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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

#181

Post by HighGoldstein »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #178
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The annoyance with 10-20% means that in order to be an "A" student you have to do all the homework instead of just ace the exams which is obnoxious if you actually know the material. Edge case, I know, but that last 20% is a ton of extra work.

The course could offer nonlinear grading where you get the maximum of [exam grade, 0.8 exam + 0.2 hw]

A lot of my university professors would use this kind of strategy where your final grading structure depends on various grades you got throughout the semester, so all students could get good grades whether they ace the exam or they are terrible at exams but excel at project based learning/labs.

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

#182

Post by pugio »

johnea wrote: post #58

One of the most offensive words in the anthropomophization of LLMs is: hallucinate. It's not only an anthropomorphism, it's also a euphemism. A correct interpretation of the word would imply that the LLM has some fantastical vision that it mistakes for reality. What utter bullsh1t. Let's just use the correct word for this type of output: wrong. When the LLM generates a sequence of words, that may or may not be gramma…

When a person hallucinates a dragon coming for them, they are wrong, but we still use a different word to more precisely indicate the class of error.

Not all llm errors are hallucinations - if an llm tells me that 3 + 5 is 7, It's just wrong. If it tells me that the source for 3 + 5 being 7 is a seminal paper entitled "On the relative accuracy of summing numbers to a region +-1 from the fourth prime", we would call that a hallucination. In modern parlance " hallucination" has become a term of art to represent a particular class of error that llms are prone to. (Others have argued that "confabulation" would be more accurate, but it hasn't really caught on.)

It's perfectly normal to repurpose terms and anthropomorphizations to represent aspects of the world or systems that we create. You're welcome to try to introduce other terms that don't include any anthropomorphization, but saying it's "just wrong" conveys less information and isn't as useful.

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

#183

Post by Dusseldorf »

gonzobonzo wrote: post #153
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.

Talk is cheap; if you want to see what people really believe, ignore what they claim and look at what they actually do. And when you do that, you see that people generally don't find typical college classes to be worth it outside of the credentials they give. Almost no one with a CS degree goes back to college to take a college algorithm course when they want to get better at algorithms; they study on their own. You…

Sure, but regardless of what the better way to learn is, a large part of the purpose of a degree is to demonstrate to potential employers that you have a certain proficiency in a field. Universities stake their reputation and accreditation on being able to measure that proficiency. We've spent thousands of years figuring out how to do that in various ways. Maybe some day it will be easy to do that for course loads that heavily utilize LLMs, but I don't think we're quite at that point yet. Certainly they have value in assisting with learning, but it's important to defend the old methods until we get there.

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

#184

Post by [deleted] »

foxglacier wrote: post #138

Schools need to re-think what the purpose of essays was in the first place and re-invent homework to suit the existance of LLMs. If it's to understand the material, then skip the essay writing part and have them do a traditional test. If it's to be able to write, they probably don't need that skill anymore so skip the essay writing. If it's to get used to researching on their own, find a way to have them do that whic…

[deleted]

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

#185

Post by Aurornis »

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…

> Students mistake mandatory assignments for something they have to overcome as effortlessly as possible.

It has been interesting to see this idea propagate throughout online spaces like Hacker News, too. Even before LLMs, the topic of cheating always drew a strangely large number of pro-cheating comments from people arguing that college is useless, a degree is just a piece of paper, knowledge learned in classes is worthless, and therefore cheating is a rational decision.

Meanwhile, whenever I’ve done hiring or internships screens for college students it’s trivial to see which students are actually learning the material and which ones treat every stage of their academic and career as a game they need to talk their way through while avoiding the hard questions.

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

#186

Post by rtkwe »

directevolve wrote: post #131
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. The main kind of cheating we need them to prevent is effective cheating - the kind that can meaningfully improve the cheater's score. Requiring cheaters to put their belongings in a locker, using proctor-provided resources, and being monitored in a proctor-provided room puts substantial limits on effective cheating. That's pretty much…

Remote proctoring programs at least are pretty rough these days. Their environment conditions are pretty exacting and then they expect you to just stare at the screen and think for basically the whole exam. Minor normal webcam problems can invalidate the entire exam through no fault of the examee or if you look around or fidget a lot it can trigger their cheat detection as well. I'm glad I finished my test taking time before it became the norm.

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

#187

Post by [deleted] »

pugio wrote: post #182
johnea wrote: post #58

One of the most offensive words in the anthropomophization of LLMs is: hallucinate. It's not only an anthropomorphism, it's also a euphemism. A correct interpretation of the word would imply that the LLM has some fantastical vision that it mistakes for reality. What utter bullsh1t. Let's just use the correct word for this type of output: wrong. When the LLM generates a sequence of words, that may or may not be gramma…

When a person hallucinates a dragon coming for them, they are wrong, but we still use a different word to more precisely indicate the class of error. Not all llm errors are hallucinations - if an llm tells me that 3 + 5 is 7, It's just wrong. If it tells me that the source for 3 + 5 being 7 is a seminal paper entitled "On the relative accuracy of summing numbers to a region +-1 from the fourth prime", we would call t…

[deleted]

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

#188

Post by Aurornis »

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…

> If the trend continues, it seems like most college degrees will be completely worthless.

I suspect the opposite: Known-good college degrees will become more valuable. The best colleges will institute practices that confirm the material was learned, such as emphasizing in-person testing over at-home assignments.

Cheating has actually been rampant at the university level for a long time, well before LLMs. One of the key differentiators of the better institutions is that they are harder to cheat to completion.

At my local state university (where I have friends on staff) it’s apparently well known among the students that if they pick the right professors and classes they can mostly skate to graduation with enough cheating opportunity to make it an easy ride. The professors who are sticklers about cheating are often avoided or even become the targets of ratings-bombing campaigns

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

#189

Post by Aurornis »

Aerroon wrote: post #142
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…

At the same time though: if AI based cheating is so effective then is college itself useful?

If calculators are so good at math, is learning math itself useful?

It’s the same old story with a new set of technology.

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

#190

Post by jmb99 »

MrDarcy wrote: post #89
baby_souffle wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I wasn’t allowed anything more complex than a Casio FX-300ES. Even my 991ES wasn’t allowed, let alone something like a TI83/4. This (from what I’ve heard) is pretty standard in Canadian universities for calc 1-3, linear algebra, discrete, etc.
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