How University Students Use Claude

How can I, as a student, avoid hindering my learning with language models?

I use Claude, a lot. I’ll upload the slides and ask questions. I’ve talked to Claude for hours trying to break down a problem. I think I’m learning more. But what I think might not be what’s happening.

In one of my machine learning classes, cheating is a huge issue. People are using LMs to answer multiple choice questions on quizzes that are on the computer. The professors somehow found out students would close their laptops without submitting, go out into the hallway, and use a LM on their phone to answer the questions. I’ve been doing worse in the class and chalked it up to it being grad level, but now I think it’s the cheating.

I would never do cheat like that, but when I’m stuck and use Claude for a hint on the HW am I loosing neurons? The other day I used Claude to check my work on a graded HW question (breaking down a binary packet) and it caught an error. I did it on my own before and developed some intuition but would I have learned more if I submitted that and felt the pain of losing points?

This sounds fine? Copy pasting LLM output without understanding is a short term dopamine hit that only hurts you long term if you don't understand it. If you struggle first, or strategically ping-pong with the LLM to arrive at the answer, and can ultimately understand the underlying reasoning.. why not use it?

Of course the problem is the much lower barrier for that to turn into cutting corners or full on cheating, but always remember it ultimately hurts you the most long term.