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College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

sentinelcolorado.com

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Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#281

Post by Cthulhu_ »

cyberax wrote: post #173
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #30

When I did my Computer Science degree the vast majority of courses were 50% final, 30% midterm - even programming exams were hand written, proctored by TAs in class or in the gymnasium - assignments/labs/projects were a small part of your grade but if you didn’t do them the likelihood you’d pass the term exams was pretty darn low. We already had AI proof education.

Bonus point: even if you use AI to prepare the submission, copying it down by hand will at least force you to _read_ it.

Some people spend ages writing a cheat sheet with the intent of cheating on the test but realise that because they wrote it down and / or tried to summarise it they actually learned the materials.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#282

Post by Cthulhu_ »

curun1r wrote: post #229

I'm old enough to remember a similar controversy over whether to allow calculators in math classes. While most schools were banning them to force kids to learn how to do math without them, my school went the other way. They mandated that every student had one and then changed the assignments and tests to account for it. Gone were questions that had whole number answers that could be computed in our heads. Instead, an…

Just like computers in schools nowadays, I will concede that part of the education should be about learning how to use AI - but they should also learn how to do research and accomplish things without the help of AI.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#283

Post by cafebabbe »

tim-projects wrote: post #236

To me this nostalgia is pointless. AI is here and it's good enough only going to get better. The classroom should be about using AI better not ignoring it. But that would require the teacher to be good at AI too. I think that's the problem here.

Seems like you're equating 'education' with 'employability training'.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#284

Post by cafebabbe »

meroes wrote: post #105
randoments wrote: post #99

Reading all these comments, I feel like US universities are a joke. I had to do all the exams in person. 100% of the grade was decided at the exam. Millions of people graduated this way and they are fine. No students were harmed in the process.

No projects, no labs, no teamwork, no papers? What a narrow set of skills to send into your economy.

oh, that's why US has the only working economy in the world ! :)

joking, of course everyone does 'projects, labs, teamwork and papers'. It's just not the main focus of the grading process.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#285

Post by neal_jones »

madrox wrote: post #244
amtamt wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rather than banning the use of AI and trying to catch students who are cheating, why aren't they creating schoolwork that requires AI? That is way to high recurring cost that many won't be able to afford. One could get a second hand calculator or even computer, and then additional resources needed was one's willingness. With mandating AI usage, we'd only increase the gap of haves and have-nots. I personally do not…

This is probably the fairest counter argument I’ve heard. One can hope that today’s AI will eventually be as cheap as a calculator, though.

That is my hope. At the same time, feels like a peak “don’t know what we don’t know” situation

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#286

Post by medbar »

tim-projects wrote: post #236

To me this nostalgia is pointless. AI is here and it's good enough only going to get better. The classroom should be about using AI better not ignoring it. But that would require the teacher to be good at AI too. I think that's the problem here.

> The classroom should be about using AI better not ignoring it.

No, it shouldn’t. I’m not bearish on AI but it shouldn’t replace any part of a classroom where the objective is to learn and communicate in a new language (German). The typewriter argument is memorable and interesting - the article points out the lack of editing forces kids to slow down and think about their writing, as well as iterate through multiple drafts. It’s not a nostalgia thing, they’re not old enough to have ever used one before.

I could see an argument for adding on a new class for GenAI, agents, context engineering or what have you, but considering how behind current US curriculums already are and how quickly the AI field moves, I can only see this ending in wasted time and money: even an up to date class will be stale by the time it’s over. Kids will end up learning this anyway outside of the classroom, no use lecturing them on something they’ll already know.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#287

Post by logicchains »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #265
curun1r wrote: post #229

I'm old enough to remember a similar controversy over whether to allow calculators in math classes. While most schools were banning them to force kids to learn how to do math without them, my school went the other way. They mandated that every student had one and then changed the assignments and tests to account for it. Gone were questions that had whole number answers that could be computed in our heads. Instead, an…

> So I can't help but wonder whether schools are going about this all wrong. Rather than banning the use of AI and trying to catch students who are cheating, why aren't they creating schoolwork that requires AI? Because using AI is the complete opposite of "I learned programming just to make tests easier". By learning how to program solver, you not only learned how to program but also learned the method well enough t…

>By pawning it off to AI to solve, you have learned nothing, not even how to prompt correctly as test questions are usually formulated well enough that AI doesn't need prompt massaging to get it.

If you got AI to produce a working solution, you solved the problem. In the real world nobody who's paying you cares about the method as long as you deliver results. Students taught to solve easy problems by themselves will be at a big disadvantage in the workforce compared to students taught to solve hard problems using AI.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#288

Post by yorwba »

zozbot234 wrote: post #270
yorwba wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, scientific calculators - made tasks easy that were a necessary prerequisite for advanced math (basic arithmetic), but not what the lesson was supposed to be about - could in theory also let students skip over what they were supposed to be learning (applying the correct operations in the correct order to solve a problem) but doing so would require programming or getting a program from someone else, which the teach…

> - cannot reliably be restricted in functionality to leave the part the students are supposed to do themselves to the student Small local LLMs are essentially that. If an LLM can tell you to eat rocks as a tasty snack or use glue to make the cheese stick to your pizza, imagine what it says when you ask it to analyze/explain complex academic subjects, or solve fiddly problems. But it will still reliably help you poli…

Small LLMs are certainly restricted, but they're not reliably restricted in a way that aligns with educational goals. Even Qwen3.5-0.8B, the smallest, dumbest LLM I have lying around, can solve quadratic equations. In math class, learning about quadratic equations for the first time, such helpfulness defeats the purpose. In physics, learning about ballistic trajectories, it might be acceptable, as long as the students themselves come up with the correct equation to model the problem, and do the reasoning to identify which of the two theoretical solutions corresponds to the physical setup.

A single model that can do many things, some less reliably than others, independently of what the requirements for the lesson are, is not a good tool to give students. You would need something that can do ancillary tasks perfectly, but won't do the part student are supposed to practice doing themselves. And what exactly that is changes with every exercise.

If you want to give students access to thesaurus functionality and nothing else, you're better off with a thesaurus.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#289

Post by Gander5739 »

logicchains wrote: post #287
PunchyHamster wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I can't help but wonder whether schools are going about this all wrong. Rather than banning the use of AI and trying to catch students who are cheating, why aren't they creating schoolwork that requires AI? Because using AI is the complete opposite of "I learned programming just to make tests easier". By learning how to program solver, you not only learned how to program but also learned the method well enough t…

>By pawning it off to AI to solve, you have learned nothing, not even how to prompt correctly as test questions are usually formulated well enough that AI doesn't need prompt massaging to get it. If you got AI to produce a working solution, you solved the problem. In the real world nobody who's paying you cares about the method as long as you deliver results. Students taught to solve easy problems by themselves will…

I don't think the entire purpose of schools is to teach you how to answer some specific set of questions; they want to improve your knowledge and skills in various domains, and the questions are merely a roundabout way to assess that. If you can answer the questions but don't know the knowledge, you're missing the most important part.

Re: College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

#290

Post by medbar »

resident423 wrote: post #152

Is there really much point though? I think AI will keep improving, and there will be more and more incentive to use an AI which costs $20/month, instead of a human writer that costs $30/hour. If someone want's an article written, and if people like the AI article as much as the human one, what stops anyone everyone using AI? The only answer I can think of is that people must believe AI writing will stay below human l…

OP is about a German learning class, so yes, there is a point. AI improving will not learn you a language faster than immersing in it until, I suppose, neural links become mainstream.
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