How University Students Use Claude • Hacker News Board

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#271

Post by photochemsyn » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:16 AM UTC

I'm looking forward to the next installment on this subject from Anthropic, namely "How University Teachers Use Claude".

How many teachers are offloading their teaching duties onto LLMs? Are they reading essays and annotating them by hand? If everything is submitted electronically, why not just dump 30 or 50 papers into a LLM queue for analysis, suggested comments for improvement, etc. while the instructor gets back to the research they care about? Is this 'cheating' too?

Then there's the use of LLMs to generate problem sets, test those problem sets for accuracy, come up with interesting essay questions and so on.

I think the only real solution will be to go back to in-person instruction with handwritten problem-solving and essay-writing in class with no electronic devices allowed. This is much more demanding of both the teachers and the students, but if the goal is quality educational programs, then that's what it will take.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#272

Post by jfarina » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:18 AM UTC

acbart wrote: post #216

Spivak wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that students don't watch the videos. We have so much log data on this - most of them don't bother to actually watch the videos. They intend to, they think they will, but they don't.

If they can perform well without reviewing the material, that's a problem with either the performance measure or the material.

And not watching lectures is not the same as not reviewing the material. I generally prefer textbooks and working through proofs or practice problems by hand. If I listen to someone describe something technical I zone out too quickly. The only exception seems to be if I'm able to work ahead enough that the lecture feels like review. Then I'm able to engage.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#273

Post by layer8 » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:19 AM UTC

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…

It’s more like looking up the solution to the math problem you’re supposed to solve on your own. It can be helpful in some situations, but in general you don’t learn the problem-solving skills if you don’t do it yourself.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#274

Post by sixpackpg » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:24 AM UTC

doctorpangloss wrote: post #262

sixpackpg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The education model at high school and undergrad uni has not changed in decades, I hope AI leads to a fundamental change. Homework being made easy by AI is a symptom of the real issues. Being taught by uni students who learned the curriculum last year, lecturers who only lecture due to obligation and haven't changed a slide in years. Lecturers who refuse to upload lecture recordings or slides. Just a few glaring issu…

And yet all the people who created all the advances in AI have extremely traditional, extremely good, fancy educations, and did absolutely bonkers amount of homework. The thing you are talking about is very aspirational.

There's some sad irony to that, making homework easier for future generations but those generations being worse off as a result on average. The lack of AI assistance was a forcing function to greater depth.

Outliers will still work hard and become even more valuable, AI won't affect them negatively. I feel non outliers will be affected negatively on average in ability to learn/think.

With no confirming data, I feel those who got that fancy education would do so in any other institution. Just those fancy institutions draw in and filter for intelligent types, not teach them to be intelligent as it's practically a pre-requisite.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#275

Post by hackable_sand » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:26 AM UTC

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…

I would recommend programming, and designing your system, on a piece of paper instead.

It's the most efficient few-shot which beats the odds on any SotA model.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#276

Post by tempestn » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:28 AM UTC

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…

I think it's both, just like we saw with the internet.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#277

Post by antasvara » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:32 AM UTC

educasean wrote: post #234

jplusequalt wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

It took me a long time to master the pen tool in Photoshop. I don't mean that I spent a weekend and learned how it worked. I meant that out of all the graphic designers at the agency I was working for, I was the designer who had the most flawless pen-tool skills and thus was the envy of many. It is now an obsolete skill. You can segment anything instantly and the results are pristine. Thanks to technology one no long…

But what if the rate at which things change increases to the point that humans can't adapt in time? This has happened to other animals (coral has existed for millions of years and is now threatened by ocean acidification, any number of native species have been crowded out by the introduction of non-native ones, etc.).

Even humans have gotten shocks like this. Things like the Black Death created social and economic upheavals that lasted generations.

Now, these are all biological examples. They don't map cleanly to technogical advances, because human brains adapt much faster than immune systems that are constrained by their DNA. But the point is that complex systems can adapt and can seem to handle "anything," up until they can't.

I don't know enough about AI or LLM's to say if we're reaching an inflection point. But most major crises happen when enough people say that something can't happen, and then it happens. I also don't think that discouraging innovation is the solution. But I don't also want to pretend like "humans always adapt" is a rule and not a 300,000 year old blip on the timeline of life's existence.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#278

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:38 AM UTC

fn-mote wrote: post #264

lgessler wrote: post #218

I'm a professor at an R1 university teaching mostly graduate-level courses with substantive Python programming components. On the one hand, I've caught some students red handed (ChatGPT generated their exact solution and they were utterly unable to explain the advanced Python that was in their solution) and had to award them 0s for assignments, which was heartbreaking. On the other, I was pleasantly surprised to find…

> had to award them 0s for assignments, which was heartbreaking You should feel nothing. They knew they were cheating. They didn't give a crap about you. Frankly, I would love to have people failing assignments they can't explain even if they did NOT use "AI" to cheat on them. We don't need more meaningless degrees. Make the grades and the degrees mean something, somehow.

[deleted]

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#279

Post by victor106 » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:38 AM UTC

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…

I thought the same as you. But I think not developing those skills will come back and bite you at some point.

For instance your point about: > reading a map to get around (GPS)

https://www.statnews.com/2024/12/16/alzheimers-disease-resea...

After reading the above it dawned on me that the human brain needs to develop spatial awareness and not using that capability of the brain very slowly shuts it off. So I purposefully turn off the gps when I can.

I think not fully developing each of those abilities might have some negative effects that will be hard to diagnose.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#280

Post by hackyhacky » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:41 AM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #265

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 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. I do know how to write a web site.” Sure. But somebody has to know these things. For many jobs, knowing these things isn’t beneficial, but for others it is. Sure, you might be able to get a job slinging AI code to produce CRUD apps or whatever. But…

> Sure. But somebody has to know these things. For many jobs, knowing these things isn’t beneficial, but for others it is.

I think you're missing the point of my comment. I'm not saying that human knowledge is useless. I'm specifically arguing against the case that:

> 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.

My logic being that we are already irreversibly dependent on supply chains.