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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

#101

Post by JoshTriplett »

sshine wrote: post #69

I teach computer science / programming, and I don't know what a good AI policy is. On the one hand, I use AI extensively for my own learning, and it's helping me a lot. On the other hand, it gets work done quickly and poorly. Students mistake mandatory assignments for something they have to overcome as effortlessly as possible. Once they're past this hurdle, they can mind their own business again. To them, AI is not…

> Oral exams because it becomes obvious how skilled they are, how deep their knowledge is.

Assuming you have access to a computer lab, have you considered requiring in-class programming exercises, regularly? Those could be a good way of checking actual skills.

> Maybe providing the IDE online and observing copy-paste is a way forward. I just don't like the tendency that students can't run software on their own computers.

And you'll frustrate the handful of students who know what they're doing and want to use a programmer's editor. I know that I wouldn't have wanted to type a large pile of code into a web anything.

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

#102

Post by JoshTriplett »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #84
aaplok wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Life doesn't tend to take place under exam conditions, either.

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

#103

Post by jumploops »

Tryk wrote: post #74
jumploops wrote: post #55

A bit off-topic, but I think AI has the potential to supercharge learning for the students of the future. Similar to Montessori, LLMs can help students who wander off in various directions. I remember often being “stuck” on some concept (usually in biology and chemistry), where the teacher would hand-wave something as truth, this dismissing my request for further depth. Of course, LLMs in the current educational land…

The problem is that many students come to university unequipped with the discipline it takes to actually study. Teaching students how to effectively learn is a side-effect of university education.

Yes, I think curiosity dies well before university for most students.

The specific examples I recall most vividly were from 4th grade and 7th grade.

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

#104

Post by [deleted] »

math_dandy wrote: post #91
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 ?

Proctoring services done well could be valuable, but it’s smaller rural and remote communities that would benefit most. Maybe these services could be offered by local schools, libraries, etc.

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by ghaff »

dragonwriter wrote: post #86
const_cast wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 educa…

And it still varies a lot. There are large lectures, small lectures, labs, seminars, largely project courses, etc. Varies by subject matter of course. You probably won't have labs in an English class but you may well have a big project of some sort.

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

#106

Post by owenpalmer »

As an engineering undergrad, I don't think any online work should count toward the student's grade, unless you're allowed to use the Internet however you want to complete it. There simply isn't any other way of structuring the course that doesn't punish the honest students.

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

#107

Post by djoldman »

Basically it comes to this: a sufficiently large proportion of a student's grade must come from work impossible to generate with AI, e.g. in-person testing.

Unfortunately, 18-year-olds generally can't be trusted to go a whole semester without succumbing to the siren call of easy GenAI A's. So even if you tell them that the final will be in-person, some significant chunk of them will still ChatGPT their way through and bomb the final.

Therefore, professors will probably have to have more frequent in-person tests so that students get immediate feedback that they're gonna fail if they don't actually learn it.

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

#108

Post by Aeolun »

sshine wrote: post #69

I teach computer science / programming, and I don't know what a good AI policy is. On the one hand, I use AI extensively for my own learning, and it's helping me a lot. On the other hand, it gets work done quickly and poorly. Students mistake mandatory assignments for something they have to overcome as effortlessly as possible. Once they're past this hurdle, they can mind their own business again. To them, AI is not…

You can get one of those card punching machines and have them hand in stacks of cards?

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

#109

Post by ghaff »

sho_hn wrote: post #18
zeta0134 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Would the solution not be to pivot to more in-person demonstrations of skill and knowledge? Yeah, this seems like the obvious conclusion.

It probably is. But it's probably also more expensive and doesn't necessarily apply across all domains--certainly not all the time.

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

#110

Post by Aeolun »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #101
sshine wrote: post #69

I teach computer science / programming, and I don't know what a good AI policy is. On the one hand, I use AI extensively for my own learning, and it's helping me a lot. On the other hand, it gets work done quickly and poorly. Students mistake mandatory assignments for something they have to overcome as effortlessly as possible. Once they're past this hurdle, they can mind their own business again. To them, AI is not…

> Oral exams because it becomes obvious how skilled they are, how deep their knowledge is. Assuming you have access to a computer lab, have you considered requiring in-class programming exercises, regularly? Those could be a good way of checking actual skills. > Maybe providing the IDE online and observing copy-paste is a way forward. I just don't like the tendency that students can't run software on their own comput…

> I know that I wouldn't have wanted to type a large pile of code into a web anything.

I might not have liked that, but I sure would have liked to see my useless classmates being forced to learn without cheating.

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