Old School

In order to minimize cheating using artificial intelligence tools, colleges are requiring handwritten test answers in blue books:

Students outsourcing their assignments to AI and cheating their way through college has become so rampant, so quickly, that it has created a market for a product that helps professors ChatGPT-proof school. As it turns out, that product already exists. In fact, you’ve probably used it. You might even dread it.

It’s called a blue book.

The mere thought of that exam booklet with a blue cover and blank pages is enough to make generations of college kids clam up—and make their hands cramp up.

But inexpensive pamphlets of stapled paper have become a surprisingly valuable tool for teachers at a time when they need all the help they can get.

Your humble blogger is familiar with the argument that artificial intelligence will be so intertwined with their lives that students should be encouraged, not discouraged, from using AI to solve exam problems. I think the counter-arguments are stronger: 1) college is perhaps the last environment where students can be forced to think for themselves without the use of AI, and tuition monies would be better spent on thinking rather than looking up information; 2) how hard is it, really, to learn how to use artificial intelligence? An employer who thinks AI is both necessary and difficult can easily sponsor a one-day class for its employees.

Blue books were good enough for us, and they should be good enough for our grandchildren.