the contents of the courses.
All this is to say that, while grading is hard, the only thing that might get people to actually care is a proper course, no matter what threats you make.
It's pointless. Just an arms race of gimmicks. There's really no option besides making homework all optional, and putting 100% of the grade into in-person exams. I basically don't trust that any new graduate has earned their degree, and won't until schools do what's necessary to crush cheaters.
I agree with you in spirit, but the last meta pre-LLM was that exams were bad at measuring student skill and that students felt more fairly treated when their grade was the result of multiple assignments and projects. I think it's a shame we have move away from that
> exams were bad at measuring student skill
They are. I have a friend who was significantly more smart and thorough in our studies but often get bad scores on exams not being able to concentrate under the pressure.
Exams also rarely measured skill in the course. Often just a subset. We would often spend the last month of each semester cramming exams instead of studying the curse material because it wasn't that useful.
I rarely felt I got a lot out of courses, but I often felt I would if I got to study it properly
the course is now no longer cs/swe.
the course is now
"how to pass exams in cs/swe"