Comment by sgirard
3 hours ago
This is interesting. I don't know how the AI agent guidelines will be enforced because there will always be a model outside the curriculum that a student can use to bypass the guidelines. Encouraging academic integrity is useful but requires the student to buy into the idea that they are paying for an education, not a diploma. This is a tough problem and I have been wondering how CS departments are incorporating AI into the curriculum while encouraging appropriate use in a learning environment.
I think the answer to "how will AI agent guidelines be enforced" is that they won't be because they can't be, at least not directly.
This doesn't mean that this approach doesn't have value though. I think it very much does.
One way to indirectly enforce use of the AI agent guidelines is via an oral examination where the instructor and student look over their work together and talk about it. Students who have genuinely tried to learn and used AI as a learning tool via the agent guidelines should do a lot better in an oral exam than students who have used AI as a solution generator.
I adopted the oral exam (without agent guidelines) for a course i teach in the academic year just gone, it worked pretty well. Next term I intend to include the agent guidelines to give them clearer guardrails. Still ultimately optional, but if students choose to ignore them it's gonna be pretty obvious during our conversation.
Stanford has an honour code. Meant no oversight even during exams. Worked surprisingly well when I was there. The flipside is, if you’re ever caught cheating, there are no second chances.
I imagine this applies here, too, if they want to enforce it strictly.
>Worked surprisingly well when I was there.
How could you tell? I proctored. People cheat pretty frequently and other students are none the wiser. It really takes like 4 proctors if you want to do it right. Even then I'm sure the clever ones are slipping through. These were scantron though. Short response/essay format you'd be screwed if you didn't know your stuff.
Marc Tessier-Lavigne was Stanford's president from 2016 to 2023. Not sure if the honor code means anything nowadays.
You mean it worked well for cheaters right? The more I learn about these "honor codes" the more I realize how sheltered these American elites have become.
Well, no amount of instructions would work if the student has no intention to learn anything.
In an ideal world guidelines should be suggestions for those willing to make the best of the course and improve as a person and professional. However a degree has real world value and repercussions, so enabling someone incompetent to do a dangerous job can put innocent lives in jeopardy. It's tough, but I hope in time we learn how to live with this new tech.