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MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

aiandeducation.mit.edu

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Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#61

Post by washadjeffmad »

cptroot wrote: post #44
testfoobar wrote: post #3

This is a bunch of fluff. I hope at least the snacks and lunches during the discussions were good. "Guiding principles: Be bold. Be humble. Put humanity front and center. Lean into learning. Teach with intentionality. No one size fits all." "Recommendations: Adapt educational processes for an AI-aware world. Center people, community, and the residential experience. Build processes, teams and tools for continuous refl…

I don't agree? By the time you get to the specific policy sections (3.x.x) there are concrete changes outlined in bold, several of which are requests for the institute to invest large amounts of resources changing the current teaching process. Even the non-bolded text occasionally contains real insights, like this gem from the end of 3.1.9: > Students should not feel policed. Durable change will require instructors t…

I immediately forwarded 3.3 to a colleague (AD of Research). We have a blanket policy document at the institutional level to establish a framework for baselines, but it's absent of any practicable guidance outside of a general approval process and expectations for academic honesty.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#62

Post by rawgabbit »

testfoobar wrote: post #3

This is a bunch of fluff. I hope at least the snacks and lunches during the discussions were good. "Guiding principles: Be bold. Be humble. Put humanity front and center. Lean into learning. Teach with intentionality. No one size fits all." "Recommendations: Adapt educational processes for an AI-aware world. Center people, community, and the residential experience. Build processes, teams and tools for continuous refl…

I thought the recommendations in section 3 were substantiative. That is move away from time-bound exams and move towards semester length project portfolios.

     >"In the era of AI, some traditional learning goals may merit rethinking; for example, do the majority of our students need to be able to write complex programs by hand?"

     >"quick, high-stakes evaluations embody the opposite of the signal we want to convey to them right now."

     >"We urge instructors to consider forms of assessment that are less vulnerable to AI, and more valuable for learning, such as oral exams, semester portfolios, and out-of-class assignments paired with in-class conversations. This likely means resources such as TAs and class time will become more central to evaluation."

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#63

Post by ghaff »

beej71 wrote: post #22

I do like that they're open to reconsidering the grading paradigm wholesale. I taught at a boot camp for a while and our highest-placed cohorts were the ones to whom we gave neither grades nor certificates. They plainly understood the game was between them and an eventual interviewer, not them and the school or instructor.

There's no magic rule that you have to give grades. A few colleges don't and MIT doesn't for the (I think) first term.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#64

Post by bananaflag »

plasticchris wrote: post #46
frognumber wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, today institutions like Georgia Tech -- which has an endowment of just about the same as MIT in the nineties adjusted for inflation -- seem to function just about the same way as MIT did back then. I want to get back to the era before people went to MIT as a center of wealth, power, and prestige, and would lie and cheat to get tenured positions there, to where it was a place where nerds went to nerd together. And…

Anywhere the nerds or artists go, if they are good, eventually becomes overrun with such types. Just look at the state of Silicon Valley and y combinator, and gentrification in general…

https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#65

Post by losvedir »

I think you can tell who still has the ability to read long form content by whether they thought this was full of fluff or decently actionable. I think the bolded parts of section 3 are definitely not fluff. I found the document pretty interesting.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#66

Post by phasefactor »

ghaff wrote: post #51
phasefactor wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess prolific em-dashes is not considered a sign of LLM writing anymore.

I am not an LLM and use em-dashes and they were house style in my last 20+ years of employment. The whole em dashes == AI thing needs to just stop.

It is more about the document containing more than sixty of them. They are a completely legitimate piece of punctuation, but even prolific pre-LLM users did not tend to go that wild with them.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#67

Post by phasefactor »

jacobolus wrote: post #36
tyrabound wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually not em-dashes, they are en-dashes, which is either intentionally to deceive (e.g., swapped) or used incorrectly. Both of which are bad, it's up to everyone to decide on which is worse coming from MITality.

Spaced en dashes – like this – are a correct and accepted typographical choice. Whether to use spaced en dashes or (spaced or unspaced) em dashes is a matter of taste or local convention, and varies from one publication to another. Other than a typo or two where the space was left out on one side of a dash, the dashes in this linked document are just fine. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#En_dash_versus_em_dash

I was not claiming they are not correct punctuation/syntax. My claim is just no one uses them that frequently... When you see dozens of them in the first few pages of a document it raises suspicion.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#68

Post by phasefactor »

losvedir wrote: post #65

I think you can tell who still has the ability to read long form content by whether they thought this was full of fluff or decently actionable. I think the bolded parts of section 3 are definitely not fluff. I found the document pretty interesting.

It can be both full of fluff and have actionable take aways.

This is dozens of pages long and reading it thoroughly will net you maybe a dozen useful sentences. That ratio is the problem people are complaining about.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#69

Post by ericpauley »

rawgabbit wrote: post #62
testfoobar wrote: post #3

This is a bunch of fluff. I hope at least the snacks and lunches during the discussions were good. "Guiding principles: Be bold. Be humble. Put humanity front and center. Lean into learning. Teach with intentionality. No one size fits all." "Recommendations: Adapt educational processes for an AI-aware world. Center people, community, and the residential experience. Build processes, teams and tools for continuous refl…

I thought the recommendations in section 3 were substantiative. That is move away from time-bound exams and move towards semester length project portfolios. >"In the era of AI, some traditional learning goals may merit rethinking; for example, do the majority of our students need to be able to write complex programs by hand?" >"quick, high-stakes evaluations embody the opposite of the signal we want to convey to them…

Project-based learning is not a new idea. However, it is precisely the sort of assessment strategy that is being attacked by AI: students can complete many projects fully using AI without learning anything about the underlying material.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#70

Post by ghaff »

phasefactor wrote: post #66
ghaff wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an LLM and use em-dashes and they were house style in my last 20+ years of employment. The whole em dashes == AI thing needs to just stop.

It is more about the document containing more than sixty of them. They are a completely legitimate piece of punctuation, but even prolific pre-LLM users did not tend to go that wild with them.

I did not notice anything about the document in that regard that was worthy of note.
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