Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by username223 » Tue, May 27, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #455

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…

I think you've identified the main issue here: LLMs aren't destroying the University or the essay. LLMs are destroying the cheap University or essay. Cheap can mean a lot of things, like money or time or distance. But, if Universities want to maintain a standard, then they are going to have to work for it again. No more 300+ person freshman lectures (where everyone cheated anyways). No more take-home zoom exams. No m…

Believe it or not, 300-person freshman lectures can be done well. They just need a talented instructor who's willing to put in the prep, and good TAs leading sections. And if the university fosters the right culture, the students mostly won't cheat.

But yeah, if the professor is clearly checked out and only interested in his research, and the students are being told that the only purpose of their education is to get a piece of paper to show to potential employers, you'll get a cynical death-spiral.

(I've been on both sides of this, though back when copy-pasting from Wikipedia was the way to cheat.)

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

#472

Post by squigz » Tue, May 27, 2025, 3:16 PM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #470

squigz wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope by 'handwritten' you don't literally mean pen and paper?

Back when I was doing my BSc in Software Engineering, we had a teacher who did her Data Structure and Algorithms exams with pen and paper. On one of them, she basically wrote 4 coding problems (which would be solved in 4 short ~30 LOC). We had to write the answer with pen and paper, writing the whole program in C. And the teacher would score it by transcribing the verbatim text in her computer, and if it had one sing…

Yeah, this is absurd. And if you have poor handwriting, the chances of "syntax errors" goes up.

My above comment is getting downvoted, and it's honestly a bit baffling. I'd be furious if I were paying tens of thousands of dollars to receive a university-level education in software engineering in 2025... and I had to write programs with pen and paper. It is so far detached from the reality of, not only the industry, but the practice itself, so as to be utterly absurd.

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

#473

Post by thomastjeffery » Tue, May 27, 2025, 3:19 PM UTC

seethishat wrote: post #361

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…

Some US universities do this remotely via proctoring software. They require pencil and paper to be used with a laptop that has a camera. Some do mirror scans, room scans, hand scans, etc. The Georgia Tech OMS CS program used to do this for the math proofs course and algorithms (leet code). It was effective and scalable. However, the proctoring seems overly Orwellian, but I can understand the need due to cheating as w…

> seems overly Orwellian

Wow.

Maybe we should consider the possibility that this isn't a good idea? Just a bit? No? Just ignore how obviously comparable this is to the most famous dystopian fiction in literary history?

Just wow. If you're willing to do that, I don't know what to tell you.

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

#474

Post by keiferski » Tue, May 27, 2025, 3:22 PM UTC

bsenftner wrote: post #439

keiferski wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities don’t pick professors because they are good teachers, they pick them for their research publications. The fact that some professors end up being good teachers is almost coincidental.

For the most part, most universities, that is true. I was dissatisfied with the quality of my undergrad college education, and had the resources to try other universities. After two state schools, I figured out that Boston is The University City with 700,000 college students in the larger Boston area when I attended Boston University, MIT and Harvard. I found Boston's over sized undergraduate population created a cre…

Yeah at that level you’re basically optimizing for all around excellence, and it’s hard to be a leader in your field without also being deeply interested in it at all levels — and being reasonably charismatic.

I’ve only taken classes at state schools, and my experience was that I’d often get a professor that was clearly brilliant at publishing but lacked even the most rudimentary teaching skills. Which is insightful in its own way…just not optimal for teaching.

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

#475

Post by thomastjeffery » Tue, May 27, 2025, 3:24 PM UTC

valiant55 wrote: post #43

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…

Capitalism and the constant thirst for growth is killing society. Since when did universities care almost solely about renevnue and growth?

When it was generally accepted by our society that the goal of all work is victory, not success. Capitalism frames everything as a competition, even when collaboration is obviously superior. Copyright makes this an explicit rule.

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

#476

Post by tgv » Tue, May 27, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #455

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…

I think you've identified the main issue here: LLMs aren't destroying the University or the essay. LLMs are destroying the cheap University or essay. Cheap can mean a lot of things, like money or time or distance. But, if Universities want to maintain a standard, then they are going to have to work for it again. No more 300+ person freshman lectures (where everyone cheated anyways). No more take-home zoom exams. No m…

10 is a small number. There's a middle ground. When I studied, we had lectures for all students, and a similar amount of time in "work groups," as they were called. That resembled secondary education: one teacher, around 30 students, but those classes were mainly focused on applying the newly acquired knowledge, making exercises, asking questions, checking homework, etc. Later, I taught such classes for programming 101, and it was perfectly doable. Work group teachers were also responsible for reviewing their students' tests.

But that commercially oriented boards are ruining education, that's a given. That they would stoop to this level is a bit surprising.

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

#477

Post by plantwallshoe » Tue, May 27, 2025, 3:33 PM UTC

I’m enrolled in an undergraduate CS program as an experienced (10 year) dev. I find AI incredibly useful as a tutor.

I usually ask it to grade my homework for me before I turn it in. I usually find I didn’t really understand some topic and the AI highlights this and helps set my understanding straight. Without it I would have just continued on with an incorrect understanding of the topic for 2-3 weeks while I wait for the assignment to be graded. As an adult with a job and a family this is incredibly helpful as I do homework at 10pm and all the office hours slots are in the middle of my workday.

I do admit though it is tough figuring out the right amount to struggle on my own before I hit the AI help button. Thankfully I have enough experience and maturity to understand that the struggle is the most important part and I try my best to embrace it. Myself at 18 would definitely not have been using AI responsibly.

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

#478

Post by tgv » Tue, May 27, 2025, 3:34 PM UTC

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

you still have to learn. The goal of learning is not to do a job. It's to enrich you, broaden your mind, and it takes work on your part.

In similar reasoning, you could argue that you can take a car to go anywhere, or let everything be delivered on your doorstep, so why should I my child learn to walk?

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

#479

Post by JoshTriplett » Tue, May 27, 2025, 3:34 PM UTC

falcor84 wrote: post #311

crystal_revenge wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe parent is making a more general point, and as someone who would also be considered "neurodivergent" I would agree with that point. There were plenty of times growing up where special consideration would have been a huge help for me, but I'm deeply grateful that I learned in a world where "sometimes life is unfair" was considered a valuable lesson. In my adult life I had a coworker who constantly demanded th…

I really like your take on this, but disagree with your conclusion. I do think that trying to "make life more fair" is essentially the main goal of civilization, codified as early (and probably much earlier) as The Code of Hammurabi. My take is that we need to tread a thin line such that we teach young people to accept that life is inherently unfair, while at the same time doing what we can as a society to make it mo…

> My take is that we need to tread a thin line such that we teach young people to accept that life is inherently unfair, while at the same time doing what we can as a society to make it more fair.

Agreed. Teaching that life is unfair (and how to succeed despite that) is an important lesson. But there's an object-meta distinction that's important to make there. Don't teach people that life is unfair by being unfair to them in their education and making them figure it out themselves. Teach a class on the topic and what they're likely to encounter in society, a couple times over the course of their education.

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

#480

Post by mwigdahl » Tue, May 27, 2025, 3:36 PM UTC

paulluuk wrote: post #301

rKarpinski wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But every year a small handful of dum-dums made it all the way to exam without having connected two dots, and I have to fail them and tell them that the three semesters they have wasted so far without any teachers calling their bullshit is a waste of life Wow.

Yeah, I've had teachers like that, who tell you that you're a "waste of life" and "what are you doing here?" and "you're dumb", so motivational. I guess this "tough love" attitude helps for some people? But I think mostly it's just that people think it works for _other_ people, but rarely people think that this works when applied to themselves. Like, imagine the school administration walking up to this teacher and sa…

You are misrepresenting what the original poster said. He did not say that he actually called kids "dum-dums" or that the kids were, themselves, a waste of life. He said that using AI to blast through assignments without learning anything from them was a waste of life.

Frankly I applaud that approach. Classes are to convey knowledge, even if the student only gives a shit about the diploma at the end of the road. At least someone cares enough to tell these students the truth about where that approach is going to take them in life.