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Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

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Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#81

Post by const_cast »

HPsquared wrote: post #73
TimorousBestie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last thing I need when researching a hard problem is an interlocutor who might lie to me, make up convincing citations to nowhere, and tell me more or less what I want to hear.

Still better than the typical classroom experience. And you can always ask again, there's no need to avoid offending the person who has a lot of power over you.

Typical classroom experience works and has worked for thousands of years.

Edutech is pretty new and virtually all of it has been a disaster. Sitting in a lecture and taking notes on paper is tried, tested, and research backed. It works. Not for everyone, but for a lot of people.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#82

Post by lurking_swe »

blitzar wrote: post #32

How did we solve this when calculators came along and ruined peoples ability to do mental arithmetic and use slide rulers?

the difference is using my calculator in real life works ALL the time and is cheap. I can depend on it. And i still need to think about the broader problem even if i have a calculator. The calculator only removes the mindless rote memorization of the steps needed to do arithmetic, etc.

My calculator doesn’t depend on a fancy AI model in the cloud. It’s not randomly rate limited during peak times due to capacity constraints. It’s not expensive to use, whereas the good LLM models are.

Did i mention calculators are actually deterministic? In other, always reliable. It’s difficult to compare the two. One gives a false sense of accomplishment because it’s say 80% reliable, and the other is always 100% reliable.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#83

Post by fn-mote »

sien wrote: post #77
math_dandy wrote: post #28

I 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…

In Australia Universities that have remote study have places where people can do proctored exams in large cities. The course is done remotely but the exam, which is often 50%+ of the final grade, is done in a place that has proctored exams as a service. Can't this be done in the US as well ?

Variations in this system are in active use in the US as well.

Do you feel it is effective?

It seems to me that there is a massive asymmetry in the war here: proctoring services have tiny incentives to catch cheaters. Cheaters have massive incentives to cheat.

I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#84

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

aaplok wrote: post #61
math_dandy wrote: post #28

I 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…

> Students don’t seem to mind this reversion. Those I ask are unanimously horrified that this is the choice they are given. They are devastated that the degree for which they are working hard is becoming worthless yet they all assert they don't want exams back. Many of them are neurodivergent who do miserably in exam conditions and in contrast excel in open tasks that allow them to explore, so my sample is biased but…

> Many of them are neurodivergent who do miserably in exam conditions

Isn't this part of life? Learning to excel anyway?

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#85

Post by baby_souffle »

fn-mote wrote: post #83
sien wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia Universities that have remote study have places where people can do proctored exams in large cities. The course is done remotely but the exam, which is often 50%+ of the final grade, is done in a place that has proctored exams as a service. Can't this be done in the US as well ?

Variations in this system are in active use in the US as well. Do you feel it is effective? It seems to me that there is a massive asymmetry in the war here: proctoring services have tiny incentives to catch cheaters. Cheaters have massive incentives to cheat. I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs.

> I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs.

It'll depend a lot on who/where/how is doing the screening and what tools (if any) are permitted.

Remember that bogus program for TI8{3,4} series calculators that would clear the screen and print "MEMORY CLEAR"? If the proctor was just looking for that string and not actually jumping through the hoops to _actually_ clear the memory then it was trivial to keep notes / solvers ... etc on the calculator.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#86

Post by dragonwriter »

const_cast wrote: post #81
HPsquared wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still better than the typical classroom experience. And you can always ask again, there's no need to avoid offending the person who has a lot of power over you.

Typical classroom experience works and has worked for thousands of years. Edutech is pretty new and virtually all of it has been a disaster. Sitting in a lecture and taking notes on paper is tried, tested, and research backed. It works. Not for everyone, but for a lot of people.

> Typical classroom experience works and has worked for thousands of years

"Typical classroom experience" hasn't even meant the same thing for thousands of years.

"lecture" used to be centered around reading the source book so that students could copy it verbatim. The printing press was an important piece of "Edutech". Technology has been continuous, and much of it has been applied to impacted the experience of education, not just in the last few years, but over a long window of history. Yeah, what we currently think of as "edutech" is what has been around for only a short time, and hasn't yet been established as part of the consensus baseline -- but that's a moving target.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#87

Post by fn-mote »

lolinder wrote: post #29
nkrisc wrote: post #13

If 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 homewor…

> rather than giving them the flexibility they deserve as grown adults

I have had so many very frustrating conversations with full grown adults in charge of teaching CS. I have no faith at all that students would be able to choose an appropriate method of study.

My issue with the instruction is the very narrow belief in the importance of certain measurable skills. VERY narrow. I won’t go into details, for my own sanity.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#88

Post by barry-cotter »

fn-mote wrote: post #83
sien wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia Universities that have remote study have places where people can do proctored exams in large cities. The course is done remotely but the exam, which is often 50%+ of the final grade, is done in a place that has proctored exams as a service. Can't this be done in the US as well ?

Variations in this system are in active use in the US as well. Do you feel it is effective? It seems to me that there is a massive asymmetry in the war here: proctoring services have tiny incentives to catch cheaters. Cheaters have massive incentives to cheat. I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs.

> proctoring services have tiny incentives to catch cheaters. Cheaters have massive incentives to cheat.

If they don’t catch them they don’t have a business model. They have one job. The University of London, Open University and British Council all have 50+ years experience on proctoring university exams for distance learning students and it’s not like Thomson Prometric haven’t thought about how to do it either, even if they (mostly?) do computerised exams.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#89

Post by MrDarcy »

baby_souffle wrote: post #85
fn-mote wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Variations in this system are in active use in the US as well. Do you feel it is effective? It seems to me that there is a massive asymmetry in the war here: proctoring services have tiny incentives to catch cheaters. Cheaters have massive incentives to cheat. I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs.

> I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs. It'll depend a lot on who/where/how is doing the screening and what tools (if any) are permitted. Remember that bogus program for TI8{3,4} series calculators that would clear the screen and print "MEMORY CLEAR"? If the proctor was just looking for that string and not actually jumping through the hoops to _actually_ clear the memory th…

Was I at university in a small window in time when a TI-89 and TI-92 was allowed?

In the years since, I’ve only ever heard mention of older models, not newer ones which makes me wonder if this is a special case and situation where technology is frozen in time intentionally to foster learning.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#90

Post by fn-mote »

tylerflick wrote: post #25
nkrisc wrote: post #13

If 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.

> the faculty felt that Java IDEs with autocomplete were doing a disservice to learning

Sounds laughably naive now, doesn’t it?

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