r/byuidaho 15d ago

STOP CHEATING!

I am attending online through the Pathway predictable, and it is truly disheartening to see such rampant cheating with the use of AI. The discussion board for my class as of this writing is, other than my post, 100% AI generated. That includes replies. And it's awful because these people don't know how obvious it is, how to make it less obvious, or at the very least how to make their posts different from the other posts already on the board.

Is embarrassing to be associated with this school and for that matter, the church, when so many are sitting here scamming their way to a degree that others have to actually work for. That we are connected to a religious institution should be a point of pride, or at the very least a neutral point. She bringing shame to it. My degree feels cheapened. It's disgusting.

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u/SpaciallyCompromised 13d ago

Something you’re not taking into account is that during Covid when everything went online scores and grades dropped by over 20% nationwide. Cheating became a massive problem while I was at BYU when they put courses, that never should have been, online. I wasn’t surprised, everyone freaked out when their scores started dropping and they couldn’t figure out why, so they cheated. Not just your loser holding on with a C under water basket weaving majors; also your biochem majors, Pre med students, pre law students, all of them were cheating.

Personally I didn’t blame anyone during that time period because they were dealt a crap hand and were trying to figure out what do. Especially for anyone in the sciences who needed to keep their GPAs in the 3.7+ range, they got royally boned.

I’m ADD, I don’t use it as a crutch, instead I formed my class and study schedules around not letting myself get distracted, 15 credit semesters, starting from 6am and out at 6pm, study time in between classes, tutoring and study group after for all of my bio, chem and anatomy classes. Covid absolutely destroyed this. I refused to cheat so instead I pulled out of school when my GPA went from a 4.0 to a 3.75. I waited until classes went back on campus, when I realized professors decided to continue their online shenanigans, I transferred to UvU.

There have always been things like cliff notes and quizlet, AI was a natural evolution of those things. AI got me through my online courses. Your undergrad is already mostly fluff and bs anyway, everything you learned will have nothing to do with your career and anything that does will be a drop in the lake of things you’ll have to learn.

For the most part college is a waist of time that 80% of people shouldn’t be required to do anyway. Unless you want be a Lawyer or a Doctor/PhD and even then you should really be skipping straight to those schools. Under grad universities are just socially accepted money laundering facilities where we’ve told everyone they need a piece of paper to prove they’re capable of learning, or BYUIs case incapable of learning, then strap those kids with crippling debt they’ll be paying off the rest of their lives (yes I know BYUI is cheap). Ever wonder why you have 101 classes? Because employers complained students graduating from BYUI were incapable or slower than average at figuring out issues and thinking outside the box. Hmm 🤔

This is the world we live in, AI isn’t going anywhere. The fact AI isn’t being taught in grade schools and college is criminal, it’d be like not teaching kids how to use computer in the early 2000s. I don’t care what anyone’s political proclivities are on the matter, the reality of the situations doest care either. Schools need to adapt or they’re going to become obsolete. AI is the future. BYU/I needs to adapt. Get rid of 90% of online classes. When I went through pathway after my mission is was all in person. There are easy AI detection softwares. Think outside the box.

Adapt or die.

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u/kjonas697 13d ago

101 classes are important for people from other countries who didn't get a standard education (for pathways students). Likewise I strongly disagree that an undergrad is fluff and not needed. Universities play a critical role in many different disciplines; College degrees wouldn't be sought after by employers if they taught nothing useful. Thirdly, you used waist when you should have used waste. Last of all AI Detection software is notoriously bad at getting false positives from 100% human written work so it cannot be relied upon.

I am not advocating that we should just roll over and accept AI doing the thinking for us, but it's also not a cut and dry problem or solution. I agree we should be teaching about AI but the existence of LLMs in the public eye started 4 years ago. Nothing as big as the education system adapts to anything in 4 years. BYUI's CompSci department just added an AI Engineering Minor this year. And that's from people who have been working with machine learning for over a decade. There is not a chance in hell that elementary school teachers would have been teaching it by now. Also, there is massive value in learning to think and problem solve without using AI and frankly teaching elementary school kids how to use ChatGPT to think for them is straight up dystopian if you ask me. Kids should be taught how to be curious and how to problem solve on their own. A hunger for knowledge and the skills to get that knowledge through experimentation are got humans to this point.

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u/SpaciallyCompromised 12d ago edited 12d ago

TLDR. From the bit I did read you’re not an incredibly bright person. I was there when the biology 101 class was being discussed as an addition. It had nothing to do with foreigners. Makes a for a good liberal story though, even if it’s 100% false.

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u/kjonas697 11d ago

Lol i'm not a liberal. Just someone who recognizes that Pathways' whole mission is to bring a level of education to countries that never had it. Also why wouldn't a college teach 101 classes? Not everyone took AP bio in high school. Also calling me stupid because i disagree with you is just. Incredibly ignorant. Have a nice day.