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Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

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Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#121

Post by dgfitz »

fn-mote wrote: post #83
sien wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia Universities that have remote study have places where people can do proctored exams in large cities. The course is done remotely but the exam, which is often 50%+ of the final grade, is done in a place that has proctored exams as a service. Can't this be done in the US as well ?

Variations in this system are in active use in the US as well. Do you feel it is effective? It seems to me that there is a massive asymmetry in the war here: proctoring services have tiny incentives to catch cheaters. Cheaters have massive incentives to cheat. I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs.

Way back like 25 years ago in what we call high school in the US, my statistics teacher tried her damndest to make final exams fair. I said next to someone I had a huge crush on, and offered to take their exam for them. I needed a ‘c’ to ace the class, and she needed an ‘a’ to pass. 3 different tests and sets of questions/scantrons. I got her the grade she needed, she did not get me the grade I needed.

So to your point, it’s easy to cheat even if the proctor tries to prevent it.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#122

Post by DrillShopper »

valiant55 wrote: post #43
math_dandy wrote: post #28

I teach math at a large university (30,000 students) and have also gone “back to the earth”, to pen-and-paper, proctored and exams. Students don’t seem to mind this reversion. The administration, however, doesn’t like this trend. They want all evaluation to be remote-friendly, so that the same course with the same evaluations can be given to students learning in person or enrolled online. Online enrollment is a huge…

Capitalism and the constant thirst for growth is killing society. Since when did universities care almost solely about renevnue and growth?

> Since when did universities care almost solely about renevnue and growth?

Since endowments got huge.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#124

Post by foolswisdom »

barry-cotter wrote: post #88
fn-mote wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Variations in this system are in active use in the US as well. Do you feel it is effective? It seems to me that there is a massive asymmetry in the war here: proctoring services have tiny incentives to catch cheaters. Cheaters have massive incentives to cheat. I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs.

> proctoring services have tiny incentives to catch cheaters. Cheaters have massive incentives to cheat. If they don’t catch them they don’t have a business model. They have one job. The University of London, Open University and British Council all have 50+ years experience on proctoring university exams for distance learning students and it’s not like Thomson Prometric haven’t thought about how to do it either, even…

The problem is that the business model is that when you outsource compliance (in this case that might be catching cheaters), the important thing is to be able to say that everyone did their best, and you don't necessarily need to do your best to say that.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#125

Post by turtletontine »

jamesgill wrote: post #114

The fundamental question that AI raises for me, but nobody seems to answer: In our competitive, profit-driven world--what is the value of a human being and having human experiences? AI is neither inevitable nor necessary--but it seems like the next inevitable step in reducing the value of a human life to its 'outputs'.

I’m similarly worried about businesses all making “rational” decisions to replace their employees with “AI”, wherever they think they can get away with it. (Note that’s not the same thing as wherever “AI” can do the job well!)

But I think one place where this hits a wall is liability and accountability. Lots of low stakes things will be enshittified by “AI” replacements for actual human work. But for things like airline pilots, cancer diagnoses, heart surgery - the cost of mistakes is so large, that humans in the loop are absolutely necessary. If nothing else, at least as an accountability shield. A company that makes a tumor-detector black box wants to be an assistive tool to improve doctor’s “efficiency”, not the actual front line medical care. If the tool makes a mistake, they want no liability. They want all the blame on the doctor for trusting their tool and not double checking its opinion. I hear that’s why a lot of “AI” tools in medicine are actually reducing productivity: double checking an “AI’s” opinion is more work than just thinking and evaluating with your own brain.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#126

Post by EGreg »

sshine wrote: post #69

I teach computer science / programming, and I don't know what a good AI policy is. On the one hand, I use AI extensively for my own learning, and it's helping me a lot. On the other hand, it gets work done quickly and poorly. Students mistake mandatory assignments for something they have to overcome as effortlessly as possible. Once they're past this hurdle, they can mind their own business again. To them, AI is not…

There you go. Actually that would be a great service, wouldn't it? Having them explain to an LLM what they are doing, out loud, while doing it, online. On a site that you trust to host it.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#127

Post by EGreg »

math_dandy wrote: post #28

I teach math at a large university (30,000 students) and have also gone “back to the earth”, to pen-and-paper, proctored and exams. Students don’t seem to mind this reversion. The administration, however, doesn’t like this trend. They want all evaluation to be remote-friendly, so that the same course with the same evaluations can be given to students learning in person or enrolled online. Online enrollment is a huge…

So just have test centers, and flip the classroom.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#128

Post by tenebrisalietum »

jamesgill wrote: post #114

The fundamental question that AI raises for me, but nobody seems to answer: In our competitive, profit-driven world--what is the value of a human being and having human experiences? AI is neither inevitable nor necessary--but it seems like the next inevitable step in reducing the value of a human life to its 'outputs'.

You should determine your own value if you don't want to be controlled by anyone else.

If you don't want to determine your own value, you're probably no worse off letting an AI do that than anything else. Religion is probably more comfortable, but I'm sure AI and religion will mix before too long.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#129

Post by Aeolun »

overgard wrote: post #49

I think as a culture we've fetishized formal schooling way past its value. I mean, how much of what you "learned" in school do you actually use or remember? I'm not against education , education is very important, but I'm not sure that schooling is really the optimal route to being educated. They're related, but they're not the same. The reality is, if someone wants to learn something then there's very little need to…

All primary schooling is designed to teach people about everything they can learn. If we don’t, many of them will end up in the coal mines because it’s the only thing they know.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#130

Post by EGreg »

djoldman wrote: post #107

Basically it comes to this: a sufficiently large proportion of a student's grade must come from work impossible to generate with AI, e.g. in-person testing. Unfortunately, 18-year-olds generally can't be trusted to go a whole semester without succumbing to the siren call of easy GenAI A's. So even if you tell them that the final will be in-person, some significant chunk of them will still ChatGPT their way through an…

Literally this. The education system is lazy and tests people only every 30 days, with a test or midterm. This is the system's fault. Quiz every day. Catch where people are struggling, early. The quiz can be on their phones and let you know when they switch apps. Just have them close their laptops, take out their phones, scan QR codes from the screen in front, or pasted on a wall, and then 5 min quiz on their phones. That's what I did.
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