Studenten nutzen YouTube, Podcasts und von ChatGPT erstellte Zusammenfassungen, anstatt ihre Aufgaben für den Unterricht tatsächlich zu lesen. Professoren sind sich nicht sicher, wie sie sich anpassen sollen.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/academics/2024/09/25/students-turn-ai-do-their-assigned-readings-them
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Is the goal simply to teach the material, or to prepare students to adapt to rapidly changing technological demands in the future workforce?
Teaching students only what their predecessors understand will lead us into intellectual stagnation.
The ancient Greeks used to be able to memorize Homer.
Today’s students can barely watch an entire episode with Homer.
Yet, we’ve made it this far, even with half the population eating their popsicles stick first.
>“I have a 20-hour-a-week job already, plus I run a student organization … [so] I need to be very selective with my time. If this reading isn’t something that’s absolutely necessary for me to read to get an A, then I either won’t read it, or, if it’s interesting, I’ll skim it, probably,” said Connor Effrain, a UF student and a friend of Wherley’s.
Effrain, a history major, reads about 250 pages per week but often uses artificial intelligence to lighten the load: He runs his assigned readings through ChatGPT to generate summaries of the text. The technology has gotten so advanced, he said, that it can answer specific questions about the text or identify quotes he might need.
“I love history. It’s interesting to read about, but since I have so much responsibility with my job, I don’t have the time to literally read every single word that gets assigned,” he said.
Can totally relate to this. I know few people who like to read for hours because there are so many other commitments. But a large part of being a grad in the arts is having had the experience of struggling through long difficult texts that you don’t get right away.
Back in my day students used CliffsNotes for that. Don’t recommend generative AI for this though, it’s still horribly inaccurate regarding specific details (the whole hallucination thing).
The gap between what students need/want to learn versus what the system is trying to teach them keeps widening. Hence this behavior.
Its sad we can’t just hold these idiots back until they figure it out.
This message brought to you by Cliff Notes.
“Cliff Notes: the old timey way to cheat.”
I’m glad they’re trying to *adapt*, not rewind time. The world changes, and education needs to change with it.
Throw in bait questions into your Curriculum that asks about things that didn’t happen in the material to force a hallucination and catch them
The future is now old man
When I was entering 11 grade my teacher-to-be gave our class an assignment in the summer leading into the fall semester:
Read 3 assigned books and write 5 pages.
Our entire class understood the assignment to be 5 pages PER BOOK.
Only 2 students did the assignment, myself and my BFF.
The thing is I only read the first book. I reverse engineered the rest of the report using whatever information I could pool online.
Turns out the teacher only wanted 5 pages total. I submitted a 16 page report (my friend gave 15 pages). We both got A’s. The rest of the class got another week to hand it in.
I’d say it’s better than what I’ve heard from a Purdue Honors graduate: that they didn’t read a single assigned reading throughout their degree program.
It is really simple. In person teaching requires actual in person books. Read it out loud in the classroom.
Gotta say NotebookLM is pretty cool…. Make a summary of the source into a podcast… How cool is that!
Do X…you have 30 minutes.
Professors and universities are going to have to up their game if they want to remain relevant. So many lecturers are there because they are forced to lecture instead of doing research, not because they are actually good at teaching or want to. They are simply evaluating test scores.
This is prevalent in physics, where research physicists are forced to give half-hearted lectures.
One particularly shitty lecturer at my UNI also required students watch the Walter Lewin lectures as well, because he was so bad at teaching.
Were it not for random Indian men teaching calculus on youtube, I probably would not have gotten my engineering degree.
Kahn academy taught me math waaaaaaay better than my college professors did.
Like, insanely so.
Professors pointed me towards the problem and asked me to learn how to solve it.
I used the tools I had available to do so.
I’m having flashbacks to Sparknotes… rofl
Working full time and taking a master’s program. I absolutely use this when time is limited. In fact, professors advise to use it as a tool which is exactly what AI should be used for. Ultimately, it’s a very fickle scale that if you depend on it, you’re only hurting yourself in the long run. Use at your own discretion.
Segmented reading might work. But really, assign drafts or use versioning. Papers can’t appear out of thin air unless you cheat.
Professors need to improve the way they teach and not just lecture anymore. It may be time to add the Socratic method and more interactive teaching to the classroom.
It’s simple: fail them like any other cheater.
They’re going to have to go back to the Socratic method. Literally ask them, with no warning, and engage them in answering the question. Ban electronic devices in the classroom and have actual consequences for doing terribly in classes.
Not having gone for a grad degree I don’t know what professors at that level could do, but if I were an undergrad professor things I’d try:
* Using ChatGPT etc. myself to see what it barfs up so I’ll recognize that when students try to slide by with it
* Increased oral discussion of the material. Call on people, especially the skulkers, don’t just let the star students monopolize the chat
* Blue books – written exams given in class, no internet or computers.
I think we should all just collectively give up
As a professor, I don’t care how they learn the material. I’ll do my job and give lectures, Q&A sessions, and supplemental metals, and they’ll need to do theirs. When test time comes, if they can pass only using their pencil and brain, that’s all that matters to me. 🤷
That’s because in many unis, at least where I am from, whoever is teaching on YouTube does a way better job than the professors ever could.
I’m a bit conflicted on this… On the one hand, I worry about the declining quality of “professionals” these days and I fear it might only get worse, though that might be more due to a shitty education system; however, remote classes and now this might potentially exacerbate things. On the other hand, it is a pretty good tool for learning and it can be incredibly valuable when it comes to studying and shit, not to mention I used to look for summaries and such back in school, as well, so I also know and understand that point of view…
I think it probably comes down to responsible usage and self-accountability in the end, and there’s not much that can be done about it, just like it happens with the Internet and such tools/resources… This one might just be a _bit_ more convenient, I guess.
Don’t rely on textbooks to teach your class
If the kid can demonstrate understanding of the topic, what does it matter if they memorized the entire material, read chatgpt assisted summaries/explanations, or magically summoned the knowledge from the ether?
You’re dealing with a generation that is unable to do anything that doesn’t involve a smart telephone or the Tick Talk.
In my generation we had paper books and we dealt with it.
Maybe it’s time for education to change with the times and adjust the way they’re teaching.
To be fair, even in the corporate world there’s this thing called Executive Summary long before the AI boom.
I mean… YouTube and Podcasts isn’t really any different than when you got cliff notes or read an article on a subject or watched a documentary at the library. It’s just in a new platform.
ChatGPT is an issue because ChatGPT lies and makes things up. But if they’re using it to write an essay; then the made up references shouldn’t be difficult to check, and if they’re using it to learn the material then either they’ll learn it and do well on tests or they’ll fail.
Didn’t anyone have to write essay answers for tests?
I can’t imagine paying all that money for college and then cheating my way through it and not learning a fucking thing. What a disservice to yourself and your growth as a human being
Just fail them. Let them flunk out.
I got a liberal arts degree 15 years ago, this is not so different from my method then of: read the table of contents, the introduction and the conclusion, and go deep on just one tiny thing so you have a snappy quote for the exam.
Essays written in class and long-form answer tests. Did teachers get dumber too? Did the multiple choice marking machines perforate their brains or something?
To be fair, we had summaries since forever. But we still had to read it and write something. ChatGPT fucks up even that
Fail them. “Unsure how to adapt”?