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323 points timbilt | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.402s | source
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joshdavham ◴[] No.42129395[source]
I'm really curious to see where higher education will go now that we have LLM's. I imagine the bar will just keep getting higher and more will be able to taught in less time.

Are there any students here who started uni just before LLM's took off and are now finishing their degrees? Have you noticed much change in how your classes are taught?

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cmontella ◴[] No.42129501[source]
I teach at the university level, and I just expect more from my students. Instead of implementing data structures like we did when I was in school, something ChatGPT is very good at; my students are building systems, something ChatGPT has more trouble with.

Instead of paper exams asking students "find the bug" or "implement a short function", they get a takehome exam where they have to write tests, integrate their project into a CI pipeline, use version control, and implement a dropbox-like system in Rust, which we expect to have a good deal of functionality and accompanying documentation.

I tell them go ahead and use whatever they want. It's easier than policing their tools. If they can put it together, and it works, and they can explain it back to me, then I'm satisfied. Even if they use ChatGPT it'll take a great deal of work and knowledge to get running.

If ChatGPT suddenly is able to put a project like that together, then I'll ask for even more.

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bondarchuk ◴[] No.42129579[source]
Wouldn't it be unfair towards the students who want to learn without LLMs?
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idopmstuff ◴[] No.42129652[source]
Why does that matter? LLMs are going to be increasingly important tools, so it's valuable for educators to help students understand how to use them well. If you choose to exclude modern tools in your teaching to avoid disadvantaging those who don't want to use them, you disadvantage all the students who do want to use them.

To put it another way, modern high school level math classes disadvantage students who want to learn without using a calculator, but it would be quite odd to suggest that we should exclude calculators from math curricula as a result.

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1. frakt0x90 ◴[] No.42129818[source]
I disagree. I see an LLM as less calculator and more as cheating. I think there's a lot of value in creating something entirely yourself without having an LLM spit out a mean solution for you to start from.

LLMs have their place and maybe even somewhere in schools but the more you automate the hard parts of tasks, the less people value the struggle of actually learning something.

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2. cmontella ◴[] No.42130697[source]
FWIW I teach upper level courses.

I see LLMs as almost sufficiently advanced compilers. You could say the same thing about gcc or even standard libraries. "Why back in my day we wrote our own hash maps while walking uphill both ways! Kids these days just import a lib and they don't learn anything!"

They are still learning, just at a higher level of abstraction.