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How University Students Use Claude

(www.anthropic.com)
395 points pseudolus | 10 comments | 09 Apr 25 15:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.721s | source | bottom
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dtnewman ◴[09 Apr 25 16:23 UTC] No.43633873[source]▶
> A common question is: “how much are students using AI to cheat?” That’s hard to answer, especially as we don’t know the specific educational context where each of Claude’s responses is being used.

I built a popular product that helps teachers with this problem.

Yes, it's "hard to answer", but let's be honest... it's a very very widespread problem. I've talked to hundreds of teachers about this and it's a ubiquitous issue. For many students, it's literally "let me paste the assignment into ChatGPT and see what it spits out, change a few words and submit that".

I think the issue is that it's so tempting to lean on AI. I remember long nights struggling to implement complex data structures in CS classes. I'd work on something for an hour before I'd have an epiphany and figure out what was wrong. But that struggling was ultimately necessary to really learn the concepts. With AI, I can simply copy/paste my code and say "hey, what's wrong with this code?" and it'll often spot it (nevermind the fact that I can just ask ChatGPT "create a b-tree in C" and it'll do it). That's amazing in a sense, but also hurts the learning process.

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srveale ◴[09 Apr 25 17:09 UTC] No.43634566[source]▶
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.

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1. hackyhacky ◴[09 Apr 25 17:11 UTC] No.43634595[source]▶
> 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.

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2. srveale ◴[09 Apr 25 17:25 UTC] No.43634766[source]▶
> 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

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3. ◴[09 Apr 25 17:27 UTC] No.43634791[source]▶
4. bryanlarsen ◴[09 Apr 25 18:07 UTC] No.43635298[source]▶
Flipped classroom means you watch the recorded lecture outside of class time and you do your homework during class time.
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5. Spivak ◴[09 Apr 25 22:31 UTC] No.43638748[source]▶
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.
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6. acbart ◴[09 Apr 25 23:15 UTC] No.43639017{3}[source]▶
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.
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7. jfarina ◴[10 Apr 25 02:18 UTC] No.43640017{4}[source]▶
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.

8. pxc ◴[10 Apr 25 02:59 UTC] No.43640214[source]▶
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.

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9. i-am-gizm0 ◴[10 Apr 25 04:26 UTC] No.43640608{4}[source]▶
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.

10. pxc ◴[11 Apr 25 16:45 UTC] No.43655846{3}[source]▶
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.