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How University Students Use Claude

anthropic.com

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Re: How University Students Use Claude

#171

Post by bboygravity »

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…

I don't get this reasoning. Without LLMs I would learn how to write sub-optimal code that is somewhat functional. With LLMs instantly see "how it's done" for my exact problem case which makes me learn way faster. On top of that it always makes dumb mistakes which forces you to actually understand what it's spitting out to get it to work properly. Again: that helps with learning.

The fact that you can ask it for a solution for exactly the context you're interested in is amazing and traditional learning doesn't come close in terms of efficiency IMO.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#172

Post by harikb »

jplusequalt wrote: post #147
hackyhacky wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think it's possible. I think the greatest trick our current societal structure ever managed to pull, is the proliferation of the belief that any alternatives are impossible. "Capitalist realism" People who organize tend to be the people who are most optimistic about change. This is for a reason.

It may be possible for you (I am assuming you are > 20, mature adult). But the context is around teens in the prime of their learning. It is too hard to keep ChatGPT/Claude away from them. Social media is too addictive. Those TikTok/Reels/Shorts are addictive and never ending. We are doomed imho.

If education (schools) were to adopt a teaching-AI (one that will given them the solution, but at least ask a bunch of questions ), may be there is some hope.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#173

Post by moltar »

jplusequalt wrote: post #167
moltar wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s finally time to just stop the homework. All school work must be done within the walls of the school. What are we teaching our children? It’s ok to do more work at home? There are countries that have no homework and they do just fine.

Homework helps reinforce the material learned in class. It's already a problem where there is too much material to be fit into a single class period. Trying to cram in enough time for homework will only make that problem worse.

Can do the work the next day to reinforce.

As I said there are countries without homework and they seem to do ok. So it’s not mandatory by any means.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#174

Post by whilenot-dev »

theLiminator wrote: post #96
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…

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…

I think the latest GenAI/LLM bubble shows that tech (this hype kind of tech) doesn't want us to learn, to think or reason. It doesn't want to be seen as a mere tool anymore, it wants to drive under the appearance that it can reason on its own. We're in the process where tech just wants us to adapt to it.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#175

Post by joe5150 »

dingnuts wrote: post #52
bko wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That's more or less accepted today. Bullshit! You cannot do second order reasoning with a set of facts or concepts that you have to look up first. Google Search made intuition and deep understanding and encyclopedic knowledge MORE important, not less. People will think you are a wizard if you read documentation and bother to remember it, because they're still busy asking Google or ChatGPT while you're happily codin…

> Google Search made intuition and deep understanding and encyclopedic knowledge MORE important, not less.

Not to mention discernment and info literacy when you do need to go to the web to search for things. AI content slop has put everybody who built these skills on the back foot again, of course.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#176

Post by dingnuts »

bboygravity wrote: post #171
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…

I don't get this reasoning. Without LLMs I would learn how to write sub-optimal code that is somewhat functional. With LLMs instantly see "how it's done" for my exact problem case which makes me learn way faster. On top of that it always makes dumb mistakes which forces you to actually understand what it's spitting out to get it to work properly. Again: that helps with learning. The fact that you can ask it for a sol…

> With LLMs instantly see "how it's done" for my exact problem case which makes me learn way faster.

No, you see a plausible set of tokens that appear similar to how it's done, and as a beginner, you're not able to tell the difference between a good example and something that is subtly wrong.

So you learn something, but it's wrong. You internalize it. Later, it comes back to bite you. But OpenAI keeps the money for the tokens. You pay whether the LLM is right or not. Sam likes that.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#177

Post by nonethewiser »

Planktonne wrote: post #78
nonethewiser wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat agree. I agree in principal - the process of problem solving is the important part. However I think LLMs make you do more of this because of what you can offload to the LLM. You can offload the simpler things. But for the complex questions that cut across multiple domains and have a lot of ambiguity? You're still going to have to sit down and think about it. Maybe once you've broken it into sufficiently smal…

You can offload the simpler things, but struggling with the simpler things is how you build the skills to handle the more complex ones that you can't hand off. If the simpler thing in question is a task you've already mastered, then you're not losing much by asking an LLM to help you with it. If it's not trivial to you though, then you're missing an opportunity to learn.

If you haven't mastered it yet then its not a simple thing.

Grandma will not be able to implement a simple add function using python by asking chat gpt and copy pasting.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#178

Post by const_cast »

ryandrake wrote: post #149
fallinditch wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, AI tools have shifted the education paradigm and cognition requirements. This is a 'threat' to universities, but I would also argue that it's an opportunity for universities to reinvent the experience of further education.

Yea, the solution here is to embrace the reality that these tools exist and will be used regardless of what the university wants, and use it as an opportunity to level up the education and experience. The clueless educational institutions will simply try to fight it, like they tried to fight copy/pasting from Google and like they probably fought calculators.

They didn’t “fight” copy and pasting from Google - they called it what it is, plagiarism, and they expel hundreds of students for it.

Universities aren’t here to hold your hand and give you a piece of paper. They’re here to build skills. If you cheat, you don’t build the skills, so the piece of paper is now worthless.

The only reason degrees mean anything is because the institutions behind them work very hard to make sure the people earning them know what they’re doing.

If you can’t research a write an essay and you have to “copy/paste” from google, the reality is you’re probably a shit writer and a shit researcher. So if we just give those people degrees anyway, then suddenly so-called professionals are going to flounder. And that’s not good for them, or for me, or for society as a whole.

That’s the key here that people are missing. Yeah cheating is fun and yeah it’s the future. But if you hire a programmer, and they can’t program, that’s bad!

And before I hear something about “leveling up” skills. Nuh-uh, it doesn’t work that way. Skills are built on each other. Shortcuts don’t build skills, they do the opposite.

Using chat GPT to pass your Java class isn’t going to help you become a master C++ day trading programmer. Quite the opposite! How can you expect to become that when you don’t know what the fuck a data type is?

We use calculators, sure. We use Google, sure. But we teach addition first. Using the most overpowered tool for block number 1 in the 500 foot tall jenga tower is setting yourself up for failure.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#179

Post by gnatolf »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #118
bko wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 expe…

Given the rate of improvement wrt to llms, this may not hold true for long

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#180

Post by jplusequalt »

moltar wrote: post #173
jplusequalt wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homework helps reinforce the material learned in class. It's already a problem where there is too much material to be fit into a single class period. Trying to cram in enough time for homework will only make that problem worse.

Can do the work the next day to reinforce. As I said there are countries without homework and they seem to do ok. So it’s not mandatory by any means.

>Can do the work the next day to reinforce.

Keeping the curriculum fixed, there's already barely enough time to cover everything. Cutting the amount of lectures in half to make room for in-class homework time does not fix this fundamental problem.

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