Even before the pandemic, I had been moving most of my examinations away from traditional in-class exams and toward a take-home format. This was mostly because it felt like a contradiction to try to teach students that history was not about the memorization of dates and then have them complete a timed exam for which memorization was a large component. In the wake of the pandemic, a take-home exam also felt more accessible: students could complete it at their own pace, focus on what they felt most comfortable, and use their own notes and the course materials at home. As of last semester, I was even having students brainstorm questions they would like to appear on the exam so that it could play to their strengths and encourage them to really think about what they learned in preparation for the exam.
This move had pluses and minuses. It certainly did decrease student anxiety about memorization. It also provided flexibility during the exam period. It allowed students to take a bit more control over their own learning at the end of the semester. However, especially in introductory courses, there were significant downsides. It was difficult to develop questions sufficiently tailored to the course to prevent cheating. Many responses did not show the kind of deep thinking I thought a take-home option would enable. Despite having access to all the information from the course (and the internet) answers remained superficial, without a great deal of detail in their argument or evidence.
These issues only became more severe this semester, in the middle of which ChatGPT and similar AI Chatbots dropped. I had, for most of the semester, taken a rather laissez-faire attitude to these tools, thinking that some students will inevitably cheat, but that its a minority group. However, what seems to have happened with my final is that rather than simply using ChatGPT to write an answer, a significant number of my students typed in the prompt, looked at the answer provided, and then wrote their own response around it. I have no proof of this and decided, after some thought, to not pursue it with the students.
Continue reading “AI and the Take Home Final”