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How University Students Use Claude

(www.anthropic.com)
395 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 09 Apr 25 15:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.204s | source
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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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bko ◴[09 Apr 25 16:36 UTC] No.43634075[source]▶
When modern search became more available, a lot of people said there's no point of rote memorization as you can just do a Google search. That's more or less accepted today.

Whenever we have a new technology there's a response "why do I need to learn X if I can always do Y", and more or less, it has proven true, although not immediately.

For instance, I'm not too concerned about my child's ability to write very legibly (most writing is done on computers), spell very well (spell check keeps us professional), reading a map to get around (GPS), etc

Not that these aren't noble things or worth doing, but they won't impact your life too much if you're not interest in penmanship, spelling, or cartography.

I believe LLMs are different (I am still stuck in the moral panic phase), but I think my children will have a different perspective (similar to how I feel about memorizing poetry and languages without garbage collection). So how do I answer my child when he asks "Why should I learn to do X if I can just ask an LLM and it will do it better than me"

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1. _carbyau_ ◴[10 Apr 25 01:32 UTC] No.43639789[source]▶
>>>For instance, I'm not too concerned about my child's ability to write very legibly (most writing is done on computers), spell very well (spell check keeps us professional), reading a map to get around (GPS), etc

Not that these aren't noble things or worth doing, but they won't impact your life too much if you're not interest in penmanship, spelling, or cartography. <<<

For me it is the second order benefits, notably the idea of "attention to detail" and "a feel for the principles". The principles of each activity being different: writing -> fine motor control, spelling -> word choice/connotation, map -> sense of direction, (my own insert here) money handling -> cost of things

All of them involve "attention to detail" because that's what any activity is - paying attention to it.

But having built up the experience in paying attention to [xyz], you can now be capable when things go wrong.

IE catch disputable transaction on the credit card, or note being told by the shop clerk "No Returns" when their policy says otherwise, un-losting yourself when the phone runs out of battery in the city.

Notably, you don't have to be trained for the details in traditional ways like writing the same sentence 100 times on a piece of paper. Learning can be fun and interesting.

Children can write letters to their friends well before they get their own phone. Geocaching/treasure hunts(hand drawn mud maps!)/orienteering for map use.

As for LLM ... well currently "attention to detail" is vital to spot the (handwave number) 10% of when it goes wrong. In the future LLMs may be better.

But if you want to be better than your peers at any given thing - you will need an edge somewhere outside of using an LLM. Yet still, spelling/word choice/connotations are especially linked to using an LLM currently.

Knowing how to "pay attention to detail" when it counts - counts.