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How University Students Use Claude

anthropic.com

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Re: How University Students Use Claude

#111

Post by spongebobstoes »

zebomon wrote: post #83

The writing is irrelevant. Who cares if students don't learn how to do it? Or if the magazines are all mostly generated a decade from now? All of that labor spent on writing wasn't really making economic sense. The problem with that take is this: it was never about the act of writing. What we lose, if we cut humans out of the equation, is writing as a proxy for what actually matters, which is thinking. You'll soon no…

Writing is not necessary for thinking. You can learn to think without writing. I've never had a brilliant thought while writing.

In fact, I've done a lot more thinking and had a lot more insights from talking than from writing.

Writing can be a useful tool to help with rigorous thinking. In my opinion, is mostly about augmenting the author's effective memory to be larger and more precise.

I'm sure the same effect could be achieved by having AI transcribe a conversation.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#112

Post by kenjackson »

hackyhacky wrote: post #70
kibwen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains furnished by for-profit companies who are all too eager to rake you over the coals to fulfill basic cognitive functions. Like, Socrates may have been against writing because he thought it made your memory weak, but at least I, an individual, am perfectly capable…

> The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains furnished by for-profit companies who are all too eager to rake you over the coals to fulfill basic cognitive functions. Yes, but that horse has long ago left the barn. I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, bu…

> I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, build a car, build a toaster, design a transistor, make an ASIC, or write an OS. I do know how to write a web site. But if I cede that skill to an automated process, then that is the feather that will break the camel's back?

Reminds me of the Nate Bargatz set where he talks about how if he was a time traveler to the past that he wouldn't be able to prove it to anyone. The skills most of us have require this supply chain and then we apply it at the very end. I'm not sure anyone in 1920 cares about my binary analysis skills.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#114

Post by janalsncm »

zebomon wrote: post #83

The writing is irrelevant. Who cares if students don't learn how to do it? Or if the magazines are all mostly generated a decade from now? All of that labor spent on writing wasn't really making economic sense. The problem with that take is this: it was never about the act of writing. What we lose, if we cut humans out of the equation, is writing as a proxy for what actually matters, which is thinking. You'll soon no…

How does your product prevent a person from simply retyping something that ChatGPT wrote?

I think the prevalence of these AI writing bots means schools will have to start doing things that aren’t scalable: in-class discussions, in-person writing (with pen and paper or locked down computers), way less weight given to remote assignments on Canvas or other software. Attributing authorship from text alone (or keystroke patterns) is not possible.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#115

Post by jplusequalt »

bko wrote: post #35
dtnewman wrote: post #14

> A common question is: “how much are students using AI to cheat?” That’s hard to answer, especially as we don’t know the specific educational context where each of Claude’s responses is being used. I built a popular product that helps teachers with this problem. Yes, it's "hard to answer", but let's be honest... it's a very very widespread problem. I've talked to hundreds of teachers about this and it's a ubiquitous…

When modern search became more available, a lot of people said there's no point of rote memorization as you can just do a Google search. That's more or less accepted today. Whenever we have a new technology there's a response "why do I need to learn X if I can always do Y", and more or less, it has proven true, although not immediately. For instance, I'm not too concerned about my child's ability to write very legibl…

>children will have a different perspective

Children will lack the critical thinking for solving complex problems, and even worse, won't have the work ethic for dealing with the kinds of protracted problems that occur in the real world.

But maybe that's by design. I think the ownership class has decided productivity is more important than societal malaise.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#116

Post by azemetre »

moojacob wrote: post #86

How can I, as a student, avoid hindering my learning with language models? I use Claude, a lot. I’ll upload the slides and ask questions. I’ve talked to Claude for hours trying to break down a problem. I think I’m learning more. But what I think might not be what’s happening. In one of my machine learning classes, cheating is a huge issue. People are using LMs to answer multiple choice questions on quizzes that are o…

Can you do all this without relying on any LLM usage? If so then you’re fine.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#117

Post by ketzu »

zebomon wrote: post #83

The writing is irrelevant. Who cares if students don't learn how to do it? Or if the magazines are all mostly generated a decade from now? All of that labor spent on writing wasn't really making economic sense. The problem with that take is this: it was never about the act of writing. What we lose, if we cut humans out of the equation, is writing as a proxy for what actually matters, which is thinking. You'll soon no…

> The writing is irrelevant.

In my opinion this is not true. Writing is a form of communicating ideas. Structuring and communicating ideas with others is really important, not just in written contexts, and it needs to be trained.

Maybe the way universities do it is not great, but writing in itself is important.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#118

Post by bcrosby95 »

bko wrote: post #35
dtnewman wrote: post #14

> A common question is: “how much are students using AI to cheat?” That’s hard to answer, especially as we don’t know the specific educational context where each of Claude’s responses is being used. I built a popular product that helps teachers with this problem. Yes, it's "hard to answer", but let's be honest... it's a very very widespread problem. I've talked to hundreds of teachers about this and it's a ubiquitous…

When modern search became more available, a lot of people said there's no point of rote memorization as you can just do a Google search. That's more or less accepted today. Whenever we have a new technology there's a response "why do I need to learn X if I can always do Y", and more or less, it has proven true, although not immediately. For instance, I'm not too concerned about my child's ability to write very legibl…

> So how do I answer my child when he asks "Why should I learn to do X if I can just ask an LLM and it will do it better than me"

It's been my experience that LLMs are only better than me at stuff I'm bad at. It's noticeably worse than me at things I'm good at. So the answer to your question depends: can your child get good at things while leaning on an LLM?

I don't know the answer to this. Maybe schools need to expect more from their students with LLMs in the picture.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#119

Post by defgeneric »

lblume wrote: post #31
brunocroh wrote: post #20

I simply don't waste my time reading an AD as an article. I take this as seriously as I would if McDonald's published articles about how much weight people lose eating at McDonald's.

If you had read the article, you would have been able to see that the conclusions don't really align with any economic goals Anthropic might have.

To have the reputation as an AI company that really cares about education and the responsible integration of AI into education is a pretty valuable goal. They are now ahead of OpenAI in this respect.

The problem is that there's a conflict of interest here. The extreme case proves it--leaving aside the feasibility of it, what if the only solution is a total ban on AI usage in education? Anthropic could never sanction that.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#120

Post by srveale »

hackyhacky wrote: post #102
srveale wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's so easy to ChatGPT your homework that the whole education model needs to flip on its head. Some teachers already do something like this, it's called the "Flipped classroom" approach. Basically, a student's marks depend mostly (only?) on what they can do in a setting where AI is verifiably unavailable. It means less class time for instruction, but students have a tutor in their pocket anyway. I've also talked…

> it's called the "Flipped classroom" approach. Flipped classroom is just having the students give lectures, instead of the teacher. > Basically, a student's marks depend mostly (only?) on what they can do in a setting where AI is verifiably unavailable. This is called "proctored exams" and it's been pretty common in universities for a few centuries. None of this addresses the real issue, which is whether teachers sh…

> Flipped classroom is just having the students give lectures, instead of the teacher.

Not quite. Flipped classroom means more instruction outside of class time and less homework.

> This is called "proctored exams" and it's been pretty common in universities for a few centuries. None of this addresses the real issue

Proctored exams is part of it. In-class assignments is another. Asynchronous instruction is another.

And yes, it addresses the issue. Students can use AI however they see fit, to learn or to accomplish tasks or whatever, but for actual assessment of ability they cannot use AI. And it leaves the door open for "open-book" exams where the use of AI is allowed, just like a calculator and textbook/cheat-sheet is allowed for some exams.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom

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