It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System
It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System
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It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System
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363 comments
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I teach at a community college. I see a lot of AI nonsense in my assignments.
So much so that I’m considering blue book exams for the fall.
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For anyone who is also not from the US:
A blue book exam is a type of test administered at many post-secondary schools in the United States. Blue book exams typically include one or more essays or short-answer questions. Sometimes the instructor will provide students with a list of possible essay topics prior to the test itself and will then choose one or let the student choose from two or more topics that appear on the test.
EDIT, as an extra to solve the mystery:
Butler University in Indianapolis was the first to introduce exam blue books, which first appeared in the late 1920s.[1] They were given a blue color because Butler's school colors are blue and white; therefore they were named "blue books".
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Importantly it is hand written, no computers.
Biggest issue is that kids’ handwriting often sucks. That’s not a new problem but it’s a problem with handwritten work.
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Give them typewriters
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There is test-taking software that locks out all other functions during the essay-writing period. Obviously, damn near anything is hackable, but it's non-trivial, unlike asking ChatGPT to write your essay for you in the style of a B+ high student. There is some concern about students who learn differently or compose less efficiently, but as father to such a student, I'm still getting to the point where I'm not sure what's left to do other than sandbox "exploitable" graded work in a controlled environment.
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I love this idea.
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Speaking from a life of dyspraxia - no, not everyone with sucky handwriting is lazy, many of us would spend 95% of our capacity on making the writing legible and be challenged to learn the actual topic as a result.
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I can get the essay done in time or it can be easy to read it cannot be both
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This is why we have accommodations offices at colleges.
No problem giving an alternative for those who need it.
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In the 1980s that wasn't really a thing. Besides, it taught me a valuable skill: I partnered with someone who was good at taking notes and I was good at paying attention without taking any notes - she, too, had a problem understanding what she was writing down while writing it down, but took beautiful copies of the lecture. So, afterwards we'd get together and I'd explain her notes to her - which helped me to cement the concepts in my head, at least long enough to get through the exam, and she got her notes explained.
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keep at it. it is worth the pain.
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Computers with some encyclopedia, but no GPTs are fine, no?
If a kid can write and train a mini-GPT trainable on that encyclopedia, then maybe they deserve the mark for desperation and ingenuity and being a fucking new Leonardo.
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Open book and calculators would seem reasonable. No communication or searching devices.
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No communication - of course, but about search - I don't think having a Wikipedia snapshot with search is bad.
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GPTs are fine, if you learn to disrespect their output and fix it before presenting it as your own.
Actually, taught that way, GPT may be a tool for teaching critical thinking - if the professors aren't too lazy to mark down the garbage output.
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Only if the first draft is the student’s own creation otherwise they will never learn how to analyze a work and construct the argument theu want to make beginning to end.
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A lot of people "have trouble getting started" - in all kinds of endeavors. Once you get them rolling, they can see the pattern and do it for themselves next time. If the AI glop gets lucky and copied decent argument from beginning to end (something I've seen it fail spectacularly at many times), then that can help jumpstart people who are stuck, but only if they can recognize when it's just a bunch of glop.
Really, if would be better for them to read a bunch of samples for themselves (which is what the AI does) and hopefully they can get the pattern. What I think is a horrible approach is to sit in a lecture hall and listen to a little guy down front drone in a monotone about the theory of what you are supposed to do, then try to synthesize from the fragments of what you understood from that what is expected. Samples to work from are much more efficient.
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Man, the US has a handwriting problem. It sucks sooo much. In other countries it seems to be only doctors, but in the US? Fucking everyone.
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Oh. Hate that. You have a list of subjects, prepare for them as good as you can, then get one you know and one you don't, start with one you don't know - not be in time or mood to finish one you know, get something shitty, the other way around - do the one you know and then be interrupted while you just probably remembered something about the one you don't, get something shitty.
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I have a friend who has taught Online university writing for the past 10 years. Her students are now just about 100% using AI - her goal isn't to get them to stop, it's to get them to recognize what garbage writing is and how to fix it so it isn't garbage anymore.
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her goal isn't to get them to stop, it's to get them to recognize what garbage writing is and how to fix it so it isn't garbage anymore.
Sadly, that may be the best we can hope for.
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I teach Philosophy.
I need them to think for themselves, which just isn’t happening if they turn in work that isn’t theirs.
So, I’m pretty harsh on anyone using AI. Even if it’s for a discussion post, I’m reporting it to the Academic Integrity office.
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Fair distinction. Arguably, writing isn't about thinking.
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her goal isn't to get them to stop, it's to get them to recognize what garbage writing is and how to fix it so it isn't garbage anymore.
I wish English teachers did this instead of... Whatever TF they're doing instead.
This is something they should've been doing all along. Long before the invention of LLMs or computers.
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This is the inevitable result of "No Child Left Behind" linking school funding to how students performed on standardized tests. American schools haven't been about education for the last 20+ years. They are about getting as much funding as possible.
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American schools haven’t been about education for the last 20+ years. They are about getting as much funding as possible.
Not just American schools, all the way back to Leonardo DaVinci and beyond it has been all about the funding.
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363 comments