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Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI
(www.techspot.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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If I were a professor in this day and age, every exam would have an oral component. If it's a class that has a large group of people, then I'd have my TA's run oral exams with small groups separately.
Oral isn't necessary and can overwhelm even very smart and knowledgeable students.
Just require all work is turned in handwritten. Tests are also done handwritten.
That's it. It's impossible to not absorb the stupidity of AI if you at least have to handwrite the answer.
It's impossible to copy/paste an answer into a test if it's handwritten.
The only thing stopping this is that teachers are used to the convenience of computer submitted work, remote learning, and disability workarounds.
This is something thats kinda impossible in a class that requires technology. A solution one of my professors came up with was having frequent handwritten tests worth less points.
Programming on a handwritten test is nothing new, but he also made us use gdb to debug a program written in assembly on paper.. which did work better than I thought it would.
I'm old enough that I took my Computer Science AP test in PASCAL in pencil on paper.
You can absolutely handwrite tests in any subject.
You can also provide workstations with no internet access for programming if you need an IDE/Compiler/etc.
bold of you to assume students know how to write anything by hand in 2026.
Nobody knew how to handwrite before someone taught them. That's what school is for.
That would be the point of an oral examination.
It requires actual preparation, which is now apparently essential to demonstrate. GenAI may be able to write the answers for you, but this requires that you actually prepared to a meaningful extent.
Nah, exams in proctored classroom with bluebooks. That's the way to go.
I mean, I run open note exams (annotated formula books - hand written), no limit on what can be written.
2 students still scored zeros - these are students who scored 90%~ on the coursework. Suffice to say, they did not pass.