I just finished grading an online/open book final exam to my university class on the US in the World Wars. I am sure some of my students used AI for their answers but two jumped out at me.
They both answered a question on the WWII training film, Pvt. SNAFU: The Homefront. For those that had never seen them, the SNAFU films, many written by a young cartoonist who would become Dr. Seuss after the war, were animated films that taught young soldiers what to do by having SNAFU do them wrong. So, in the film showing how to avoid common booby traps, he gets blown up a lot. And yes, since the films were written in the early 1940s, often by young men, for other young men, you can imagine the jokes they made with terms like “booby trap.”
In Homefront SNAFU gripes how his family have it easy back home. His Mom is playing cards and gossiping. His Dad is at the pool hall, and his grandfather is at some girlie show. Worse yet, his girl (Mary Lou) is probably being hit on by some wolf at a nightclub. A Technical Sargent God-Fairy shows up and shows him what they’re really doing.
Mom is growing a Victory Garden.
Dad is on an assembly line building tanks.
Grandpa is in a shipyard.
And Mary Lou has joined the WACS.
It’s a great film for sparking a discussion on rationing, war jobs, women in the workplace and in the military, etc.
What two students gave me had the characters all in totally different jobs. Imagine if you asked a question about the original Star Wars film and a student tells you that Darth Vader was a farmboy, Leia was the Emperor, Luke Skywalker was the villain, Chewbacca was a droid, and Han Solo didn’t shoot first! That’s what I got from two students. The characters (Mom, Girlfriend, Dad, Grandpa) were all there, but their roles were all scrambled and some were not even in the film (such as Mary Lou joining the Red Cross).
Those two students did not do well on their exams. I may have to go back to ye olde Bluebooks and pens in a stuffy classroom for final exams. And since their handwriting generally looks like a 2d graders now, that’ll be fun to try to read. Penance, I suppose, for those poor profs who had to try to read my chicken-scratch handwriting not only on exams, but as term papers. (Yes, I’m that old).
