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AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

economist.com

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Re: AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

#51

Post by avgDev »

throwitaway222 wrote: post #44
grahammccain wrote: post #35

Guess what this is probably fine. AI helps people do their work on a daily basis and probably makes them memorize less things. That’s how the world is moving. You don’t need to be able to memorize something for an exam to show mastery of a topic. And we shouldn’t organize our society around memorizing things for exams.

What is a doctor? The person recommending next course of action based on best practices. What is the best practice? Is it a globally decided on thing, a locally tested thing that has proven to be better? Is the global thing just the most popular because someone wrote it on reddit and it got millions of views (but isn't actually good). If our society is organized on just delegating all authority to "the best answer" w…

I actually think having a single source of truth would not be terrible. Let me explain.

All podiatrists are not the same. All physicians in their specialties are often specializing in their own niche and are up-to-date on that niche.

I've had lisfranc ligament injury. My podiatrist wanted to perform a surgery quickly, which in 90% of cases is advised. I decided to seek a 2nd opinion because I realized she did the X-rays wrong, as she did them non-weight bearing, which is useless if there are no fractures.

The specialist was excited to see me, and up to date on all the lisfranc research. I've had a really bad sprain and he said conservative treatment should be sufficient. It took months but I healed up.

I've had quite a few injuries from playing sports and often found doctors to be "wrong" simply because their knowledge was out of date.

Re: AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

#52

Post by cindyllm »

11eiej wrote: post #48
jbstack wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important thing is that I could learn to use a flint and steel pretty easily if I wanted to. I don't need to carry out that particular task, but my ability to adapt to new problems means I can carry out more relevant tasks when needed. The most useful part of school and university for me wasn't that I learned the difference between a cirrocumulus and a cirrostratus cloud in geography class. It's that I learned ho…

It’s not ‘even the learned how to learn’. It’s the exposure to feeling under pressure, creativity of the mind etc - the less you expose a human to ‘suffering’ the more useless they become.

[dead]

Re: AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

#53

Post by avgDev »

johnnyApplePRNG wrote: post #34

[flagged]

Homework isn't boring.....its the social media and addictive games that completely are destroying our attention span.

After I detox from online games, I can go back to learning new "boring" stuff. There are nerds(myself included) who find learning fun, and using AI boring because it doesn't scratch the learning itch.

Re: AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

#54

Post by spandrew »

grahammccain wrote: post #35

Guess what this is probably fine. AI helps people do their work on a daily basis and probably makes them memorize less things. That’s how the world is moving. You don’t need to be able to memorize something for an exam to show mastery of a topic. And we shouldn’t organize our society around memorizing things for exams.

This is too simplistic. There are disciplines, like Anatomy, where you're basically just memorizing bones, glands, and other parts of the human body. For organic chemistry, students need to memorize most of the krebs cycle diagram for their exams (because doing so and drawing it lets them reference it later).

Thinking is infinitely more complex than "critical thinking" vs. rote functions. You want students to get to critical, eventually, but the lower orders on bloom's taxonomy serve important roles, too.

Course design built around multiple choice questions, essays, and a lot of the historical assessments that we're used to are largely not great for learning in the first place—–they're used because they can be auto-graded or score assigned quickly. AI, conversely, is kind of revealing the limitations of these outmoded learning design practices.

Think of the meme going around right now from Milennials to Gen Z: "I wrote a 5 page essay on a book I never read!" AI is a new tech—so of course people are still figuring out the limits of it. In 10 years a lot of the paradigm will be set. Until then, students are unfortunately kind of in the thick of it.

Re: AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

#55

Post by gritspants »

alpha_squared wrote: post #50
vorticalbox wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I don’t know but after this meeting I will find out and get back to you” Is an acceptable answer.

It's only an acceptable answer when used sparingly. The more often it's used, the more questions arise about your role in that meeting.

I can see that. Personally, I use that for people who like to go down tedious rabbit holes and want to free up the rest of the attendees to go back to work.

Re: AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

#56

Post by zuzululu »

grahammccain wrote: post #35

Guess what this is probably fine. AI helps people do their work on a daily basis and probably makes them memorize less things. That’s how the world is moving. You don’t need to be able to memorize something for an exam to show mastery of a topic. And we shouldn’t organize our society around memorizing things for exams.

It's critical to understand the fundamentals on your own and that is different from AI being used in public. Sure school doesn't have as much value as it used to but it was always more about social credit or a certification that you took the time and effort to understand the world under pressure (obviously not true for all disciplines) or goals attached preferably in group settings.

This is something that AI cannot replace. Viewing things as memorizing is the wrong take.

Re: AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

#57

Post by Ajedi32 »

GPerson wrote: post #29
zemo wrote: post #18

abolish homework

This is the answer. Many (all?) European schools don’t give homework (this is partly because of the way the grad programs work). It’s on the students to study in order to pass the (difficult) exams.

Seems this did effectively abolish homework if AI is now doing it all for them. The result seems to be that fewer students pass the exams, not more.

As with any skill, practice is necessary to achieve competence. If homework is no longer a viable way to force students to practice, you'll need to find some replacement, you can't just abolish it and expect there to be no negative consequences.

Re: AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

#58

Post by iambenm »

grahammccain wrote: post #35

Guess what this is probably fine. AI helps people do their work on a daily basis and probably makes them memorize less things. That’s how the world is moving. You don’t need to be able to memorize something for an exam to show mastery of a topic. And we shouldn’t organize our society around memorizing things for exams.

How do you differentiate between mastery of a topic and mastery of using an AI in an exam setting?

Open book tests and allowed cheat sheets already solve the memorization-is-not-required gap. It seems like allowing use of AI pushes that closer to thinking-is-not-required. And if no thinking is required, then how can you prove personal mastery?

Re: AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

#59

Post by alberto467 »

alpha_squared wrote: post #50
vorticalbox wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I don’t know but after this meeting I will find out and get back to you” Is an acceptable answer.

It's only an acceptable answer when used sparingly. The more often it's used, the more questions arise about your role in that meeting.

Exactly, maybe there was no need to waste his time with the meeting, he could have been doing productive work instead

Re: AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

#60

Post by rtikulit »

jimmar wrote: post #13

In my professional career, my employers give me a lot more assignments than exams.

Stand-alone bottom-up observations (even if valid) obscure the fundamental problem that AI (or "AI" if you like) is inducing systemic change across human civilization.

If cohorts are graduating into the workforce with decreasing stand-alone skills, that implies the economic value-add of labour is shifting to AI, which implies broadly falling standards of living, falling political power, and an ongoing transfer of power and wealth to capital.

If students are taking shortcuts with AI when their brains have the highest capacity for learning they may be permanently weakening their prospects. It doesn't seem likely that whatever "AI management skills" they incidentally learn will make up for, over their lifetime, the economic value loss they suffer due to reduced cognitive skills.

On an individual basis, in the next few years, this might not matter. Across decades, economies and polities, it will.

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