Live Hackerthon Pitches to Combat AI Cheating

Greetings from the Copeland Lecture Theatre at the Australian National University. The theatre has been repurposed as a pitch arena. Teams of students are making three minute presentations on an app they developed as part of the Software Construction course. There are only a few seconds for changeover between presentations. This form of experiential learning is one way to combat AI cheating. This allows the whole class to present in one hour long lecture slot. As well as being graded, students can win a prize and may be talent spotted by entrepreneurs, such as Ken Kroeger. While the presentations are digital, I noted that Professor Gretton used an pen and paper for notes on the work. 

As well as having to pitch live, each team has to provide an electronic archive of their work. This makes it much harder for a student to contract out the work, either to a human or AI software. One subtley in the way the pitches are made is that Zoom is being used, although we are all in the room together on this occasion, this allows all the presentations to be easily recorded and the option of a blended mode, wth remote students and teachers.