4 ms·

It is a five alarm fire at every university I have a line into. As in, “it’s time to radically rethink your entire course” kind of fire. I don’t think it’s bad

It is a five alarm fire at every university I have a line into. As in, “it’s time to radically rethink your entire course” kind of fire. I don’t think it’s bad, per se, but ChatGPT has effectively made it pointless to do certain kinds of assignments now. A lot of professors have been teaching the same way for many years. It’s a reckoning.

babyshake 4y ago
The ultimate reckoning may be that the model of teaching people how to think is now deprecated, as the ability to think and reason can now be outsourced in a way that is much more direct and powerful compared to search engines and the internet.
ectopod 4y ago
I attended a prestigious university. You could pretty much do what you liked (including nothing) for the three years and the degree was awarded for 30 hours of exams in a single week. In the exam room you couldn't copy work or pay someone else to do it or consult a chatbot. You knew the subject or you didn't. So you don't have to change the teaching. You could change the examining.
- omnicognate 4y ago
  Yep, back to exams, which there was never anything wrong with in the first place, IMO.
  - nprateem 4y ago
    Except for the people who answer badly due to stress and discover they've wasted 3 years off the back of a few bad hours.
    - omnicognate 4y ago
      This is why we have retakes. If your coursework results in lower grades than fellow students who cheated (with or without AI) there's no such recourse. Even assuming all the students do it in good faith, there are factors other than knowing the material that can affect their performance on coursework. For example one person may have access to a well equipped, ergonomic, quiet space and plenty of undisturbed time in which to complete the assignment, while another may not. The major benefit of exams is that everybody is taking them in, as far as possible, consistent and controlled conditions. It's not ideal, but I think it's better than the alternatives.
      - nprateem 4y ago
        Some unis only allow retakes if you totally fail. They don't let you optionally choose to retake to try to do better, so no, that's not a solution that works for everyone.

babyshake 4y ago

The ultimate reckoning may be that the model of teaching people how to think is now deprecated, as the ability to think and reason can now be outsourced in a way that is much more direct and powerful compared to search engines and the internet.

ectopod 4y ago

I attended a prestigious university. You could pretty much do what you liked (including nothing) for the three years and the degree was awarded for 30 hours of exams in a single week. In the exam room you couldn't copy work or pay someone else to do it or consult a chatbot. You knew the subject or you didn't. So you don't have to change the teaching. You could change the examining.

omnicognate 4y ago
Yep, back to exams, which there was never anything wrong with in the first place, IMO.
- nprateem 4y ago
  Except for the people who answer badly due to stress and discover they've wasted 3 years off the back of a few bad hours.
  - omnicognate 4y ago
    This is why we have retakes. If your coursework results in lower grades than fellow students who cheated (with or without AI) there's no such recourse. Even assuming all the students do it in good faith, there are factors other than knowing the material that can affect their performance on coursework. For example one person may have access to a well equipped, ergonomic, quiet space and plenty of undisturbed time in which to complete the assignment, while another may not. The major benefit of exams is that everybody is taking them in, as far as possible, consistent and controlled conditions. It's not ideal, but I think it's better than the alternatives.
    - nprateem 4y ago
      Some unis only allow retakes if you totally fail. They don't let you optionally choose to retake to try to do better, so no, that's not a solution that works for everyone.