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How University Students Use Claude

anthropic.com

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Re: How University Students Use Claude

#321

Post by _tom_ »

No one seems to be talking about the fact that we need to change the definition of cheating.

People's careers are going to be filled with AI. College needs to prepare them for that reality, not to get jobs that are now extinct.

If they are never going to have to program without AI, what's the point in teaching them to do it? It's like expecting them to do arithmetic by hand. No one does.

For every class, teachers need to be asking themselves "is this class relevant" and "what are the learning goals in this class? Goals that they will still need, in a world with AI".

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#322

Post by CalRobert »

crooked-v wrote: post #162
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…

That's a quote that sounds great until, say, that self-built building by somebody who's neither engineer nor architect at best turns out to have some intractible design flaw and at worst collapses and kills people. It's also a quote from a character who's literally immortal and so has all the time in the world to learn things, which really undermines the premise.

Honestly having gone through the self build process for a house it’s not that hard if you keep it simple. Habitat for humanity has some good learning material

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#323

Post by foxglacier »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #319
DSingularity wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is now reality -- fighting to change the students is a losing battle. Besides in terms of normalizing grade distributions this is not that complicated to solve. Target the cheaters with pop quizzes. Prof can randomly choose 3 questions from assignments. If students cant get enough marks on 2/3 of them they are dealt a huge penalty. Students that actually work through the problems will have no problems with scori…

Why not just grade solely based on live performance? (quizzes and tests) Homework would still be assigned as a learning tool, but has no impact on your grade.

Because students wouldn't do the homework and would fail the quizzes. Students need to be pressured into learning and grades for doing the practice are a way. Don't pretend many students are self-motivated enough to follow the lecturer's instructions when there's no grade in it and insisting that "trust me, you won't learn if you don't do it".

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#324

Post by salomonk_mur »

diroussel wrote: post #269
lisper wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pre-planned plans Isn't that cheating? Shouldn't a properly self-reliant human be able to come up with the plans too?

Learning from others doesn’t mean you are not learning.

Ask the LLM to create plans and step by step guides then!

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#325

Post by foxglacier »

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…

Your child perhaps shouldn't learn things that computers can do. But they should learn something to make themselves more useful than every uneducated person. I'm not sure schools are doing much good anymore teaching redundant skills. Without any abilities beyond the default, they'll grow up to be poor. I don't know what that useful education is but I expect something sort of thinking skills, and perhaps even giant piles of knowledge to apply that thinking to.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#326

Post by dankwizard »

jplusequalt wrote: post #128
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…

>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…

Your opinion is wild.

Hmm, millions of humans are spending a bulk of their lives plugging away at numbers on a screen. We can replace this with an AI and free them up to do literally anything else.

No, let's not do that. Keep being slow ineffective calculators and lay on your death bed feeling FULFILLED!

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#327

Post by chii »

foxglacier wrote: post #323
cellularmitosis wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just grade solely based on live performance? (quizzes and tests) Homework would still be assigned as a learning tool, but has no impact on your grade.

Because students wouldn't do the homework and would fail the quizzes. Students need to be pressured into learning and grades for doing the practice are a way. Don't pretend many students are self-motivated enough to follow the lecturer's instructions when there's no grade in it and insisting that "trust me, you won't learn if you don't do it".

> would fail the quizzes.

not those who did actually do the work, and learnt.

The change ought to be that students are allowed to be failed, and this should be a form of punishment for those who "cheat".

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#328

Post by mock-possum »

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…

Even if you use a tool to do work, you still have to understand how your work will be checked to see whether it meets expectations.

If the expectation is X, and your tool gives you Y, then you’ve failed - no matter if you could have done X by hand from scratch or not, it doesn’t really matter, because what counts is whether the person checking your work can verify that you’ve produced X. You agreed to deliver X, and you gave them Y instead.

So why should you learn to do X when the LLM can do it for you?

Because unless you know how to do X yourself, how will you be able to verify whether the LLM has truly done X?

Your kid needs to learn to understand what the person grading them is expecting, and deliver something that meets those expectations.

That sounds like so much bullshit when you’re a kid, but I wish I had understood it when I was younger.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#329

Post by deepsun »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #319
DSingularity wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is now reality -- fighting to change the students is a losing battle. Besides in terms of normalizing grade distributions this is not that complicated to solve. Target the cheaters with pop quizzes. Prof can randomly choose 3 questions from assignments. If students cant get enough marks on 2/3 of them they are dealt a huge penalty. Students that actually work through the problems will have no problems with scori…

Why not just grade solely based on live performance? (quizzes and tests) Homework would still be assigned as a learning tool, but has no impact on your grade.

I've heard that's how studying is done in Oxford/Cambridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#330

Post by aprilthird2021 »

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…

> there's no point of rote memorization as you can just do a Google search. That's more or less accepted today.

It's not true even though it's accepted. Rote memorization has a place in an education. It does strengthen learning and allow one to make connections between the things seen presently and things remembered, among other things.

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