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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

#741

Post by WalterBright »

10000truths wrote: post #693
wffurr wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The results are nice and I use them. I haven't seen your presentations, so I can't speak to them. But I do know at work there's a lot more illustrations in docs and presentations and such, and they almost all have an AI art "tell". I find them grating and distracting from the actual content. Very rarely do they add anything useful to the doc other than the knowledge that the owner burned some GPU time and tokens f…

That's because of people who treat AI like a magical "give me a finished product" button. Someone whipping up PowerPoint slides tends to care more about saving time than maintaining quality - the (usually watermarked) stock photos of yore weren't exactly the zenith of artistic presentation either. Like any other tool, the quality of output is proportional to the quality of input. You'll get much better results if you…

An example. The upper right drawing replaced the hand-drawn much cruder version I did 20 years go.

https://dlang.org/spec/iasm.html

I was quite pleased with the improvement.

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

#742

Post by octoberfranklin »

Auracle wrote: post #604
jordanb wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Google Translate to not learn French in collage. Fortunately for me it was bad enough I had to carefully review all its outputs, but that still didn't help and I managed to pass two semesters without ever developing even basic language skills. Something radical needs to be done. When I was in high school there were still a lot of "no calculator" restrictions in my math classes that I chaffed at because I hated…

I wish that would have worked for me - we had oral tests. 2 years of French in high school and one semester at college - what an absolute waste of time. How much French do I know now? Basically none. The same goes for everyone in my life that did Spanish instead in high school. Part of what we could do during this upset is re-prioritize.

Wow, really?

I took four years of Spanish in high school, and thirty-ish years later I can hold basic conversations with people, ask for things, answer their questions.

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

#743

Post by rahimnathwani »

jventura wrote: post #676
rahimnathwani wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So all groups outsourced their thinking to an LLM. Will they have learned anything they can apply to different types of projects in future?

Not in the same level, see my other comments..

I think we're using two standards without naming the difference.

- "Responsible for the code", i.e. understands it, can explain it, can modify it on request, is the right bar for a working engineer using an LLM to go faster. But it's the wrong bar for a student, because in a course the deliverable isn't the point, the practice is.

I presume that as course like 'Parallel Computing' exists to build the habits of reasoning about decomposition, contention, race conditions, strategy tradeoffs. Those habits come from doing the reps, the same way you don't learn to write by reading good prose. Your two "successful" groups outsourced exactly the reps the course is (or should be) there to build.

Being able to follow and tweak a solution proves comprehension, but comprehension is a much lower bar than producing the solution.

Your students may understand this particular solution well enough to explain it. But did they learn enough that they could tackle a different problem with a different shape, without using an LLM?

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

#745

Post by insane_dreamer »

amiga386 wrote: post #714
insane_dreamer wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a Berkeley CS class, not a remedial math class.

I'm suggesting the problem is not limited to Berkeley. They both show the same underlying issue, there's a growing number of students attending university without the prerequisite maths skills they need to succeed. It seems they're now at the point where the sheer number of students that need improved maths skills overwhelms the staff, resulting in them failing.

I agree it's not limited to Cal.

But my point was that while you might expect remedial math students to fail (they're in remedial math for a reason), you shouldn't be having 1/3 of students failing a CS class (except perhaps if it's full of humanities majors who were required to take it for some odd reason)

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

#746

Post by jventura »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #743
jventura wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the same level, see my other comments..

I think we're using two standards without naming the difference. - "Responsible for the code", i.e. understands it, can explain it, can modify it on request, is the right bar for a working engineer using an LLM to go faster. But it's the wrong bar for a student, because in a course the deliverable isn't the point, the practice is. I presume that as course like 'Parallel Computing' exists to build the habits of reason…

I'm not a native EN speaker (I'm Portuguese), therefore a lot is lost in my attempt to find the right words. I'm writing these words without any use of AI or even a sentence-checker (only the spell-checker in Firefox).

Of course that the "succesfull" groups implemented their solutions, tweaked them and, tried their best to escape from race conditions and were able to talk about the performance/memory/etc. tradeoffs. We have a grid to grade for those and other items. They did not outsource all of their thinking to an LLM.. That is what I mean as taking responsability for their code, maybe not the correct word, but the one that came to my head when I wrote it..

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

#747

Post by rahimnathwani »

jventura wrote: post #746
rahimnathwani wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're using two standards without naming the difference. - "Responsible for the code", i.e. understands it, can explain it, can modify it on request, is the right bar for a working engineer using an LLM to go faster. But it's the wrong bar for a student, because in a course the deliverable isn't the point, the practice is. I presume that as course like 'Parallel Computing' exists to build the habits of reason…

I'm not a native EN speaker (I'm Portuguese), therefore a lot is lost in my attempt to find the right words. I'm writing these words without any use of AI or even a sentence-checker (only the spell-checker in Firefox). Of course that the "succesfull" groups implemented their solutions, tweaked them and, tried their best to escape from race conditions and were able to talk about the performance/memory/etc. tradeoffs.…

Thanks. I'm still curious whether they could apply what they learned to a new problem, without using an LLM.

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

#748

Post by loneboat »

littlexsparkee wrote: post #642
loneboat wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine an elementary school teacher told you that many of her students had failing grades, so she had implemented a new reading curriculum. If she told you that afterwards the failing grades had "soared", it could easily be read either way: - The (previously failing) grades had increased, so the program must be working very well. - The percent of grades that count as failing had increased, so the program must actual…

It's not the best phrasing but it's still quite clearly the latter

Yeah, it was quite clear once I started reading the article. It just threw me for a loop as I read the title - Usually if I hear of grades "soaring" that's a _good_ thing.

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

#749

Post by aleph_minus_one »

CivBase wrote: post #492
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. So, as long as you are not under time pressure (which you in…

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. You must come from a wealthy background because what you described is far beyond the vast majority of people's means - at least here in the US. Most of us go to college because it's the only reliable way to get a tollerable job that pays well. Only a few of my college courses aligned with my interests. The rest wer…

> You must come from a wealthy background

You could hardly be further from truth.

In Germany, where I live, rather the children from rich families who will get some well-paid job anyway often consider getting some formal degree as an inconvenient barrier on their well-paved path towards a high-status and high-paid job.

On the other hand, if you don't come from a rich family, you better are passionate about what you study because otherwise people will "suggest" that a vocational training might be a better choice for you - then you will earn money now instead of wasting years at a university without earning money.

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

#750

Post by thescriptkiddie »

frollogaston wrote: post #138
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…

Berkeley chancellor told students to vote for 2020 California Proposition 16, which would've repeated 1996 Proposition 209 that banned race-based admission in public universities. Prop 16 failed. Subsequently, Cal started ignoring SAT/ACT scores. I have to think this was their alternative way of taking fewer Asian students, who average highest on that. Soon after I got an email from the same chancellor praising the c…

people thinking california universities are discriminating against asian students is really funny
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