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Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

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Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#521

Post by kenjackson »

matwood wrote: post #124
HanayamaTriplet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the removal of standardized testing in 2021 was the real reason, then why is there a sudden spike of failure rates happening right now?

It takes time to work through the system and it has been steadily getting worse. It was already discussed on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48309233

That's not what this actual data shows. While there has been an increase math deficiency, the increase in failure rates happened recently and probably only partially related to the math preparation issue.

I think we will make a major mistake if we think math preparation fixes this - especially in CS classes where AI literally calls out to be used for projects. And it certainly doesn't explain me hearing the same problems are happening at MIT -- they just are being a bit wiser about "catching students" (or rather not doing so).

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#522

Post by mysteria »

jplusequalt wrote: post #438
phantom784 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read a few years ago about a teacher (I think highschool) who put his lectures on YouTube for students to view in their own time and then used the in class hours for interaction, questions, tests. That seems like a smart approach. It reverses the traditional model of "lecture in class, homework outside of class".

How does this scale in practice? We already require students be at school for 7 hours a day. If they now have to watch 3-4 hours of lectures at home every day, then students are left with little time to do anything else. What about those students who don't have stable home environments? How are they supposed to find multiple hours a day to watch lectures? How does this address the underlying issue of students off loa…

From my experience it works fine if it's one class that's doing it. If multiple classes are doing it then like you said it's literally a couple extra hours a day watching lectures and most students end up skipping them, forcing the instructor to end up teaching during class time anyways.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#523

Post by eunos »

ItsBob wrote: post #393

They worry me. A lot. My son is 15 and I use Google Family Link to control what he does on his phone: it's pretty open for the most part (I receive notifications of installs) but Gemini is a hard-ban. We've spoken at length of the dangers. He says his pals use LLMs frequently and I suspect that's the reason for their test scores: some of them are in the 20% - 40% range for tests whereas my son is 80%+ because he stud…

> Gemini is a hard-ban.

Sounds like you would hard-ban your son from using Internet if it was only introduced 5 years ago

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#524

Post by eunos »

Jtarii wrote: post #444
rybosworld wrote: post #419

If you watch old videos of tradesmen using basic hand tools like hammers, you'll find examples of skill/dexterity with the tool that I think don't exist today at all except maybe in communities like the Amish. I think it's true that we collectively lose something akin to beauty every time technology advances. But usually some new set of skills that have beauty emerge. If LLMs end up being the pneumatic nail gun for t…

It seems pretty clear that LLMs are going to be extremely corrosive to culture in general.

No more corrosive than introduction of internet

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#525

Post by mywittyname »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #164
somenameforme wrote: post #39

The likely 'real' reason is hidden in one paragraph within the article and has nothing to do with the implication of the eye-catching title: "Both Garcia and Ranade have joined more than 1,300 UC faculty in signing a petition calling for the reinstatement of ACT and SAT standardized testing scores for STEM admissions in the UC system. The petition and its accompanying open letter detail similar concerns with students…

I'm not American so maybe I am missing some context. But how did admissions work without test scores?

It varies by school. I went to a (low ranking) state engineering school and it was guaranteed entry if a prospect met the following criteria:

- Had high school diploma (or equivalent).

- Resident of the state for >6 months (student or one parent).

- ACT score of something like 21. With provisional admission granted to students with scores below, until they completed all first year engineering courses with a B or better.

So likely they just dropped the concept of provisional admission. All that did was open up classes for registration a week later to ensure other students were able to get their preferred class openings. Provisional had to take the scrap classes, like the four-hour, once a week Calc class on Friday night.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#526

Post by vector_spaces »

I agree that AI is likely a driving force here, but it is also likely not the only driving force. COVID likely played a devastating role, along with curriculum changes in high school, reactionary cultural shifts towards anti-intellectualism, and broader declines in literacy that have been in progress for a while now. It would be interesting to see data for the past 5-10 years or so.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#527

Post by thewebguyd »

conductr wrote: post #464
cj wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know far more about muscle building and retention than you I am a competitive bodybuilder… > I train just as hard to maintain them as I did to get them there. Are you enhanced? Were you enhanced when you built the 20” arms? If so, yes I agree. Edit: With 20" arms, there's nearly 0% chance you're natural. You can't compare your enhanced experience to naturals.

Chiming into this little tiff to say I think bulk muscle is a bad analogy in the first place. It’s more akin to a muscle memory/skill. Something like golf is a better analogy. If you took any golfer, at any level, and had them refrain from golfing for 3 years. I feel pretty confident asserting they would all perform worse than they had. Their skill is diminished.

They would also likely get that skill back faster than a brand new golfer.

I noticed it myself with cycling. Took 8 years off the bike, when I started up again I was nearly back to my old FTP in about 2 months despite starting from basically zero. Muscle memory is real, where I am now as a returning cyclist would take a pure beginner cyclist at least 4+ months to get to, fitness wise.

That said, you do have to work somewhat hard to maintain. With cycling, just 2 weeks off the bike is enough to see a VO2 max drop of anywhere from 4 to 7%. After just 4 weeks, your glycogen storage capacity decreases and you start rapidly losing fitness. After 2 months, you are basically now out of shape.

Detraining happens faster than most people think. And therein lies the danger with over reliance on LLMs for your cognitive skills. Detraining there happens just as fast, skills atrophy in a matter of weeks, not months or years.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#528

Post by lokar »

While this is worse in degree, it’s not new.

I TA’d in the early 2000s and the first day students were warned that we used automatic analysis to find programming assignments that were similar to previous submissions. And renaming things, moving them around etc would not help.

We caught and failed cheaters every term.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#529

Post by aidenn0 »

mdorazio wrote: post #31
aidenn0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody know how many students take CS 10 in a typical spring semester?

I believe it’s still a single section, so probably around 250 (at least that’s about what it was when I was there a long time ago). Compared to the 1000+ who take 61A.

So that's more than 10%, and (assuming the reporting is accurate) this was on an exam, not homework...

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#530

Post by usui »

arjie wrote: post #473
ap99 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who even makes the decision to drop having a standard bar to verify students? And what possible benefit would that have?

The book SAT Wars has arguments for and against and the striking thing for me was that some in admissions believe in a concept called crafting a class : the applicants are input into the admissions officer’s artisanal contribution to producing a class that they believe would be good for the university to have. The idea of a standard bar and so on does sound like it would interfere with such a process. I always did fi…

America's vapid fixation with race is ridiculous especially since it uses race as a proxy for social stratum when it could just be addressing class issues directly instead. If only there were some history of forms that parents fill out every year showing their income to the government that is more-or-less vetted to some degree—too bad we don't have such a thing that students could use to prove social stratum! Plus, what the hell is race anyway? An unethical tip one could give to university applicants would be to claim membership to the most beneficial group because it's not like university admissions has any way of proving your "race". Construct any fabricated story that'll get the most approval and maximize your chances of getting into a top university.
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