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Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

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

#381

Post by jmmcd »

ghusto wrote: post #374

I've always though that the education system was broken and next to worthless. I've never felt that teachers ever tried to _teach_ me anything, certainly not how to think. In fact I saw most attempts at thought squashed because they didn't fit neatly into the syllabus (and so couldn't be graded). The fact that AI can do your homework should tell you how much your homework is worth. Teaching and learning are collabora…

> The fact that AI can do your homework should tell you how much your homework is worth.

A lot of people who say this kind of thing have, frankly, a very shallow view of what homework is. A lot of homework can be easily done by AI, or by a calculator, or by Wikipedia, or by looking up the textbook. That doesn't invalidate it as homework at all. We're trying to scaffold skills in your brain. It also didn't invalidate it as assessment in the past, because (eg) small kids don't have calculators, and (eg) kids who learn to look up the textbook are learning multiple skills in addition to the knowledge they're looking up. But things have changed now.

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

#382

Post by jmmcd »

ccppurcell wrote: post #330
sshine wrote: post #69

I teach computer science / programming, and I don't know what a good AI policy is. On the one hand, I use AI extensively for my own learning, and it's helping me a lot. On the other hand, it gets work done quickly and poorly. Students mistake mandatory assignments for something they have to overcome as effortlessly as possible. Once they're past this hurdle, they can mind their own business again. To them, AI is not…

If there is another course where students design their own programming language, maybe you could use the best of the previous year's. That way LLMs are unlikely to be able to (easily) produce correct syntax. Just a thought from someone who teaches in a totally different neck of the mathematical/computational woods.

Modern LLMs can one-shot code in a totally new language, if you provide the language manual. And you have to provide the language manual, because otherwise how can the students learn the language.

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

#383

Post by Telemakhos »

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…

A PhD was historically a teaching degree: that’s what the D stands for.

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

#384

Post by raverbashing »

Telemakhos wrote: post #383
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…

A PhD was historically a teaching degree: that’s what the D stands for.

No?

PhD - Philosophy Doctor

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

#385

Post by iwanttocomment »

Super_Jambo wrote: post #265
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…

Once you're an adult some of the best lessons come from having bad teachers.

Adult here! No.

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

#386

Post by addcommitpush »

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…

I mean this seems a solved problem: hand-and-paper written onsite exams + blackboard-and-chalk oral onsite exams. If this is too costly (is it? many countries manage), make students take them less often.

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

#387

Post by alabastervlog »

Aeolun wrote: post #117
JoshTriplett wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life doesn't tend to take place under exam conditions, either.

The important parts of life (like interviews) do.

It’s really just interviews, and even those are nothing like any exam I’ve ever taken. They’re closest, in terms of the kind of stress and the skills required to look good, to some kind of solo public speaking performance.

… which most people come out of 17+ years of school having done very little of, with basically a phobia of it, and being awful at it.

They are probably something like oral exams that a few universities use heavily, or the teaching practices of many elite prep schools.

[edit] oh and interviews in most industries aren’t like that. Tech is especially grueling in the interview phase.

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

#388

Post by wrp »

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 ?

The Open University in the UK started in 1969. Their staff have a reputation for good interaction with students, and I have seen very high quality teaching materials produced there. I believe they have always operated on the basis of remote teaching but on-site evaluation. The Open University sounds like an all-round success story and I'm surprised it isn't mentioned more in discussions of remote education.

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

#389

Post by intended »

CalRobert wrote: post #329
throwaway2037 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 play…

Then there's Europe, where making it easy to get a master's degree just let to jobs requiring people to waste time getting yet another unneeded degree.

This entire situation is something that is predictable, and I have personally called it out years ago - not because of some unique ability, but because this is what happened in India and China decades upon decades ago.

There’s only so many jobs which have you a good salary.

So everyone had to become a doctor lawyer or engineer. Business degrees were seen as washouts.

Even for the job of a peon, you had to be educated.

So people followed incentives and got degrees - in any way or form they could.

This meant that degrees became a measure, and they were then ruthlessly optimized for, till they stopped having any ability to indicate that people were actually engineers.

So people then needed more degrees and so on - to distinguish their fitness amongst other candidates.

Education is what liberal arts colleges were meant to provide - but this worked only in an economy that could still provide employment for all the people who never wanted to be engineers, lawyers or doctors.

This mess will continue constantly, because we simply cannot match/sort humans, geographies, skills, and jobs well enough - and verifiably.

Not everyone is meant to be a startup founder. Or a doctor. Or a plumber, or a historian or an architect or an archaeologist.

It’s a jobs market problem, and has been this way ever since the American economy wasn’t able to match people with money for their skills.

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

#390

Post by stackedinserter »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #355
ninetyninenine wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is universal. I’ve had largely the same experience. There’s several reasons for this. 1. Stupider people are better teachers. Smart people are too smart to have any empathic experience on what it’s like to not get something. They assume the world is smart like them so they glaze over topics they found trivial but most people found confusing. 2. They don’t need to teach. If the student body is so smart then the s…

I did once have a Physics lecturer say " When I took Quantum Mechanics back in my undergrad, I got an A but didn't actually understand anything" and then in the same lecture 20 minutes later: "What part of this do you not understand?" when the entire class was just blankly looking at the whiteboard.

Seriously, what so non-understandable in first 20 minutes of QM?
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