Mathematics/AI and a School Cheating

[jedishrfu]

An interesting article on how tools like Mathematica are changing the way teachers teach:

Denise Garcia knows that her students sometimes cheat, but the situation she unearthed in February seemed different. A math teacher in West Hartford, Connecticut, Garcia had accidentally included an advanced equation in a problem set for her AP Calculus class. Yet somehow a handful of students in the 15-person class solved it correctly. Those students had also shown their work, defeating the traditional litmus test for sussing out cheating in STEM classrooms.

Garcia was perplexed, until she remembered a conversation from a few years earlier. Some former students had told her about an online tool called Wolfram|Alpha that could complete complicated calculations in seconds. It provided both the answers and the steps for reaching them, making it virtually undetectable when copied as homework.

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https://www.wired.com/story/ai-is-making-it-extremely-easy-for-students-to-cheat/

 

[Orodruin]

I will happily admit to using Wolfram Alpha as a tool in my daily work. It is great for finding conversion factors without having to look them up or multiplying different factors yourself, which is very prone to errors and resulting order of magnitude issues. For actual math, Mathematica is both faster and more reliable.

 

[jedishrfu]

This article brings back the idea that khan academy suggested where homework was done in class and class work i.e. Watching khan academy videos was done at home. In this way, students would not be able to,call upon Mathematica or other tools to cheat.

 

[Orodruin]

This article brings back the idea that khan academy suggested where homework was done in class and class work i.e. Watching khan academy videos was done at home. In this way, students would not be able to,call upon Mathematica or other tools to cheat.

I am not sure Khan academy was first to suggest this. The approach is similar to flipped classroom and you can also add quizzes to your videos to make them more interactive (I have done this) and reduce the risk of students alt-tabbing to facebook.

 

[jedishrfu]

I heard Salman Khan describe how Khan Academy videos were used in some schools in a TED talk and thought he had suggested the strategy.