Notes from Texas
Last week, Dan and I spent three days in San Antonio at the Financial Education Association conference. We expected papers on innovative teaching, some solid cases, and, now that AI is here, plenty of talk about cheating. The presentations were great, but the biggest lessons came from conversations over coffee between sessions.
Here’s what we learned...
Publisher quizzes no longer measure learning. AI can answer these questions reliably in seconds, and it’s driving grade inflation. So why are they still in use? Replacing them is a big lift, and most instructors don’t have time to build their own AI-resistant assessments. Administrators haven’t offered workable solutions, and publishers and ed tech companies have yet to offer scalable alternatives.
Instructors are vibe-coding their own tools. Several instructors who’ve moved away from online quizzes are building their own assessment tools: Excel plugins, AI chatbots, and even a tool that asks students questions out loud and grades their spoken answers with AI. Some were impressive, but I left worried about student data. As one instructor put it, “No one should be risking a lawsuit over this!”
Proctoring tools are failing. Proctoring software seems to be the only anti-cheating tool in use for online classes. I’m not a fan: it’s clunky, painful to use, and easy to beat. I’m far from alone. I heard stories of roommates hiding under desks, hidden AirPods, and all kinds of tech for getting around it. A quick look at r/cheatonlineproctor shows how easy it is.
Instructors and administrators are clashing, and Higher Ed’s future is at stake. At many schools, especially smaller regional schools with falling enrollment, some administrators are actively discouraging efforts to prevent cheating. Their fear is that tougher grading will put off prospective students. That’s short-term thinking that erodes trust in a university education, and I believe it’s one of several reasons so many people now question whether a degree is worth it.
Paper is back. Many instructors are returning to in-person assessment, often with pen and paper. Scantrons, hand-graded exams, and blue books are back. Nobody seemed happy about it: it means more work, slower feedback for students, and extra costs like Scantron sheets and exam rooms.
But it works. Grades are more accurate, and it’s a powerful way to make students do the work, even if that work is cramming for a test.
How we see it
We think a lot about assessment at BT. Here’s what we’ve been building, and where we’re headed.
In-class exams. Last fall, instructors told us cheating on online quizzes had become a major problem, so we built the Paper Exam Grader. It auto-grades paper exams in under five minutes and is free for instructors and students.
Low-stakes quizzes. This fall, we started recommending that instructors make weekly quizzes formative: multiple attempts, highest score counts, and few enough points that students gain more from practicing than from using AI to boost their grade.
Goals. Building on that idea, we built Goals, a new assessment type that awards points for completing learning activities like watching videos and working through practice problems.
What’s next. We’re rethinking assessment from first principles: what should it look like when students have AI tools now and will be expected to use them after graduation? There’s no silver bullet, but we believe the right direction is supporting assessments where AI use is (1) restricted, (2) ineffective, or (3) required.
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