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Students fight back over course taught by AI

theguardian.com

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Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#21

Post by whstl »

zulban wrote: post #7

It has been many years that most courses in most universities have inferior lectures than just watching a great series of YouTube videos. Many professors have no passion or training in teaching, they just want to do research. Or they have no time or pay to prepare a course. So of course they use AI slop wherever they can. Even if they record their lectures, that's almost never better than the best free ones out there…

I worked in the tech side of education until 15 years ago or so, and it was already clear how problematic it was getting.

Distance learning was basically a dimly-lit grainy video, recorded 5 years prior, all acquired from the same provider and being shown to hundreds of classes all over the country. Instead of teachers, "tutors" (we couldn't call them teachers for legal reasons) making barely above minimum wage answering questions of dozens of classes and grading things on Moodle/Blackboard. A real teacher would be responsible for a class but they would barely see anything happening online, as they were just figureheads already busy with real classes.

I also remember some courses having almost half of the courses being long distance, so even people choosing traditional education were pushed into doing cost-saving computer shit.

The computers in the campus were obviously miserable to use, so I did everything in my power to at least make the software light enough so that people wouldn't suffer much, but in the end I hated myself for being in that industry.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#22

Post by gonzo41 »

In a case of the worst person you know makes a great point, Jordan Peterson was remarking a few years back about how Youtube and MOOC's were really the new universities of the modern age. If you want knowledge it's there for the taking.

The legacy institutions really are just a stamp / sorting hat for young people these days.

For the money people spend these days on education, you'd think there'd be grounds for refunds based on false advertising of the product.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#23

Post by j45 »

marstall wrote: post #14

I just had a pretty amazing 4 hour session with gpt 5.1 going over my son's rare disease. Chat broke it all down for me in a really deep and clear way in the back and forth. Insights I've never gotten to from talking to docs, reading papers, reading bio textbooks etc. I guess some small percentage of it was hallucinated, but if you want to call it a teacher/student relationship, it was pretty amazing.

This type of use while asking for annotations for all facts can be insightful to have the start of an informed conversation with a professional.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#24

Post by ModernMech »

This is the culmination of decades of cuts to education. I mean, what else was going to be the end point of having teachers buy supplies for their own kids, demonizing professors, demonizing higher education and the idea of education generally, not training enough teachers, and underpaying the teachers you already have.

In America we have to deal with school shootings, the latest religious group mandating the 10 commandments be put up or rainbows be taken down, irate parents mad that you failed their kid who didn't do work all semester and has severe behavioral problems no one is allowed to discipline. And now of course with AI, the students aren't doing their work, and if you call them out on it they call their parents, they sue, you get deposed and have to admit you can't 100% prove it's AI... so why bother? Who would ever want to grow up to be a teacher anymore?

So yeah, cut education, end up with AI students submitting AI papers to AI teachers. We have arrived.

The only question now is... what are we going to do about it?

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#25

Post by kittikitti »

Unpopular opinion, but I dislike how universities embraced vocational programs. These students were not there for academics, they were there for job and career training. The irony is that they complain about the high costs of tuition when they're just there to get more money. These professors have much better things to work on. I apologize if my opinion upsets you.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#26

Post by j45 »

gonzo41 wrote: post #22

In a case of the worst person you know makes a great point, Jordan Peterson was remarking a few years back about how Youtube and MOOC's were really the new universities of the modern age. If you want knowledge it's there for the taking. The legacy institutions really are just a stamp / sorting hat for young people these days. For the money people spend these days on education, you'd think there'd be grounds for refun…

MooCs are just glorified long videos of classrooms from 20 years ago.

I wouldn't trust a Jordan Peterson type to have impartial position on a sudden EdTech psychosis when:

- he appears to have a relatively new online academy

- selling courses

- in a way that is relatively new to him

- don't seem welcome to teach in academic institutions

- uses psychology on their audience for the above

If MooCs weren't a thing, and courses on LaserDisc were, I think we'd know what we'd be hearing about a LaserDisc Academy by mail service.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#27

Post by thmsths »

ModernMech wrote: post #24

This is the culmination of decades of cuts to education. I mean, what else was going to be the end point of having teachers buy supplies for their own kids, demonizing professors, demonizing higher education and the idea of education generally, not training enough teachers, and underpaying the teachers you already have. In America we have to deal with school shootings, the latest religious group mandating the 10 comm…

I think you know the answer to your question: nothing until it becomes a major issue. This is like global warming, it's a slow moving catastrophe, you can see it coming from a mile away but it's expensive to fix so it's hard to convince people to do something about it and there is just enough ambiguity that the detractors can effectively block your efforts.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#28

Post by j45 »

danishSuri1994 wrote: post #4

AI can help with content generation or scaffolding, but teaching is still a bidirectional feedback process. When the model can’t adapt to misunderstanding or context, students immediately feel the gap. It’s a UX failure more than a “should AI be allowed” issue

Teaching isn't bi directional.

Understanding before application are two different steps.

The issues you're outlining can be solved by arranging technology to go through a process to satisfy the above.

Still, instruction, and instructors aren't really needing to be replaced, it's the silent elephant in the room that is rarely talked about that hopefully considers evolving.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#30

Post by j45 »

kittikitti wrote: post #25

Unpopular opinion, but I dislike how universities embraced vocational programs. These students were not there for academics, they were there for job and career training. The irony is that they complain about the high costs of tuition when they're just there to get more money. These professors have much better things to work on. I apologize if my opinion upsets you.

Generally, it's easy to be unpopular with a healthy income rolling in.

Most students go to school to improve their access to opportunity to uplift their current and future descendants.

Yes, often economic uplifting is a part of that.

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