My take: While AI tools can help with learning, the vast majority of students use it to avoid learning
replies(4):
Torturing students with five paragraph essays, which is what “learning” looks like for most American kids, is not that great and isn’t actually teaching critical thinking which is most valuable. I don’t know any other form of writing that is like that.
Reading “themes” into books that your teacher is convinced are there. Looking for 3 quotes to support your thesis (which must come in the intro paragraph, but not before the “hook” which must be exciting and grab the reader’s attention!).
And teachers should use AIs too. Evaluating papers is not that hard for an LLM.
"Your a teacher. Given this assignment (paste /attach the file and the student's paper), does this paper meet the criteria. Identify flaws and grammatical errors. Compose a list of ten questions to grill the student on based on their own work and their understanding of the background material."
A prompt like that sounds like it would do the job. Of course, you'd expect students to use similar prompts to make sure they are prepared for discussing those questions with the teacher.
what's the point of the teacher then? Courses could entirely be taught via LLM in this case!
A student's willingness to learn is orthogonal to the availability of cheating devices. If a student is willing, they will know when to leverage the LLM for tutoring, and when to practise without it.
A student who's unwilling cannot be stopped from cheating via LLM now-a-days. Is it worth expending resources to try prevent it? The only reason i can think of is to ensure the validity of school certifications, which is growing increasingly worthless anyway.
when wikipedia was initially made, many schools/teachers explicitly denied wikipedia as a source for citing in essays. And obviously, plenty of kids just plagerized wikipedia articles for their essay topics (and was easily discovered at the time).
With the advent of LLM, this sort of pseudo-learning is going to be more and more common. The unsupervised tests (like online tests, or take home assignments) cannot prevent cheating. The end result is that students would pass, but without _actually_ learning the material at all.
I personally think that perhaps the issue is not with the students, but with the student's requirement for certification post-school. Those who are genuinely interested would be able to leverage LLM to the maximum for their benefit, not just to cheat a test.
Coaching the student on their learning journey, kicking their ass when they are failing, providing independent testing/certification of their skills, answering questions they have, giving lectures, etc.
But you are right, you don't have to wait for a teacher to tell you stuff if you want to self educate yourself. The flip side is that a lot of people lack the discipline to teach themselves anything. Which is why going to school & universities is a good idea for many.
And I would expect good students that are naturally curious to be using LLM based tools a lot to satisfy their curiosity. And I would hope good teachers would encourage that instead of just trying to fit students into some straight jacket based on whatever the bare minimum standards say they should know, which of course is what a lot of teaching boils down to.