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…
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 ?
Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
201–210 of 672 posts
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe schools and universities need to stop considering homework to be evidence of subject matter mastery. Grading homework never made sense to me. What are you measuring, really, and how confident are you of that measurement? You can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. Universities need to accept that AI exists, and adjust their operations accordingly.
How do you suggest we measure whether the students have actually learned the stuff then?
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#203A bit off-topic, but I think AI has the potential to supercharge learning for the students of the future. Similar to Montessori, LLMs can help students who wander off in various directions. I remember often being “stuck” on some concept (usually in biology and chemistry), where the teacher would hand-wave something as truth, this dismissing my request for further depth. Of course, LLMs in the current educational land…
This resonates with me a lot. I used to dismiss AI as useless hogwash, but have recently done a near total 180 as I realised it's quite useful for exploratory learning.
Not sure about others but a lot of my learning comes from comparison of a concept with other related concepts. Reading definitions off a page usually doesn't do it for me. I really need to dig to the heart of my understanding and challenge my assumptions, which is easiest done talking to someone. (You can't usually google "why does X do Y and not Z when ABC" and then spin off from that onto the next train of reasoning).
Hence ChatGPT is surprisingly useful. Even if it's wrong some of the time. With a combination of my baseline knowledge, logic, cross referencing, and experimentation, it becomes useful enough to advance my understanding. I'm not asking ChatGPT to solve my problem, more like I'm getting it to bounce off my thoughts until I discover a direction where I can solve my problem.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#204I 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…
> Oral exams because it becomes obvious how skilled they are, how deep their knowledge is. Assuming you have access to a computer lab, have you considered requiring in-class programming exercises, regularly? Those could be a good way of checking actual skills. > Maybe providing the IDE online and observing copy-paste is a way forward. I just don't like the tendency that students can't run software on their own comput…
Even IntelliJ has gateway
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#205I 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…
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#206Culture, not technology.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#207Earlier 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 ?
Where I'm studying its proctored-online. They have a custom browser and take over your computer while you're doing the exam. Creepy AF but saves travelling 1,300 km to sit an exam.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Many of them are neurodivergent who do miserably in exam conditions Isn't this part of life? Learning to excel anyway?
Life doesn't tend to take place under exam conditions, either.
In my adult life I had a coworker who constantly demanded that she be given special consideration in the work environment: more time to complete tasks, not working with coworkers who moved too quickly, etc. She was capable but refused to recognize that even if you have to do things in a way that don't work for you, sometimes you either have to succeed that way or find something else to do.
Today she's homeless living out of her car, but still demands to that be hired she needs to be allowed to work as slowly as she needs and that she will need special consideration to help her complete daily tasks etc.
We recently lived through an age of incredible prosperity, but that age is wrapping up and competition is heating up everywhere. When things are great, there is enough for everyone, but right now I know top performers that don't need special consideration when doing their job struggling to find work. In this world if you learned to always get by with some extra help, you are going to be in for a very rude awakening.
Had I grown up in the world as it has been the last decade I would have a much easier adolescence and a much harder adult life. I've learned to find ways to maximize my strengths as well as suck it up and just do it when I'm faced with challenges that target my weaknesses and areas I struggle. Life isn't fair, but I don't think the best way to prepare people for this is to try to make life more fair.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grading homework has two reasonable objectives: Provide an incentive for students to do the thing they should be doing anyway. Give an opportunity to provide feedback on the assignment. It is totally useless as an evaluation mechanic, because of course the students that want to can just cheat. It’s usually pretty small, right? IIRC when I did tutoring we only gave like 10-20% for the aggregate homework grade.
The annoyance with 10-20% means that in order to be an "A" student you have to do all the homework instead of just ace the exams which is obnoxious if you actually know the material. Edge case, I know, but that last 20% is a ton of extra work.
Realistically I think the more common case is to think you know the material, skip studying, and then faceplant on the test. Homework should help self-correct.
But yeah, I could it being annoying if you really do already know the material.