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How University Students Use Claude

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Re: How University Students Use Claude

#381

Post by jurgenaut23 »

djmips wrote: post #351
nneonneo wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's brilliant! I mean, arithmetic is the same way, right? Nobody should do the arithmetic by hand, as you say. Kindergarten teachers really ought to just hand their kids calculators, tell them they should push these buttons like this, and write down the answers. No need to teach them how to do routine arithmetics like 3+4 when a calculator can do it for them.

I'm not sure you aren't being a little bit sarcastic but essentially that's true.

That was sarcastic, because that's wrong. And I cannot conceive how can one think this is a good approach to learning.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#382

Post by shinycode »

samuel wrote: post #349
enjo wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's literally "let me paste the assignment into ChatGPT and see what it spits out, change a few words and submit that". My wife is an accounting professor. For many years her battle was with students using Chegg and the like. They would submit roughly correct answers but because she would rotate the underlying numbers they would always be wrong in a provably cheating way. This made up 5-8% of her students. Now she…

I guess this students don't pass, do they? I don't think that's a particularly hard concern. It will take a bit more, but will learn the lesson (or drop out). I'm more worried about those who will learn to solve the problems with the help of an LLM, but can't do anything without one. Those will go under the radar, unnoticed, and the problem is, how bad is it, actually? I would say that a lot, but then I realize I'm p…

For your GPS at worst you follow directions road sign by road sign. For a job without the core knowledge what’s the goal of hiring one person vs an unqualified one doing just prompts or worse, hiring no one and let agents do the prompting ?

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#383

Post by suddenlybananas »

djmips wrote: post #360
suddenlybananas wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If kids don't go through the struggle of understanding arithmetic, higher math will be very very difficult. Just because you can use a calculator, doesn't mean that's the best way to learn . Likewise for using LLMs to program.

I have no anecdata to counter your thesis. I do agree that immersion in the doing of a thing is the best way to learn. I am not fully convinced that doing a lot of arithmetic hand calculation precludes learning the science of patterns that is mathematics. They should still be doing something mathematical but why not go right into using a calculator. I have no experience as an educator and I bet it's hard to get good…

There's a wealth of research on how children learn to do math, and one of the most crucial things is having experiences manipulating numbers directly. Children don't understand how the symbols we use map to different numbers and the operations themselves take time to learn. If you just have them use a black-box to generate answers, they won't understand how the underlying procedures conceptually work and so they'll be super limited in their mathematical ability later on.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#384

Post by pja »

deepsun wrote: post #329
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.

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

The tutorial system is just for teaching, not grading. It does keep students honest with themselves about their progress when they’re personally put on the spot once a week in front of one or two of their peers.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#385

Post by shinycode »

Stubbs wrote: post #365
samuel wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this students don't pass, do they? I don't think that's a particularly hard concern. It will take a bit more, but will learn the lesson (or drop out). I'm more worried about those who will learn to solve the problems with the help of an LLM, but can't do anything without one. Those will go under the radar, unnoticed, and the problem is, how bad is it, actually? I would say that a lot, but then I realize I'm p…

As someone already said, parents used to be concerned that kids wouldn't be able to solve maths problems without a calculator, and it's the same problem, but there's a difference between solving problems _with_ LLMs, and having LLMs solve it _for you_. I don't see the former as that much of a problem.

Well the extent is much broader from a calculator vs an LLM. Why should I hire you if an agent can do it ? LLM is every job is a calculator and can be replaced. Spotify CEO stated on X that before asking for more headcount they have to justify not being able to do the job with an agent. So all the students who let the LLM do their assignment and learn basically nothing, what’s their value for a company to be hired ? The company will and is just using the agent as well …

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#386

Post by pja »

HPsquared wrote: post #372
deepsun wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Funnily enough, the best use of AI in education is to serve as exactly this kind of tutor. This is the future of education.

The promise of the expansion of this kind of tutorial teaching to everyone via AI is great. The problem is keeping students honest with themselves.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#387

Post by oerdier »

stevenhuang wrote: post #378
oerdier wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking is not a generic/standalone skill that you can practise targetedly. As in, critical thinking doesn't translate across knowledge domains. To think critically you need extensive knowledge of the domain in question; that's one reason why memorizing facts will always remain necessary, despite search engines and LLMs. At best what you can learn specifically regarding critical thinking are some rules of t…

I think you'd find many would disagree with each of those claims.

I hope they'll apply the critical thinking rule of thumb to check for themselves what modern research has to say on this!

Edit: And how can you critically assess if that research is any good? To do it well you need... domain knowledge.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#388

Post by namaria »

technoabsurdist wrote: post #84

I'm an undergrad at a T10 college. Walking through our library, I often notice about 30% of students have ChatGPT or Claude open on their screens. In my circle, I can't name a single person who doesn't heavily use these tools for assignments. What's fascinating, though, is that the most cracked CS students I know deliberately avoid using these tools for programming work. They understand the value in the struggle of s…

> the most cracked CS students I know deliberately avoid using these tools for programming work. They understand the value in the struggle

I think they are in the right path here

> they've automated their humanities, social sciences, and other major requirements using LLMs.

This worries me. If they struggle with these topics but don't see the value in that struggle, that is their prerogative to decide for themselves what is important to them. But I think more technically apt people who have low verbal reasoning skills, little knowledge of history, sociology, psychology, etc, is a net positive for society. So many of the problems with the current tech industry is the tendency to think everything is just a technical problem and being oblivious to the human aspects.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#389

Post by namaria »

proteal wrote: post #85

I’m about to graduate from a top business school with my MBA and it’s been wild seeing AI evolve over the last 2 years. GPT3 was pretty ass - yet some students would look you dead in the eyes with that slop and claim it as their own. Fast forward to last year when I complimented a student on his writing and he had to stop me - “bro this is all just AI.” I’ve used AI to help build out frameworks for essays and suggest…

I for one look forward to LLMs automating the work of MBAs.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#390

Post by sersi »

deepsun wrote: post #329
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.

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

That's also how it's done in almost all French engineering schools. You get open book tests with a small amount of relatively difficult questions and you have 3-4 hours to complete.

In some of the CS tests, coding by hand sucks a bit but to be honest, they're ok with pseudo code as long as you show you understand the concepts.

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