Comment Don't grade homework. Test critical thinking. (Score 4, Insightful) 74
Homework assignments, and frankly any work done outside of a controlled environment, should serve only to prepare people for the work that will be done on an exam in a controlled environment. If students want to use AI to complete those assignments they are free to do so. But it likely won't do a good job of preparing them to do the work on an exam. Multiple choice exams and short form writing assignments under controlled conditions (i.e. no electronics, or laptops locked out of anything other than exam writing software) are well suited to assess factual knowledge and the ability to apply those facts to novel circumstances.
The problem here isn't that people don't know how to create an assessment that can't be completed by an AI. The problem is that they are unwilling to do so. They are locked into a mindset where take home assignments and projects count for large parts of the grade or where they aren't willing to lock people into a controlled environment for testing. Partly because they can't envision a better way and partly because they're too lazy to do so.
The underlying problem is that there's a fundamental disconnect between why people really attend college or post graduate programs and why the people teaching them think they do. People are not there to learn. They are there to get a certificate that says they've learned. Preferably while doing the least amount of actual learning possible. The real value of a degree is not what you learn to get the degree. It's the degree itself. If universities and professors think that it's more important that the people they are purporting to educate are actually educated there are fairly simple ways to accomplish that. But they have to recognize that their students (and a large share of professors) are not going to quietly adapt to that new paradigm without objection. It will be difficult and messy and may require them to ask students to 'unlearn' everything they did to be 'successful' in academics up to that point.