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This comment reflects my personal opinion and experience [please take it with open mind] I really hate these type of questions. The open ended questions that i

This comment reflects my personal opinion and experience [please take it with open mind] I really hate these type of questions. The open ended questions that is about myself is not something useful. Students will usually do it because they have and will come up with anything (even before LLM). I understand the point that part of that is for students to get to know each other and professor know more about their expectations. I was once a grader for Astronomy class in the summer for the public (anyone could take it). Part of the assessment was that in each assignment students will ask one question and each student should answer at least one other question. I really questioned my relation with the world grading those questions. Astrology was the common topic. Random questions from all about anything you could come up related to Astronomy (or you think it is related). I no longer teach or grade and my experience were pre-ChatGPT era. ChatGPT will change education and educators have to adapt. They were forced to do it and they just did it for the grade. The purpose was to encourage communication and collaboration but in my experience this rarely work. People will just put bare minimum to just do this. LLM makes this too easy and it will be too tempting to use it. Some people did good job both asking and answering. But many were just not interested and had to do it anyway. Scientists collaborate out of necessity and because most of the them have genuine interest in this field. They get trained during their grad school and usually they still don't do well communicating and collaborating with each other. They are human after all. For the case we have in hand I can see a student tempted to write poor version on answer to this question without having to worry about grammar, typos..etc and will ask LLM to write in an academic style. How would they practice writing academic writing and express their thoughts properly? Probably never but this is them tricking themselves. Another problem which makes this case unique is that this course is about ethics. So lets set plagiarism and university rules aside. A discussion on using LLMs would be better start for a class about ethics and technology.

travisjungroth 2y ago
In your second paragraph, you said you didn’t find it useful and then you said why it’s useful.
- drivingmenuts 2y ago
  Sort of. I read it more as "here's why it's done but it's totally effing useless".
ordu 2y ago
> I really hate these type of questions. The open ended questions that is about myself is not something useful. Yes, it can be helpful for a professor, who could see what is interesting for the audience and modify their lectures according to it. But I believe you underestimate usefulness of such exercises for students. It triggers them to reflect on themselves, why they are studying and what they want to achieve. It is useful as a general lesson on reflection, on consciousness, on active learning, but even more useful for this particular course. When you think of your goals, verbalize questions you hope to find answers for, then you direct your mind, your attention. You become more of an attentive and active learner instead of a passive one, who just listens and tries to remember as much as they can. One of the recommendations I heard about how to read a book, was "formulate a question that the book can answer, then read the book searching for the answer". I believe it helps. I struggle to read some books if they are not particularly interesting for me, if I'm reading them in a "fishing" mode: maybe I'll find something useful or at least interesting? But if I had read the title, the introduction, maybe some reviews, to understand what book talks about, if I had then selected questions to the book, and then read the book looking for answers, I have no issues with focusing my attention on reading. If my attention wanders, it does it to think about what I had just read, which is a good sign. Such reading mode guarantees that the time wouldn't be wasted. > They were forced to do it and they just did it for the grade. The purpose was to encourage communication and collaboration but in my experience this rarely work. People will just put bare minimum to just do this. Yeah, I know. It is sad. I took an undergraduate course at 35, I studied with people of 18-20, and most of them just trying to fulfill the formal requirements that needed for grades, without trying hard to see what happens. I ended with a small group of students who really tried. Even when we didn't understand the purpose of some exercise we tried hard, got some results (grades, yes, but not just them), and then speculated on what was the point of the exercise. Sometimes we asked professors about the point of the exercise. Most students started with speculating about the point of the exercise and when they didn't see any, they didn't really tried to do the exercise, they just chased grades with the minimum effort.
techjamie 2y ago
Reminds me of the "discussion" assignments we were given in a couple college classes I was in. The idea was that students would write a top level response, then respond to someone else. In reality, I would write my response, then come up with 2-3 sentences of reply that basically amounted to "I agree with that guy." It never really fostered the type of debate the professor was looking for, because most other students had the same approach, and nobody else cared enough to go back and read the replies to themselves.
- tfandango 2y ago
  This must be the standard distance learning process because both my son and my wife (working on her masters) have to write a post and then respond to 2 other posts. It seems like fake discourse to me, all comments are written for the instructor to read and not for the OP. There is never a response to a response, thus no real discussion.

travisjungroth 2y ago

In your second paragraph, you said you didn’t find it useful and then you said why it’s useful.

drivingmenuts 2y ago
Sort of. I read it more as "here's why it's done but it's totally effing useless".

ordu 2y ago

> I really hate these type of questions. The open ended questions that is about myself is not something useful. Yes, it can be helpful for a professor, who could see what is interesting for the audience and modify their lectures according to it. But I believe you underestimate usefulness of such exercises for students. It triggers them to reflect on themselves, why they are studying and what they want to achieve. It is useful as a general lesson on reflection, on consciousness, on active learning, but even more useful for this particular course. When you think of your goals, verbalize questions you hope to find answers for, then you direct your mind, your attention. You become more of an attentive and active learner instead of a passive one, who just listens and tries to remember as much as they can. One of the recommendations I heard about how to read a book, was "formulate a question that the book can answer, then read the book searching for the answer". I believe it helps. I struggle to read some books if they are not particularly interesting for me, if I'm reading them in a "fishing" mode: maybe I'll find something useful or at least interesting? But if I had read the title, the introduction, maybe some reviews, to understand what book talks about, if I had then selected questions to the book, and then read the book looking for answers, I have no issues with focusing my attention on reading. If my attention wanders, it does it to think about what I had just read, which is a good sign. Such reading mode guarantees that the time wouldn't be wasted. > They were forced to do it and they just did it for the grade. The purpose was to encourage communication and collaboration but in my experience this rarely work. People will just put bare minimum to just do this. Yeah, I know. It is sad. I took an undergraduate course at 35, I studied with people of 18-20, and most of them just trying to fulfill the formal requirements that needed for grades, without trying hard to see what happens. I ended with a small group of students who really tried. Even when we didn't understand the purpose of some exercise we tried hard, got some results (grades, yes, but not just them), and then speculated on what was the point of the exercise. Sometimes we asked professors about the point of the exercise. Most students started with speculating about the point of the exercise and when they didn't see any, they didn't really tried to do the exercise, they just chased grades with the minimum effort.

techjamie 2y ago

Reminds me of the "discussion" assignments we were given in a couple college classes I was in. The idea was that students would write a top level response, then respond to someone else. In reality, I would write my response, then come up with 2-3 sentences of reply that basically amounted to "I agree with that guy." It never really fostered the type of debate the professor was looking for, because most other students had the same approach, and nobody else cared enough to go back and read the replies to themselves.

tfandango 2y ago
This must be the standard distance learning process because both my son and my wife (working on her masters) have to write a post and then respond to 2 other posts. It seems like fake discourse to me, all comments are written for the instructor to read and not for the OP. There is never a response to a response, thus no real discussion.