>ChatGPT is literally changing how school will test their students, for a start.
Sure, instead of schools checking for plagiarism from other students' papers using turnitin.com, they'll check for plagiarism using ChatGPT tools that scan for known output from their industrial-scale amalgamation of plagiarized materials. Big whoop.
It appears that it's hard to detect AI generated content. E.g. true detection rates are only around 25% and there are also techniques to further mask output [1].
You only need enough to flag suspect content, and then the teacher calls the student in for a quick oral exam - the fakers will flounder, the reals will pass.
Even if you understand the material well, doing assigned tasks takes a lot of time. Especially if it's free form text. And "I want to do something more interesting right now" is at least as powerful a motivator to cheat assignments as "I don't know how to do this".
Aye, if I mostly know a subject why bother to take the time to write 10 pages when I can outsource that to a bot, and if they question me I can do a 20 min oral interview and save myself the trouble?
I mean, that's certainly part of it. But you're also seeing very fast restructuring of individual courses (because programs overall will definitely take years to restructure because higher education moves so damned slow) to account for these tools.
In the small institution I am currently working with, the English courses, in one week, integrated chatgpt as a tool for students to work with. It's part of the collaborative idea building and development process now for every student enrolled in creative writing and writing analysis classes, and that happened in one week. I cannot stress enough how unbelievably fast that is for higher ed. That's faster than light speed.
And we're not even that well resourced. I have to imagine there are other examples where it's more than just running through a bot to scan for known outputs.
Sounds like they simply panicked and threw something together with little thought or preparation, what, right in the middle of an actual course? And they want to charge kids for this kind of 'expert instruction'? I'd be pissed as a student.
What a weird assumption you made there. In what way does what I wrote sound panicked? Because it was a week? Yes it was fast, but it was a massive effort of the entire english faculty.
It's integrated into existing assignments, modifying processes that are super well established already. It was like integrating a new person into the class. Also, it was before semester, so the students literally saw nothing weird; that was another strange assumption for you to make.
Just a tip, and don't read tone in this statement, but don't assume things. 9/10 times you're going to be incorrect. It's much better to ask questions, instead of making statements with question marks at the end of them.
I simply don’t buy that they had anywhere close to enough time to integrate this into an existing curriculum in a way that would meet the high standards paying students should have for a university education. I don’t have to ask how an English department became experts in using a just released AI in the classroom in a week because I don’t think that’s what they actually achieved.
Again, stop putting words in my mouth, please. I never said they became experts. I said they integrated it into existing processes. I said that they were doing something other than just scanning for chatgpt hits like plagiarism checkers.
>It's part of the collaborative idea building and development process now for every student enrolled in creative writing and writing analysis classes
>It's integrated into existing assignments, modifying processes that are super well established already. It was like integrating a new person into the class.
I don't honestly know how else to say that. I legitimately do not know how to help you understand what I'm saying.
Not who you are replying to. I found your example fascinating - would you be able to share one or two concrete examples of this integration you mentioned? I would like a low-level peek or two into how the teaching landscape is changing in light of the rise of LLMs like chatGPT.
Sure - I'll use one of the creative writing classes.
In the past, the class would be centered around ideas and themes the class came up with together during the first week of the semester. They would then read and discuss short stories from various authors centered around that theme, preferably from different eras and/or cultures. From there, they would work in pairs/small groups to flush out original ideas they came up with for their own stories based on the themes and styles from the first month of reading. Then they would work individually to write the stories. Finally, they would come back together to edit and work through that process as a group, with a reading and discussion in the last week or two.
Now, the class works alone the first day or two to discuss themes with chatgpt, to identify relevant and appropriate literature (if possible), and to flush out initial ideas for the readings and discussion topics. Then we come back together for group work to figure out themes for the semester and possible readings, like it used to be, but primed with whatever information they had already discussed with Chatgpt. From there they work through the readings, using chatgpt to bounce ideas for discussion off of before coming to class. Then they work in teams, like before, to flush out their own stories, but again, using chatgpt as if it were another member of the group. They also have to track their question/comment and response, to evaluate their own thought processes and look for weak links in their reasoning and logic. Students are then free to use the software to edit their writing before coming together with their creative assignments.
We haven't made it past the step of reading, as it's still the first month of the semester. But,the discussion for the first section has been much more in-depth and (to use a word that is impossible to quantify) vibrant. The students had already aired the ideas they thought may be dumb, and would therefore be less willing to voice in a public setting; this allows them to really dive further into whatever is in each story, and connect dots between stories that generally took a week or two. Because they have another 'person' to talk to whenever they want, and however much they want, they tend to really get into the work. Further, and unexpectedly (and anecdotally sadly) it has allowed a couple of students I know personally who would not have been willing to participate in public discussion (anxiety disorder and TBI) a stronger voice, because they know their ideas are flushed out already, and it provides them with a 'script' of ideas they know are novel and valuable for the class. In other words, if they were able to get the idea from Chatgpt, they knew they had more work to do to build that thought, because that is really just a baseline.
I'm interested to see how the actual writing process goes. Chatgpt is okay at creative writing, but not at the level that we expect to see. Some faculty expressed concerns that students would just have the software do the work for them, but I'm not really bothered by that. First off, if someone can figure out how to make a career out of publishing chatgpt prompts, well, good for them. Second, if the software is able to write better than the students are, they don't really belong in this class in particular (graduate level writing class).
Anyway, like I said earlier in the thread - we're really just treating this as another 'person' in the class, but who is available to everyone, all the time. It's beneficial for the brainstorming sections, but not for the hard skills, from what I can tell. I am most excited to watch them evaluate their own thought processes when working with chatgpt to flush out their ideas. In the past, this has been a barrier, because every single person I’ve ever met never gives a partner 100% of their thoughts all the time. They always hold back. My theory is that, because it’s a dead-end conversation, they will be more willing to push into new topics, and really think hard about what they’re trying to say. We’ll see if that stands.
Are we trying to produce adults who are able to think critically and creatively, and who reach their full intellectual potential, or are we trying to produce adults who can push a few buttons and blindly believe what the machine tells them?
While likely not how it would be work out in practice, you would hope that with better tools would also come higher standards. If you expect more complex, more thorough, and/or less error-prone output from students using AI then you don’t necessarily have to lower how much critical and creative insight they need to have. Like the difference in a test that does and doesn’t allow calculators, you always have to fit the assignments to the tools that are used for them.
> In fact, [writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own.
- attributed to Socrates by Plato. c.399-347 BCE. “Phaedrus.”
The point is that all technology is a tool. Whether it be writing, calculators, or various narrow AI software. We can either bemoan the loss of a now-less-useful skill (memorization, long division, longform writing), or learn how to use these tools to better achieve our goals.
Technologies develop for different purposes and have different effects. Modern digital technology has a very inhumane origin story, as noted in “New Dark Age” by James Bridle, and other works.
https://jamesbridle.com/books/new-dark-age
As long as it pushes the students into mental effort I have no problem with changes in education. The world changes, it’s normal to have changes. But there’s nothing wrong to compare against prior models, sometimes we revisit abandoned ideas, artworks, models etc
Isn't the problem that kids (like all of us) are lazy and would rather use tools than their brain, rather than people trying to keep school "just like it was"?
That's how we teach today, but that doesn't mean it's the only way. As a counter example, in chess, AI makes a great learning partner, and from beginners to world champions the level of proficiency has increased immensely in the last 30 years due to better chess engines.
All math homework through the high school level is now as simple as figuring out how to describe it to ChatGPT (or maybe ChatGPT 2.0 for particularly tricky examples). Paper-writing is now a matter of figuring out how to rephrase LLM output in your own words to get around any watermarking or pattern detection.
Wolfram alpha has been around for math cheats (and people like me who just needed a more visual representation to learn) for a while now. Including proof of work.
Oh yeah, it's why most of my classes restricted us to TI-83s. The TI-89 was restricted in schools to basically calc and above, and the TI-92 was just banned. Lol
In my school TI-89s were unrestricted, but I think that was mostly because teachers were only trained with 83s and assumed the 89 had equivalent capabilities. The SAT permitting the 89 probably had something to do with it too, since the 92 was banned (because qwerty as I understand it.)
Sure, instead of schools checking for plagiarism from other students' papers using turnitin.com, they'll check for plagiarism using ChatGPT tools that scan for known output from their industrial-scale amalgamation of plagiarized materials. Big whoop.