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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

#651

Post by chipsrafferty »

voilavilla wrote: post #635
Balgair wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even before LLMs, if you walked into any frat and asked to see their test bank, you'd get thousands of files. Though not technically cheating, having every test a professor ever gave was a huge advantage. Especially since most profs would just reuse tests and HWs without any changes anyway. To my generation, it wasn't that cheating was a 'thing' as much as it was impossible to avoid. Profs were so lazy that any semi-…

Seems to me that studying a collection of every test over the years, without knowing what questions will be on the exam is... actually learning? >_<

It's a lot easier to memorize AABBCCBDDADBADABCCABAD than the actual information.

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

#652

Post by chipsrafferty »

tgv wrote: post #476
Balgair wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1…

All of my classes with a dozen students were better than all of my classes with 2 dozen. My favorite class had 7 students.

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

#653

Post by armchairhacker »

kaashif wrote: post #642
armchairhacker wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO exams should be on the easier side and not require much computing (mainly knowledge, and not unnecessary memorization). They should be a baseline, not a challenge for students who understand the material. Students are more accurately measured via long, take-home projects, which are complicated enough that they can’t be entirely done by AI. Unless the class is something that requires quick thinking on the job, in…

> They should be a baseline, not a challenge for students who understand the material. You've made this normative statement but not explained why. I think exams should not require huge amounts of computation (I agree) but should contain a range of questions - from easy to very difficult - so that the best and average students can be differentiated.

Specifically, I think they should minimally penalize students who know the material and could apply it professionally, but don't do well on exams in general. Otherwise GPA isn't a useful metric for employers* (and I don't know who else would it be a metric for), because the best students are the best test-takers, not the best employees.

So, maybe not a baseline. The exam could have some difficult knowledge-based questions, as long as that "knowledge" when memorized would make the student a better professional; or if the exam is open-book, it can have knowledge that would be difficult to search for. It shouldn't require students to memorize obscure things that are unlikely to be used professionally (e.g. unimportant dates for history, or complex formulas for math that one would look up or reference by name), because then you're prioritizing students who handle rare edge-cases over those who probably accomplish more amortized.

* "Employer" and "professional" also including "PI" and "academic"

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

#654

Post by foxglacier »

patrickmay wrote: post #506
foxglacier wrote: post #138

Schools need to re-think what the purpose of essays was in the first place and re-invent homework to suit the existance of LLMs. If it's to understand the material, then skip the essay writing part and have them do a traditional test. If it's to be able to write, they probably don't need that skill anymore so skip the essay writing. If it's to get used to researching on their own, find a way to have them do that whic…

"Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is." -- Leslie Lamport Writing is an essential skill.

Writing well requires both having organized thinking and writing skills to carry the reader's thinking and feelings along where you want them to go. You can put your organized thinking into an LLM, perhaps as bullet points or dense explanations and it can do the writing skills part. You just need to be able to read well enough to evaluate the output, which is a lot easier.

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

#655

Post by const_cast »

squigz wrote: post #606
xandrius wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The professor is not actually compiling your code, the idea is to know whether you can pseudo code a solution, of course.

> if it had one single error (missed semicolon) or didn't compile for some reason, the whole thing was considered wrong From GP

That's exceedingly rare I imagine, and stupid.

I had to hand-write 90% of my programming exams. Nobody cared about semicolons, they cared if your algorithm worked. You didn't even really need to program in C, just something that looked close enough.

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

#656

Post by tgv »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #632
tgv wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And learning does do that. It is an economic compromise, though. Most of us have average (or worse) teachers. I have the feeling that that's what your arguing against, not learning per se. > LLMs are here to call that bluff Students have been copying from e.g. encyclopedias for as long as anyone can remember. That doesn't mean that an encyclopedia removes the need to learn. Even rote memorization has its use. But it'…

The bluff I'm referring to here is the measurement. The notion that an educational experience can be meaningfully measured, and that such a measurement can be guaranteed well enough to prevent uneducated people from obtaining fraudulent certification. I don't see learning as a compromise with economics. I see each as entirely irrelevant to the other. Certification is not a tool for learning; it is a tool for capitali…

Without school and tests, the majority of the people won't learn a thing. They are too dumb, selfish and lazy to do so. They need to be coerced into learning. The system may not be the rosy image you have in mind, but human nature makes it almost unavoidable.

> it is a tool for capitalism

All communist states had normal schools and certification. Without it, the state would collapse.

We're not completely free agents, and we can't be. That's one of those Rousseau-ian delusions. We need to cooperate to form a society, and it needs to be fairly strong in order to thrive. Hence, education.

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

#657

Post by belZaah »

datahack wrote: post #146

There is a tremendous lack of understandings between the genx and millennial teachers and the way they see and use AI, and how younger people are using it. Kids use AI like an operating system, seamlessly integrated into their workflows, their thinking, their lives. It’s not a tool they pick up and put down; it’s the environment they navigate, as natural as air. To them, AI isn’t cheating—it’s just how you get things…

I teach Enterpise Architecture on graduate level. I would absolutely not mind people using AI as an OS or an information source or a therapist. I would not mind them looking things up in an encyclopedia, so why mind them using AI.

What I do mind is: - the incredible generic slop AI generates. Let’s improve communication, make a better strategy, improve culture. - the unwavering belief in AI. I tell my students, why using AI will not give them a good grade. They get a case solved by all major LLMs, graded, with thorough feedback and a bad grade. I tell them, that literally writing anything at all as the answer would not give a much worse answer. And still they go and use AI and get bad grades. - the incredible intellectual laziness it seems to foster. I criticize TOGAF in my course (let’s not get into that) and explicitly state it to be outside of the course material. Repeatedly, in writing and verbally. And what do the students do? They ask a LLM, that inevitably starts referring to TOGAF. And the answer is copied in the case analysis without even an attempt to actually utilize TOGAF or to justify the choice made

My students actually get worse grades and are worse off in terms of being able to solve actual real-life problems, because they use AI. Getting a degree should increase their intellectual capabilities but people actively choose not to, thus wasting their time. And that’s I’m not OK with.

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

#659

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

msgodel wrote: post #597
Balgair wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real universities should continue to exist for their cutting-edge research and tutoring from very talented people, because that can't be commodified. At least until/if AI reaches expert competence (in not just knowledge but application), but then we don't need jobs either. Okay, woah, I hadn't thought of that. I'm sitting here thinking that education for it's own sake is one of the reasons that we're trying to get…

I'm an autodidact. I've found leaked copies of university degree plans, pirated and read textbooks on all kinds of subjects, talk to experts for fun when I can etc. American universities mostly get in the way of doing this sort of thing. You need a degree to be credentialed so you can get your "3 years of experience" that lets you apply for jobs. That's pretty much all its for these days.

> I'm an autodidact. I've found leaked copies of university degree plans, pirated and read textbooks on all kinds of subjects, talk to experts for fun when I can etc.

The last decade+ has been a goldmine for this, especially in computing-related topics. Between textbooks, school course sites, MOOCs etc, there's lifetimes of stuff out there.

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

#660

Post by Macha »

chipsrafferty wrote: post #651
voilavilla wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me that studying a collection of every test over the years, without knowing what questions will be on the exam is... actually learning? >_<

It's a lot easier to memorize AABBCCBDDADBADABCCABAD than the actual information.

Did you have a lot of multiple choice tests in higher education? I know Americans used them a lot in high school, but didn't realise that extended to college.
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