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"You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

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Re: "You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

#251

Post by HDThoreaun »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #201
HDThoreaun wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with different exams for each students is that it’s next to impossible to make them equally difficult which ruins the curve.

You've missed the point of curves. Curves exist as a different solution to the problem of "we don't know whether everybody understands the material or not, and we don't know how to evaluate whether they do". It's like saying "The problem with electric cars is that they don't fit the equipment for our emissions test" If you give a pre-written test, you basically need to curve it because you don't really know how well…

I disagree. The point of curves is to differentiate the students. Students who don’t understand do and the material should be failed, it that doesn’t tell us who should get A vs B vs C

Re: "You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

#252

Post by fluoridation »

dmm wrote: post #250
fluoridation wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we're still teaching kids arithmetic. I remain unconvinced that it's a worthwhile use of time.

LLMs can read from images. Should we stop teaching reading?

My argument is not "if a machine can do it then it's not worth a human's time to do it". Reading provides advantages that doing arithmetic by hand does not.

Re: "You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

#253

Post by OkayPhysicist »

Ekaros wrote: post #238
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being kicked out of the science school and into the business school is a pretty huge punishment that late in the game, for negligible reward: "Oooh, I aced my Particle Physics final". It was just easier to do the test honestly, and lick your wounds later.

I think later students get in degrees less issues there will be. It will be the first exams and some after them that have most cheating.

Yeah, I remember in a freshman lab that I was TAing for I spotted an assignment that was clearly a bad photocopy of an email (complete with email address at the bottom), which wasn't the student's email. So I went and found a name that matched up with that email, which was another student, and at that point I felt the need to look through all the assignments looking for this particular copy's calling card, a strange rounding error on one of the tables. Ended up finding about a dozen cases of cheating on that prelab, alone. A prelab worth, generously, half of a percent of their overall grade. Let the professor know, finished grading the rest.

Next week I had a dozen more missing assignments than usual, went to the professor asking "hey, why did a quarter of the class not turn in their assignments this week?", and they replied that the students had been served an ultimatum: Drop engineering, go transfer somewhere else in shame, or get hit with an academic dishonesty inquiry, which could carry much stiffer sentences.

They all took the former. The theory was that students cheat because they're either unwilling or unable to engage with the material, which means they're not cut out for engineering.

Re: "You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

#254

Post by Nasrudith »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #157
petemir wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore oral examinations do not scale. We had to do them during covid times and it was gruesome, spending full days in meetings and losing a full week with only 70-80 students.

Education just doesn’t really scale. There haven’t been technological advances in education that have overwhelmed the student teacher ratio in terms of effectiveness. On some level we just have to accept this.

The main technological advances already happened relatively early via printing, first through the printing presses and then later through desktop publication. Other advances are more peripheral such as better indexing via computers.

Re: "You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

#255

Post by jstarfish »

Tanoc wrote: post #235
vineyardmike wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you may have heard, in the US at least, there’s record low unemployment. There’s literally not enough people to do those jobs. It’s complex why… 1. Demographic changes means more retirees, and smaller workforce. Literally less people to go around. 2. With low unemployment, everyone’s doing something else. Something harder to automate, or otherwise more valuable. It’s not like people are sitting around unemployed (…

It's not just that people are going for "better" jobs to avoid the lowest of low tier schlock jobs. It's that a dedicated chunk of those jobs refuse to hire because the employers are trying to downsize that part of their overall workforce and thus reduce costs. An example of this has been the rail shortage, where despite needing twice as many workers as they actually have in order to keep things from collapsing the r…

> People who have been unemployed for more than a year are not included.

Yep, let's just exclude all the people who tell the real story here.

Every gen-z in my family (and neighbors!) also have 18-21 year-olds who are doing weird shit like working for two days up to a max of two weeks, then abandoning the job. I don't know what this is about ("working" once per quarter to get the work credits for Social Security?) or how this is captured by the stats, but they are by no means employed.

Re: "You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

#256

Post by csours »

Delk wrote: post #151
csours wrote: post #133

It feels more and more like we need to rethink what scoring schoolwork means. Worksheets and exams can show how familiar you are with the material, or they can be gamed or useless in some other way. But the best they can ever do is show familiarity. What I really want as a consumer of someone's grade or academic history is how well they WORK in the subject area, along with how well they work with other people, not ju…

> I feel cheated by my school years, because I was led to believe that regurgitation of facts is very important. Which school is that? I guess that's probably true of primary or middle / lower secondary school, but I don't feel like regurgitation of facts was particularly endorsed in my experience at upper secondary level, let alone at university level. There might of course be quite a bit of variation between countr…

> I guess that's probably true of primary or middle / lower secondary school, but I don't feel like regurgitation of facts was particularly endorsed in my experience at upper secondary level, let alone at university level.

The problem is that by the time someone gets to graduate level courses, their mode of thinking has been set.

Re: "You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

#257

Post by csours »

vineyardmike wrote: post #207
csours wrote: post #133

It feels more and more like we need to rethink what scoring schoolwork means. Worksheets and exams can show how familiar you are with the material, or they can be gamed or useless in some other way. But the best they can ever do is show familiarity. What I really want as a consumer of someone's grade or academic history is how well they WORK in the subject area, along with how well they work with other people, not ju…

I like your direction of thought, but I think we should make sure we don’t over correlate education with vocational utility. School isn’t always about work, and not all education should be about work or jobs or whatever. That’s why I really like that you included how well they work with others . Personally, I never felt like school was about memorizing facts (maybe some history classes…), but I also had two parents w…

Maybe there's a better word than 'work'. When I say

> how well they WORK in the subject area

I don't mean 'perform in a paid job', I mean 'take productive steps'. So even if you're just noodling around having fun with a musical instrument, you can be working, if you're improving your control and understanding. Messing around without a productive aim can still be very productive.

Re: "You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

#258

Post by pierat »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #251
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've missed the point of curves. Curves exist as a different solution to the problem of "we don't know whether everybody understands the material or not, and we don't know how to evaluate whether they do". It's like saying "The problem with electric cars is that they don't fit the equipment for our emissions test" If you give a pre-written test, you basically need to curve it because you don't really know how well…

I disagree. The point of curves is to differentiate the students. Students who don’t understand do and the material should be failed, it that doesn’t tell us who should get A vs B vs C

"Do they proficiently understand the topic?" Should be met with a trinary answer: YES, NO, WITHDRAW.

We should not encourage stack ranking (or a curve) as a way to stratify students because they joined the class with too many smarter people. Go read up about stack ranking, and why it's a horrific practice.

In a "grade on a curve" situation, it benefits you to drop the class if there's too many people you think smarter or more experienced than you. And it benefits you if you're smarter than them. And, thats a REALLY UGLY way to approach education.

Re: "You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

#259

Post by Tanoc »

jstarfish wrote: post #255
Tanoc wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just that people are going for "better" jobs to avoid the lowest of low tier schlock jobs. It's that a dedicated chunk of those jobs refuse to hire because the employers are trying to downsize that part of their overall workforce and thus reduce costs. An example of this has been the rail shortage, where despite needing twice as many workers as they actually have in order to keep things from collapsing the r…

> People who have been unemployed for more than a year are not included. Yep, let's just exclude all the people who tell the real story here. Every gen-z in my family (and neighbors!) also have 18-21 year-olds who are doing weird shit like working for two days up to a max of two weeks, then abandoning the job. I don't know what this is about ("working" once per quarter to get the work credits for Social Security?) or…

Honestly I could probably fit into that group you're describing on technicality. I usually do informal contract or commission work that I have to self report come tax season. When things slow down in the fall or right around New Year's I often pick up seasonal work or just reply to random help ads to get a few hundred dollars to cover the shortfall. I'm in a grey area already, which makes what content creators like livestreamers do even more of a mystery to me in regards to whether they're considered self-employed or doing the digital equivalent of street busking.

Re: "You have a 27% 'AI' issue in here"

#260

Post by AnnikaL »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #107
Miraste wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if they cheat they are only cheating themselves anyways. I've heard people say this a lot. It's a very old-school liberal arts perspective that doesn't fit with the modern world. In practice, for most students, education is a third-place benefit of university behind 1. the certificate and 2. networking.

I find the “liberal arts” thing weird. First, as a scientist with an engineering degree, I definitely feel if you cheat through school you’re only cheating yourself. In the hard sciences a lack of knowledge and ability is pretty easy to suss out. The degree gets you the interview, the network might open a door or two, but the education is how you get the job. And once you’ve got it, if you didn’t learn anything, you…

Are physics, chemistry, mathematics, and biology not considered "liberal arts"?
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