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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

#331

Post by CuriouslyC »

raphman wrote: post #302
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".

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…

Research has shown that testing is far and away the most valuable academic tool.

Just have a quiz every day. In fact, have _TWO_ quizzes, one at the start of class and one at the end, and take the higher of the two scores. In between the first quiz and the second, work through problems with the students designed to help people that bombed the first test figure out how to pass the second.

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

#332

Post by colechristensen »

somenameforme wrote: post #39

The likely 'real' reason is hidden in one paragraph within the article and has nothing to do with the implication of the eye-catching title: "Both Garcia and Ranade have joined more than 1,300 UC faculty in signing a petition calling for the reinstatement of ACT and SAT standardized testing scores for STEM admissions in the UC system. The petition and its accompanying open letter detail similar concerns with students…

But do these universities not have math placement exams? Not for admissions but just before you register for your first semester classes, a 30 minute math test should be a straightforward preventative measure. I did a test like this, I assumed they were pretty universal.

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

#333

Post by gom_jabbar »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #115
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…

At this rate humans will become avatars remotely controlled by LLMs. Ironic conclusion of the consciousness debate.

[dead]

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

#334

Post by aleph_minus_one »

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.

> 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.

Perhaps this is rather a sign that you currently shouldn't jump on the LLM hype train, but rather attempt to get a good foundation on the basics. When the whole LLM area becomes much more "stabilized" (I see signs that this is currently happening, if only for the reason that training state of the art models has become more and more expensive), you can still get into LLMs if you want.

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

#335

Post by dmd »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #330
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…

> 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. You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. So, as long as you are not under time pressure (which you in…

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study.

This has not been true for something like 70 years now. People go to university because it is expected that that is what you do after high school.

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

#336

Post by cmrdporcupine »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #330
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…

> 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. You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. So, as long as you are not under time pressure (which you in…

> If, on the other hand, LLMs help you with making much faster progress in understanding the subject that you study

My experience is that they uncomfortably do both. You can "understand" something conceptually quicker -- like you have a new brain-muscle-thing that lets you cut through the hard difficult tedious corners to get to the meat of the matter.

But then you also can become reliant on it, and have difficulty doing the mechanistic rote work of working through it yourself.

Like the really big powerful calculator that it is, really.

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

#337

Post by sfink »

johnvanommen wrote: post #161
adamcharnock wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering if there would be a benefit to inverting how we teach subjects now. Previously we would teach from the bottom, and build up. Semi-colon goes here, curly brace goes there, and then build up to architecture, systems, etc. But this doesn't seem to make sense when someone comes to a topic with an LLM in-hand. They need to know high-level techniques, architecture, best practice, etc. As they pursue the…

I keep trying to convince people that English majors and Philosophy majors will benefit the most from LLMs. English majors in particular, have been trained to be VERY exact in how they word things. That awareness of how to structure the English language, it will benefit those who use LLMs. Then again, maybe someone will just make a LLM that’s built to turn poor English and poor reasoning into excellent English and ex…

I disagree with you, for the very reason you give:

> Then again, maybe someone will just make a LLM that’s built to turn poor English... into excellent English

That's already been done, for some (pretty weird) definition of "excellent".

I work with, or at least in the vicinity of, someone who is very good at getting work out of LLMs. He has a whole system of CLAUDE.md files and skill files and things. He makes TONS of typos. When I first saw that, I was itching to go in and fix them all, it seemed viscerally wrong to be adding an extra layer of correction required between the instructions and the LLM's behavior. But in practice, I don't think it mattered at all. The LLM didn't care. Typos in particular might require a bunch of RLHF in the chatbot, but my hypothesis is that the LLM is already mapping messy human input to the nearest surface of some high-dimensional manifold and the added noise of typos is inconsequential to where it ends up (as long as there isn't any real ambiguity -- though even there, you could probably construct cases where that would help rather than hurt!)

Typos are different from sloppy writing, but I think the AI companies have put a lot of work into training these chatbots on dealing with typical non-English major writing with all of its imprecision. Also, it's easier to construct cases where that imprecision and sloppiness would help rather than hurt: a mistake in the input that is common enough to show up in the training data is going to be a good match for the needed correction as well as associated corrections. The precise language could easily result in the LLM overestimating the user's competence.

That doesn't address whether an English major's careful composition would help for hard tasks where getting the specification right really matters -- perhaps that was your point? I guess it's an open question whether "boiling away the typos" and "boiling away a poorly articulated specification" are related enough.

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

#338

Post by hgoel »

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…

HN is going to eat up this garbage

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

#339

Post by kingkawn »

userbinator wrote: post #43
HanayamaTriplet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the removal of standardized testing in 2021 was the real reason, then why is there a sudden spike of failure rates happening right now?

It takes time for students to work their way through the system.

Wouldn’t this change be evidenced right away after the elimination of the test as criteria if the test was responsible

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

#340

Post by elAhmo »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #330
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…

> 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. You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. So, as long as you are not under time pressure (which you in…

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this.

This is probably not true for majority of people. Most go to school because it is mandatory, pushed by parents and society, and university gives you credentials and better job opportunities. Homework and tests are a way to get a number grade on 'how well you memorized something', it doesn't really measure a deep understanding of the topic.

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