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AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

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

#91

For some of the classes my kids were in, the lessons and homework time were reversed. Learning the material (using the text book and videos) was what they had to do at night and class time was spent working through problems or applying the material in some way.

They’re using flipped learning even in universities now.

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

#92

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.

A lot of expertise is actually knowing things about the domain. You can't make a good judgement call on a topic without getting relevant knowledge in your head to make that decision. You can't even lookup the relevant knowledge without knowing what knowledge is important to make the decision, so reference material is not enough.

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

#93
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meetings are still like exams, if you can't craft a line of thinking on the spot it doesn't come off well. You don't need a final answer but you can't just answer "I don't know" otherwise you risk being slimed (shout out to anyone who still remembers "You Can't Do That on Television")

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

True, but only for things that that your colleagues don't expect you to know already. Remember the "I'll circle back" meme about Jen Psaki? This response can only be used sparingly before it's seen as a sign of underpreparedness/inability to do back-of-the-envelope thinking.

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

#95
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memorizing stuff is good for understanding. Of course memorizing without understanding doesn't really help, which is what a lot of student last-minute "cramming" boils down to. But without concrete and memorized knowledge, any abstract reasoning skills become quickly impossible.

Wrong. Memorizing without understanding is pointless. And I'd argue that rote memorization does nothing to guide ones understanding. Because if you actually understand a subject deeply enough you can literally derive almost anything that would need to be memorized on the fly, and if you can't (say constants, or spec information, or anything else) you can simply surgically look it up online (or via an LLM).

> Wrong. Memorizing without understanding is pointless.

GP said exactly the same thing.

I agree with GP’s broader point, which is that you cannot have understanding without a specific set of baseline facts. The student studying only those facts and never achieving the understanding they are meant to support is a tragedy of our education system.

There are people who need to understand microbiology at a specific level and they cannot derive it all on the fly. They can achieve better memorization through understanding but I personally have found rote memorization can be an essential first step in some disciplines.

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

#96
post #86
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m talking about university students. I don’t think I third graders are turning into functional adults any time soon.

Okay, but this article isn't about that: > The study followed 27,000 pupils aged 12 to 18

The same applies to high school students. Just make it exam based and give suggested reasons.

(Third grade is 9-10 years old I believe.)

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

#97

For some of the classes my kids were in, the lessons and homework time were reversed. Learning the material (using the text book and videos) was what they had to do at night and class time was spent working through problems or applying the material in some way.

Flipped classroom was a popular method when I was teaching math. Some students found it very helpful. The trouble was getting the students to do the reading before class. If students came in unprepared they struggled to keep up.

I did this for the last college programming course I taught (2025) as an anti-LLM measure. Every class started with a very short closed-book auto-graded multiple-choice test on the reading. I was careful to specify which was the core reading needed to learn the material (on the quiz) and which was extra (not on the quiz - I think many professors assign this extra reading to everyone, thinking of their strongest students). I think this developed an expectation in the students that doing the reading was easier than finding a way not to.

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

#98

For some of the classes my kids were in, the lessons and homework time were reversed. Learning the material (using the text book and videos) was what they had to do at night and class time was spent working through problems or applying the material in some way.

Flipped classroom was a popular method when I was teaching math. Some students found it very helpful. The trouble was getting the students to do the reading before class. If students came in unprepared they struggled to keep up.

It's especially hard when multiple subjects try to do it, because it can add enormous amounts of home-time expectations. And many families can't dedicate that much time.

I do like it though, and I like that college generally leaned that way more (and was better balanced, as it had substantially less time in classrooms, so you could study during the day).

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

#99
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 pow…

> 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.

Students have been cheating and taking shortcuts on their work long before the current generation of AI tools existed (and probably for as long as graded exams have existed).

Somehow, civilization has managed to survive.

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

#100

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.

> You don’t need to be able to memorize something for an exam to show mastery of a topic.

Yes, you do need to memorize and know things about the subject in order to be a master of it. What is the definition of "mastery" that you are using? What are the Things being memorized?

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