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AI ripped the cover off of a dirty secret of higher education: The bulk of assignments are useless busywork using outdated formats, and educators and education

AI ripped the cover off of a dirty secret of higher education: The bulk of assignments are useless busywork using outdated formats, and educators and educational institutions haven't been motivated to change it. Instead of realizing this and embracing the theories and models of newer education sciences, most institutions have become near ideologues with their inertia.

spwa4 2y ago
Either that, or, you don't have respect for the fact that one TA has to correct the work of >30 students per class, for perhaps 10 different classes PLUS other work (like actual research), including checking for plagiarism and the like. This only works with certain formats that are characterized by a large asymmetry of work between student and teacher. You could, of course, pay 30x more and get better service. And then there's the total disrespect students have for just outright knowledge and practice. Being able to recite a math formularium from memory "is useless". It kind of is. But students who can do this work 5x faster than people who can't, and surely that's a good part of an education. The second thing that really matters for math is doing A LOT of exercises (like 10 intermediate to hard problems per day, ideally) over a prolonged period of time (months, minimum). That's every last exercise in a big calculus book. The exercises "are useless". Mathematica can do it, and in almost all cases, can do it better than a 40-year experience mathematician. But ... The difference between students who've done both and students who haven't is night and day. Including the difference in using tools like Mathematica. Frankly, you can even see the difference clearly in other subjects.
shadowerm 2y ago
I would say it is an even deeper issue of credentialism vs education. True education doesn't need busywork but credentialism does. The busywork is the filter for the credential. Also, if a person doesn't write essays in college how are we going to have all these authors that turn 20 pages of ideas into 300 page books? It would ruin the whole book industry. It takes a ton of practice to uncompress an idea into a coherent structure using 10X more words than needed so the book is the optimal length for sale when printed.

spwa4 2y ago

Either that, or, you don't have respect for the fact that one TA has to correct the work of >30 students per class, for perhaps 10 different classes PLUS other work (like actual research), including checking for plagiarism and the like. This only works with certain formats that are characterized by a large asymmetry of work between student and teacher. You could, of course, pay 30x more and get better service. And then there's the total disrespect students have for just outright knowledge and practice. Being able to recite a math formularium from memory "is useless". It kind of is. But students who can do this work 5x faster than people who can't, and surely that's a good part of an education. The second thing that really matters for math is doing A LOT of exercises (like 10 intermediate to hard problems per day, ideally) over a prolonged period of time (months, minimum). That's every last exercise in a big calculus book. The exercises "are useless". Mathematica can do it, and in almost all cases, can do it better than a 40-year experience mathematician. But ... The difference between students who've done both and students who haven't is night and day. Including the difference in using tools like Mathematica. Frankly, you can even see the difference clearly in other subjects.

shadowerm 2y ago

I would say it is an even deeper issue of credentialism vs education. True education doesn't need busywork but credentialism does. The busywork is the filter for the credential. Also, if a person doesn't write essays in college how are we going to have all these authors that turn 20 pages of ideas into 300 page books? It would ruin the whole book industry. It takes a ton of practice to uncompress an idea into a coherent structure using 10X more words than needed so the book is the optimal length for sale when printed.