Of course: blame it on the students that they re more interested in the grade than the learning.

Never blame the grade oriented standardisation you put em through.

Agreed 💯. That is also expressed in the article...

So true, kids should be able to see the value of what is being taught. If the instructor or is unable to convey the importance of the lesson, maybe the information isn’t worthy of the effort of learning.

I mean when there is an expected wordcount for something that you can write in a few sentences this is really helpful to get your thoughts together.

The article is like on the professor side? But what about the student side?

Me as a student in a univ where profs don't teach and just give assignments, activities, and projects(either group/individual) and it's like "you will figure it out".

"It's how you use it" this is the right term, i use the chatgpt to explain the process and make pointers to my outputs. I use it for code reviews :>

I really like what the author of this article says about giving students agency rather than having them all answer the same questions. As a young person in college, most of my assignments are rather boring to me. I've used ChatGPT on a number of things because I just didn't want to engage with the material, I didn't find it interesting. I never copied word for word of course.

With that being said, I had an English teacher who repeatedly assigned essays with topics that I just absolutely despised. They were just dreadful. I just emailed the teacher and said a more complicated version of, "Hey I don't really like this topic, I would like to do this instead, here's how it aligns with the objectives of the original assignment. Is that okay?"

I've done this multiple times with multiple professors and I have never had any of them say no. It's really hard to assign material that will be engaging for all of the students. I think it'd be better to enable students to request permission to do something else if they can articulate how it aligns with the original assignment. A student will always work harder on something they care about.

Assessments based on concepts of the students future needs presumes you know what the students are going to need. Things that are fundamental needs are better addressed. Using ChatGPT in developing lesson plans, grading, or writing essays is unwise because ChatGPT will give you wrong answers, generic answers, or not the same answer twice. It will give you citations that it made up. It has problems with basic math and distinguishing letters.

Same as a pocket calculator or spreadsheet, tools that made part of the task much easier but also facilitated more time and opportunity to focus on analysis and strategy.

The problem is when you need to teach -- and assess the homework of -- dozens of students. Education needs to be offered to the masses, but the way it's done today is to put so many people together that the teacher has no option other than not look at how each student develops. This becomes a larger problems in colleges and universities with more than 60 students in each classroom, and teachers having to work on several of those simultaneously.

I have to disagree with the comparison of chatGPT to a calculator. A calculator takes away the tedious process of doing a calculation but you would still have to problem solve to fully answer the question. A tool that produces essays removes a lot of the thought process behind the assignment

I mean, by the time I was done with undergrad I could write the typical 5 page paper in my sleep. I would start with the last paper and just edit it to refocus on the new paper. I wasn’t putting a lot of thought into it. Maybe this will require professors and TAs to engage more in class and use means other than writing assignments to assess student knowledge. In grad school participation was a factor on which you’d get graded. The professors actively noticed who contributed to class discussion and who didn’t…

This is really cool. And I can imagine your professors would really appreciate it as well. After all you are making their life easier for them. 👍

Assessment is total crap in most times that people are going through difficult times, or just anything where it’s like survival mode and testing brings that out sometimes. Anxiety on anxiety for what.

The most important thing we can teach young people is the power of critical thinking.

ChatGPT is a great asset if you want to teach that, because with every answer it gives, you need to consider why it’s giving it, what the context it, what it’s sources might be and whether there is an intention or bias in it.

as long as you update your prompts and the direction of ChatGPT, you can fix all those errors and creat great lessons plans and outlines. i already know teachers who are using it to save themselves time

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The problem is that the reasons ChatGPT gives dumb answers are buried deep in the opaque vagaries of its algorithm. Students need to respect that ChatGPT can just screw up, but checking it becomes an exercise in rote fact checking.

What they really need to learn about critical thinking are the myriad ways humans can mislead themselves and others, on purpose or by accident, from the tricks of malicious grifters to subtle biases we all have. ChatGPT isn't great for that, and it unfortunately might discourage the use of tools like long-form essays that are better for learning critical thinking and other essential skills like structuring ideas.

This is a pretty lame take. I’m sure if you ask a bunch of students they would say most classes are pointless. But that doesn’t make it true and there is a societal benefit to teach a broad range of subjects to students. Even if they don’t enjoy it.

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Just get the AI to grade the papers😂

They're gonna hate it even more when AI turns out to make a way better educator than the teachers too

Call me cynical, but I don't think many students would stop to consider questioning ChatGPT.

I have known teachers like that. Basic things like having a plan for what you are teaching and the resources to do it - these are fundamentals. If they need to have someone or something do it for them, I think they should consider another occupation.

I dont think you understand how much this helps them organize their own lesson plans while also generating new idea for them.

It’s a wonderful tool

And on that note: teacher ls are already underpaid and they usually make lesson plans a curriculum while not on the clock. This only helps them achieve a worth and value for their job. Cutting down out of school time.

One of the enormous problems in education is that we have to completely “rethink” and reinvent everything we do every single year. We’re flying the airplane as it’s being built and it’s the reason our school systems are a disaster.

When I was teaching freshman composition, the problem that I ran into was that some students really struggled with too much freedom if I allowed them to pick the topic. I usually had a few general topics explicitly listed, but also allowed students to explore other topics that mirrored their interest.

Another problem is that evaluating writing is much more time intensive than most other forms of evaluation. When you have to evaluate 40+ papers in only a few days, it becomes increasingly tricky to allow latitude. If an instructor is only getting paid for 3 hours to grade papers, it's hard to blame them for not allowing much divergence from a prompt. That's a problem that can be solved by lowering student-teacher ratios, but most universities are more focused on cost cutting.

Finally, the purpose of college is increasingly coming into question. Nowadays, it's being used as essentially a job training facility when that has not been the point of it historically. Capitalist ideology has really snuck into every corner of academia now, and that mindset values standardization and objective results. As long as the primary goal of academia is to create a supply for the workforce, then assignments and evaluations will tend to focus on standardization over creativity.

Yes, I totally agree. I was a teacher for a hot sec until I saw that it wasn't worth it in the long run. Anyways, I quickly realized that it is so tough to teach to individual students vs. teach to the class and then differentiate in worksheets (easy, medium, hard) but all of that takes time to organize . So with this new technology that can further individual teaching and help educators!

On one point, it’s not really designed for straight math at all. It also helps if someone is educated in approaching the tool as a whole. Then it works great.

I'm doing a sort of flipside to this. I have to write a big-effort research paper over the course of the semester, but the prompt is extremely open-ended and I don't really know where to go with it. I've got until Feb 1st to figure out something interesting to write about, and as a last ditch, I'm probably just gonna ask ChatGPT to give me a list of prompts. CGPT has an "issue" where it will effectively just make things up because there's no problem solving underneath to actually check if its statements are accurate, but it's great for inspiration.

That’s like the exact opposite of the truth.

The problem with education is that it doesn’t evolve quickly enough, we keep doing the same things over and over.

Love this response and I agree wholeheartedly. It's not realistic for every student to do what I do. It's also not realistic for teachers to be able to make class engaging for everyone when they have so many students and so little time.

My favorite classes have been the ones where it's like 1 teacher and less than 10 students. They're amazing.

And I think that's a great way to use it. There's such things as having prompts that are too open. I've used cgpt in similar ways as well.

Idk where I heard this, but constraint breeds creativity. Being confined to a prompt can create wonderful results. I just appreciate being able to act on an idea I may have instead.

What you're describing is basically grad school. Graduate school is an amazing academic experience in the right circumstances. I really found my time as a grad student to be intellectually fulfilling.

Unfortunately, most universities also see grad students as a source of cheap labor, so they are generally ripe for exploitation. Basically, any discussion of grad school is going to result in me repeating my earlier points about capitalist ideology infiltrating academia.

> That’s like the exact opposite of the truth.

Depends what field you're in. Computing moves pretty bloody fast.

Classes will just do more in class grading, either with locked down PCs or handwritten assignments.

Those are problems if you just throw a prompt in and copy/paste the answer.

As a tool to speed up and revise your writing, ChatGPT is very effective.

Its useful for putting your plan on paper in a nice, clean format that other people can read.

> I think they should consider another occupation.

We already have a massive teacher shortage. Last thing we need is to push more to leave.

20 years ago a good student was defined as someone who could use a computer or calculator effectively to solve problems. Perhaps 10 years ago whomever could use search engines to find data were the most successful. We’re in a transition period where those who can use AI to come up with answers should be considered the best students. Eventually it will be whomever can program the AI to come up with the best solutions.

This cycle continues (rapidly) until people build AIs to optimize AIs in ways we can’t.

It's the consequence of a job market the incentivizes a degree over knowledge and experience.

If having a good grade is all you need to make a living, then there's no need to actually learn.

I think it will play out the same way across all areas: the good and the smart adapt and evolve to make something greater than we've ever seen, while a bunch of lazy mofos make everyone look bad.

Part of it is that "we need adults to be able to write a coherent essay with 5 paragraphs and a main idea at the end of the first paragraph and..."

And maybe the real question is: do we? When?

Do adults need to be able to do long division?

I work at a tech company at a typical TC rate (many times the average income). Somehow this is not valued. Short, to the point emails - as short and terse as possible - with clear and succinct points are what counts. Simpler words. Building up my point with screenshots and visualizations.

The whole assumption here is we still need kids to learn a task that AI already knows how to do better than most of them will be able to do in their lifetime.

Teachers dont get paid enough as it stands, now you want to reteach them all how to teach? Jesus Christ

Can you communicate what you just said, but in 2 short bullet points?

This is how we end up with kids that don’t understand how to critically think. Learning how ti put together a coherent essay is NOT just about learning to write a 5 paragraph essay with a beginning, middle and end. It’s about learning how to synthesize information and discuss it in a meaningful way. You write research papers to learn how to interpret data and scientific literature, you write persuasive essays to learn how to put together a good argument, etc. Reading and listening to lectures is well and good, but until you have to write about, teach or at least discuss the information yourself most people aren’t thinking very critically about it. Mostly, they’re just jotting down notes.

Most skills taught in school are wastes of time.

Skills that an AI can do well are likely wastes of time to teach.

I believe Google are actively working with educational institutes to detect AI-generated content.

Yet you felt the need to write more elaborately in the first instance. There was a reason for that.

Sometimes the lesson is not what's being taught. Maths, for example, teaches you how to look at a problem, break it down and solve pieces at a time, step by step. Even if the maths is not useful, the process of thinking is.

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If those kids could read they would be really upset.

What do you call it when you go to insult something, but you just make yourself sad?

"yOu wOn'T aLwAyS hAvE aCaLcULaToR iN yOuR pOcKeT"

"wIkIpEdIA iSn'T a ReLiAbLe SoUrCe"

Universities need to adapt to modern times if they want to stay relevant enough for people to go into debt for decades in order to pay them.

Paper and pencil.

>profs don't teach and just give assignments, activities, and projects(either group/individual) and it's like "you will figure it out".

This is a pretty good description of what most software teams experience when thrown in a project from the product team. It's a good reflection of real life, you have humanity's collective knowledge at your fingertips after all!

They should restrict certain things when student access with their student login. So, that there will be less chances for cheating

My high school kid wrote an essay today (on his own) and then used chatGPT to review it at the end. Not gonna lie, I thought it was a clever use. Waiting to see how the teacher’s comments line up.

Honestly, generating a few essays and writing my own version is probably a more educational method than what I did in high school when I had to write a book report. Better to read a bunch of analysis than just flip around the book and try to make random thematic connections.

It’s not a chance, it’s a reality check.

Higher Ed:
If your answer is pencils and paper, get used to an Amish student body. FFS, get your head out of the sand, stand up, admit you’re behind the curve, shake it off, and adapt. Yes, I understand that means learning something new, but that’s what you guys are suppose to be good at….

Finance and Healthcare:
Stop laughing, they’re coming for you next….

Good bring back actual tests

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you're getting down voted, but I've had some pretty lacking teachers...and chatGPT is quickly replacing the ways that I supplement the gaps in my learning. Instead of watching hours of YouTube, or trying to rely on poorly written textbooks, chatGPT has made the learning process interactive with decent explanations of concepts that i might be struggling with.

Will it replace the better professors I've come across? No, that's impossible.

But it does help when I have trouble with the course information and am experiencing a disconnect between the instructor, the material, and my learning process for whatever reason.

Yeah 100%, I'm a developer and I'm using it every day to save time sifting through results on Google to figure out how to solve problems. It's not always right, but sometimes it gets you on the right track anyway.

You mean it wasn't a good idea for my university to prioritize the athletic department at the expense of all the other academic departments?

There have always been ways to get by on the bare minimum. There’s not much you can do for those folks.

I’m more interested in the kids who are going to use it like their personal Kahn Academy.

Big brain move now is to develop an AI that grades papers for the teachers.

This is kinda inline with when calculator became a thing. People were against it because they wanted kids to do it by-hand/in-head.

Chat got for sure may help student get answer. But unless they thoroughly inspect it and take a final decision if it is sufficient/correct, they can't use it. And in my opinion, that itself involves a learning and demonstrate the understanding students have. Which could be sufficient.

Seems like the most obvious solution.

Yeah. There's a lot of talk about this being an exciting tool but, in reality, its a low-effort way of achieving an outcome.

How about we ask ChatGPT what could be done about it? 🤣

Admit that machines are superior and they will replace our species

Oh no! I found an easy way to do work I didn’t sign up for and is unpaid and has a 90% likelihood of never benefiting in the future, but if I fail to do it to a standard that is the opinion of a disgruntled and underpaid “boss” I might get an assessment that will ruin my ability to find work that I ACTUALLY want to do and will ACTUALLY get paid for?!?!? Oh nooooo!! No no no! This is terrible!

Note: I’m an airline pilot and it is because of the shitty American education system that I had to wait until I was 35 to be able to become a pilot and now I get paid more than I ever have to do what I love. Fuck the school system.

Pay teachers more, let students pursue passions, don’t force them to do work they are bad at and have it affect their future. Stop trying to pump out slaves, america.

I’m actually for chatgpt in the sense of who really cares of an ai writes something better than most humans and I take it and tweak it to make it my own creation.

It feels like a lot of people are scared or intimidated by it, like it’s perceived as this big playing field leveler. When In reality the playing field was pretty flat to begin with, just some man made obstacles.

I hope it grows and becomes more accessible to people.

You can drill all day it's more important to know the content than get a grade, only question you get is "will I get a good grade?".

I can't tell kids that grades are subjective to an extent so put more weight on what you know, not what I say you know.

Also, students can try to cheat with ChatGPT, but I teach 4th. It's pretty obvious based on their ability if they cheated on an essay or not. If it isn't obvious based on your past work, good on you using a resource because you obviously have the skill.

Chat GPT, write a witty but offensive counter-comment to wadejohn, using simple and succinct language.

An error occured. If this issue persists please contact us through our helpcenter at help.openai.com.

Degrees are an easy filter that put the burden on the applicant. Skill testing is expensive and difficult to do legally in the US, and trial periods discourage candidates who are already employed.

Absolutely. And it's time to rethink a lot of other stuff too!

Maybe instead of teaching us to regurgitate shit; they could actually teach us to understand instead of test.

This right here. As AI gets better, the days of reading and trying to remember 500 page text books are numbered. You may start seeing books that are just outlines of concepts and you go through that asking the AI questions and working on that and fine tuning the questions to get to what you need to know.

Now add in AI generated videos to go with the explanation of the topic being worked on.

That’s not a long term solution since as AI progresses, it will become increasingly indistinguishable from human speech. Even if this doesn’t happen, students can still reword the AI’s contents to match their own style which, if done thoroughly enough, will completely circumvent the AI-checking.

I have done better from the teachers that do not demand me to memorize everything and allowed open book tests. They would say it’s better to know where you get your knowledge then to force you to remember every exact thing. Those teachers were heaven sent with all the memory issues I have had.

which is probably already possible, using the ai key frame generation based on DALL-E

But then you can't just demand a better grade because you were up all night writing this paper even tho it's shit.

Maybe teaching and assessment are two different things?

Instead of every action you take in school being assessed....maybe the classroom is just where you learn.

Then separately you prove what you learned by a domain specific artifact of some sort that correlates to whatever you want to do in the real world. Could be a portfolio, novel research, interview, test, business plan, whatever.

At this point why should anyone care whether students can do something that can be done at the same level of quality, cheaper, and faster by AI ?

The real question is, are people aware of how royally AI is going to fuck with inequality, and how badly we need to figure out a solution before all the jobs are gone?

Certs, credentials and licenses are used far more often as a means of protectionism to incumbents than in the service of anything else.

Frankly I'd like to see us do away with a lot of them - if you can do the job you can do the job. Some are obviously more procedure oriented and risky than others but does massage therapy really require more training than teaching people how to fly an airplane? Licensing boards would say so

>The most important thing we can teach young people is the power of critical thinking.

Adults don't understand critical thinking these days. Look at the double standards many people apply in their own lives and the absolute mess tribal politics is today. The kids are doomed.