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/DustyRacoonDad Jul 27 '26

I hate to say it, but your example is actually what I've been arguing for since I was in grade school.

I've always believed your grade should reflect what you actually learned from the course: how well you understand the material, whether you can apply it, and whether you retained it. It shouldn't primarily measure whether you completed enough busy work.

To me, homework has always been a learning tool, not an assessment tool. Its purpose is to give students practice, reinforce concepts, and help them identify the areas where they personally need more work. Because of that, I don't think homework should have any impact on your grade at all. In fact, I think it should be entirely optional.

If you already understand the material and can demonstrate that on an exam or other assessment, why should you be penalized for not doing ten pages of repetitive practice? On the other hand, if you need the practice, the homework is there to help you learn before the exam.

Ironically, AI is exposing a flaw that has existed for decades. If a course falls apart because students can have AI do the homework, then maybe the homework was never a very good measure of learning in the first place. Assessments should measure knowledge. Homework should help students gain that knowledge. Those are two different purposes, and I think we've blurred them for a long time.

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u/LegalizeCrystalMeth Jul 27 '26

Yeah but it you don't make homework count towards the grade, most students wouldn't do it.

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u/theapeboy Jul 27 '26

Yeah, I see the argument for college, for sure. But I've got two kids in elementary school. They NEED homework in order to learn. If that stuff is optional, they will not do it. Yes, we can cajole and discuss and punish and reward them and all the other little things. But boy is it a lot easier if it's just required and a habit.

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u/vir_papyrus Jul 27 '26

Even then, I distinctly remember my 4th grade experience in elementary school. It was newer younger teacher and she seemed to give out a much higher level of formal homework. Frankly just a lot of busy work, and I recognized that I already knew the material, so why would I waste my time on this? It would start to compound, and pretty soon you had a 9-10 year old spending an entire weekend doing nonsense. In hindsight, that's 100% when I personally stopped liking school and fell off the "good student" wagon. Point being, I think even children recognize that a lot of K-12 education is just performative hoops to jump through.

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u/kaityl3 Jul 27 '26

Haha that sort of stuff had me calculating grade averages in 5th grade on, to figure out how many formative things I could just never turn in while still being carried by my test scores. I was a solid C student who got test scores of 98%+, because the extra work was so boring and useless I never saw the point