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How University Students Use Claude

anthropic.com

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Re: How University Students Use Claude

#201

Post by palmotea »

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 (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 to understand the math behind the arithmetic.

And I can tell you from experience that "letting a calculator solve arithmetic" (or more accurately, being dependent on a calculator to solve arithmetic) means you cripple your ability to learn and understand more advanced stuff. At best your decision turned you into the equivalent of a computer trying to run a 1GB binary with 8MB of RAM and a lot of paging.

> No one knows if that's true. We're running a grand experiment: 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.

It's the latter. Though I suspect the masses will be shoved into the garbage disposal than be allowed to wallow in ignorant consumerism. Only the elite that owns the means of production will be allowed to indulge.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#202

Post by OptionOfT »

bko wrote: post #35
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…

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…

The problem with GPS is that you never learn to orient yourself. You don't learn to have a sense of place, direction or elapsed distance. [0]

As to writing, just the action of writing something down with a pen, on paper, has been proven to be better for memorization than recording it on a computer [1].

If we're not teaching these basic skills because an LLM does it better, how do learn to be skeptical of the output of the LLM. How do we validate it?

How do we bolster ourselves against corporate influences when asking which of 2 products is healthier? How do we spot native advertising? [2]

[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/531573a

[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00016...

[2]: Example: https://www.nytimes.com/paidpost/netflix/women-inmates-separ...

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#203

Post by DontchaKnowit »

jplusequalt wrote: post #180
moltar wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just make lecture times longer.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#204

Post by DontchaKnowit »

ryandrake wrote: post #82
dyauspitr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure you can assume close to 100% of students are using LLMs to do their homework.

And if you're that one person out of 100,000 who is not using LLMs to do their homework, you are at a significant disadvantage on the grading curve.

Maybe, but piss on that, who needs good grades? Youll learn a hell of a lot better

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#205

Post by Spivak »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #155
hackyhacky wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's called the "Flipped classroom" approach. Flipped classroom is just having the students give lectures, instead of the teacher. > Basically, a student's marks depend mostly (only?) on what they can do in a setting where AI is verifiably unavailable. This is called "proctored exams" and it's been pretty common in universities for a few centuries. None of this addresses the real issue, which is whether teachers sh…

Flipped classroom means you watch the recorded lecture outside of class time and you do your homework during class time.

Thank you, it's amazing how people don't even try to understand what words mean before dismissing it. Flipped makes way more sense anyway since lectures aren't terribly interactive. Being able to pause/replay/skip around in lectures is underrated.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#206

Post by freeone3000 »

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.

“You won’t always have a calculator” became moderately false to laughably false as I went from middle to high school. Every task I will ever do for money will be done on a computer.

I’m still garbage at arithmetic, especially mental math, and it really hasn’t inhibited my career in any way.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#207

Post by walleeee »

> Students primarily use AI systems for creating (using information to learn something new)

this is a smooth way to not say "cheat" in the first paragraph and to reframe creativity in a way that reflects positively on llm use. in fairness they then say

> This raises questions about ensuring students don’t offload critical cognitive tasks to AI systems.

and later they report

> nearly half (~47%) of student-AI conversations were Direct—that is, seeking answers or content with minimal engagement. Whereas many of these serve legitimate learning purposes (like asking conceptual questions or generating study guides), we did find concerning Direct conversation examples including: - Provide answers to machine learning multiple-choice questions - Provide direct answers to English language test questions - Rewrite marketing and business texts to avoid plagiarism detection

kudos for addressing this head on. the problem here, and the reason these are not likely to be democratizing but rather wedge technologies, is not that they make grading harder or violate principles of higher education but that they can disable people who might otherwise learn something

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#208

Post by Spivak »

dingnuts wrote: post #176
bboygravity wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

This makes for a good sound bite but it's just not true. The use case of "show me what is a customary solution to " plays exactly into LLMs strength as a funny kind of search engine. I used to (and still do) search public code for this use case to get a sense of the style and idioms common in a new language/library and the plausible set of tokens is doing exactly that.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#209

Post by mistrial9 »

hackyhacky wrote: post #144
tristor wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, build a car, build a toaster, design a transistor, make an ASIC, or write an OS. Why not? I mean that, quite literally. I don't know how to make an ASIC, and if I tried to write an OS I'd probably fail miserably many times along the way but might be able to muddle through to something very basic. The rest of that list is certai…

> The peer commenter shared the Heinlein quote, but there's really something to be said for /society/ of being peopled by well-rounded individuals that are able to competently turn themselves to many types of tasks Being a well-rounded individualist is a great, but that's an orthogonal issue to the question of outsourcing our skills to machinery. When you were growing crops, did you till the land by hand or did you u…

ok - but.. here in California, look at houses that are 100 years old, then look at the new ones.. sure you can list the improvements in the new ones, on a piece of paper.. the craftsmanship, originality and other intangibles are obviously gone in the modern versions.. not a little bit gone, a lot gone. Let the reader use this example as a warmup to this new tech question.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#210

Post by Jedd »

Mawr wrote: post #194
ryandrake wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reply brings to mind the well-known Heinlein quote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallan…

What an awful quote. Literally all progress we've made is due to ever increasing specialization.

That is literally not true.
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