Sales of traditional exam notebooks at American universities have skyrocketed as students increasingly use artificial intelligence to complete assignments. By forcing students to take exams on paper, teachers want to force students to think for themselves.
This is reported by The Wall Street Journal.
According to university bookstores, exam notebook sales have increased over the past two academic years by more than 30% at Texas A&M University, by almost 50% at the University of Florida, and by 80% at the University of California, Berkeley.
The largest manufacturer of exam notebooks in the United States is Roaring Spring Paper Products, a family-owned company in Pennsylvania that makes several million of the books annually for 23 cents apiece. Sales slumped in 2020-2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, when schools switched to remote learning. But the company is now seeing a resurgence in demand for its products thanks to its fight against AI-based cheating in schools.
The WSJ notes that more and more students are relying on artificial intelligence to solve even the simplest tasks. ChatGPT traffic generally decreases each summer, when students are away from higher education institutions and schoolchildren are in school.
Students rely on artificial intelligence to complete homework assignments in math, economics, programming, and essay writing. The problem of AI cheating has become so serious that teachers are forced to return to written exams. Or to organize oral exams — the kind where students immediately answer questions from tickets.
Despite the effectiveness of written exams in combating cheating, many teachers have mixed feelings about it. They believe that students should learn to use artificial intelligence to improve their efficiency, as these tools will be part of their future careers. However, for now, written exams on paper are one of the few ways to ensure that students have truly mastered the material.
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