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Coping with Copilot

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Re: Coping with Copilot

#11

Post by spcebar »

Cheating is getting easier by the day, but the bottom line is that if the student is cheating, they're probably not absorbing the coursework (or if they are cheating and absorbing the coursework, there might be something wrong with the coursework).

The most effective policy might not be to try and mechanically prevent cheating, but to explain that, this is information that you're going to need if you actually want to go into the field and if you're using copilot here you are damaging yourself in the long run.

Maybe it's not fair to give as good grades to students who are cheating on assignments as those who are actually doing the assignments, but at the end of the day is the purpose of the course to measure the student or to teach the student?

Re: Coping with Copilot

#12

Post by foepys »

niek_pas wrote: post #5

The scrolljacking on this site is awful. Why do people keep doing this?

I'm using reader mode in Firefox more and more often because websites just cannot keep their hands off my inputs nowadays. It's infuriating.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#14

Post by eru »

muzani wrote: post #10

This reminds me of when my school teacher insisted that real engineers didn't use calculators. They'd calculate their sines and cosines from a table. 3 years later, the education ministry decided that was BS and let everyone bring calculators to math exams. Surprisingly, math scores didn't go up much.

We never did much calculation in math exams. That's what physics class was for.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#15

Post by eru »

jeffbee wrote: post #3

I guess CS programs are going to need to grow up and teach real topics like ethics, technical communications, effective testing, and large-scale systems design instead of how to write simple loops, which is something I learned at the age of 4 from “Gortek and the Microchips”.

What makes you think GPT-3 (or similar) won't write your ethics essay for you?

Re: Coping with Copilot

#16

Post by chiefalchemist »

The good students will take the time to learn and understand (even if they didn't write the code). Other students, as they always have, will look for short cuts.

Not everyone who take CS1* courses are CS (or similar eng) majors. We keep crying "Everyone should learn to code" and now that's made easier than ever some of continue to complain. Huh?

Full disclosure: I started to use CoPilot a couple of months ago. It does not remove me from the process. It does allow me to shift more brain cycles from the mundane to the more difficult. My general feeling is, I have yet to get close to taking full advantage of what it can offer me.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#17

Post by refulgentis »

I love the choice of an AI-generated photo for the header, and the hidden message of its poor quality if you look at it longer than a glance.

There's an emerging divide between those with experience with AI tools and people who tried them a few times and got hyped and blogged a maximalist view of consequences.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#18

Post by TakeBlaster16 »

muzani wrote: post #10

This reminds me of when my school teacher insisted that real engineers didn't use calculators. They'd calculate their sines and cosines from a table. 3 years later, the education ministry decided that was BS and let everyone bring calculators to math exams. Surprisingly, math scores didn't go up much.

I had to deal with this too. "You're not going to go through life with a calculator in your pocket!"

Re: Coping with Copilot

#19

Post by jeffbee »

eru wrote: post #15
jeffbee wrote: post #3

I guess CS programs are going to need to grow up and teach real topics like ethics, technical communications, effective testing, and large-scale systems design instead of how to write simple loops, which is something I learned at the age of 4 from “Gortek and the Microchips”.

What makes you think GPT-3 (or similar) won't write your ethics essay for you?

That’s very easy to deal with. Oral exams or blue-book exams.

Re: Coping with Copilot

#20

Post by GrumpyYoungMan »

spcebar wrote: post #11

Cheating is getting easier by the day, but the bottom line is that if the student is cheating, they're probably not absorbing the coursework (or if they are cheating and absorbing the coursework, there might be something wrong with the coursework). The most effective policy might not be to try and mechanically prevent cheating, but to explain that, this is information that you're going to need if you actually want to…

> "...this is information that you're going to need if you actually want to go into the field..."

That has never, ever stopped anyone motivated to cheat. Even here on highly-educated HN, you get posters with open disdain for what they learned in college.

> "... at the end of the day is the purpose of the course to measure the student or to teach the student?"

Both. Otherwise, the college diploma really does become the meaningless scrap of sheepskin that its detractors claim it is.

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