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College professors are going back to paper exams and handwritten essays to fight students using ChatGPT
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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When I was in College for Computer Programming (about 6 years ago) I had to write all my exams on paper, including code. This isn't exactly a new development.
So what you’re telling me is that written tests have, in fact, existed before?
What are you some kind of education historian?
He's not pointing out that handwritten tests are not something new, but that using handwritten tests over typing them to reflect the student's actual abilities is not new.
I had some teachers ask for handwritten programming exams too (that was more like 20 years ago for me) and it was just as dumb then as it is today. What exactly are they preparing students for? No job will ever require the skill of writing code on paper.
I personally never had a problem performing well in those tests, I happen to have the skill to compile code in my head, and it is a helpful skill in my job (I've been a software engineer for 19 years now), but it's definitely not a required skill and should not be considered as such.
Education is not just for getting a job, you dink.
Same. All my algorithms and data structures courses in undergrad and grad school had paper exams. I have a mixed view on these but the bottom line is that I'm not convinced they're any better.
Sure they might reflect some of the student's abilities better, but if you're an evaluator interested in assessing student's knowledge a more effective way is to make directed questions.
What ends up happening a lot of times are implementation questions that ask from the student too much at once: interpretation of the problem; knowledge of helpful data structures and algorithms; abstract reasoning; edge case analysis; syntax; time and space complexities; and a good sense of planning since you're supposed to answer it in a few minutes without the luxury and conveniences of a text editor.
This last one is my biggest problem with it. It adds a great deal of difficulty and stress without adding any value to the evaluator.