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How University Students Use Claude

anthropic.com

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Re: How University Students Use Claude

#411

Post by fransje26 »

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…

> For instance, I'm not too concerned about my child's ability to write very legibly (most writing is done on computers), spell very well (spell check keeps us professional), reading a map to get around (GPS), etc

That sounds like setting-up your child for failure, to put it bluntly.

How do you want to express a thought clearly if you already fail at the stage of thinking about words clearly?

You start with a fuzzy understanding of words, which you delegated to a spellchecker, added to a fuzzy understanding of writing, which you've delegated to a computer, combined with a fuzzy memory, which you've delegated to a search engine, and you expect that not to impact your child's ability to create articulate thoughts and navigate them clearly?

To add irony to the situation, the physical navigation skills have, themselves, been delegated to a GPS..

Brains are like muscles, they atrophy when not used.

Reverse that course before it's too late, or suffer (and have someone else suffer) the consequences.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#412

Post by Ekaros »

iNic wrote: post #399
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…

The solution is making all homework optional and having an old-school end of semester exam.

You can always give extra points for homework which then compensate from lacking in tests. If you get perfect points in test, well maximum grade. If less than perfect, you can up grade with those extra points. Fair for everyone.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#413

Post by casey2 »

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…

>I'd work on something for an hour before I'd have an epiphany and figure out what was wrong. But that struggling was ultimately necessary to really learn the concepts.

This is entirely your opinion. We don't know how the brain learns nor do we know if intelligence can be "taught"

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#414

Post by Ekaros »

codedokode wrote: post #255
crooked-v wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> self-built building by somebody who's neither engineer nor architect That is exactly how our ancestors built houses. Also a traditional wooden house doesn't look complicated.

>Law § 229 of Hammurabi's Code

>If a house builder built a house for a man but did not secure/fortify his work so that the house he built collapsed and caused the death of the house owner, that house builder will be executed.

If even professionals did get it wrong so often that there had to be law for it... Yeah, maybe it is not that simple.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#415

Post by lelanthran »

chii wrote: post #327
foxglacier wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Aren't students already allowed to fail?

As a comment upthread said, let them cheat on the take home as much as they want to, they're still going to fail the exam.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#416

Post by bluehatbrit »

I'd be very curious to know how these results would differ across other LLM providers and education levels.

My wife is a secondary school teacher (UK), teaching KS3, GCSE, and A level. She says that most of her students are using Snapchat LLM as their first port of call for stuff these days. Many of the students also talk about ChatGPT but she had never heard of Claude or Anthropic until I shared this article with her today.

My guess would be that usage is significantly higher across all subject, and that direct creation is also higher. I'd also assume that these habits will be carried with them into University over the coming years.

It would be great to see this as an annual piece, a bit like the StackOverflow survey. I can't imagine we'll ever see similar research being written up by companies like Snapchat but it would be fascinating to compare it.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#417

Post by chii »

PeterStuer wrote: post #51
vunderba wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There's a big difference between a student having a back-and-forth dialogue with Claude around "the extent to which feudalism was one of the causes of the French Revolution." , versus another student using their smartphone to take a snapshot of the actual homework assignment, pasting it into Claude and calling it a day.

From what I could observe, the latter is endemic amongst high school students. And don't kid yourself. For many it is just a step up from copy/pasting the first Google result. They never could be arsed to learn how to input their assignments into Wolfram Alpha. It was always the ux/ui effort that held them back.

THe question is would those students have done any better or worse if there hadn't been LLM for them to "copy" off?

In other words, is the school certificaftion meant to distinguish those who genuinely learnt, or was it merely meant to signal (and thus, those who used to copy pre-llm are going to do the same, and thus reach the same level of certification regardless of whether they learnt or not)?

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#418

Post by inejge »

shinycode wrote: post #385
Stubbs wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?…

> 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.

Spotify CEO is channeling The Two Bobs from Office Space: "What are you actually doing here?" Just in a nastier way, with a kind of prisoner's dilemma on top. If you can get by with an agent, fine, you won't bother him. If you can't, why can't you? Should we replace you with someone who can, or thinks they can?

Spotify CEO is not his employees' friend.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#419

Post by marksbrown »

aj7 wrote: post #222
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…

I’m a physicist. I can align and maximize ANY laser. I don’t even think when doing this task. Long hours of struggle, 50 years ago. Without struggle there is nothing. You can bullshit your way in. But you will be ejected.

A master blacksmith can shoe a horse an' all. Laser alignment is also a solved problem with a machine. Just because something can be done by hand does not mean it has any intrinsic value.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#420

Post by chii »

_tom_ wrote: post #321

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 nee…

> It's like expecting them to do arithmetic by hand. No one does.

But those who traditionally learnt arithmetics have had this training, which _enables_ higher order thinking.

Being reliant on AI to do this means they would not have had that same level of training. It could prevent them from being able to synthesize new patterns or recognize them (and so if the AI also cannot do the same, you get stagnation).

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