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A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

(www.theatlantic.com)
222 points dougb5 | 3 comments | 04 Sep 25 02:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.014s | source
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djoldman ◴[04 Sep 25 21:36 UTC] No.45132499[source]▶
Unfortunately, this kind of story will continue to be a popular one in newspapers and magazines, garnering lots of clicks. It feeds into the "everything is different now" sort of desperate helplessness people seem primed to adopt with respect to AI sometimes.

Obviously the answer to testing and grading is to do it in the classroom. If a computer is required, it can't connect to the internet.

Caught with a cellphone, you fail the test. Caught twice you fail the class.

The non-story beatings will continue until morale and common sense improve.

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godelski ◴[04 Sep 25 21:53 UTC] No.45132650[source]▶
Are you suggesting kids spend longer times in school or suggesting kids spend less time on education?
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thedevilslawyer ◴[04 Sep 25 22:06 UTC] No.45132761[source]▶
Neither? it's quite clear they're suggesting improving assessments. This will lead to upstream learning not being gamed.
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godelski ◴[05 Sep 25 05:33 UTC] No.45135268{3}[source]▶
So the option is to what, stop handing out homework? That would result in less education time. To clarify, I mean education time, not classroom time.
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djoldman ◴[05 Sep 25 18:30 UTC] No.45141954{4}[source]▶
Continue to assign homework. Tie the homework to in class assessment such that if a student can do well on homework, without AI assistance, they are expected to do well on tests conducted in class, again without AI assistance.

Set homework grades to be a relatively small percentage of the final grade.

With the above framework, a student is incentivized to complete homework. If they cheat themselves and use AI, they'll do badly on the tests and badly in the class overall.

Tell the students about the above rationale. Tell them that they're not to use AI for homework, that you can't stop them from using AI, but that by using AI, all they get is a perfect score on homework and probably a bad overall grade.

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1. godelski ◴[05 Sep 25 21:06 UTC] No.45143617{5}[source]▶
I think this is easier said than done. It pretty much sounds like you're suggesting there are pop-quizes. We've seen that style of teaching before. IME it isn't as effective. Though I'm quite suspect that a big part of that is simply coordination with other classes. All it takes is one teacher who thinks their class is the most important and not give enough wiggle room so that there is room for triage and expected life events. Just because there's theoretically enough time does not mean there is enough time. Think of it like lifeboats. Do you want enough lifeboats so that each person has a spot or do you want extra lifeboats so that in case one gets destroyed or in case a person is unable to make it to the other lifeboat that they will still survive? Over optimization ignores the noise inherent to reality.
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2. thedevilslawyer ◴[06 Sep 25 06:23 UTC] No.45147080[source]▶
It is easily done as well. In-class pen and paper assessments are a reality, and execution is well known. No rocket science.

Don't allow assessments to be gamed and everything will follow.

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3. godelski ◴[06 Sep 25 20:52 UTC] No.45152737[source]▶

  > Don't allow assessments to be gamed and everything will follow.
That's the hard part...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law