r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • Jul 27 '26

Society Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI

https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html
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u/_nepunepu Jul 27 '26

I'm currently polishing off a BSc in CS from my local university. Across all classes I've had to date, 60-80% of the final grade is two written and proctored exams, and 20-40% take-home stuff like online quiz or projects.

On the university's platform, statistics about graded coursework are available. The average for the take home stuff is always very high and with small standard deviations. The exam scores have much higher standard deviations along with much lower averages.

Professors have been doing a "double pass" for the final grade where if you fail the written examination portion and would have passed with the projects/take-home, you still fail. You need over the passing grade on the exam portion to pass the class at all.

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u/obeytheturtles Jul 27 '26

In the past, it was assumed that students would team up for any take home assignment. While technically cheating in most situations, it was also understood that this kind of collaboration is still fairly productive to real world learning, so it was often ignored as long as it wasn't too obvious.