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Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

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Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#101

Post by shanebellone »

williamcotton wrote: post #99
shanebellone wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I actually take offense to the notion that you would consider people who find these tools useful to be incapable engineers." I apologize for offending you. I can't imagine parsing code for errors being faster than typing it out. I suppose I assumed most have boilerplate memorized. I'll try to avoid being so presumptuous in the future.

There's two ways to check if something is correct: run it or read it. In this case I just copy and pasted the results and it worked as expected. YMMV. I will say that you seem to be operating under the assumption that these tools are less reliable at producing the correct code than they really are! Ironically, the latest GPT-3 models trained before OpenAI made changes to their API resulting in basically useless assis…

"I will say that you seem to be operating under the assumption that these tools are less reliable at producing the correct code than they really are!"

Its output is generic. Leverage is not found in convention. For that reason, I find it useless.

Plus, I typically retain my codebase. For exploratory coding, I could see some utility.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#102

Post by curiousllama »

cptcobalt wrote: post #97
tablespoon wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, anytime somebody finds a way to engage students to think in a different way than just trying to memorise facts is a win, IMO. I think it is lamentable that students are asked to rely more and more on recalling facts at the time where it is becoming less and less important compared to critical thinking. That's a false dichotomy (which I used to believe, too). You can't "think critically" in a vacuum. You n…

No, it's not a false dichotomy. Yes, you need to build knowledge via a body of memorized facts, but "the education system" currently hyperindexes on rote memorization, which only works for some types of learners, not all. This assignments requires applied critical thinking and applying tools (yes, including memorized knowledge) to evaluate a paper. This requires working with multiple tools, and will also help the stu…

> "the education system" currently hyperindexes on rote memorization

Which education system, and in what subjects? I recall quite the opposite (rando public schools in the US). In hindsight, I would have benefitted a lot from simply memorizing more things.

My freshman calc grade would've been a lot higher if I had bothered to memorize trig identities in HS. Sure, I could derive them, but I had to notice "this is an identity" first - the lack of memorization actually hindered my intuition.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#103

Post by curiousllama »

datastoat wrote: post #52

I'm trying something similar with an introductory Algorithms class. After we go through Breadth First Search, there's a practical assignment where students are asked to modify the algorithm to return _all_ shortest paths. Then I ask ChatGPT for its solution, and students try to spot its mistakes. Later, after going through the proof of correctness of Dijkstra's algorithm, I ask ChatGPT for a proof of correctness of i…

> in the past I've given them bullshit proofs from real students in exams

I'd be so honored to be one of these proofs. "Your wrongness is an elegant balance of instructive error and subtle misunderstanding. Can I save it for posterity? (c-)"

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#104

Post by myself248 »

twawaaay wrote: post #71

I think this is great idea. Actually, anytime somebody finds a way to engage students to think in a different way than just trying to memorise facts is a win, IMO. I think it is lamentable that students are asked to rely more and more on recalling facts at the time where it is becoming less and less important compared to critical thinking. This is lazy way to do something about structural education system issues. I c…

This is brilliant. Is it based on a real bug you found in your company's own code?

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#105

Post by myself248 »

maegul wrote: post #6

Beyond the adaptation to AI angle on this, the idea is compelling in its own right I'd say. Anyone who's gone on to mark/grade or write assessments would probably attest to the perspective it provides. Whatever your opinion of assessment in academia/schooling (I, for one, am generally negative), there is something to seeing the difference between someone who actually understands and someone who is spamming to get the…

> not feeling that I've learnt something properly unless I felt I could teach it to someone else.

That's always been my gold-standard as well.

In presentations, I should be able to ask an intelligent question. If I can't do that, either I wasn't engaged enough or the material wasn't accessible.

In my own work, I should be able to teach someone else, or at least write a tutorial. I find that writing down an explanation forces me to research the boundaries of correctness, not just find a happy path down the middle.

In teaching, I should be able to know my student and what they're already familiar with, and draw accurate and useful analogies between that and the new material. I should be able to anticipate how analogies might be misinterpreted or overfit, and couch them in caveats as needed.

Ideally, ultimately, my student should be able to meet the same standard. But this will require work on their part and is not my sole responsibility.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#106

Post by williamcotton »

shanebellone wrote: post #101
williamcotton wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two ways to check if something is correct: run it or read it. In this case I just copy and pasted the results and it worked as expected. YMMV. I will say that you seem to be operating under the assumption that these tools are less reliable at producing the correct code than they really are! Ironically, the latest GPT-3 models trained before OpenAI made changes to their API resulting in basically useless assis…

"I will say that you seem to be operating under the assumption that these tools are less reliable at producing the correct code than they really are!" Its output is generic. Leverage is not found in convention. For that reason, I find it useless. Plus, I typically retain my codebase. For exploratory coding, I could see some utility.

Gotcha. You want code. I want tools.

So a tool that helps me make tools is a lever.

But a tool that helps you make code is not a lever, because “good code” is your goal.

This explains it perfectly! Thank you!

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#107

Post by CuriouslyC »

tablespoon wrote: post #95
twawaaay wrote: post #71

I think this is great idea. Actually, anytime somebody finds a way to engage students to think in a different way than just trying to memorise facts is a win, IMO. I think it is lamentable that students are asked to rely more and more on recalling facts at the time where it is becoming less and less important compared to critical thinking. This is lazy way to do something about structural education system issues. I c…

> Actually, anytime somebody finds a way to engage students to think in a different way than just trying to memorise facts is a win, IMO. I think it is lamentable that students are asked to rely more and more on recalling facts at the time where it is becoming less and less important compared to critical thinking. That's a false dichotomy (which I used to believe, too). You can't "think critically" in a vacuum. You n…

The problem with memorizing facts is that you forget them readily unless you're using them all the time. It is much more efficient to learn processes, because these are generic enough that following them quickly becomes an unconscious habit. Declarative memory is also less reliable than procedural memory.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#108

Post by weird-eye-issue »

angarg12 wrote: post #93
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curating it would give a level playing field to candidates and allow you to decide what you are actually testing for, but maybe I'm also missing the point

You can do both. Generate 10 solutions with ChatGPT and pick the ones that work best. Do this for each candidate.

That is curating

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#109

Post by shanebellone »

williamcotton wrote: post #106
shanebellone wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I will say that you seem to be operating under the assumption that these tools are less reliable at producing the correct code than they really are!" Its output is generic. Leverage is not found in convention. For that reason, I find it useless. Plus, I typically retain my codebase. For exploratory coding, I could see some utility.

Gotcha. You want code. I want tools. So a tool that helps me make tools is a lever. But a tool that helps you make code is not a lever, because “good code” is your goal. This explains it perfectly! Thank you!

"because “good code” is your goal."

Original thought is my goal.

Otherwise, I think you're spot on. To each their own as they say!

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#110

Post by tzs »

twawaaay wrote: post #71

I think this is great idea. Actually, anytime somebody finds a way to engage students to think in a different way than just trying to memorise facts is a win, IMO. I think it is lamentable that students are asked to rely more and more on recalling facts at the time where it is becoming less and less important compared to critical thinking. This is lazy way to do something about structural education system issues. I c…

> One of my programming interview question is a flawed piece of code implementing an algorithm. The algorithm is there in its entirety, so there is no need to actually recall the details of it. The task is to point out and fix functional flaws, then critique and fix non-functional problems.

That's similar to what I plan to do if I ever find myself having to interview job candidates.

My plan is to have a selection of LeetCode problems that I have solved before and ask the candidate to pick a two or three of that seem interesting. I will NOT ask them to actually solve them or code solutions.

We will just talk them over to come to an agreement on what the problem is asking for, talk about what edge cases we might have to worry about, and then toss out suggestions on how to approach it. A whiteboard would be available. I'd try to let the candidate take the lead in the discussion, just contributing myself enough to keep things moving if the candidate seems stuck on something.

Once we've got a solution (regardless of how much of it came from the candidate and how much came from me moving things alone), we'd go the the discussion section for that problem and take a look at the solutions people have posted, and I'd ask the candidate to check a few of those for correctness and to suggest improvements.

A lot of the solutions people post in the discussion are wrong, ranging from just simple coding goofs (like not initializing a variable or using the wrong variable) through missing an edge case all the way to just flat out their algorithm is just wrong.

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