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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

#271

Post by BrenBarn »

Brybry wrote: post #256
BrenBarn wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that pressure as well. I find that a lot of the problems we have with AI are in fact AI exposing problems in other aspects of our society. In this case, one problem is that the people who do the teaching and know what needs to be learned are the faculty, but the decisions about how to teach are made by administrators. And another problem is that colleges are treating "make money" as a goal. These problems exist…

Instructors and professors are required to be subject matter experts but many are not required to have a teaching certification or education-related degree. So they know what students should be taught but I don't know that they necessarily know how any better than the administrators. I've always found it weird that you need teaching certification to teach basic concepts to kindergartners but not to teach calculus to…

The instructors may not know the absolute best way to teach, but I think they do know more than the administrators. All my interaction with teacher training suggests to me that a large proportion of it is basically vacuous. On dimensions like the ones under discussion here (e.g., "should we use AI", "can we do this class online"), there is not really anything to "know": it's not like anyone is somehow a super expert on AI teaching. Teacher training in such cases is mostly just fads with little substantive basis.

Moreover, the same issues arise even outside a classroom setting. A person learning on their own from a book vs. a chatbot faces many of the same problems. People have to deal with the problem of AI slop in office emails and restaurant menus. The problem isn't really about teaching, it's about the difficulty of using AI to do anything involving substantive knowledge and the ease of using AI to do things involving superficial tasks.

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

#272

Post by aaplok »

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?

I don't think so? I teach maths, not survival or social pressure. If a student in my class is a competent mathematician why should they not be acknowledged to be that?

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

#273

Post by boredhedgehog »

const_cast wrote: post #163
gonzobonzo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Conversely, if we're noticing what people actually do, you'll realize close to zero people who want to pursue computer science are doing it on their own. And not due to a lack of information. The draw of education hasn't been access, not since the internet anyway. Structure, pacing, curriculum, schedule, and measurement cannot be recreated. I've had many people tell me they're going to learn to program online. Almost…

> We used to do the "everyone self-educate" thing. Most people couldn't read or write.

Do you regard that as intrinsically problematic? The people themselves weren't unhappy about their state, and society, too, could function well without mass literacy. There was a certain period where we thought training wage workers for their duties required them to be literate, but that might turn out to be unnecessary, if supplying an LLM is cheaper overall than mandatory school education.

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

#274

Post by avhception »

california-og wrote: post #266
BrenBarn wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that pressure as well. I find that a lot of the problems we have with AI are in fact AI exposing problems in other aspects of our society. In this case, one problem is that the people who do the teaching and know what needs to be learned are the faculty, but the decisions about how to teach are made by administrators. And another problem is that colleges are treating "make money" as a goal. These problems exist…

I totally agree. I think the neo-liberal university model is the real culprit. Where I live, Universities get money for each student who graduates. This is up to 100k euros for a new doctorate. This means that the University and its admin want as many students to graduate as possible. The (BA&MA) students also want to graduate in target time: if they do, they get a huge part of their student loans forgiven. What has…

I think one of the outcomes might be a devaluation of the certifications offered in the public job marketplace.

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

#275

Post by vkou »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #249
dgfitz wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way back like 25 years ago in what we call high school in the US, my statistics teacher tried her damndest to make final exams fair. I said next to someone I had a huge crush on, and offered to take their exam for them. I needed a ‘c’ to ace the class, and she needed an ‘a’ to pass. 3 different tests and sets of questions/scantrons. I got her the grade she needed, she did not get me the grade I needed. So to your poi…

I am confused by your pronouns and other plot holes. You wanted to "ace the class", which is an "A" on your final report card? But your crush's exam tanked your grade? You passed the class anyway, right? Did you swap Scantrons, then, and your crush sat next to you, writing answers on the dgfitz forms? She wouldn't pass without an "A" on the exams, so her running point total was circling the drain, and your effort gav…

> Were the 3 tests administered on 3 separate occasions, so nobody caught you repeatedly cheating the same way?

I imagine that it would be utterly trivial for two people to nearly-undetectably cheat in this way, by both of them simply writing the other person's name on their exam.

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

#276

Post by Sam6late »

In Roman times, teaching focused on wrestling to prepare young people for life. Now, in the AI age, what to teach, and why, have once again become major questions, especially when AI can pass the bar exams and a Ph.D. is no longer a significant achievement. Critical thinking, and life experiences could be the target but would they do it?

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

#277

Post by snickerbockers »

I think we (as in, the whole species) need to reflect on what the purpose of education is and what it should be, because in theory there's no reason why anybody should pay for a college tuition and then undermine their own mastery of the subject. Obviously 90% of the student body sees it as a ticket to being taken seriously by prospective employers and the other 10% definitely does not deserve to be taken seriously because by prospective employers because they can't even admit an uncomfortable truth about themselves.

Anyways this isn't actually useful advice because no one person can enact change on a societal scale but I do enjoy standing on this soapbox and telling at people.

BTW academic success has never been a fair measure of anything, standards and curriculum vary widely between institutions. I spent four years STRUGGLING to get a 3.2 GPA in high school then when I got to undergrad we had to take this "math placement exam" that was just basic algebra and I only had difficulty with one or two problems but I knew several kids with >= 4.0 GPA who had to take remedial algebra because they failed.

But somehow there's always massive pushback against standardized testing even when they let you take it over and over and over again until you get the grade you wanted (SAT).

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

#278

Post by hoseja »

Brybry wrote: post #256
BrenBarn wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that pressure as well. I find that a lot of the problems we have with AI are in fact AI exposing problems in other aspects of our society. In this case, one problem is that the people who do the teaching and know what needs to be learned are the faculty, but the decisions about how to teach are made by administrators. And another problem is that colleges are treating "make money" as a goal. These problems exist…

Instructors and professors are required to be subject matter experts but many are not required to have a teaching certification or education-related degree. So they know what students should be taught but I don't know that they necessarily know how any better than the administrators. I've always found it weird that you need teaching certification to teach basic concepts to kindergartners but not to teach calculus to…

Nobody knows "how" things should be taught. Pedagogy is utter disaster.

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

#280

Post by jimnotgym »

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…

I'm not a teacher, but I came here to say the same thing. Pen and paper.
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