Colleges having a meltdown over AI reminds me of colleges having a meltdown over Wikipedia when wikipedia first came out 20 years ago.
Stop relying on students to do their work in home. Most of people work from 9 to 5 yet education system expects teenagers to do overtime assignments. And noone even pays them for it.
Students don’t learn by just going to class then doing nothing afterwards. Teachers give the tools, the kids need to practice them. Jesus I wish I could get paid for just going to school.
Are you actually referencing a mastodon post made by one individual claiming to be a lifelong teacher as substantiated evidence to support your claim?
I’m also a lifelong teacher, and I think homework has its place.
It allows teachers to assess a students progress and identify issues that individual might be struggling with.
Teacher can modify the curriculum to improve common shortcoming appearing in homework results, in other words, hw can help the teacher help the students.
HW allows more accurate grading, so you’re not just judged based on your tests, your attitude in class, and the teacher’s gut.
As I mentioned, it’s practice for the student. Sure I could do math accurately if I really thought about it, but getting lots of practice in means it takes less time and I don’t look foolish at some point when it matters.
That said, I almost never assign hw in my own classes unless students need more time with a project than I am able to provide. That said, some student are never happy when I give them a score based solely on how much (or how little) they actually participate in class vs poke about on their phones.
Which is worse: bad citation or anecdotes with no citation?
AFAIK the actual research is somewhat unclear.
But my (former teacher) problems with "education" are a wider topic for another day.
Was your citation not just another anecdote with no citation?
Students don’t learn by just going to class then doing nothing afterwards
Really? Then why are they going there in the first place???
And how do you get that juicy job experience allowing you to negotiate higher wage? You spend time on homework given you by your boss???
Jesus I wish I could get paid for just going to school.
Maybe you should be paid for passed exams and decent grades?
I’ve always believed that fiscal responsibility and interpersonal skills should be taught in schools. Add online etiquette and context interpretation to that list as well.
Also, who’s going to pay you? You’re going to school so you can learn how to make money for yourself later. If you don’t do your schoolwork, you might end up making less than others who did because you’ll be less experienced with it.
That's something only a teacher would say. As someone who did all their school work and got a fancy engineering job, a lot of it was bogus busy work that 99% of us have completely forgotten.
You can't tell me that I needed two teachers having me comb through the book for words that weren't part of the index so that I could rewrite the word's textbook definition on a piece of paper verbatim on a weekly basis and that that was a good education experience.
You can't tell me my high school study hall where they'd give you something to do if you were bored and forbid you from sleeping or playing games unless the study hall monitor "liked you" was a good experience.
I mean my high school algebra teacher couldn't even remember the algebra lesson she'd taught every year for over a decade when I had her. If it was really a life skill or that important, she would've remembered.
In calculus they teach you the hard way to differentiate and then they're just like "ah but actually you can do it this way and that's how everyone does it."
Artificially raising the difficulty by forbidding formula sheets in math is also just stupid. If you can see the problem, recognize which formula to use, and use it, that should be enough.
We're just straight up wasting millions of hours of people's time with our education system that has very little merit in terms of long term results and retention and negatively affects both people that come out of it "passing with flying colors" and people that flunk out because of various home life circumstances, bad teachers, difficult with the material, or a lack of interest.
Students are miserable (suicide is at an all time high last I checked and I'm pretty confident it's not just about social media), administrators are miserable, teachers are miserable, and kids really don't learn all that much that stays with them into adulthood. We desperately try to shove way too much information into people's heads in a very dry and uncaptivating way. We need to throw the system out and figure out how to teach what matters and change/replace stuff that doesn't matter or make sense (e.g. we changed the spelling of various words in the past, why don't we fix them instead of teaching a bunch of ridiculous spellings that make no sense like facade, ghost, llama, etc).
To the spelling point: The world, for the most part, has moved away from the grammarian tradition of the 19th and 20th century of having a handful of dictionary makers decide what English is proper and what isn't - the language evolves on its own, and if a misspelling becomes popular enough, it becomes a proper spelling. For example, facade is a french word, spelled façade, the accent under the C means it's pronounced like an S. We dropped it in English because we don't use accents in English, and now we spell it facade. It's a "misspelling", but you've probably never spelled it correctly. The language was never consistent to begin with, pretending you can fix spelling to make it so is a fool's errand.
I disagree that it's a fools errand. Misspellings rarely become popular enough to become "proper" because we teach everyone the "proper" spelling and we have spell checkers on our computers that are used for virtually everything.
There's no method for the people speaking the English language to put pressure on a word that already exists because we've build up this infrastructure to "lock things in' and insist that "they've been this way so they must continue to be this way." The only way we get language evolution currently is via slang ... which is hardly a way to get a better language.
I know the history of facade, it's like many other words we've stolen from other languages that don't make a lick of sense in our alphabet. It's not an infinite list, it's fixable, but we need to change the mind share that "it has to be this way."
We made up official spellings, we can fix them, they're not an immutable law of nature.
The fool's errand is trying to make the language consistent, when it never has been, especially trying to do it via spelling. English isn't consistent. It's not supposed to be. It takes pieces from every other language and integrates them into English whether it makes sense to or not, leading to inconsistency. That inconsistency, I think, is by design. It makes the language more versatile than any other, a "good enough" medium of communication for everything, but usually not the best, which for communication, tends to be fine.
The old "why try to do anything because it will never be perfect" argument never holds water.
That's not at all the argument I'm making. My argument is that English's inconsistency is, at this point, the reason it is successful. By integrating everything into it, it has become a good enough medium of communication for almost everything. That would not have been possible unless the language eschewed consistency.
Really, a better argument against changing the spelling is the classic "standards" xkcd, where now you're just making another dialect of English where they spell words differently again, and now it needs to be adopted, fracturing the language further. Honestly, though? It doesn't matter. Fix the spelling if you want. English can take the fracturing. The changes might take, they might not, but I doubt it'll make the language more consistent overall, for every fix you put in, you'll have someone who disagrees and doesn't put it in, making your dialect more consistent, but the language overall less so, but it doesn't matter. English will continue to be inconsistent, and that's okay, that's why it works.
By integrating everything into it, it has become a good enough medium of communication for almost everything.
Except that's not at all what we've done.
The only reason English dominates is because it's the dominant language of the world super powers following world war II. It's not because of some special design, principle, or properties.
English isn't just "make up whatever rules and put them wherever", particularly formal English which is what we're talking about in the context of education.
Really, a better argument against changing the spelling is the classic "standards" xkcd, where now you're just making another dialect of English where they spell words differently again, and now it needs to be adopted, fracturing the language further.
Language will evolve with or without direction. We have the structure in the form of schools to actually evolve it with direction in the name of making things more consistent and intuitive. We should use it, that's all.
I am entirely certain that it’s the same amount of cheating as it always was and the only thing that changed is that AI is how they’re doing it.
What exactly was the tool we cheated with in the past that was equivalent to LLMs? What is your certainty based on?
Other people writing it for you and the openness with which I heard many other students discussing that they weren’t writing their own stuff.
Valid. I never had anyone do my assignments for free and in few minute though. It seems unreasonable to assume that this has no multiplying effect. After all, I have no hard numbers either
If they're smart enough to cheat they're smart enough to pass.
Be real now. How much of that stuff do you all really use in your daily lives?
Because the real world doesn't care about rote memorization as long as the work gets done in my experience.
I'm an engineer. I use all of it. I use it whether I'm writing technically correct and accurate forensic reviews or doing math in my head (or on paper) to analyze a condition in real time or checking a complex finite element model to ensure that there are no improper assumptions or invalid boundary conditions. AI/ML is really useful for some things, and deadly for others.
Rote memorization may seem unnecessary, but a mental catalog - whether it be quotes, body parts and systems, equations of natural phenomena, or even manufactured parts and specifications - is the hallmark of someone who can work independently in a real time industry. It may not matter for some jobs, but it's make or break in others.
The only thing the world gives a shit about:
CAN you do it? If you can, how long will it take and how much?
The how is irrelevant.
The how is irrelevant.
What I usually tell students is that homework and projects are learning opportunities. The point isn't for them to produce a particular artifact; it's to go through the process and develop skills along the way. For instance, I do not need a program that can sort numbers... I can do that myself and there are a gazillion instances of that. However, students should do that assignment to practice learning how to code, how to debug, how to think through problems, and much more. The point isn't the sorting program... it's the process and experience.
How do you get better at say gymnastics? You do a bunch of exercises and skills, over and over.
How do you get better at say playing the guitar? You play a lot songs, over and over.
How do you get better at say writing? You write a lot, some good, some bad, over and over.
To get better at anything, you need to do the thing, a lot. You need to build intuition and muscle memory. Taking shortcuts prevents that and in the long run, hurts your learning and growth.
So viewing homeworks as just about the artifact you submit is missing the point and short-sighted. Cheating, whether using AI or not, is preventing yourself from learning and developing mastery and understanding.
When students want to cheat their way through the education system, the fault is not solely their own. Perhaps this will drain some of the excess credentialism out of the system.
On the contrary, it will raise the floor of required credentials. When everyone has a HS education, an undergrad degree is needed to stand out. Now that a bachelors is the de facto education level, a masters degree is necessary. If it gets easier to get a MS degree, we'll be requiring a PhD for entry level positions.
Colleges having a meltdown over AI reminds me of colleges having a meltdown over Wikipedia when wikipedia first came out 20 years ago.
Stop relying on students to do their work in home. Most of people work from 9 to 5 yet education system expects teenagers to do overtime assignments. And noone even pays them for it.
Students don’t learn by just going to class then doing nothing afterwards. Teachers give the tools, the kids need to practice them. Jesus I wish I could get paid for just going to school.
That's not entirely true. Practice is important, but homework actually has a negative impact on learning: https://hachyderm.io/@Impossible_PhD/112969358305278574
Are you actually referencing a mastodon post made by one individual claiming to be a lifelong teacher as substantiated evidence to support your claim?
I’m also a lifelong teacher, and I think homework has its place.
That said, I almost never assign hw in my own classes unless students need more time with a project than I am able to provide. That said, some student are never happy when I give them a score based solely on how much (or how little) they actually participate in class vs poke about on their phones.
Which is worse: bad citation or anecdotes with no citation?
AFAIK the actual research is somewhat unclear.
But my (former teacher) problems with "education" are a wider topic for another day.
Was your citation not just another anecdote with no citation?
Really? Then why are they going there in the first place???
And how do you get that juicy job experience allowing you to negotiate higher wage? You spend time on homework given you by your boss???
Maybe you should be paid for passed exams and decent grades?
I’ve always believed that fiscal responsibility and interpersonal skills should be taught in schools. Add online etiquette and context interpretation to that list as well.
Also, who’s going to pay you? You’re going to school so you can learn how to make money for yourself later. If you don’t do your schoolwork, you might end up making less than others who did because you’ll be less experienced with it.
That's something only a teacher would say. As someone who did all their school work and got a fancy engineering job, a lot of it was bogus busy work that 99% of us have completely forgotten.
You can't tell me that I needed two teachers having me comb through the book for words that weren't part of the index so that I could rewrite the word's textbook definition on a piece of paper verbatim on a weekly basis and that that was a good education experience.
You can't tell me my high school study hall where they'd give you something to do if you were bored and forbid you from sleeping or playing games unless the study hall monitor "liked you" was a good experience.
I mean my high school algebra teacher couldn't even remember the algebra lesson she'd taught every year for over a decade when I had her. If it was really a life skill or that important, she would've remembered.
In calculus they teach you the hard way to differentiate and then they're just like "ah but actually you can do it this way and that's how everyone does it."
Artificially raising the difficulty by forbidding formula sheets in math is also just stupid. If you can see the problem, recognize which formula to use, and use it, that should be enough.
We're just straight up wasting millions of hours of people's time with our education system that has very little merit in terms of long term results and retention and negatively affects both people that come out of it "passing with flying colors" and people that flunk out because of various home life circumstances, bad teachers, difficult with the material, or a lack of interest.
Students are miserable (suicide is at an all time high last I checked and I'm pretty confident it's not just about social media), administrators are miserable, teachers are miserable, and kids really don't learn all that much that stays with them into adulthood. We desperately try to shove way too much information into people's heads in a very dry and uncaptivating way. We need to throw the system out and figure out how to teach what matters and change/replace stuff that doesn't matter or make sense (e.g. we changed the spelling of various words in the past, why don't we fix them instead of teaching a bunch of ridiculous spellings that make no sense like facade, ghost, llama, etc).
To the spelling point: The world, for the most part, has moved away from the grammarian tradition of the 19th and 20th century of having a handful of dictionary makers decide what English is proper and what isn't - the language evolves on its own, and if a misspelling becomes popular enough, it becomes a proper spelling. For example, facade is a french word, spelled façade, the accent under the C means it's pronounced like an S. We dropped it in English because we don't use accents in English, and now we spell it facade. It's a "misspelling", but you've probably never spelled it correctly. The language was never consistent to begin with, pretending you can fix spelling to make it so is a fool's errand.
I disagree that it's a fools errand. Misspellings rarely become popular enough to become "proper" because we teach everyone the "proper" spelling and we have spell checkers on our computers that are used for virtually everything.
There's no method for the people speaking the English language to put pressure on a word that already exists because we've build up this infrastructure to "lock things in' and insist that "they've been this way so they must continue to be this way." The only way we get language evolution currently is via slang ... which is hardly a way to get a better language.
I know the history of facade, it's like many other words we've stolen from other languages that don't make a lick of sense in our alphabet. It's not an infinite list, it's fixable, but we need to change the mind share that "it has to be this way."
We made up official spellings, we can fix them, they're not an immutable law of nature.
The fool's errand is trying to make the language consistent, when it never has been, especially trying to do it via spelling. English isn't consistent. It's not supposed to be. It takes pieces from every other language and integrates them into English whether it makes sense to or not, leading to inconsistency. That inconsistency, I think, is by design. It makes the language more versatile than any other, a "good enough" medium of communication for everything, but usually not the best, which for communication, tends to be fine.
The old "why try to do anything because it will never be perfect" argument never holds water.
That's not at all the argument I'm making. My argument is that English's inconsistency is, at this point, the reason it is successful. By integrating everything into it, it has become a good enough medium of communication for almost everything. That would not have been possible unless the language eschewed consistency.
Really, a better argument against changing the spelling is the classic "standards" xkcd, where now you're just making another dialect of English where they spell words differently again, and now it needs to be adopted, fracturing the language further. Honestly, though? It doesn't matter. Fix the spelling if you want. English can take the fracturing. The changes might take, they might not, but I doubt it'll make the language more consistent overall, for every fix you put in, you'll have someone who disagrees and doesn't put it in, making your dialect more consistent, but the language overall less so, but it doesn't matter. English will continue to be inconsistent, and that's okay, that's why it works.
Except that's not at all what we've done.
The only reason English dominates is because it's the dominant language of the world super powers following world war II. It's not because of some special design, principle, or properties.
English isn't just "make up whatever rules and put them wherever", particularly formal English which is what we're talking about in the context of education.
Language will evolve with or without direction. We have the structure in the form of schools to actually evolve it with direction in the name of making things more consistent and intuitive. We should use it, that's all.
I am entirely certain that it’s the same amount of cheating as it always was and the only thing that changed is that AI is how they’re doing it.
What exactly was the tool we cheated with in the past that was equivalent to LLMs? What is your certainty based on?
Other people writing it for you and the openness with which I heard many other students discussing that they weren’t writing their own stuff.
Valid. I never had anyone do my assignments for free and in few minute though. It seems unreasonable to assume that this has no multiplying effect. After all, I have no hard numbers either
If they're smart enough to cheat they're smart enough to pass.
Be real now. How much of that stuff do you all really use in your daily lives?
Because the real world doesn't care about rote memorization as long as the work gets done in my experience.
I'm an engineer. I use all of it. I use it whether I'm writing technically correct and accurate forensic reviews or doing math in my head (or on paper) to analyze a condition in real time or checking a complex finite element model to ensure that there are no improper assumptions or invalid boundary conditions. AI/ML is really useful for some things, and deadly for others.
Rote memorization may seem unnecessary, but a mental catalog - whether it be quotes, body parts and systems, equations of natural phenomena, or even manufactured parts and specifications - is the hallmark of someone who can work independently in a real time industry. It may not matter for some jobs, but it's make or break in others.
The only thing the world gives a shit about:
CAN you do it? If you can, how long will it take and how much?
The how is irrelevant.
What I usually tell students is that homework and projects are learning opportunities. The point isn't for them to produce a particular artifact; it's to go through the process and develop skills along the way. For instance, I do not need a program that can sort numbers... I can do that myself and there are a gazillion instances of that. However, students should do that assignment to practice learning how to code, how to debug, how to think through problems, and much more. The point isn't the sorting program... it's the process and experience.
How do you get better at say gymnastics? You do a bunch of exercises and skills, over and over.
How do you get better at say playing the guitar? You play a lot songs, over and over.
How do you get better at say writing? You write a lot, some good, some bad, over and over.
To get better at anything, you need to do the thing, a lot. You need to build intuition and muscle memory. Taking shortcuts prevents that and in the long run, hurts your learning and growth.
So viewing homeworks as just about the artifact you submit is missing the point and short-sighted. Cheating, whether using AI or not, is preventing yourself from learning and developing mastery and understanding.
When students want to cheat their way through the education system, the fault is not solely their own. Perhaps this will drain some of the excess credentialism out of the system.
On the contrary, it will raise the floor of required credentials. When everyone has a HS education, an undergrad degree is needed to stand out. Now that a bachelors is the de facto education level, a masters degree is necessary. If it gets easier to get a MS degree, we'll be requiring a PhD for entry level positions.