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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

#111

Post by dgellow »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #38
johnnyApplePRNG wrote: post #34

[flagged]

So your complaint is...it's boring? The point is to train the brain via repitition and iteration. If your goal is entertainment, I'm not sure what you are looking for.

It’s about having something engaging, not entertaining. As someone with ADHD, the difference between a homework that feels engaging and interesting and one that is a waste of time is massive. I wish I had learned the distinction and got my diagnostic when I was young, but I now see it clearly as I take courses as an adult.

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

#113

Post by OroPla »

josefritzishere wrote: post #94

I think we need to accept that AI causes cognitive decline, like Alzheimer's. For an Adult this may be manageable, but in a young brain, this is detrimental.

I remember reading about people talking how writing and reading books leads to cognitive decline because people won't need to remember things anymore.

Pretty sure the way social media is designed contributes more to short attention spans and atrophy of the cerebral cortex.

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

#114

Post by Aerroon »

spandrew wrote: post #54
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…

>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!"

As somebody that read every mandatory reading book, I wish I had had the critical thinking skills to not read them. In retrospect, they were a waste of time and made me absolutely hate reading.

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

#117

Post by snazz »

theevilsharpie wrote: post #99
rtikulit wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When you lower the barrier to taking the shortcut, you get more people to take it who wouldn’t otherwise have done so. If cheating becomes incredibly easy, lots of students who would have otherwise been honest take the easy way out. Moral conviction gets harder to keep as doing the right thing becomes less rational.

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

#118

Post by mistrial9 »

Sharlin wrote: post #91
criddell wrote: post #65

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.

I experienced this method in accelerated class context, decades ago

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

#119

Post by kzz102 »

jimmar wrote: post #13

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

Even if we grant that education is to prepare for employment, which a lot of people disagree with, it does not follow education should do the same thing as what's done in employment.

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

#120

Post by beambot »

shuwix wrote: post #62

Education sustem is not about the actual knowledge, but about training various aspects of the brain during kids development. So even memorizing literature have benefits, even though it doesn't bring any career use. If you skip this, well your brain won't develop as much at period of life it's able to do so.

Maybe. As the nature of assistive tools changes, so does pedagogy. Calculators are the easy example since most of us are (still) familiar. But there are others that were just as pronounced -- e.g. log tables and slide rules were transformational and instrumental at one time, and you've (probably) never used them. If you had used slide rules to solve your homework problems then were excluded from using them on exams, you'd see a similar effect.

AI is a big change; pedagogy is going to change too.

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