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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

#311

Post by falcor84 »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #209
JoshTriplett wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I believe parent is making a more general point, and as someone who would also be considered "neurodivergent" I would agree with that point. There were plenty of times growing up where special consideration would have been a huge help for me, but I'm deeply grateful that I learned in a world where "sometimes life is unfair" was considered a valuable lesson. In my adult life I had a coworker who constantly demanded th…

I really like your take on this, but disagree with your conclusion. I do think that trying to "make life more fair" is essentially the main goal of civilization, codified as early (and probably much earlier) as The Code of Hammurabi.

My take is that we need to tread a thin line such that we teach young people to accept that life is inherently unfair, while at the same time doing what we can as a society to make it more fair.

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

#312

Post by jobigoud »

bosuanzi wrote: post #63

Different times have different teaching tasks, which is the sign of human progress. Just like after the invention of computers, those methods of how to do manual calculations faster can be eliminated from teaching tasks. Education shifted towards teaching students how to use computational tools effectively. This allowed students to solve more complex problems and work on higher-level concepts that manual calculations…

On one hand I tend to agree because these students will also be able to use AI when they actually hit the workplace, but on the other hand it has never happened that the tools we use are better than us at so many tasks.

How long before a centaur team of human + AI is less effective than the AI alone?

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

#313

Post by falcor84 »

bee_rider wrote: post #219
timr wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and yet, somehow we managed? > Show some imagination for why other people hold their positions. I say that as someone who has also graded piles of paper exams in graduate school (also not that long ago!) I don't believe the argument you are making is true, but if the primary objection really is that teachers have to grade , then no, I don't have any sympathy.

It sorta depends on the material… I always thought paper programming tests were dumb: when I was taking them and when I was proctoring/grading them. It is not that similar to writing a program in an IDE where it will tell you if you make a little mistake, and often help you work your way through it. We made it. But, that’s survivorship bias, right? We can’t really know how much potential has wasted.

Hear, hear!

Doing programming on paper seems to me like assessing someone's skills in acrobatics by watching them do the motions in a zero-gravity environment. Without the affordances given by the computer, it's just not the same activity.

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

#314

Post by lukan »

falcor84 wrote: post #307
throwaway2037 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instructors and professors are required to be subject matter experts but many are not required to have a teaching certification or education-related degree. I attended two universities to get my computer science degree. The first was somewhat famous/prestigious, and I found most of the professors very unapproachable and cared little about "teaching well". The second was a no-name second tier public uni, but I found…

That's been my experience too, and I think it actually makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective - if the students are smart enough to learn well regardless of the level of the instruction, then the professors don't face any pressure to improve. Taking this to the extreme, I think that a top-tier university could do very well for itself by only providing a highly selective admission system, good facilities…

I rather think it is a elitist concept of "I am a highly respected professor at a elite uni, how dare you bother me with your profane questions!"

I was at a Uni aiming for and then gaining "Elite" status in germany and I did not liked the concept and the changes.

I like high profile debates. As high as possible. But I don't like snobism. We all started as newbs.

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

#315

Post by [deleted] »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #94
fn-mote wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sani…

I'm sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but just like junior employees, I think university students should clock in at 9am and finish working at 5pm. I think they would really benefit learning how to work a full day and develop some work life balance.

[deleted]

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

#316

Post by falcor84 »

stevage wrote: post #309
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…

> Teaching Linux basics doesn't suffer the same because the exam-preparing exercise is typing things into a terminal, and LLMs still don't generally have API access to terminals. Huh, fighting my way through a Linux CLI is exactly the kind of thing I use Chatgpt for professionally. I did study it in compsci, but those commands are inherently not memorable.

Yes, LLMs have had API access to terminals for quite a while now. I've been using Windsurf and Claude Code to type terminal commands for me for a long while (and `gh copilot suggest` before that) and couldn't be happier. I still manually review most of them before approving, but I've seen that the chances of the AI getting an advanced incantation right on the first try are much higher than mine, and I haven't yet once had it make a disastrous one, while that's happened to me quite a few times with commands I typed on my own.

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

#317

Post by LunaSea »

baq wrote: post #288
aaplok wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

real life first, math second. taking tests is a skill that must be learned, especially now with AI faking quite literally everything that can be shown on a screen. (unless your students are learning purely for the joy of it and not for having a chance to get hired anywhere.)

> taking tests is a skill that must be learned

Why? It's a useless skill that you will literally never have to use after your schooling.

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

#318

Post by gchamonlive »

protocolture wrote: post #254
gchamonlive wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The impact LLMs have on education is arguably orders of magnitude higher than calculators

Not really, its just calculators for all the other classes. And tbh, lots of people historically would have loved a calculator that could write an essay about shakespeare or help code a simple game.

It's how you approach it.

You tell it to act as a tutor, it'll act as one. Tell it to solve your homework in the form of a poem, it'll do that.

That's not just a calculator, even though it's just calculating, just as much as a computer isn't just a voltage switcher, even thought it's just switching voltages.

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

#319

Post by GeoAtreides »

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

if "many" are "divergent" then... are they really divergent? or are they the new typical?

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

#320

Post by stevage »

falcor84 wrote: post #316
stevage wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teaching Linux basics doesn't suffer the same because the exam-preparing exercise is typing things into a terminal, and LLMs still don't generally have API access to terminals. Huh, fighting my way through a Linux CLI is exactly the kind of thing I use Chatgpt for professionally. I did study it in compsci, but those commands are inherently not memorable.

Yes, LLMs have had API access to terminals for quite a while now. I've been using Windsurf and Claude Code to type terminal commands for me for a long while (and `gh copilot suggest` before that) and couldn't be happier. I still manually review most of them before approving, but I've seen that the chances of the AI getting an advanced incantation right on the first try are much higher than mine, and I haven't yet onc…

Oh, I just copy paste back and forth.

Often I just paste an error with some scroll back but no instructions and it works out what I need.

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