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Comment by Propelloni | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the Germans were right? One in-person test, preferably an interview, at the end of the semester should be enough to motivate the smarter part of the bunch to make sure they understand the issues at hand. The rest is chaff anyway. Don't optimize for chaff.

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As was sort of offhandedly mentioned in the article, all pre-LLM research into what results in students actually learning the material (as a distinct thing from passing the class) has landed pretty solidly on the side of frequent, low-stakes exams having better outcomes than rare high-stakes exams. The best students learn the material regardless of how you evaluate them; some weaker students will benefit from more frequent nudges to keep up rather than trying to cram at the end, some students simply won't realize they're falling behind without regular feedback, and some students successfully cram at the end and pass the class without retaining much of the material. The final group often expresses a preference for the one-exam-at-the-end model despite being disserved by it if the goal is to learn and not merely pass.

Yeah and look at where this soft approach landed us. We have entitled crybabies voting for Hitler 2.0 because they can't stomach the uncomfortable feeling of seeing a diverse person in their pure white neighbourhoods. Children and young adults need to be hit with the big hard fist of reality repeatedly until they become good people. If some should fall through the cracks, they would not have made for good members of society anyway, so best they fall early and not drag the rest of us with them.

That's entirely fine. Have midterms that are also interviews. Have labs where TAs interview students vocally every few weeks, etc.

I had that a variation of that experience. This was mostly in the pre-AI days. Homework assignments were mandatory but only counted towards exam admission not the final grade. Much better for motivation.

When I was a student, nobody cared if you did your home work. The teacher would go through the home work in the next class, and if you didn't do it, you would just lose the opportunity.

Then there was the written exam at the end of each course, which constituted 100% of the grade. The only reason that got abolished was because it made too many students fail, and the board hates that. So that became a race to the bottom, and apparently, we can still go lower.

It's reaching levels where most uni diplomas don't matter any longer. The only thing that will then matter is your network. That's the end of social mobility.

"Don't optimize for chaff." is being chaff a permanent state of a child or person?

I think I understand what you mean though, and I kind of agree. I just don't like the use of the word chaff, like something you would discard permanently.

I'm pretty sure I was "chaff" at some point (maybe multiple) in my life growing up.

It may not be permanent, but by the time someone goes to university it's not the instructor's job to fix them.

Funny to see this comment, that's exactly how studying math in Cologne was. On the very first day one of our profs said:

"This is math, you can find all solutions to the course problems in old material since I've been teaching here for 20 years, but know this you're cheating yourself and at the end of the semester you're taking a three hour test on pen and paper so good luck"

I see zero reason why AI should impact teaching. You can grade exercises as information to the students as to how well they're doing, but simply have an exam at the end of the course. Needlessly to say like 60-70% flunked through Analysis I and Linear Algebra. But they're adults and they're there voluntarily, so why is this an issue

They pay as much tuition as the wheat and the schools want them to keep paying said tuition.

One test is too stressful and may be affected by bad luck. I'd recommend many small quizzes. You can use LLMs to grade.

It's terrifying that some people actually do think this. Not you obviously, but I had enough conversations with other people.

on the off chance you’re being sincere: the article mentions that they allow free retakes of the oral exam

> You can use LLMs to grade.

The article gives examples of LLMs being wrong. An AI grading of an AI submission would presumably give a good mark, to a wrong answer.

I agree.

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