Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

solarshades.club

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 672 posts

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#291

Post by goatlover »

datahack wrote: post #146

There is a tremendous lack of understandings between the genx and millennial teachers and the way they see and use AI, and how younger people are using it. Kids use AI like an operating system, seamlessly integrated into their workflows, their thinking, their lives. It’s not a tool they pick up and put down; it’s the environment they navigate, as natural as air. To them, AI isn’t cheating—it’s just how you get things…

ChatGPT is only 2.5 years old. How are kids using AI like it's always been around? I really hope they aren't making major life decisions consulting chatbots from big tech companies, instead of their relatives, teachers and friends. I'm old enough to recall when social media was viewed as this incredibly positive tech for humanity. How things have changed. One wonders how we'll view the impact AIs in a few years.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#292

Post by vintermann »

barry-cotter wrote: post #88
fn-mote wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Variations in this system are in active use in the US as well. Do you feel it is effective? It seems to me that there is a massive asymmetry in the war here: proctoring services have tiny incentives to catch cheaters. Cheaters have massive incentives to cheat. I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs.

> proctoring services have tiny incentives to catch cheaters. Cheaters have massive incentives to cheat. If they don’t catch them they don’t have a business model. They have one job. The University of London, Open University and British Council all have 50+ years experience on proctoring university exams for distance learning students and it’s not like Thomson Prometric haven’t thought about how to do it either, even…

Well, if they don't catch someone. They don't have much incentive to avoid false positives. Catching someone who did not cheat but failed to follow all the draconian rules, is probably a lot easier than to catch an actual cheater.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#293

Post by obscurette »

sireat wrote: post #257
const_cast wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical classroom experience works and has worked for thousands of years. Edutech is pretty new and virtually all of it has been a disaster. Sitting in a lecture and taking notes on paper is tried, tested, and research backed. It works. Not for everyone, but for a lot of people.

Actually, before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Amos_Comenius in 17th century much of education was route memorization. Then it was corporal punishment if you did not learn quickly enough. Comenius idea was of pansophia - knowledge for all. Also his Latin textbook - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janua_Linguarum_Reserata was quite revolutionary - in using relations to real world knowledge to learn a new language.…

Education is bound to culture and life in general. We just can't imagine nowadays how fatalistic and submissive to god and authority people's world view was before protestants in medieval Europe. An education bound to memorization and pretty violent culture helped to mould the people society needed at the time. But it wasn't always like that. There were quite different views to learning in ancient Greek, during golden age of islam etc.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#294

Post by california-og »

halgir wrote: post #284
california-og wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. I think the neo-liberal university model is the real culprit. Where I live, Universities get money for each student who graduates. This is up to 100k euros for a new doctorate. This means that the University and its admin want as many students to graduate as possible. The (BA&MA) students also want to graduate in target time: if they do, they get a huge part of their student loans forgiven. What has…

> Some thesises had hallucinated sources, some had AI slop blogs as sources, the texts are robotic and boring. But should I fail them, out of principle on what the ideal University should be? No, you should fail them for turning in bad theses, just like you would before AI.

That's probably what should happen, but it's not what happens in reality. In grading I have to follow a very detailed grading matrix (made by some higher-ups) and the requirements for passing and getting the lowest grade are so incredibly low that it's almost impossible to fail, if the text even somewhat resembles a thesis. The only way I could fail a student, is if they cheated, plagiarised or fabricated stuff.

The person who used the AI slop blog for sources, we asked them to just remove them and resubmit. The person who hallucinated sources is however getting investigated for fabrication. But this is an incredibly long process to go through, which takes away time and energy from actual teaching / research / course prep. Most of the faculty is already overworked and on the verge of burnout (or are recovering post-burnout), so everybody tries to avoid it if they can. Besides, playing a cop is not what anybody wants to do, and its not what teaching should be about, as the original blog post mentioned. IF the University as an institution had some standards and actually valued education, it could be different. But it's not. The University only cares about some imaginary metrics, like international rankings and money. A few years ago they built a multi-million datacenter just for gathering data from everything that happens in the University, so they could make more convincing presentations for the ministry of education — to get more money and to "prove" that the money had a measurable impact. The University is a student-factory (this is a direct quote by a previous principal).

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#295

Post by throwaway2037 »

Brybry wrote: post #256
BrenBarn wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that pressure as well. I find that a lot of the problems we have with AI are in fact AI exposing problems in other aspects of our society. In this case, one problem is that the people who do the teaching and know what needs to be learned are the faculty, but the decisions about how to teach are made by administrators. And another problem is that colleges are treating "make money" as a goal. These problems exist…

Instructors and professors are required to be subject matter experts but many are not required to have a teaching certification or education-related degree. So they know what students should be taught but I don't know that they necessarily know how any better than the administrators. I've always found it weird that you need teaching certification to teach basic concepts to kindergartners but not to teach calculus to…

    > Instructors and professors are required to be subject matter experts but many are not required to have a teaching certification or education-related degree.
I attended two universities to get my computer science degree. The first was somewhat famous/prestigious, and I found most of the professors very unapproachable and cared little about "teaching well". The second was a no-name second tier public uni, but I found the professors much more approachable, and they made more effort to teach well. I am still very conflicted about that experience. Sadly, the students were way smarter at the first uni, so the intellectual rigor of discussions was much higher than my second uni. My final thoughts: "You win some; you lose some."

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#296

Post by myaccountonhn »

ai-christianson wrote: post #20
nkrisc wrote: post #13

If the trend continues, it seems like most college degrees will be completely worthless. If students using AI to cheat on homework are graduating with a degree, then it has lost all value as a certificate that the holder has completed some minimum level of education and learning. Institutions that award such degrees will be no different than degree mills of the past. I’m just grateful my college degree has the year 2…

Aren't the jobs they'll get be expecting them to use AI?

Even if you just use AI, you need to know the right prompts to ask.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#297

Post by throwaway2037 »

hoseja wrote: post #278
Brybry wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instructors and professors are required to be subject matter experts but many are not required to have a teaching certification or education-related degree. So they know what students should be taught but I don't know that they necessarily know how any better than the administrators. I've always found it weird that you need teaching certification to teach basic concepts to kindergartners but not to teach calculus to…

Nobody knows "how" things should be taught. Pedagogy is utter disaster.

I am pretty sure that early childhood education (until fifth grade) is a very active area of research in all highly developed nations. Almost, by definition, it you want to (a) become or (b) stay a highly developed nation, you need to have a high quality public education system.

My mother was a first grade teacher for 30+ years. In her school system, first grade is the year that students learn to read. Each year, she was also required to take professional training classes for a certain number of days. She told me that, in her career, there were many changes and improvements and new techniques developed to help children learn how to read. One thing that changed a lot: The techniques are way more inclusive, so non-normie kids can learn to read better at an earlier age.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#298

Post by halgir »

california-og wrote: post #294
halgir wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some thesises had hallucinated sources, some had AI slop blogs as sources, the texts are robotic and boring. But should I fail them, out of principle on what the ideal University should be? No, you should fail them for turning in bad theses, just like you would before AI.

That's probably what should happen, but it's not what happens in reality. In grading I have to follow a very detailed grading matrix (made by some higher-ups) and the requirements for passing and getting the lowest grade are so incredibly low that it's almost impossible to fail, if the text even somewhat resembles a thesis. The only way I could fail a student, is if they cheated, plagiarised or fabricated stuff. The…

That sounds horrible. Thanks for the insight.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#299

Post by throwaway2037 »

avhception wrote: post #274
california-og wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. I think the neo-liberal university model is the real culprit. Where I live, Universities get money for each student who graduates. This is up to 100k euros for a new doctorate. This means that the University and its admin want as many students to graduate as possible. The (BA&MA) students also want to graduate in target time: if they do, they get a huge part of their student loans forgiven. What has…

I think one of the outcomes might be a devaluation of the certifications offered in the public job marketplace.

I can say from some working experience in the United States that way too many jobs require a university degree. I remember being an intern or my first job after uni (which I struggled a great deal to complete), looking around and thinking: "There is no way that all of these people need a uni degree to do their jobs." I couldn't believe how easy work was compared to my uni studies (it was hell). I felt like I was playing at life with a cheat code (infinite lives, or whatever). I don't write that to brag; I am sure many people here feel the same. So many jobs at mega corps require little more than common sense: Come to work on time, dress well, say your pleases and thank yous, be compliant, do what is asked, etc. Repeat and you will have a reasonable middle class life.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#300

Post by throwaway2037 »

sien wrote: post #77
math_dandy wrote: post #28

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 ?

Can you tell us: Is "remote study" a relatively recent phenom in AU -- COVID era, or much older? I am curious to learn more. And, what is the history behind it? Was it created/supported because AU is so vast and many people a state might not live near the campus?

Also: I think your suggestion is excellent. We may see this happen in the US if AI cheating gets out of control (which it well).

Post reply on HN