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Do most people really need to learn college level writing? I would ask, what is the motivator of learning how to write well? One reason could be communication.

Do most people really need to learn college level writing? I would ask, what is the motivator of learning how to write well? One reason could be communication. However, if we can communicate easier and faster than ever before with an AI, that subject no longer needs to be taught. College writing will go the way of calligraphy. Colleges and the faculty that staff them need to keep up with the times or risk being obsoleted. Instead of teaching students to write, they should instead offer courses on prompt engineering and how to get the LLMs to spit out what is needed, in a minimum amount of time. And let's face it -- most people are being prepared for the life of a corporate worker or laborer. I'd argue a great number of people don't need college. Cheating is widespread because there are people in those courses who aren't interested in the material. A quick course in how to compose an email, workplace communication should be all that is needed for most white collar workers. Those who really want to study writing should be offered the courses as an artistic, historical and anachronistic pursuit and those courses should definitely not be financed on the tax payer's dime.

agiacalone 2y ago
Uni CS lecturer here: It's not the writing itself that is important, it's the ability to communicate ideas and express one's own thoughts. I use writing on exams as a way to determine what the student actually knows about a particular thing. It's not a perfect metric by any stretch, but it's one of the few that we have to test knowledge of a subject (theoretical knowledge) versus a practical demonstration (project or code).
- hirvi74 2y ago
  Why not use more oral exams? It'd be quite difficult for me to cheat on an algorithms examination if you and I were talking back and forth in real time. I understand time is probably a factor, but I still think such assessments could be conducted. I had foreign-language assessments and musical assessments conducted in such a manner at the university level. Not to mention, when those students apply for many of the jobs out there, they might have gained some useful skills for interviewing, conversing with team members, etc.. I'm not opposed to some writing, but it seems like our education system believes it to be the only medium that matters.
  - agiacalone 2y ago
    > Why not use more oral exams? ... I understand time is probably a factor We do this, actually. Usually in the form of project demos when students complete a longer project. But also consider: I have ~200-250 students a semester. Even at 10 minutes a student per semester (and really...how much can I learn about a student in 10 minutes??) that's a whole lot of hours. I also don't get paid hourly. I also don't get paid a lot. Teaching isn't exactly a high-paying job in the state Uni system.
deleted 2y ago
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Biologist123 2y ago
I work in a sector where due to poor English and writing skills, OpenAI has been quite transformative in the quality of emails being sent - to me at least. But…I find my eyes glossing over when I notice ChatGPT’s telltale signs. Also on matters of substance, ChatGPT has a way of saying nothing at all - it writes in glittering generality and in a way that can feel devoid of context. I’m quite pro AI as an editing tool, but I think it would be a great loss for people to lose the capacity for writing.
hirvi74 2y ago
> Cheating is widespread because there are people in those courses who aren't interested in the material I think academic cheating is partially due to Goodhart's Law. In other words, grades have become the target, and are no longer a good assessment of understanding. An easy way to get rid of cheating would be to get rid of grades. However, grades are too ingrained in our system for them to be removed any time soon. I am not saying that assessments and evaluations should be completely eradicated. I just think assessments should be more holistic. By that, I mean that assessing a student's ability should be more contingent on personalized evaluations, a pass/fail system, and should involve more apprenticeships/mentoring opportunities with those more experienced. Much like in the times of yore.
- agiacalone 2y ago
  > > Cheating is widespread because there are people in those courses who aren't interested in the material This is only part of the issue, IMO. Students (especially CS/Engineering students) are usually overloaded with work. I've caught otherwise motivated students cheating simply because they're stressed to perform and didn't want to fail--especially since they've usually gotten pretty far in their coursework once they get to me--and the stress got the better of them. No excuses for them (and I fail cheating/plagarism along with my Uni policy) but lack of interest isn't always the motivating factor. > I just think assessments should be more holistic I'm with you on this, but aside from the time issue which I brought up in a previous response, this has been attempted at Uni before. In the 1960s, UCSC attempted to eliminate all grading and assessments and had professors write a narrative about their students. It worked from a knowledge perspective, but was absolutely lambasted in the wider media and academic circles. https://old.reddit.com/r/UCSC/comments/wpmgax/does_anyone_know_what_happened_with_the_old/ https://old.reddit.com/r/UCSC/comments/wpmgax/does_anyone_kn...
PostOnce 2y ago
A client worth north of a million dollars to me once said point blank that my competition can't write an email, and that's a big part of the reason we're doing business.
NoPicklez 2y ago
This is an odd take, do people in white collar jobs not need to write and communicate through writing effectively? I write memorandums and reports for clients where I need to articulate technical concepts in a way that is simple to understand. Where I need to communicate my findings to non-technical and technical stakeholders, the process to be able to write those reports takes a long time. You may not need a college course on writing, but generalising that people don't need to be taught to write is stupid. I have seen many of our graduates use LLM's to help compose their reports, without them understanding how it reads and what they're trying to communicate, those sections need to be rewritten.
- atonse 2y ago
  Same here. I pushed my team to use ChatGPT instead of fearing it. But one of my ex employees who used to write substandard tickets still wrote substandard tickets with ChatGPT (I had asked him to get advice from ChatGPT on what makes for effective tickets). The only difference was that they had perfect punctuation and grammar, and were 5x more verbose. Like any tool, if you don’t know what you’re asking for, the result will suffer.
  - NoPicklez 2y ago
    Exactly, if you don't know what you're asking for, how it reads or how it tells the story you're trying to convey. You will just have a well written piece of text that doesn't make sense in the context of what you're trying to say.
wrp 2y ago
> Do most people really need to learn college level writing? It's about the ability to demonstrate you have a coherent mental model of a topic. Use of LLMs doesn't help students who can't do that on their own.
gizmo686 2y ago
> Do most people really need to learn college level writing No, but only because college level writing is really bad (or, at least, the gen-ed writing courses are. I've had plenty other courses that didn't have writing in the curriculum, but still expected actually decent writing.) Even if we ignore the entire "college is not job training" view, writing is is probably one of the skills most universal to knowledge jobs.

agiacalone 2y ago

Uni CS lecturer here: It's not the writing itself that is important, it's the ability to communicate ideas and express one's own thoughts. I use writing on exams as a way to determine what the student actually knows about a particular thing. It's not a perfect metric by any stretch, but it's one of the few that we have to test knowledge of a subject (theoretical knowledge) versus a practical demonstration (project or code).

hirvi74 2y ago
Why not use more oral exams? It'd be quite difficult for me to cheat on an algorithms examination if you and I were talking back and forth in real time. I understand time is probably a factor, but I still think such assessments could be conducted. I had foreign-language assessments and musical assessments conducted in such a manner at the university level. Not to mention, when those students apply for many of the jobs out there, they might have gained some useful skills for interviewing, conversing with team members, etc.. I'm not opposed to some writing, but it seems like our education system believes it to be the only medium that matters.
- agiacalone 2y ago
  > Why not use more oral exams? ... I understand time is probably a factor We do this, actually. Usually in the form of project demos when students complete a longer project. But also consider: I have ~200-250 students a semester. Even at 10 minutes a student per semester (and really...how much can I learn about a student in 10 minutes??) that's a whole lot of hours. I also don't get paid hourly. I also don't get paid a lot. Teaching isn't exactly a high-paying job in the state Uni system.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Biologist123 2y ago

I work in a sector where due to poor English and writing skills, OpenAI has been quite transformative in the quality of emails being sent - to me at least. But…I find my eyes glossing over when I notice ChatGPT’s telltale signs. Also on matters of substance, ChatGPT has a way of saying nothing at all - it writes in glittering generality and in a way that can feel devoid of context. I’m quite pro AI as an editing tool, but I think it would be a great loss for people to lose the capacity for writing.

hirvi74 2y ago

> Cheating is widespread because there are people in those courses who aren't interested in the material I think academic cheating is partially due to Goodhart's Law. In other words, grades have become the target, and are no longer a good assessment of understanding. An easy way to get rid of cheating would be to get rid of grades. However, grades are too ingrained in our system for them to be removed any time soon. I am not saying that assessments and evaluations should be completely eradicated. I just think assessments should be more holistic. By that, I mean that assessing a student's ability should be more contingent on personalized evaluations, a pass/fail system, and should involve more apprenticeships/mentoring opportunities with those more experienced. Much like in the times of yore.

agiacalone 2y ago
> > Cheating is widespread because there are people in those courses who aren't interested in the material This is only part of the issue, IMO. Students (especially CS/Engineering students) are usually overloaded with work. I've caught otherwise motivated students cheating simply because they're stressed to perform and didn't want to fail--especially since they've usually gotten pretty far in their coursework once they get to me--and the stress got the better of them. No excuses for them (and I fail cheating/plagarism along with my Uni policy) but lack of interest isn't always the motivating factor. > I just think assessments should be more holistic I'm with you on this, but aside from the time issue which I brought up in a previous response, this has been attempted at Uni before. In the 1960s, UCSC attempted to eliminate all grading and assessments and had professors write a narrative about their students. It worked from a knowledge perspective, but was absolutely lambasted in the wider media and academic circles. https://old.reddit.com/r/UCSC/comments/wpmgax/does_anyone_know_what_happened_with_the_old/ https://old.reddit.com/r/UCSC/comments/wpmgax/does_anyone_kn...

PostOnce 2y ago

A client worth north of a million dollars to me once said point blank that my competition can't write an email, and that's a big part of the reason we're doing business.

NoPicklez 2y ago

This is an odd take, do people in white collar jobs not need to write and communicate through writing effectively? I write memorandums and reports for clients where I need to articulate technical concepts in a way that is simple to understand. Where I need to communicate my findings to non-technical and technical stakeholders, the process to be able to write those reports takes a long time. You may not need a college course on writing, but generalising that people don't need to be taught to write is stupid. I have seen many of our graduates use LLM's to help compose their reports, without them understanding how it reads and what they're trying to communicate, those sections need to be rewritten.

atonse 2y ago
Same here. I pushed my team to use ChatGPT instead of fearing it. But one of my ex employees who used to write substandard tickets still wrote substandard tickets with ChatGPT (I had asked him to get advice from ChatGPT on what makes for effective tickets). The only difference was that they had perfect punctuation and grammar, and were 5x more verbose. Like any tool, if you don’t know what you’re asking for, the result will suffer.
- NoPicklez 2y ago
  Exactly, if you don't know what you're asking for, how it reads or how it tells the story you're trying to convey. You will just have a well written piece of text that doesn't make sense in the context of what you're trying to say.

wrp 2y ago

> Do most people really need to learn college level writing? It's about the ability to demonstrate you have a coherent mental model of a topic. Use of LLMs doesn't help students who can't do that on their own.

gizmo686 2y ago

> Do most people really need to learn college level writing No, but only because college level writing is really bad (or, at least, the gen-ed writing courses are. I've had plenty other courses that didn't have writing in the curriculum, but still expected actually decent writing.) Even if we ignore the entire "college is not job training" view, writing is is probably one of the skills most universal to knowledge jobs.