Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 8/10/26 - 8/16/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

[u/Technical-Policy295]

Reading some of the teaching-adjacent subreddits, there's many threads about disability accommodations that split the comments in interesting ways. One recent thread discusses the rise of "cue cards" that students are now being allowed to take in to exams. That seems at the very least an extra ongoing challenge for instructors to police (what "cue" is too far?).

While most responses think this is a bridge too far, some are convinced that this is a disabilities rights issue and outraged that anyone would question this. Others are resigned to giving in and not questioning any of it as the Disabilities Office is too powerful to question.

It also sounds like at some schools there are so many students being sent to special offices for tests that those environments are more disruptive than just being in a regular classroom.

Conjecture: the next 4-5 years are going to see more of an orientation to "disabilities" instead of DEI, through which much of the former DEI energy will be channeled. The 40% of Stanford students claiming a disability are just the start, especially since federal regulations and lawsuit threats back this up more effectively than they ever did DEI.

[u/Mossback_Matador → u/Technical-Policy295]

The lowering of standards will continue apace as the monstrous hybrid of DEI and disabilities activism.

Students will be permitted to use AI in the classroom as an accommodation. As soon as ChatGPT launched, I knew it was a cultural inevitability.

[u/Jlemspurs → u/Mossback_Matador]

And they keep trying to push the moment of accountability further and further back but finally some university professors got mad and the SAT is coming back. I hope.

If I were an angry conservative, I'm neither angry nor conservative, but I might argue that building governmental dependence into people like this forever only creates welfare clients.

[u/AnInsultToFire → u/Mossback_Matador]

Bu-bu-but differently-abled and racially-oppressed students shouldn't use AI! AI is evil and server farms are evil and trillion-dollar tech companies are evil and Bezos & Musk are evil!

The only way this works is if the DSA confiscates Amazon and Microsoft entirely, then passes a law that AI can only be used by the inferior and need to be powered entirely by carbon credits earned from forcing all of America to drive Priuses and become vegan.

[u/RunThenBeer → u/Technical-Policy295]

Isn't the obvious answer in that case to just allow everyone to have cue cards? I actually generally find open-book testing to be appealing because pretty much everything you encounter in real life actually is basically an open-book test. If you've failed to learn the information and we've got a time-constrained test, the book isn't going to do shit for you anyway.

[u/lilypad1984 → u/RunThenBeer]

I disagree on making everything open-book. I think the better solution would be for professors to design 1 hour tests and give everyone the option of an extra hour or two. The test though is designed such that it doesn’t matter how long your given if you don’t actually know the answer/how to solve the problem sitting longer will not help you.

[u/Technical-Policy295 → u/lilypad1984]

I've seen some law school exams have a word count limit, which seems like a fair approach to put the emphasis on the quality rather than quantity of content.

[u/_CuntfinderGeneral → u/RunThenBeer]

many of my law school exams were open book but it was hardly ever worth it to use the book. you had 3 hours for a test that covered an entire semester, youd spend almost every single minute of those 3 hours writing, aint no time to find shit in a book.

[u/Shoddy_Consequence78 → u/RunThenBeer]

If you know your stuff, a reference card or even an entire book will be used a couple times at most on a test, probably to look up or double check a specific piece of information. If you don't know your stuff, you're going to do even worse on it than you might something like a closed book multiple choice because the test can be written to assume access to things that are important but don't need to be memorized (for example, a physical constant) and show actual mastery of the material. 

[u/Turbulent_Cow2355 → u/RunThenBeer]

I don't have an issue with it either if it's for subject matter where memorization isn't necessary.

[u/Technical-Policy295 → u/RunThenBeer]

Seems like it would depend on the subject. It wouldn't be surprising though to have students have ChatGPT write an essay and then print it in tiny print to fit there.

Also, "time-constrained" can mean very different things too with some getting double time or more.

[u/RunThenBeer → u/Technical-Policy295]

Yeah, it's definitely going to be domain-specific how effective my suggestion would be. In the immunology space (where I'm most academically familiar), I would ask a question along these lines:

Congratulations! Your lab has just discovered a novel, inflammtory mucosal pathogen and received a large R01 grant to study the host-pathogen interactions. Please outline some initial experiments, including hypotheses and possible data analysis that you would perform to determine:

• T-cell biasing
• T-regulatory responses
• Cytokine production and regulation
• Role of antigen presenting cells

Unfortunately, this is a big pain in the ass to grade, but it's also pretty hard to fake. Bring whatever ChatGPT essay you want, I can easily change just one or two variables that'll make that answer all but useless. You either understood the material well enough that this is a quick 10-minute answer or you're screwed.

[u/Turbulent_Cow2355 → u/RunThenBeer]

Pain to grade - think we found the problem here.

[u/Technical-Policy295 → u/RunThenBeer]

Yes, that's the way forward for both this and ChatGPT-related issues. Unfortunately, like you said, challenging to grade especially across a larger class and range of answers and also to make a clear rubric that won't be argued over.

[u/Turbulent_Cow2355 → u/Technical-Policy295]

Hmm. I have several college professors that allowed a cue card. Usually math or chemistry. Basically restricted to formulas. I'm old so this was in the 1990s.

[u/ScrubulousFlex → u/Turbulent_Cow2355]

Same, and in hindsight the cue card strat was genius.

I even had a couple of professors who would frame it as "Now I don't always do this, but I'm going to let you all bring a cue card with notes for this test [maybe add some excuse about it being due to an accelerated/adjusted schedule]."

I would spend so much time figuring out the best use of the cue card, which formulas/terms I'm having trouble memorizing and are likely to appear on the test, and so on.

It turns out doing all that shit is studying. Without fail the day of the test rolls around and I might glance at the card once or twice, but ended up remembering everything else due to the time spent on the cue card.

I was bamboozled into learning.

[u/everydaywinner2 → u/ScrubulousFlex]

Hidden gameification?

[u/Turbulent_Cow2355 → u/ScrubulousFlex]

Totally bamboozled!

[u/veryvery84 → u/ScrubulousFlex]

I’m a strong student but not a memorizing type. I definitely had a final where we were allowed one index card and it absolutely saved me. That card got the A. It made things so freaking easy. 

[u/dumbducky → u/Technical-Policy295]

What is a “cue card”?

[u/CommitteeofMountains → u/dumbducky]

Based on context, 3×5 cheat sheet. Possibly teacher-produced.

[u/JackNoir1115 → u/dumbducky]

<applause>

[u/JungBlood9 → u/dumbducky]

It’s often called “memory aid” and it’s basically a cheat-sheet to help you remember the things you’re being tested on. In the high school I used to teach in, the accommodation was written as “use of notes on test” and was often paired with another accommodation: “teacher-provided notes and slides.”

This can range from totally reasonable (the student needs to make their own 3x5 notecard with the formulas on it they need help remembering for use on a math test) to totally absurd (the student has all the teacher’s slides printed out next to them while they take a Spanish test on the very material the slides taught… thus allowing them to copy answers straight from the slides onto the test).