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On paper? Oral exams are mush better in my opinion
> On paper? Oral exams are mush better in my opinion I agree: they're great, if you have that luxury. But they don't scale.
Is overuse of generative AI by students acting like hyperprocessed foods for learning? Quick dopamine hits. Immediate satisfaction. Long-term learning deficits. How to break this cycle? I wrote this article to try to answer this question.
Say what you will about Oreos and other processed foods, but they do actually contain calories. They are legitimately food. Here's my experience as a professional educator: AI tools are used not as shortcuts in the learning process, but for avoiding the learning process entirely. The analogy is therefore not to junk food, but to GLP-1, insofar as it's something that you do instead of food. Students can easily use AI…
In education today there's a lot of focus on knowledge and testing, and therefore it's fairly natural for AI to be used to just answer questions instead of as a learning aid. If we had a focus more on understanding, I'd hope that use of AI would be more exploratory, with more back and forth to help students learn in a way that works for them. After all, if LLMs are basically just text calculators, every student having a concept explained to them in exactly the language they need would be pretty amazing.
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> On paper? Oral exams are mush better in my opinion I agree: they're great, if you have that luxury. But they don't scale.
I was talking to a high-school English teacher recently about building oral exams using ChatGPT voice-mode. Current models would struggle to provide a uniform experience across students, but it feels like it's within near-term reach.
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Say what you will about Oreos and other processed foods, but they do actually contain calories. They are legitimately food. Here's my experience as a professional educator: AI tools are used not as shortcuts in the learning process, but for avoiding the learning process entirely. The analogy is therefore not to junk food, but to GLP-1, insofar as it's something that you do instead of food. Students can easily use AI…
It doesn't even have to be on paper. That computer science exam can be done on a monitored university computer. The only bit that needs enforcement is not using outside resources, to show that a particular knowledge and how to apply it is actually in one's head.
I also agree with the title and its implications.
But hype is hype, and humans like to ride the hype.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't even have to be on paper. That computer science exam can be done on a monitored university computer. The only bit that needs enforcement is not using outside resources, to show that a particular knowledge and how to apply it is actually in one's head.
Here in czechia they still do oral exams where you sit in a chair in front of an instructor and they ask you questions which you have to answer by speaking. I don't think there's any better way to show actual content mastery than that
Is overuse of generative AI by students acting like hyperprocessed foods for learning? Quick dopamine hits. Immediate satisfaction. Long-term learning deficits. How to break this cycle? I wrote this article to try to answer this question.
Say what you will about Oreos and other processed foods, but they do actually contain calories. They are legitimately food. Here's my experience as a professional educator: AI tools are used not as shortcuts in the learning process, but for avoiding the learning process entirely. The analogy is therefore not to junk food, but to GLP-1, insofar as it's something that you do instead of food. Students can easily use AI…
For learning, I think having an Oreo cookie (using AI) is OK once in a while, especially if your hitting a wall and can't get through, but it's a really, I think, a very steep slippery slope that leads to avoiding the learning process altogether.
I remember as a co-op student spending three days solving a particularly subtle bug in a C-based word processor. My grit was rewarded. On day three, I vividly remember staring at the code and the solution just popped into my head. That was one of the most formative experiences in my earlier years as a developer and feeling of elation never left me. I worry that AI will take these moments, especially early in ones career.
Our brains have not changed in hundreds of years, and I agree that the in person experience is actually the best. Humans learn best from humans. I'm trying to learn French, and Duo has been sad for a few weeks due to my absence, but its not having the same effect on me if it were a human French teacher was was sad with me.
Regarding failing students, I personally had to take summer school twice and still ended up failing grade 12 and repeating the entire school year. Why? I was too focused on computers and nothing else. In retrospect, taking summer school and repeating grade 12 actually helped me catch up at time when the stakes were low. If I hadn't, I would have definitely failed later in life when the costs were higher.
I feel like the article is not disciplined about maintaining definitions between Education and learning here, but there's some interesting stuff. I've found (I think!) LLMs to be hyper-useful for enquiry-based learning: lots of "well does that mean that" and "isn't that the same as" and "but you said earlier that" and "could you use shorter answers and we'll do this step by step please". I am curious to dig into "Gen…
> Our results suggest that students attempt to use GPT-4 as a "crutch" during practice problem sessions, and when successful, perform worse on their own. Thus, to maintain long-term productivity, we must be cautious when deploying generative AI to ensure humans continue to learn critical skills.
I think the caution is the use of AI to circuit the real learning, even if AI is in a tutor mode, to avoid building up true grit.
Ultimately, in writing this article, my hope was that a student would read it and get angry, angry that over use of AI - using it as a crutch - is actually having a negative impact on their learning, and they would resolve to using it only for more efficiency and effectiveness, not a substitution for the true learning.
I was thinking of Richard Feynman’s approach to learning when writing this article. He was a genius, so I didn't want the analogy to be unrelatable. However, he really enjoyed understanding the first principles and that enjoyment gave him such a solid foundation. He put in the necessary hours to learn, and what a remarkable life he enjoyed because of it.