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Students fight back over course taught by AI

theguardian.com

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Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#91

Post by j45 »

IAmBroom wrote: post #46
j45 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching isn't bi directional. Understanding before application are two different steps. The issues you're outlining can be solved by arranging technology to go through a process to satisfy the above. Still, instruction, and instructors aren't really needing to be replaced, it's the silent elephant in the room that is rarely talked about that hopefully considers evolving.

> Teaching isn't bi directional. ... said no decent teacher, ever. The flows aren't symmetrical, but they are bidirectional.

Teaching will get to evolve when the subject matter is changing faster than the delivery mechanisms.

Where the subject matter doesn't change as quickly.. might be in for some trouble.

This article is kind of strange. I would title it "Digitally and AI illiterate institution attempts to deliver course that looked impressive and amazing to them." Students do have standards and students baseline digital literacy passed by institutions a long, long time ago.

I know, let's talk about MooCs.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#92

Post by IAmBroom »

sureglymop wrote: post #35
gonzo41 wrote: post #22

In a case of the worst person you know makes a great point, Jordan Peterson was remarking a few years back about how Youtube and MOOC's were really the new universities of the modern age. If you want knowledge it's there for the taking. The legacy institutions really are just a stamp / sorting hat for young people these days. For the money people spend these days on education, you'd think there'd be grounds for refun…

I think that's not true. What I gain from university are three things: 1. Experts who compile/write the theoretical materials necessary (usually long form text, scripts). 2. The necessary pressure to actually read and understand these in order to pass the exams. 3. Social connections and the ability to work on interesting projects supervised by lecturers with experience and connections (clout if you will). It's not t…

Exactly. A degree is not merely a proof that you've been exposed to, and temporarily retained, a certain set of knowledge, but proof you can work towards longterm (4yr) and short-term (quiz on Friday, homework tomorrow) goals successfully.

College is 100x less forgiving of missing deadlines than the real world of jobs, for instance - but then, in college the only serious source of delays is yourself and your choices. It's actually quite a good litmus test for the ability to apply oneself towards externally imposed goals - which is most of what a job entails.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#93

Post by graemep »

pjc50 wrote: post #64
ecshafer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are Polytechnics not considered universities in Europe? RPI (Rensalear Polytechnic Institute) or CalPoly (California Polytechnic Institute) for example in the US are just normal universities, usually with more of a technical, engineering focused. But they are essentially the same "level" as a university.

The UK collapsed the poly/uni distinction thirty or so years ago, as it was seen as a source of class discrimination.

Really? That was the motive?

It actually made it a lot worse if anything.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#94

Post by beej71 »

calibas wrote: post #83

Soon we'll have a system where students use AI for homework and teachers use AI to grade it. I'm sure it's already happening.

I'm lucky to teach in a school with relatively small classes (~25) and I can manually grade and review everything. (The autograde scripts I wrote in bash help.)

But yes, it's happening. If I had 300 students, I couldn't do this. I'd need a bunch of TAs or some AI. Or just pure autograding, which I always hated since the person who did nothing gets the same F as the person who left out a semicolon.

And students are definitely using AI, evidenced by their stratospheric code improvements in the last 18 months.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#95

Post by marstall »

thisisit wrote: post #79
marstall wrote: post #14

I just had a pretty amazing 4 hour session with gpt 5.1 going over my son's rare disease. Chat broke it all down for me in a really deep and clear way in the back and forth. Insights I've never gotten to from talking to docs, reading papers, reading bio textbooks etc. I guess some small percentage of it was hallucinated, but if you want to call it a teacher/student relationship, it was pretty amazing.

> Insights I've never gotten to from talking to docs, reading papers, reading bio textbooks etc. Curious why do you think you not have gotten these insights that too even from textbooks no less? > I guess some small percentage of it was hallucinated You guess it is a small percentage? How much do you guess this small percentage was the most important part about this disease? Because it seems like you were taken in by…

> You guess it is a small percentage?

Well I am operating within a space where his doctors are setting the parameters in terms of the pathways targeted, the therapies offered, etc. And I'm asking, how does this therapy work? How is it related to X and Y? How strong is the evidence? Questions like that. I think I can throw the appropriate grain of salt on it, but yeah, some fake facts could creep in. It's stuff that will be validated, but super valuable to just synthesize the lay of the land and give me context for understanding what the docs are saying.

> Curious why do you think you not have gotten these insights that too even from textbooks no less?

Partly just how tailored and conversational ChatGPT is. It gets right at my needed level of explanation. It knows how much education I have. It remembers salient details about my son and his condition. It really explains things well. It knows so much. It's quite remarkable.

[note, i didn't read the article so am not opining on its content in any way. An AI college education sounds terrible in many ways]

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#96

Post by chemotaxis »

palmotea wrote: post #88
chemotaxis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, to be fair, a lot of economic activity is like that. Why pay thousands of dollar for a plumber or an electrician? Most of what they do is going to Home Depot, buying a $15 part, and replacing it. But it's one less skill for a homeowner to learn, so you delegate. The problem isn't that someone learns to prompt AI and is selling the output. The problem is that the customer thinks they're paying for human instru…

>> It's when you take that conversation you just had, make it into a PowerPoint, and try to sell it for 10000x what you spent on the credits that it really becomes lazy. Why expect anyone pay for that when they could have just asked the AI themselves? > I mean, to be fair, a lot of economic activity is like that. Why pay thousands of dollar for a plumber or an electrician? Most of what they do is going to Home Depot,…

You mostly don't. Household plumbing and wiring is nowhere the near of complexity of, say, a lawnmower engine. It's mostly "the p-trap is leaking", "the faucet is leaking", "the toilet's flush valve is broken", "the wiring nut is loose". The kind of stuff you don't need skill to fix properly.

There are situations where you do want to call a pro, but it's not what you usually call them for. Most of it is one notch above "my trash can is full, can you come over and empty it".

Besides, your argument applies to the AI case too. You're not paying for AI output. You're paying for my expertise in prompting and my ability to evaluate the output and say "yep, that's right".

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#97

Post by camdenreslink »

zkmon wrote: post #12

Outrageous at the least. These universities already became so commercial that they show photos of some Victorian era buildings as their campus, but most students never set foot in those buildings, as all classrooms are held in rented building outside of campus, and the main buildings are kept only as ornamental pieces. Also, there are hardly any good teachers left. Most are hired on sharing basis, who shuttle between…

If you live in a city with multiple colleges/universities check out the cars in the staff parking lot. Many will have parking passes/stickers for multiple colleges on there. These are adjuncts that have to drive all over town to cobble together a full time job as an instructor.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#98

Post by lupire »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #52
zulban wrote: post #7

It has been many years that most courses in most universities have inferior lectures than just watching a great series of YouTube videos. Many professors have no passion or training in teaching, they just want to do research. Or they have no time or pay to prepare a course. So of course they use AI slop wherever they can. Even if they record their lectures, that's almost never better than the best free ones out there…

It really depends what field. In some branches of history, archaeology, and linguistics, for instance, many matters of emerging consensus often reach students only through lecturers’ handouts that are not put online. What a curious person will find on the internet and in general-reference books can be a decade or more behind, and viewed within the field as horribly out of date.

If that information were valuable to learn, someone with access would be republishing it online.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#99

Post by marstall »

j4coh wrote: post #63
marstall wrote: post #14

I just had a pretty amazing 4 hour session with gpt 5.1 going over my son's rare disease. Chat broke it all down for me in a really deep and clear way in the back and forth. Insights I've never gotten to from talking to docs, reading papers, reading bio textbooks etc. I guess some small percentage of it was hallucinated, but if you want to call it a teacher/student relationship, it was pretty amazing.

Next try it on something rare you're an expert in, and be amazed at the low quality.

i quiz it often on aspects of my son's condition that I understand, and it gets things right most of the time, with the occasional glaring bit of misinformation.

Re: Students fight back over course taught by AI

#100

Post by marstall »

j45 wrote: post #23
marstall wrote: post #14

I just had a pretty amazing 4 hour session with gpt 5.1 going over my son's rare disease. Chat broke it all down for me in a really deep and clear way in the back and forth. Insights I've never gotten to from talking to docs, reading papers, reading bio textbooks etc. I guess some small percentage of it was hallucinated, but if you want to call it a teacher/student relationship, it was pretty amazing.

This type of use while asking for annotations for all facts can be insightful to have the start of an informed conversation with a professional.

I am using it mostly to try to understand and get context about what the professionals tell me, the treatments they are offering, etc.
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