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College professor here. The way I see it, AI is inevitable and it’s here to stay. Fighting against AI would be like trying to fight against pocket calculators in the 70s. It’s coming whether we like it or not, in class and in the real world; so we need to focus on adjusting the curriculums to work with it, rather than against it.
Right now, a lot of course curriculums are predominantly regurgitation based learning: I’ll tell you X, you tell me X but in 3 months. But AI trivializes that way of thinking. If I want to, I can get ChatGPT to generate an entire essay on the impact of ink drying speeds to the colour of grass. Whatever I want, it takes it 10s to write. However, LLMs still struggle with critical thinking, nuances, and originality; which I think is the more important aspect of education.
so in a way, ai makes lazy teaching methods more clearly useless since you can just generate essays
Since this is your area, I’m very curious – how do you design a curriculum to teach critical thinking, nuances, and originality?
Is it like asking for an original take on your literature piece?
Is it like being given someone else’s essay and having to write what you think about it?
Sorry for the late reply, I had to sit and think on this one for a little bit.
I think there are would be a few things going on when it comes to designing a course to teach critical thinking, nuances, and originality; and they each have their own requirements.
For critical thinking: The main goal is to provide students with a toolbelt for solving various problems. Then instilling the habit of always asking “does this match the expected outcome? What was I expecting?”. So usually courses will be setup so students learn about a tool, practice using the tool, then have a culminating assignment on using all the tools. Ideally, the problems students face at the end require multiple tools to solve.
Nuance mainly naturally comes with exposure to the material from a professional - The way a mechanical engineer may describe building a desk will probably differ greatly compared to a fantasy author. You can also explain definitions and industry standards; but thats really dry. So I try to teach nuances via definitions by mixing in the weird nuances as much as possible with jokes.
Then for originality; I’ve realized I dont actually look for an original idea; but something creative. In a classroom setting, you’re usually learning new things about a subject so a student’s knowledge of that space is usually very limited. Thus, an idea that they’ve never heard about may be original to them, but common for an industry expert.
For teaching
originalitycreativity, I usually provide time to be creative & think, and provide open ended questions as prompts to explore ideas. My courses that require originality usually have it as a part of the culminating assignment at the end where they can apply their knowledge. I’ll also add in time where students can come to me with preliminary ideas and I can provide feedback on whether or not it passes the creative threshold. Not all ideas are original, but I sometimes give a bit of slack if its creative enough.The amount of course overhauling to get around AI really depends on the material being taught. For example, in programming - you teach critical thinking by always testing your code, even with parameters that don’t make sense. For example: Try to add
123 + "skibbidy", and see what the program does.
Teaching critical thinking?
Every LLM has a Silver lining?
Teaching critical thinking?
Every LLM has a Silver lining?
When schools make the objective of school education then children will prioritize learning the material.
The goal is to keep them in day care while their parents are at work and getting a degree because it’s the bare minimum requirement for a shit load of jobs.
Tests and homework can be easily gamed, cheating is literally the smart thing to do if that gets you through it to the degree.
I had a classmate in college who paid his friend to take his finals for him IN PERSON. The classes were so big the teacher didn’t know what he looked like. These days he gets 90k/yr reprogramming streetlights.
I know the article mentions these, but it’s time to bring back oral exams and handwritten-in-class essays
I could never write essays by hand. Too often I would write out a paragraph just to read it, break it up, and subsequently rewrite both parts.
One typewriter for you
Anyone else hoping for typewriters to come back, some with new designs? Just me?
I like the ones where you could correct your mistakes because it put out the caracters after you pressed Return.
too modern, I know…
That’s why you gotta write your outline first!
Nah man, waterfall technique applies to everything.
Yay, lets punish the kid with tremors in their hand and lose 20 points for no fucking reason 🙃
The good ol’ days of ableist school admins
I doubt a kid with tremors would be unable to get an exception made for them. I have tremors and in the mid 2000s my teachers were offering me test taking options like computers and other methods.
I always refused because I was stubborn.
Chromebooks these days have locked down modes for tests where you can only acess the test and maybe desmos, I think newer AP tests are done this way at the highschool I went to.
What about those with dysgraphia? Are we going to punish the teacher who has to read that mess? Lol
who could have predicted this???
Literally everyone:
Maybe students should be given very locked-down computers. They can run school-approved software and access school-approved websites, nothing else.
I guarantee you that would not work, because I went through cyber schooling as a kid long before covid was a thing and they tried the same with me when I procrastinated and played games instead of doing my work. They locked it down progressively more and I kept breaking out until finally, they gave me a computer so locked down you couldn’t open task manager, command prompt, safe mode had a password…
I was back to full access in <3 days. At the age of like 12. And apparently, the school’s IT department basically said “we can’t lock it down any more or else he wouldn’t be able to do work on it, either”. And then they gave up.
In short, that will not stop a crafty enough, stubborn enough kid. Guaranteed.
At this point the cat is out of the bag, I’m doing uni currently and have used ai to assist, though I’ve only used the ai to help me understand topics, or asked it to give me practise questions, never given it an assignment question or asked it to gen my answers for me.
As a sort of personal tutor it can be really great. I was thinking about how you can try to encourage students to use it without cheating, and the only thing that came to me was if the education system maintained its own “virtual tutor” ai, one that was specifically designed to prevent cheating and encourage ethical use.
Not sure though, it’s a tough problem to deal with, I guess the other option is just more controlled tests, which no one likes.
