Back to the Future

From the LA Times: A cheating crisis is growing at American universities as AI rapidly becomes embedded in learning: Extreme and uneven classroom practices are in force to prevent deception, false accusations against students are increasing and the definition of what it means to cheat is shifting, professors, students and specialists in academic integrity say.

At UCLA, students in a recent sociology class said they were told in an email to “procure a mirror large enough to fully reflect your entire desk-area work space,” and turn on their laptop camera so the professor could watch them during an online test. In another course, students said they had to take their oral video exam with their arms crossed in front of them or behind their heads so they couldn’t type into AI platforms...

Titi Olotu, a UCLA junior with an accommodation through UCLA’s Center for Accessible Education, was weighing whether to drop the sociology professor’s course when the mirror email arrived. Her accommodation called for brief snack breaks during exams and the option to write down notes on paper. Olotu said she felt the online proctoring treated any movement as suspect. “Any little thing, moving, breathing, talking, looking, is cheating,” Olotu said. She dropped the class.

The UCLA professor did not respond to requests for an interview. A spokesperson said the school “takes student concerns seriously” and has processes for reviewing student-faculty conflicts but does not discuss individual cases...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-06-12/ai-cheating-california-college-students-professors-chatgpt-accusations.

Yours truly was an undergrad at Columbia, 1960-64, long before the internet, smart phones, AI, etc. Final exams were scheduled in the gym. The gym was filled with rows of seats with desks. Several classes were assigned to the gym at the same time and the seats were carefully assigned so that no students taking the exam for your class were seated nearby where you might see their writing. If you dropped your pen or pencil, you were not allowed to bend over and pick it up. You had to signal to a roving proctor that you needed to bend over and the proctor would come and watch. Similarly, you could not leave to go to the restroom without signaling a proctor to get permission. The restroom door was open and a proctor was assigned to sit in the entrance. There was a mirror inside the restroom so that the proctor could watch what you were doing. (Columbia was all male at the time.)

Seems like we are going back to the future. The "benefit" of the old Columbia system was that cheating was very unlikely, so you wouldn't be accused of it falsely. Whether today's students will accept such a system remains to be seen.