Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How University Students Use Claude

anthropic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 601 posts

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#221

Post by izacus »

0xffff2 wrote: post #126
dtnewman wrote: post #14

> A common question is: “how much are students using AI to cheat?” That’s hard to answer, especially as we don’t know the specific educational context where each of Claude’s responses is being used. I built a popular product that helps teachers with this problem. Yes, it's "hard to answer", but let's be honest... it's a very very widespread problem. I've talked to hundreds of teachers about this and it's a ubiquitous…

>For many students, it's literally "let me paste the assignment into ChatGPT and see what it spits out, change a few words and submit that". Does that actually work? I'm long past having easy access to college programming assignments, but based on my limited interaction with ChatGPT I would be absolutely shocked if it produced output that was even coherent, much less working code given such an approach.

It doesn't matter who coherent the output is - the students will paste it anyway, then fail the assignment (and you need to deal with grading it) and then complain to parents and school board that you're incompetent because you're failing the majority of the class.

Your post is based in a misguided idea that students actually care about some basic quality of their work.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#222

Post by aj7 »

dtnewman wrote: post #14

> A common question is: “how much are students using AI to cheat?” That’s hard to answer, especially as we don’t know the specific educational context where each of Claude’s responses is being used. I built a popular product that helps teachers with this problem. Yes, it's "hard to answer", but let's be honest... it's a very very widespread problem. I've talked to hundreds of teachers about this and it's a ubiquitous…

I’m a physicist. I can align and maximize ANY laser. I don’t even think when doing this task. Long hours of struggle, 50 years ago. Without struggle there is nothing. You can bullshit your way in. But you will be ejected.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#223

Post by ketzo »

aj7 wrote: post #222
dtnewman wrote: post #14

> A common question is: “how much are students using AI to cheat?” That’s hard to answer, especially as we don’t know the specific educational context where each of Claude’s responses is being used. I built a popular product that helps teachers with this problem. Yes, it's "hard to answer", but let's be honest... it's a very very widespread problem. I've talked to hundreds of teachers about this and it's a ubiquitous…

I’m a physicist. I can align and maximize ANY laser. I don’t even think when doing this task. Long hours of struggle, 50 years ago. Without struggle there is nothing. You can bullshit your way in. But you will be ejected.

barely related to your point but “I can align and maximize ANY laser” is such an incredibly specific flex, I love it

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#224

Post by JSR_FDED »

bko wrote: post #35
dtnewman wrote: post #14

> A common question is: “how much are students using AI to cheat?” That’s hard to answer, especially as we don’t know the specific educational context where each of Claude’s responses is being used. I built a popular product that helps teachers with this problem. Yes, it's "hard to answer", but let's be honest... it's a very very widespread problem. I've talked to hundreds of teachers about this and it's a ubiquitous…

When modern search became more available, a lot of people said there's no point of rote memorization as you can just do a Google search. That's more or less accepted today. Whenever we have a new technology there's a response "why do I need to learn X if I can always do Y", and more or less, it has proven true, although not immediately. For instance, I'm not too concerned about my child's ability to write very legibl…

Let your children watch the movie Idiocracy - it’s more eloquent than you’ll ever be in answering that question.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#225

Post by elcritch »

crooked-v wrote: post #162
ryandrake wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reply brings to mind the well-known Heinlein quote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallan…

That's a quote that sounds great until, say, that self-built building by somebody who's neither engineer nor architect at best turns out to have some intractible design flaw and at worst collapses and kills people. It's also a quote from a character who's literally immortal and so has all the time in the world to learn things, which really undermines the premise.

I sort of view that list as table stakes for a well rounded capable person.. Well barring the invasion bit. Then again, being familiar with guns and or other forms of self defense is valuable.

I think most farmers would be somewhat capable on most of that list. Equations for farm production. Programming tractor equipment. Setting bones. Giving and taking orders. Building houses and barns.

Building a single story building isn’t that difficult, but time consuming. Especially nowadays with YouTube videos and pre-planned plans.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#226

Post by jay_kyburz »

pugio wrote: post #187

I've used AI for one of the best studying experiences I've had in a long time: 1. Dump the whole textbook into Gemini, along with various syllabi/learning goals. 2. (Carefully) Prompt it to create Anki flashcards to meet each goal. 3. Use Anki (duh). 4. Dump the day's flashcards into a ChatGPT session, turn on voice mode, and ask it to quiz me. Then I can go about my day answering questions. The best part is that if…

This sounds great! If I were learning something I would also use something like this.

I would double check every card at the start though, to make sure it didn't hallucinate anything that you then cram in your brain.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#227

Post by bongodongobob »

0xffff2 wrote: post #169
bongodongobob wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you asking? Go try it. And yes, depending on the task, it does.

As I said, I'm not a student, so I don't have access to a homework assignment to paste in. Ironically I have pretty much everything I ever submitted for my undergrad, but it seems like I absolutely never archived the assignments for some reason.

I was able to get ~80% one shots on Advent of Code with 4o up to about day 12 iirc.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#228

Post by krull10 »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #161
0xffff2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For many students, it's literally "let me paste the assignment into ChatGPT and see what it spits out, change a few words and submit that". Does that actually work? I'm long past having easy access to college programming assignments, but based on my limited interaction with ChatGPT I would be absolutely shocked if it produced output that was even coherent, much less working code given such an approach.

>> Does that actually work? Sure. Works in my IDE. "Create a linked list implementation, use that implementation in a method to reverse a linked list and write example code to demonstrate usage". Working code in a few seconds. I'm very glad I didn't have access to anything like that when I was doing my CS degree.

Yeah, and forget about giving skeleton code to students they should fill in; using an AI can quite frequently completely ace a typical undergraduate level assignment. I actually feel bad for people teaching programming courses, as the only real assessment one can now do is in-class testing without computers, but that is a strange way to test students’ ability to write and develop code to solve certain classes of problems…

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#230

Post by [deleted] »

walleeee wrote: post #207

> Students primarily use AI systems for creating (using information to learn something new) this is a smooth way to not say "cheat" in the first paragraph and to reframe creativity in a way that reflects positively on llm use. in fairness they then say > This raises questions about ensuring students don’t offload critical cognitive tasks to AI systems. and later they report > nearly half (~47%) of student-AI conversa…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN