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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

#651

Post by fluoridation »

jawilson2 wrote: post #599
faidit wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to normalize being on silent all the time and making people wait hours for a response. Return to the primordial monkey of 1800s-era high-latency comms. At first, some people will be offended. "Why didn't you let me ping and buzz you and interrupt you all day? You didn't respond immediately each time :'((". Some people with unrealistic expectations may even stop talking to you entirely. But eventually (years m…

I've told people this for years. The mode of communication reflects the urgency. If you text me, expect a response on the order of 3+ days. If you call, and I recognize the number, it will be more urgent. If I DON'T recognize it, it goes to voicemail and back in the 3+ days queue. If you show up at my door, it is immediate. Even with my wife, she will text while I'm at the grocery to pick up some extra food items, an…

That's funny, I take the exact opposite approach. I prioritize interactions based on how much commitment I expect they'll require, with lesser commitment getting more priority. So a text message I'll usually answer right away. An email or some written reply that requires some redaction I'll postpone to when I can take the time for a thoughtful response. A ring on my buzzer, if I'm not expecting anything or anyone, I'll always ignore; I can't let any dumbass passing by the front of my building rope me into a pointless conversation.

Phone calls don't fit neatly into this scheme because they demand a lot of attention, but it's easy to get out of one if you realize it's not something critical. I generally pick up and the moment I get the slightest whiff of spam, I just hang up.

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

#652

Post by shagie »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #534
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…

Absolutely university has to change. But it's not a simple change. I say this as a professor for Physics: My colleagues say "We must fully embrace AI as a tool". I agree. But how do you teach it? It's a moving target, and you can't even give homework like: "Research with an LLM of your choice, and submit the transcript" because they can do that, or they can just copy the task into an LLM and have the LLM do it. It be…

> Maybe we have to go to oral tests only.

"Perfect homework, blank stares: Why colleges are turning to oral exams to combat AI" https://apnews.com/article/college-oral-exam-ai-chatgpt-7795...

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

#653

Post by rahimnathwani »

danso wrote: post #646
rahimnathwani wrote: post #640

The grade data come from https://berkeleytime.com/grades I was worried they may have cherrypicked courses that support their chosen narrative. So I plotted the % of F grades (red line) for all CS courses still offered, and sorted the chart in descending order of the # grades given out (light blue vertical bars) in the most recent semester when the course was offered. My worry was borne out. See the first few charts.…

The article says they looked at CS 10 and 61A, which IIRC are the intro classes at Berkeley. Why do you think that amounts to “cherry picking” versus being a reasonable starting point for analysis (esp if those classes, as they are for one of the quoted professors, aren’t graded on a curve)?

Because CS10, being an intro class, has its highest enrollment in Fall, not in Spring.

In the most recent CS10 cohort (the one in which 35% of grades were an F) only 34 students were graded.

If you're going to look at intro classes, why not look at the Fall semesters, which have much higher enrollment?

             # grades   % F grades
 Fall 2019        268        0.37%
 Fall 2020        259        8.49%
 Fall 2021        342        3.22%
 Fall 2022        218       13.30%
 Fall 2023        194        7.22%
 Fall 2024        169        1.18%
 Fall 2025        146        2.74%
You can see a chart of the data here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17acH9JkGE4MlYE1Aeh_i...

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

#654

Post by overgard »

epgui wrote: post #637
overgard wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really underrated problem. I don't think my actual cognitive skills have declined by using AI, but I do notice that my patience and attention span are a lot lower. I'm learning a new code base for a new job right now, and I'm finding AI to be a really double edged sword for it. One one hand, it's extremely valuable for asking questions about the code base. On the other hand, if I'm not careful and I just let i…

> I don't think my actual cognitive skills have declined by using AI I'm not speaking about you but... I know most people would not have much awareness of their cognitive decline. I know this because that awareness gap is there with or without LLMs, across all age groups and cultures.

True, I guess I try to have some objective measures like my chess elo and maybe some canaries like what books I'm reading. But it would be really hard to tell.

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

#655

Post by rahimnathwani »

krull10 wrote: post #650
rahimnathwani wrote: post #640

The grade data come from https://berkeleytime.com/grades I was worried they may have cherrypicked courses that support their chosen narrative. So I plotted the % of F grades (red line) for all CS courses still offered, and sorted the chart in descending order of the # grades given out (light blue vertical bars) in the most recent semester when the course was offered. My worry was borne out. See the first few charts.…

Alternatively, many faculty may be simply adjusting their curves to avoid failing too many students because they are incentivized to avoid giving too many low grades. Lower grades generally result in lower course evals, which can impact raises and promotion, and low grades can also result in additional attention from admin that no professor wants to deal with…

[flagged]

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

#656

Post by eks391 »

tialaramex wrote: post #452
gcanyon wrote: post #316

It's incredibly difficult at this point to "skate where the puck is going" as Gretzky is said to have done. No one knows what knowledge work will look like in five years. People used to memorize log and trig tables, and no one would say that's part of being a competent mathematician at this point. That said, assessments of poor critical thinking skills jump out at me more than the rest. That sort of thing seems likel…

> People used to memorize log and trig tables, and no one would say that's part of being a competent mathematician at this point Do you have evidence that it ever was part of being a competent mathematician? AIUI the trope of mathematicians who can't even do arithmetic was common already before the pocket calculator was introduced last century.

My grandpa was upset that I never bothered to memorize trig tables. Tried to argue that I am not useful when there isn't a calculator around. I can think of several rebuttles to this, but didn't care to use any. He'd already been retired for some time so I didn't expect him to understand why even a pocket calculator is useless in modern engineering analysis, so memorizing trig was no more than a boring party trick performed by the out of touch nerd.

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

#657

Post by conductr »

Archer6621 wrote: post #624
conductr wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People could also regain some cognitive skill back rather fastr when they worked to regain it. But the issue is, many people just lack the motivation to do so. If you golf or cycle, it's likely a passion or hobby. Most people don't view their cognitive health this way, they view it as work. It's why most people don't read much after their schooling, learning and being smart was only ever an ends to a means (diploma,…

I think part of the problem is also that many people simply work too hard or have too much going on in their lives to have any kind of cognitive energy left for this sort of maintenance work, even when they reason/plan that it is useful. This also seems to be encouraged somehow (by society?), to keep going like a freight train, or maybe it doesn't get discouraged enough (i.e. it doesn't get recognized as a problem).

My experience as a parent to an only-child has shown me there's just zero boredom or tolerance of boredom. Any pause or void needs to be filled with something. Any time my son says "I'm bored" my default response has become "awesome", "you're lucky", "I wish I had time to be bored" along with other quips like "boredom is a life skill". Of course, I see this same phenomenon in adults as well. So my rebuttal is that most people have much more free time than they think, it's just a matter of prioritization.

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

#658

Post by lukan »

mywittyname wrote: post #505
noduerme wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm 45 and I'm like you - no social media, relatively under connected, and still feel swamped constantly by emails and calls and especially texts. They eat up half my productive time every day, and most of them are things I'm looped in on that I don't even need to respond to. Okay so let's say that's the new cognitive burden. The new escape hatch is "AI". Now you don't need to read your mail or write responses!…

> And now your friends and coworkers will send you AI generated mail anyway This hits close. I realized one of my friends was using AI to message me and I took it kind of hard. It's weird to be worth the effort for them to set up a chat bot to talk to me but not worth the 2-3mins a week to actually read/respond to my messages. Right now, I just basically ghosted him, but I have teh feeling this is the start of an eme…

Are you sure he is sending automated messages, or used LLM to polish up some writing? Would be a difference to me, but .. still weird.

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

#660

Post by estetlinus »

jventura wrote: post #241

CS Professor here: just yesterday I did the discussion of a course projects' (Parallel Computing), and one of the three groups that I did yesterday have clearly gone the ChatGPT way. They couldn't even understand the choices the LLM made regarding the architecture, etc. The way to "catch" these students is similar to what we did in the past when students copied from other students which is "to give them rope to hang"…

I did a course of parallell computing 6 years ago. I still dont understand anything about it. Probably would if I had used an LLM, since I would have used it as a private tutor.
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