I have been wrestling with this too. I only see two options: no tech university or AI wrangling university.
https://solresol.substack.com/p/you-can-no-longer-set-an-und...
Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
21–30 of 672 posts
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#22Let students use AI as they will when learning, but verify without allowing them to use it -- in class -- otherwise you have no way of knowing what they know. Job interviewers face the same problem.
We're highly considering going back to onsite interviews, the big liniter is scheduling the interviewers.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#23If the trend continues, it seems like most college degrees will be completely worthless. If students using AI to cheat on homework are graduating with a degree, then it has lost all value as a certificate that the holder has completed some minimum level of education and learning. Institutions that award such degrees will be no different than degree mills of the past. I’m just grateful my college degree has the year 2…
The credentials were never about having become learned.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#24If the trend continues, it seems like most college degrees will be completely worthless. If students using AI to cheat on homework are graduating with a degree, then it has lost all value as a certificate that the holder has completed some minimum level of education and learning. Institutions that award such degrees will be no different than degree mills of the past. I’m just grateful my college degree has the year 2…
Maybe schools and universities need to stop considering homework to be evidence of subject matter mastery. Grading homework never made sense to me. What are you measuring, really, and how confident are you of that measurement?
You can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. Universities need to accept that AI exists, and adjust their operations accordingly.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#25If the trend continues, it seems like most college degrees will be completely worthless. If students using AI to cheat on homework are graduating with a degree, then it has lost all value as a certificate that the holder has completed some minimum level of education and learning. Institutions that award such degrees will be no different than degree mills of the past. I’m just grateful my college degree has the year 2…
TBF this problem doesn’t seem that new to me. I was forced to do my lab work in Vim and C via SSH because the faculty felt that Java IDEs with autocomplete were doing a disservice to learning.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
then you're discriminating against students not using AI. I for sure know I really would be depressed to be asked for a huge pile of work I'll do myself when other will just cheat and have free time to do something else work on interesting projects or see friends whatever.
Would the solution not be to pivot to more in-person demonstrations of skill and knowledge? Say the tests and exams become hand written, or taken in a controlled lab or whatever, so you need to eventually pick up the skill. But how you pick up the skill is irrelevant. Maybe the issue is, somewhat, the concept of graded homework in the first place. It's meant to be practice material, but is only actually useful as pra…
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Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand your intentions but I'm skeptical even this solves the problem. Realistically I think we're just moving away from knowledge-work and efforts to resuscitate it are just varying levels of triage for a bleeding limb. In the actual workplace with people making hundreds of thousands a year (the top echelon of what your class is trying to prepare students for) I'm not seeing output increase with AI tools so cl…
What do you view as coming after knowledge work? Do you think we'll see a resurgence of physical, in-person work? Not rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious and could see that being a real scenario.
With an ageing population, I don't think we are going to run out of the need for basic healthcare workers.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#28I teach math at a large university (30,000 students) and have also gone “back to the earth”, to pen-and-paper, proctored and exams.
Students don’t seem to mind this reversion. The administration, however, doesn’t like this trend. They want all evaluation to be remote-friendly, so that the same course with the same evaluations can be given to students learning in person or enrolled online. Online enrollment is a huge cash cow, and fattening it up is a very high priority. In-person, pen-and-paper assessment threatens their revenue growth model. Anyways, if we have seven sections of Calculus I, and one of these sections is offered online/remote, then none of the seven are allowed any in person assessment. For “fairness”. Seriously.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#29If the trend continues, it seems like most college degrees will be completely worthless. If students using AI to cheat on homework are graduating with a degree, then it has lost all value as a certificate that the holder has completed some minimum level of education and learning. Institutions that award such degrees will be no different than degree mills of the past. I’m just grateful my college degree has the year 2…
All of the best professors I had either did not grade homework or weighted it very small and often on a did-you-do-it-at-all basis and did not grade attendance at all. They provided lectures and assignments as a means to learn the material and then graded you based on your performance in proctored exams taken either in class or at the university testing center.
For most subjects at the university level graded homework (and graded attendance) has always struck me as somewhat condescending and coddling. Either it serves to pad out grades for students who aren't truly learning the material or it serves to force adult students to follow specific learning strategies that the professor thinks are best rather than giving them the flexibility they deserve as grown adults.
Give students the flexibility to learn however they think is best and then find ways to measure what they've actually learned in environments where cheating is impossible. Cracking down on cheating at homework assignments is just patching over a teaching strategy that has outgrown its usefulness.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#30If the trend continues, it seems like most college degrees will be completely worthless. If students using AI to cheat on homework are graduating with a degree, then it has lost all value as a certificate that the holder has completed some minimum level of education and learning. Institutions that award such degrees will be no different than degree mills of the past. I’m just grateful my college degree has the year 2…
> I’m just grateful my college degree has the year 2011 on it, for what it’s worth.
College students still cram and purge. Nobody forced to sit through OChem remembers their Diels-Alder reaction except the organic chemists.
College degrees probably don't have as much value as we've historically ascribed to them. There's a lot of nostalgia and tradition pent up in them.
The students who do the best typically fill their schedule with extra-curricular projects and learning that isn't dictated by professors and grading curves.