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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

#421

Post by seb1204 »

jmmcd wrote: post #381
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…

Yep, making time to sit down to do homework, forming an understanding of planning the doing part, forming good habits of doing them, knowing how to look up stuff, in a book index or on Wikipedia or by searching or asking AI. The expectation is still that some kind of text output needs to be found and then read, digested.

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

#422

Post by noitpmeder »

noitpmeder wrote: post #346
AlexCoventry wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better approach might be to get students to use AI as a writing coach. Get them to commit to a short handwritten essay during class, then use AI give them feedback on the essay. Their interaction with the AI and how they respond to the feedback becomes the assessment material. That's not compatible with the authors "Butlerian Jihad" ideology, though.

This is insane to me. Why not title the class "how to use AI?" Why not make this the title of every class? I see no future in education other than making homework completely ungraded, and putting 100% of the grade into airgapped exams. Sure, the pen and paper CS exam isn't reflective of a real world situation, but the universities need some way to objectively measure understanding once the pupil has been disconnected…

apologies, their oracle, trying to improve pronoun usages...

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

#423

Post by armchairhacker »

RHSeeger wrote: post #348
directevolve wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I expect the system will only catch a small fraction of the cheating that occurs. The main kind of cheating we need them to prevent is effective cheating - the kind that can meaningfully improve the cheater's score. Requiring cheaters to put their belongings in a locker, using proctor-provided resources, and being monitored in a proctor-provided room puts substantial limits on effective cheating. That's pretty much…

But it also only catches cheating on exams. For homework/projects, you can't really have that be in person.

My take:

- Make “homework” ungraded. Many college classes already do this, and it has been easy to cheat on it way before AI by sharing solutions. Knowledge is better measured in exams and competence in projects. My understanding is that homework is essentially just practice for exams, and it’s only graded so students don’t skip it then fail the exams; but presumably now students cheat on it then fail exams, and for students who don’t need as much practice it’s busywork.

- Make take-home projects complex and creative enough that they can’t be done by AI. Assign one large project with milestones throughout the semester. For example, in a web development class, have students build a website, importantly that is non-trivial and theoretically useful. If students can accomplish this in good quality with AI, then they can build professional websites so it doesn’t matter (the non-AI method is obsolete, like building a website without an IDE or in jQuery). Classes where a beyond-AI-quality project can’t be expected in reasonable time from students (e.g. in an intro course, students probably can’t make anything that AI couldn’t), don’t assign any take-home project.

- If exams (and maybe one large project) aren’t enough, make in-class assignments and projects, and put the lectures online to be watched outside class instead. There should be enough class time, since graded assignments are only to measure knowledge and competence; professors can still assign extra ungraded assignments and projects to help students learn.

In summary: undergraduate college’s purpose is to educate and measure knowledge and competence. Students’ knowledge and competence should be measured via in-class assignments/exams and, in later courses, advanced take-home projects. Students can be educated via ungraded out-of-class assignments/projects, as well as lectures, study sessions, tutoring, etc.

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

#424

Post by seb1204 »

analog31 wrote: post #173
jumploops wrote: post #55

A bit off-topic, but I think AI has the potential to supercharge learning for the students of the future. Similar to Montessori, LLMs can help students who wander off in various directions. I remember often being “stuck” on some concept (usually in biology and chemistry), where the teacher would hand-wave something as truth, this dismissing my request for further depth. Of course, LLMs in the current educational land…

>>> Of course, LLMs in the current educational landscape (homework-heavy) only benefit the students who are truly curious I think you hit on a major issue: Homework-heavy . What I think would benefit the truly curious is spare time . These things are at odds with one another. Present-day busy work could easily be replaced by occupying kids' attention with continual lessons that require a large quantity of low-quality…

Spare time, haha, most people nowadays have a hard time having some dead time. The habitual checking of socials or feeds has killed the mind wandering time. People feel uncomfortable or consiser life boring with the device induced dopamine fix. Corporations got us by the balls.

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

#425

Post by munksbeer »

protocolture wrote: post #251
marcus_holmes wrote: post #229

My essay-writing process for my MBA was: - decide what I wanted to say about the subject, from the set of opinions I already possess - search for enough papers that could support that position. Don't read the papers, just scan the abstracts. - write the essay. Scan the reference papers for the specific bit of it that best supported the point I want to make. There was zero learning involved in this process. The produc…

I literally wrote a friends psychology paper when I had no idea of the subject and they got a HD for it. All I did was follow the process you outlined. My mother used to do it as a service for foreign language students. They would record their lectures, and she would write their papers for them.

Confession. I became disillusioned with a teacher of a subject in school, who I was certain had taken a disliking to me.

I tested it by getting hold of a paper which had received an A from another school on the same subject, copying it verbatim and submitting it for my assignment. I received a low grade.

Despite confirming what I suspected, it somehow still wasn't a good feeling.

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

#426

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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…

Homework isn't about doing the homework, it's teaching you to learn and evidence that you have and can learn. Yeah you can have an AI do it just as much as you can have someone else do it, but that doesn't teach you anything and if you earn the paper at the end of it, it's effectively worthless.

Unis should adjust their testing practices so that their paper (and their name) doesn't become worthless. If AI becomes a skill, it should be tested, graded, and certified accordingly. That is, separate the computer science degree from the AI Assisted computer science degree.

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

#427

Post by seb1204 »

throwaway290 wrote: post #362
Aurornis wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If calculators are so good at math, is learning math itself useful? It’s the same old story with a new set of technology.

> If calculators are so good at math, is learning math itself useful? What's your answer? Surely it was proven to be "not useful"? I don't think I ever met a person who benefitted from knowing math now that everyone has a calculator in pocket. Other than maybe playing some games where if you do calculation on the fly you win

Well, if you don't know math because the calculator does it you would also have no understanding of the concepts e.g. addition, subtraction, whole numbers or fraction etc. so you would not know how to in use or what to do with a calculator. It's a tool that is useful to do something you know how it works faster.

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

#428

Post by baq »

razakel wrote: post #335
baq wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

real life first, math second. taking tests is a skill that must be learned, especially now with AI faking quite literally everything that can be shown on a screen. (unless your students are learning purely for the joy of it and not for having a chance to get hired anywhere.)

>taking tests is a skill that must be learned "I had to suffer so you must too."

"I'm hiring and want to see if his resume checks out"

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

#429

Post by aerhardt »

mountainb wrote: post #415
aerhardt wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Software Engineering degree from Harvard Extension and I had to take quite a few exams in physically proctored environments. I could very easily manage in Madrid and London. It is not too hard for either the institution or the student. I am now doing an Online MSc in CompSci at Georgia Tech. The online evaluation and proctoring is fine. I’ve taken one rather math-heavy course (Simulation) and it worked. I se…

Professional proctored testing centers exist in many locations around the world now. It's not that complicated to have a couple people at the front, a method for physically screening test-takers, providing lockers for personal possessions, providing computers for test administration, and protocols for checking multiple points of identity for each test taker. This hybrid model is vastly preferable to "true" remote tes…

That’s what I did at HES and it was fine. Reasonable and not particularly stressful.

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

#430

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

carlosjobim wrote: post #149
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The annoyance with 10-20% means that in order to be an "A" student you have to do all the homework instead of just ace the exams which is obnoxious if you actually know the material. Edge case, I know, but that last 20% is a ton of extra work.

You're there to pass and get your diploma. If you want to excel, there are other real venues for that ambition.

What if you want to get into grad school?
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