this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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TLDR: Most of her students have delegated doing their homework to ChatGPT.
Well I agree with her: fuck that. She makes a good point that writing is not some busywork consisting of transcribing thoughts, it is thinking. I can certainly understand the frustration of correcting LLM slop for days. If the student can’t be bothered to write it, why would the teacher be bothered with correcting it? Just ask ChatGPT to correct "your" homework and put "AI Prompter" in your resume. Apparently it pays really well.
…OK I’m not being nice, I’ll step back a little. Article touches on an interesting concept:
Why are students bringing the forklift into the weight room though? Is it because they don’t give a shit? Or are the stakes too high and they don’t trust their own abilities? Do they have the time to even try between their work shifts?
Likely a mix of all these factors and more. I think the author fails to critically examine how much skill is necessary for the average person and sets a bar of mastery for which many of her students are clearly uninterested in clearing.
While I don't say this as a criticism of the author, it is worth pointing out that she's also failed to adapt to the new technologies. She talks about how teachers will need to adapt to the new tools but ultimately places the blame on the students rather than reconsidering who her audience is. I'm guessing these are not individuals who are honestly pursuing a career in writing as those individuals would likely be much more engaged on the subject and willing to grow their skills (unless it's purely a means to an end- the acquisition of any degree). Using a tool which obscures stylistic choices may be "good enough" for these individuals and being able to accommodate the use of this tool effectively would necessarily require a shift in teaching style which gets them asking questions of the output. She recognizes this, but rather than questioning her teaching style it's written off as a failure of the student's ability to withstand the 'temporary discomfort of not knowing'.
I think you have some good points, except that these are not average people, but grad students being taught writing for PhD programs. I think that level of study necessitates mastery by its nature- you have to write original work for (most) doctorate degrees.
While I think there may be more to pull apart here, I think we're missing the necessary context to weigh in any deeper. How many assignments there are, what the assignments look like, whether they feel like just busy work, how much else is going on in the students life, etc. I think it would be telling (albeit not all that surprising as some are still just looking for a degree at that level) if they were using chatgpt on their doctorate, but even in that case I would perhaps argue that learning to use chatgpt tactfully or in ways which aren't the direct writing might be useful skills to have for future employment.
How would you propose adapting to this? Do you believe it's the teacher's responsibility to enact this change rather than (for example) a principal or board of directors?
The average teacher does not have the luxury of choosing their audience. Ideally you'd only teach students who want to learn, but in reality teachers are given a class of students and ordered to teach them. If enough students fail their exams, or if the teacher gives up on the ones who don't care, the teacher is assumed to be at fault and gets fired.
You can theoretically change your exams so that chatbot-dependent students will fail, or lower your bar because chatbots are "good enough" for everyday life. But thanks to standardized testing, most teachers do not have the power to change their success metrics in either direction.
This article is about PhD students coasting through their technical writing courses using chatbots. This is an environment/application where the product (writing a paper) is secondary to the process (critical analysis), so being able to use a chatbot is missing the point. Even if it were, cancelling your technical writing class to replace it with an AI-wrangling class is not a curriculum modification but an abdication. Doing that can get your program canceled, and could even get a tenured professor fired.
The author was really stuck between a rock and a hard place. Re-evaluating the systemic circumstances that incentivize cheating is crucially important -- on that we absolutely agree -- but it's a responsibility that should be directed at those with actual power over that system.
[Edit: taking the tone down a notch.]
To be clear, I'm not blaming anyone here. I think it's a tough problem and frankly, I'm not a professional educator. I don't think it's the teacher's responsibility and I don't blame them for a second for deciding that nah, this isn't worth my time.
Completely agreed here. I would have just failed the students for cheating if it were me. But to be clear, I was talking in more the abstract, since the article is written more about the conundrum and the pattern than it is about a solution. The author decided to quit, not to tackle the problem, and I was interested in hearing them follow that thread a bit further as they're the real expert here.
There's a part of me that thinks some of the blame should go to outdated pedagogical methods. Designing learning experiences and testing modalities is hard and most higher education for educators doesn't provide enough emphasis to meet the challenges of the modern classroom.
I'm not an educator, but the best teachers and professors I've had came up with ways to check for understanding, not just retention.
In the case of ChatGPT, maybe we have to admit writing papers is not as effective a teaching tool as we've given it credit for?
In the weightlifting analogy maybe it means understanding the reason one goes to the weight room. If it is to lose weight, for example, there are other ways. If it is to be able to lift heavy things maybe go lift some heavy things. If you don't care about any of those things then you bring a forklift.
Now, in defense of teachers like the one mentioned in the article, the entrenched administration and bureaucratic systems are likely the largest barriers to this sort of innovation.
I supervise exactly one person, and it's a ton of cognitive effort to analyse his level of competence, determine what skills/paradigm/knowledge he should gain and then create tasks for him to expose him to, help him internalize and then reinforce that same thing.
He's a great colleague.
Makes sense to me. For teachers that's their whole job (mostly... research professors and the like have other responsibilities, of course). And multiplied by a hundred or more.
Imagine something comes along that invalidates all of the tricks of the trade that have helped make it manageable. You're back to square one. I don't envy the position educators are in.
i assure you that i do not give a shit about writing a memo discussing the ethics of the Challeneger disaster. It's an assignment just to write something.
I don't care, my teacher doesnt care, the world doesn't care. It's a grade.
This is 95% of writing assignments in my experience.
Or is it because kids are dumb?
Nah even the smart ones use chat gpt https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-award-winning-japanese-novel-was-written-partly-by-chatgpt-180983641/
Good for her to quit, if she can't make her lessons worth doing she shouldn't be teaching