How University Students Use Claude

IMO it's so easy to ChatGPT your homework that the whole education model needs to flip on its head. Some teachers already do something like this, it's called the "Flipped classroom" approach.

Basically, a student's marks depend mostly (only?) on what they can do in a setting where AI is verifiably unavailable. It means less class time for instruction, but students have a tutor in their pocket anyway.

I've also talked with a bunch of teachers and a couple admins about this. They agree it's a huge problem. By the same token, they are using AI to create their lesson plans and assignments! Not fully of course, they edit the output using their expertise. But it's funny to imagine AI completing an AI assignment with the humans just along for the ride.

The point is, if you actually want to know what a student is capable of, you need to watch them doing it. Assigning homework has lost all meaning.

> it's called the "Flipped classroom" approach.

Flipped classroom is just having the students give lectures, instead of the teacher.

> Basically, a student's marks depend mostly (only?) on what they can do in a setting where AI is verifiably unavailable.

This is called "proctored exams" and it's been pretty common in universities for a few centuries.

None of this addresses the real issue, which is whether teachers should be preventing students from using AIs.

> Flipped classroom is just having the students give lectures, instead of the teacher.

Not quite. Flipped classroom means more instruction outside of class time and less homework.

> This is called "proctored exams" and it's been pretty common in universities for a few centuries. None of this addresses the real issue

Proctored exams is part of it. In-class assignments is another. Asynchronous instruction is another.

And yes, it addresses the issue. Students can use AI however they see fit, to learn or to accomplish tasks or whatever, but for actual assessment of ability they cannot use AI. And it leaves the door open for "open-book" exams where the use of AI is allowed, just like a calculator and textbook/cheat-sheet is allowed for some exams.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom

>Not fully of course, they edit the output using their expertise

Surely this is sarcasm, but really your average schoolteacher is now a C student Education Major.

Flipped classroom means you watch the recorded lecture outside of class time and you do your homework during class time.

I was talking about people I know and talk with, mostly friends and family, who are smart, hard working, and their students are lucky to have them.

Thank you, it's amazing how people don't even try to understand what words mean before dismissing it. Flipped makes way more sense anyway since lectures aren't terribly interactive. Being able to pause/replay/skip around in lectures is underrated.

Except that students don't watch the videos. We have so much log data on this - most of them don't bother to actually watch the videos. They intend to, they think they will, but they don't.

The education model at high school and undergrad uni has not changed in decades, I hope AI leads to a fundamental change. Homework being made easy by AI is a symptom of the real issues. Being taught by uni students who learned the curriculum last year, lecturers who only lecture due to obligation and haven't changed a slide in years. Lecturers who refuse to upload lecture recordings or slides. Just a few glaring issues, the sad part these are rather superficial easy to fix cases of poor teaching.

I feel AI has just revealed how poor the teaching is, though I don't expect any meaningful response to be made by teaching establishments. If anything AI will lead to bigger differences in student learning. Those who learn core concepts and to critically think will be become more valuable and the people who just AI everything will become near worthless.

Unis will release some handbook policy changes to the press and will continue to pump out the bell curve of students and get paid.

And yet all the people who created all the advances in AI have extremely traditional, extremely good, fancy educations, and did absolutely bonkers amount of homework. The thing you are talking about is very aspirational.

If they can perform well without reviewing the material, that's a problem with either the performance measure or the material.

And not watching lectures is not the same as not reviewing the material. I generally prefer textbooks and working through proofs or practice problems by hand. If I listen to someone describe something technical I zone out too quickly. The only exception seems to be if I'm able to work ahead enough that the lecture feels like review. Then I'm able to engage.

There's some sad irony to that, making homework easier for future generations but those generations being worse off as a result on average. The lack of AI assistance was a forcing function to greater depth.

Outliers will still work hard and become even more valuable, AI won't affect them negatively. I feel non outliers will be affected negatively on average in ability to learn/think.

With no confirming data, I feel those who got that fancy education would do so in any other institution. Just those fancy institutions draw in and filter for intelligent types, not teach them to be intelligent as it's practically a pre-requisite.

Flipped classroom sounds horrible to me. I never liked being given time to work on essays or big projects in class. I prefer working at home, where the environment is much more comfortable and I can use equipment the school doesn't have, where I can wait until I'm in the right mood to focus, where nobody is pestering me about the intermediary stages of my work, etc.

It also seems like a waste of having an expert around to be doing something you could do at home without them.

Exams should increasingly be written with the idea in mind that students can and will use AI. Open book exams are great. They're just harder to write.

As a university student currently taking a graduate course with a "flipped classroom" curriculum, I can confirm that many students in the class aren't watching the posted videos.

I myself am one of them, but I attribute that to the fact that this is a graduate version of an undergrad class I took two years ago (but have to take the grad version for degree requirements). Instead, I've been skimming the posted exercises and assessing myself which specific topics I need to brush up on.

I don't see a future that doesn't involve some form of AR glasses and individual tuned learning. Forget teachers, you will just don your learning glasses and have an AI that walks you through assignments and learning everyday.

That is if learning-to-become-a-contributing-member-of-society doesn't become obsolete anyway.

I should add that upon reflection, I did have some really good "flipped classroom" experiences in college, especially in highly technical math and philosophy courses. But in those cases (a) homework was really vital, (b) significant work was never done in class, and (c) we never watched lectures at home. Instead, the activity at home (which did replace lectures) was reading textbooks (or papers) and doing homework. Then class time was like collective office hours.

Failure to do the homework made class time useless, the material was difficult, and the instructors were willing to give out failing grades. So doing the homework was vital even when it wasn't graded. Perhaps that can also work well here in the context of AI, at least for some subjects.