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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

#51

Post by AlexCoventry »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #2

I predict that asking students to hand-write assignments is not going to go well. Unfortunately, universities built on the consumer model (author teaches at Arizona State) are incentivized to listen to student feedback over the professor’s good intentions.

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.

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

#52

Post by anonymousDan »

solresol wrote: post #21

I have been wrestling with this too. I only see two options: no tech university or AI wrangling university. https://solresol.substack.com/p/you-can-no-longer-set-an-und...

Not sure I agree with either/or. In person assessments are still pretty robust. I think an ideal university will teach both with a clear division between them (e.g. whether a particular assessment or module allows AI). What I'm currently struggling with is how to design an assessment in which the student is allowed to use AI - how do I actually assess it? Where should the bar actually be? Can it be relative to peers? Does this reward students willing to pay for more advanced AI?

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

#53

Post by __loam »

FinnLobsien wrote: post #11
catigula wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your intentions but I'm skeptical even this solves the problem. Realistically I think we're just moving away from knowledge-work and efforts to resuscitate it are just varying levels of triage for a bleeding limb. In the actual workplace with people making hundreds of thousands a year (the top echelon of what your class is trying to prepare students for) I'm not seeing output increase with AI tools so cl…

What do you view as coming after knowledge work? Do you think we'll see a resurgence of physical, in-person work? Not rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious and could see that being a real scenario.

Digging people out of the codebases they're going to shit out with this technology.

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

#54

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

bee_rider wrote: post #42
ryandrake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe schools and universities need to stop considering homework to be evidence of subject matter mastery. Grading homework never made sense to me. What are you measuring, really, and how confident are you of that measurement? You can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. Universities need to accept that AI exists, and adjust their operations accordingly.

Grading homework has two reasonable objectives: Provide an incentive for students to do the thing they should be doing anyway. Give an opportunity to provide feedback on the assignment. It is totally useless as an evaluation mechanic, because of course the students that want to can just cheat. It’s usually pretty small, right? IIRC when I did tutoring we only gave like 10-20% for the aggregate homework grade.

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.

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

#55

Post by jumploops »

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 landscape (homework-heavy) only benefit the students who are truly curious…

My hope is that, with new teaching methods/styles, we can unlock (or just maintain!) the curiosity inherent in every pupil.

(If anyone knows of a tool like this, where an LLM stays on a high-level trajectory of e.g. teaching trigonometry, but allows off-shoots/adventures into other topical nodes, I’d love to know about it!)

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

#56

Post by jofla_net »

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…

Thank you for not giving in. The slide downhill is so ravenous and will consume so much of our future until the wise intervene.

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

#57

Post by TimorousBestie »

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…

The last thing I need when researching a hard problem is an interlocutor who might lie to me, make up convincing citations to nowhere, and tell me more or less what I want to hear.

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

#58

Post by johnea »

One of the most offensive words in the anthropomophization of LLMs is: hallucinate.

It's not only an anthropomorphism, it's also a euphemism.

A correct interpretation of the word would imply that the LLM has some fantastical vision that it mistakes for reality. What utter bullsh1t.

Let's just use the correct word for this type of output: wrong.

When the LLM generates a sequence of words, that may or may not be grammatically correct, but infers a state or conclusion that is not factually correct; lets state what actually happened: the LLM generated text was WRONG.

It didn't take a trip down Alice's rabbit hole, it just put words together into a stream that inferred a piece of information that was incorrect, it was just WRONG.

The euphemistic aspect of using this word is a greater offense than the anthropomorphism, because it's painting some cutesy picture of what happened, instead of accurately acknowledging that the s/w generated an incorrect result. It's covering up for the inherent short comings of the tech.

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

#59

Post by TimorousBestie »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #51
TimorousBestie wrote: post #2

I predict that asking students to hand-write assignments is not going to go well. Unfortunately, universities built on the consumer model (author teaches at Arizona State) are incentivized to listen to student feedback over the professor’s good intentions.

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.

“Butlerian Jihad” ideology is definitely overselling it.

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

#60

Post by AStonesThrow »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #59
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.

“Butlerian Jihad” ideology is definitely overselling it.

How about Habakkuk chapter 2, or Daniel chapter XIV?

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/habakkuk/2?18

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/daniel/14?23

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