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How University Students Use Claude

anthropic.com

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Re: How University Students Use Claude

#131

Post by jjmarr »

colonial wrote: post #39
mppm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting article, but I think it downplays the incidence of students using Claude as an alternative to building foundational skills. No shit. This is anecdotal evidence, but I was recently teaching a university CS class as a guest lecturer (at a somewhat below-average university), and almost all the students were basically copy-pasting task descriptions and error messages into ChatGPT in lieu of actually program…

CS/CE undergrad here who entered university right when ChatGPT hit. Things are bad at my large state school. People who spent the past two years offloading their entry-level work onto LLMs are now taking 400-level systems programming courses and running face-first into a capability wall. I try my best to help, but there's only so much I can do when basic concepts like structs and pointer manipulation get blank stares…

Put the systems level programming in year 1, honestly. Either you know the material going in, or you fail out.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#132

Post by jplusequalt »

hackyhacky wrote: post #107
theLiminator wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think removing pointless cognitive load makes sense, but the point of an education is to learn how to think/reason. Maybe if we get AGI there's no point learning that either, but it is definitely not great if we get a whole generation who skip learning how to problem solve/think due to using LLMs. IMO it's quite different than using a calculator or any other tool. It can currently completely replace the human in th…

> IMO it's quite different than using a calculator or any other tool. It can currently completely replace the human in the loop, whereas with other tools they are generally just a step in the process. The (as yet unproven) argument for the use of AIs is that using AI to solve simpler problems allows us humans to focus on the big picture, in the same way that letting a calculator solve arithmetic gives us flexibility…

>the next generation will either surpass us in grand fashion using tools that we couldn't imagine, or will collapse into a puddle of ignorant consumerism, a la Wall-E

Seeing how the world is based around consumerism, this future seems more likely.

HOWEVER, we can still course correct. We need to organize, and get the hell off social media and the internet.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#133

Post by bongodongobob »

0xffff2 wrote: post #126
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…

>For many students, it's literally "let me paste the assignment into ChatGPT and see what it spits out, change a few words and submit that". Does that actually work? I'm long past having easy access to college programming assignments, but based on my limited interaction with ChatGPT I would be absolutely shocked if it produced output that was even coherent, much less working code given such an approach.

Why are you asking? Go try it. And yes, depending on the task, it does.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#134

Post by hackyhacky »

jplusequalt wrote: post #128
hackyhacky wrote: post #70

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. 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…

>50 years from new the career of a "coder" will evoke the same historical quaintness as does "switchboard operator" or "wainwright." And what happens to those coders? For that matter--what happens to all the other jobs at risk of being replaced by AI? Where are all the high paying jobs these disenfranchised laborers will flock to when their previous careers are made obsolete? We live in a highly specialized society t…

> And what happens to those coders? For that matter--what happens to all the other jobs at risk of being replaced by AI?

Some will manage to remain in their field, most won't.

> Where are all the high paying jobs these disenfranchised laborers will flock to when their previous careers are made obsolete?

They don't exist. Instead they'll take low-paying jobs that can't (yet) be automated. Maybe they'll work in factories [1].

> I seriously oppose such a future, and if that makes me a Luddite, so be it.

Like I said, the Luddites were right, in the short term. In the long term, we don't know. Maybe we'll live in a post-scarcity Star Trek world where human labor has been completely devalued, or maybe we'll revert to a feudal society of property owners and indentured servants.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/bessent-fired-federal-workers-manuf...

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#135

Post by knowaveragejoe »

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…

Paul Graham had a recent blogpost about this, and I find it hard to disagree with.

https://www.paulgraham.com/writes.html

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#136

Post by hackyhacky »

jplusequalt wrote: post #132
hackyhacky wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO it's quite different than using a calculator or any other tool. It can currently completely replace the human in the loop, whereas with other tools they are generally just a step in the process. The (as yet unproven) argument for the use of AIs is that using AI to solve simpler problems allows us humans to focus on the big picture, in the same way that letting a calculator solve arithmetic gives us flexibility…

>the next generation will either surpass us in grand fashion using tools that we couldn't imagine, or will collapse into a puddle of ignorant consumerism, a la Wall-E Seeing how the world is based around consumerism, this future seems more likely. HOWEVER, we can still course correct. We need to organize, and get the hell off social media and the internet.

> HOWEVER, we can still course correct. We need to organize, and get the hell off social media and the internet.

Given what I know of human nature, this seems improbable.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#137

Post by mceoin »

I'm curious why people think business is so underrepresented as a user group, especially since "analyzing" 30% of the Bloom Taxonomy results. My dual theories are:

- LLMs are good enough to zero or few-shot most business questions and assignments, so n.questions is low VS other tasks like writing a codebase.

- Form factor (biased here); maybe threads-only aren't best for business analysis?

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#138

Post by vonneumannstan »

srveale wrote: post #95
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…

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…

>Not fully of course, they edit the output using their expertise

Surely this is sarcasm, but really your average schoolteacher is now a C student Education Major.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#139

Post by pr337h4m »

zebomon wrote: post #129
janalsncm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

It may be possible that with enough data from the two categories (copied from ChatGPT and not), your keystroke dynamics will differ. This is an open question that my co-founder and I are running experiments on currently. So, I would say that while I wouldn't fully dispute your claim that attributing authorship from text alone is impossible, it isn't yet totally clear one way or the other (to us, at least -- would wel…

At this point, it would be easier to stick to in-person assignments.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#140

Post by jplusequalt »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #92
notyourwork wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I agree, convincing children to learn using that rationalization won’t work.

Yes it does. Plenty of children accept "you won't always have (tool)" as a reason for learning.

All adults were once children and there are plenty of adults who cannot read beyond a middle school reading level or balance a simple equation. This has been a problem before we ever gave them GPTs. It stands to reason it will only worsen in a future dominated by them.
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