Comment by bambax
9 months ago
You wish. I used to think that too. But it turns out, nowadays, every single exam in person is done with a phone hidden somewhere, with various efficiency, and you can't really strip students before they enter the room.
Some teachers try to collect the phones beforehand, but then students simply give out older phones and keep their active ones with them.
You could try to verify that the phones they're giving out are working by calling them, but that would take an enormous amount of time and it's impractical for simple exams.
We really have no idea how much AI is ruining education right now.
Unlike the hard problem of "making an exam difficult to take when you have access to an LLM", "making sure students don't have devices on them when they take one" is very tractable, even if teachers are going to need some time to catch up with the curve.
Any of the following could work, though the specific tradeoffs & implementation details do vary:
- have <n> teachers walking around the room to watch for cheaters
- mount a few cameras to various points in the room and give the teacher a dashboard so that they can watch from all angles
- record from above and use AI to flag potential cheaters for manual review
- disable Wi-Fi + activate cell jammers during exam time (with a land-line in the room in case of emergencies?)
- build dedicated examination rooms lined with metal mesh to disrupt cell reception
So unlike "beating LLMs" (where it's an open question as to whether it's even possible, and a moving target to boot), barring serious advances in wearable technology this just seems like a question of funding and therefore political will.
Infrared camera should do the trick.
Cell jammers sound like they could be a security risk. In the context of highschool, it is generally very easy to see when someone is on their phone.