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Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

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Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#301

Post by tgv »

ap99 wrote: post #266
yubblegum wrote: post #251

The obvious cognitive deterimental effects of using map apps, when we all realized we lose directional sense and our previous ability to navigate without the smartdevices, was society's canary in a coal mine and a headsup of what was coming. WAL-E and Idiocracy. The future.

This goes with calculator to do basic math, contacts apps to store phone numbers instead of remembering them, and watches to tell time imo. Sure we could use our brain power with old techniques to do these, but why? I don't want to do any of these. I'd rather use that brain power for other problems. Same with maps. I don't want to have to store a bunch of location or routing data in my head. I think what you're point…

> I'd rather use that brain power for other problems.

Except you won't have the underpinnings to even properly think about other problems. Your brain will be mush.

> I don't want to have to store a bunch of location or routing data in my head.

This is preposterous.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#302

Post by raphman »

phantom784 wrote: post #287
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. I agree - I would have been toast. I wonder if the teachers/colleges need to change the way they teach and assess. Let the students use the AI tools they like (perhaps guide them how they can use them professionally), but test regularly and early on the skills/knowledge they'r…

> I read a few years ago about a teacher (I think highschool) who put his lectures on YouTube for students to view in their own time and then used the in class hours for interaction, questions, tests. That seems like a smart approach. It reverses the traditional model of "lecture in class, homework outside of class".

A smart approach that does not solve the AI problem - actually flipped classrooms work worse now due to AI usage.

My own experience with flipped classrooms (which seems to be shared by quite a few people who have tried it out): they only work well if all students actually read/watch the materials beforehand. In small, advanced courses, intrinsic motivation may be sufficient - but in most cases you need some extrinsic coercion - such as a mandatory quiz about the materials or hand-written lecture notes that need to be shown at each in-person session.

With AI, some people don't watch the lectures but let ChatGPT give them a summary which they submit. Then these people poison your in-person session with their lack of knowledge and motivation.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#303

Post by chasd00 »

justinnk wrote: post #103
threatripper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that this is an adjustment period that society has to go through. The way we are using electronic devices today, in some years it will probably be looked at like smoking cigarettes. And I'd argue that a lot of the "decline" is due to a shift of skills away from things that mattered more in the past toward other things that are not measured/perceived by the older generation.

Interesting analogy. I believe regarding addictiveness they may be compared. > a shift of skills away from things that mattered more in the past toward other things that are not measured/perceived by the older generation. Do you have any ideas what these things might be? As someone in his twenties, I’m sometimes saddened by observing that some of the skills I acquired over a long time (e.g., writing, coding) may beco…

it happens, things change and the change is only speeding up. I think the real skill to have going forward is the ability to acquire new skills. I tell my boys "get good at learning and you don't have to get good at anything else".

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#304

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

ListeningPie wrote: post #166
f311a wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ask LLMs about high-level techniques, and their answers will usually be good enough. What you can't get from LLMs is the taste and judgment, which you can only obtain by having a strong CS base and coding manually for years. High-level techniques were never a problem. You could Google tens of articles on this topic. They are useless too, it's like learning how to drive a racing bicycle from reading a book. Su…

taste and judgment, which you can only obtain by having a strong CS base and coding manually for years. I disagree, the definers of taste; art and food critics, movie and book reviewers, don’t need to have learned the craft by doing. Taste is a separate skill.

No one seriously expects a food critic to be able to cook a Michelin-starred meal. The job of that kind of critic is to be insightful and entertaining, and it's very different to the taste required to create top quality food, which is a combination of solid technical skill and creative flair.

Taste in coding is a combination of insight, experience, native talent, technical skill, and flair. Tasteful coding produces clever but straightforward minimal elegant solutions that an average developer can't imagine but can adapt and maintain.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#305

Post by samsolomon »

windward wrote: post #299
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. I agree - I would have been toast. I wonder if the teachers/colleges need to change the way they teach and assess. Let the students use the AI tools they like (perhaps guide them how they can use them professionally), but test regularly and early on the skills/knowledge they'r…

>(perhaps guide them how they can use them professionally) If that's anything like how they guided me to use programming languages professionally... In my workplace I find systems and policies move too slowly to keep up with how rapidly the LLM world is changing. Colleges are even more glacial. They've barely adapted to video conferencing.

Ancient brains, medieval institutions, godlike technology.

Tristan Harris had some sort of comment like that on a podcast about the challenges posed by AI.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#306

Post by TaupeRanger »

olpad wrote: post #300
phantom784 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read a few years ago about a teacher (I think highschool) who put his lectures on YouTube for students to view in their own time and then used the in class hours for interaction, questions, tests. That seems like a smart approach. It reverses the traditional model of "lecture in class, homework outside of class".

I always absolutely hated when a teacher did a reverse classroom and I had to “learn” at home and then practice in the classroom. I think the solution is more engaging lessons and less outside work. I know why homework exists, but homework is a chore that most people want to get done as fast as possible. If kids got to learn something interesting in school and then have their free time after school, there would be le…

When left to their own devices, 99% of children are not interested enough in math, history, literature, languages, or almost any other school subject to engage with it willingly. Only teaching "interesting" things that kids are "interested" in is both impossible (too many varied kids per class for that to work 100% of the time) and even if possible, would leave kids with zero practical knowledge, because learning most of that stuff is not something kids inherently want to do.

College is different, because theoretically you should be taking classes that are relevant to your field (although there are still "core" requirements that are somewhat high-school adjacent).

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#307

Post by stavros »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #244
loneboat wrote: post #2

What a terribly ambiguous title. "Failing grades soar after xyz" makes it sound like xyz has helped what were previously terrible, failing grades become good ones.

No matter how many times I read it, I can't interpret it the way you're suggesting. "x soars after y" always reads as "x increases a lot because of y". I don't really get what you're saying. Are you maybe saying that "soars" might mean "get better", so "failing grades soar" might mean there are actually less failing grades? That's not how I've ever understood that word.

"Falling" means that something goes towards the earth. "Soaring" means the opposite. "Grades soar" means that grades went up "Falling grades means that grades are going down". "Falling grades soar" is just meaningless writing.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#308

Post by bko »

camelmel wrote: post #35

I have some sympathy for these kids. If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. Now I work mostly with PhDs who were at the top of every academic environment they've ever been in. And yet I can see their thinking skills rapidly declining as well; many of them can no longer brainstorm, code, think deeply, or write without…

What does this have to do with LLMs?

They stopped requiring SAT and ACTs in order to get a student population more representative of the population in general. This obviously allowed students that were not prepared for college into the system.

If you do well in your math SATs you'll likely do well in math college. SAT scores and college GPA are highly correlated. No idea why anyone thought it was good to ignore probably the strongest signal of success in college.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#309

Post by gcanyon »

“a typical GPA for a lower division course will fall in the range 2.8 – 3.3.”

Reminds me of a year where a teacher of mine (high school) gave everyone in class an A. He got called on it, and fought back. He literally called out the weakest kids in the class and had them do the work in front of the admins complaining and said, "tell me that's not A work, I ["fucking" strongly implied] dare you."

His grades stuck.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#310

Post by Forgeties79 »

torben-friis wrote: post #257
36733883 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>We used a vibes based system based on how compelling a sob story you could concoct whilst staying on the good side of fraud. Besides lost meritocracy, that is accidentally filtering for ability and willingness to manipulate others emotionally. Which feels really scary.

Honestly I don’t believe a thing they’re saying. Just look at the demographics of any Ivy League school and you’ll see it can’t be true
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