२६ ऑक्टोबर, २०२६

"Grading for correctness just adds a huge incentive for them to use AI for homework instead of doing it themselves, and penalizes students for honesty."

Said UC Berkeley professor (and winner of the Fields Medal) Richard Borcherds.

द्वारा पोस्ट केलेले Ann Althouse येथे १२:१७ PM
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४५ टिप्पण्या:

Big Mike म्हणाले...

AI is a tool, like any other tool. Competent professors will learn how to use it, and teach their students how to use it to address the type of problems their respective disciplines deal with.

२६/१०/२६, १२:२८ PM
MadisonMan म्हणाले...

Math Professors aren't needed because of AI. That's my take-away. Cost-savings for Universities.

२६/१०/२६, १२:२९ PM
Big Mike म्हणाले...

@MadMan, meteorology professors either!

२६/१०/२६, १२:४२ PM
Big Mike म्हणाले...

@MadMan meteorology professors either!

२६/१०/२६, १२:४४ PM
Big Mike म्हणाले...

Blogger sucks. Sorry about the duplicates.

२६/१०/२६, १२:४५ PM
ThreeSheets म्हणाले...

Don't grade it at all. Grading for completeness just means they'll either turn in AI slop or wrong information. In person, on paper tests, that require them to know the material and apply concepts (which they won't be able to master if they don't do the homework).

२६/१०/२६, १२:४८ PM
ALP म्हणाले...

Good idea. Anyone seeking professional licensure after graduation will study, otherwise they won't be able to pass the really important test. Ditto for those that have more entrance exams after the BS.

२६/१०/२६, १२:५१ PM
Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

Who grades homework in college? Not giving take home exams makes sense, though.

२६/१०/२६, १२:५२ PM
Martin म्हणाले...

You know how they train AI. Telling it when it is wrong and having it try again.

२६/१०/२६, १:०० PM
RideSpaceMountain म्हणाले...

Future generations seem doomed to have their impeccable thinking done for them.

२६/१०/२६, १:०४ PM
tommyesq म्हणाले...

Do it like law school (at least back when I was still there) - final exam is your sole test and grade, in person and hand-written.

२६/१०/२६, १:२४ PM
bleh म्हणाले...

Stop assigning homework except for reading assignments. Just make it so everything a student produces is done in class with paper and pen. Term papers and the like are basically pointless now. Totally unreliable.

२६/१०/२६, १:२६ PM
Achilles म्हणाले...

"Intellectuals" are corrosive to society.

Our University system is a cancer and it is giving mediocre lazy people a comfortable living and status riding on the back of the people who actually make this country what it is.

२६/१०/२६, १:४६ PM
Leland म्हणाले...

My takeaway is the good news that apparently some do still grade in College. The news I keep hearing sounds like nobody is graded at all.

२६/१०/२६, १:४७ PM
Achilles म्हणाले...

MadisonMan said...
Math Professors aren't needed because of AI. That's my take-away. Cost-savings for Universities.

No professors are needed because of AI.

The only thing you lose by having AI teach college students is the bias of professors and the student loan debt piled on younger generations to enrich a bunch of mediocre people who were the bottom 20% in their field so they taught it instead.

२६/१०/२६, १:५० PM
Narr म्हणाले...

I never gave homework and am surprised that anyone does at college or university level. Maybe it makes sense for some disciplines, but I relied on the three exams per semester to tell me whether or not someone was doing the assigned readings and paying attention in class.

My field (as an adjunct) was history, the mother discipline.

२६/१०/२६, २:१५ PM
Narr म्हणाले...

OK, homework in math makes sense (or it used to).

२६/१०/२६, २:५१ PM
gspencer म्हणाले...

"Just make it so everything a student produces is done in class with paper and pen."

Voting especially.

२६/१०/२६, ३:०४ PM
john mosby म्हणाले...

Fields Medal means this guy is a pure mathematician, with enough juice that he is teaching future pure mathematicians how to advance the craft, not putting pre-meds through weed-out Calc 101.

Aspiring pure mathematicians have to do the reps: proof after proof after proof, to develop their mental muscles, to the point that they can one day have a blinding flash of insight and prove Fermat's Last Theorem or some similarly barely-tractable problem.

Homework in this context is like sending your varsity football team into the weight room with a checklist of exercises to return. You can fake the paperwork, but you only hurt yourself.

Or kind of like the Socratic stuff in law school. It's a very low percentage of your total grade, so you could conceivably never prepare any case, give a Gen Z stare whenever called upon, and still get straight A's. But you would only be hurting yourself.

(Actually in both fields, a bit of work put into an AI app could really improve the process. A math AI app could challenge each student with individual theorems to prove, to make collaboration among students less efficient, and monitor their computer use to make it harder to get another AI's help. An AI lawprof could individually Socratize each student, like being called on every single day of every class. Kind of like one of those AI job interviews.

Like a lot of other tech advances, AI instruction won't just replace the old tool, it will change the whole paradigm. CC, JSM

२६/१०/२६, ३:०७ PM
Smilin' Jack म्हणाले...

Grading for correctness is just another tool the white male patriarchy uses to oppress and control women and minorities. There are no wrong answers!

२६/१०/२६, ३:१४ PM
Josephbleau म्हणाले...

In math homework is the only way to engage the student with the subject matter. There is no learning done unless the student can produce a solution to the problem.

But in all college math syllabuses I have read it states that getting help from fellow students is ok if the student writes his own full solution for the submission. At least that gets the student to understand the work. If a student is really interested in math this aids learning. If not, he will fail the exam anyway.

२६/१०/२६, ३:१६ PM
Jaq म्हणाले...

Oral exams and grade the kids based on how they interact in class

२६/१०/२६, ३:१७ PM
Jaq म्हणाले...

It’s funny I was just playing mini golf with some friends and the one keeping score was going on about how kids can’t add anymore, and I took a picture of the scorecard and gave it to ChatGPT and it showed she had shorted herself a stroke. She added it up again, Chat was right. I don’t see how to stop it.

२६/१०/२६, ३:२२ PM
Jaq म्हणाले...

AI is a godsend for students who want to learn.

२६/१०/२६, ३:३४ PM
Richard Dolan म्हणाले...

The professor offers an argument that proves too much. If grading homework is counterproductive, how much more so is having credit requirements to earn a math degree.

२६/१०/२६, ३:५५ PM
john mosby म्हणाले...

Josephbleau: “ getting help from fellow students is ok if the student writes his own full solution for the submission.”

I’ve never fully understood the distinction between copying someone else’s math homework and rewriting it in your own words. Usually there are only a few logical paths to the solution - sometimes only one. You may be able to switch the order of some steps, or you may not. Then all that’s left to you are that/which or therefore/so distinctions (I speak here of paragraph proofs; if you’re doing pure symbols, then you have even less wiggle room).

In contrast, there are infinitely many ways to say Lincoln’s cabinet was a team of rivals: federation of competitors, group of type As who somehow worked together, etc. Yes, I picked Doris to be ironic.

West Point, I am told, designates certain math assignments as Drill Problems, and the only originality requirement is that you literally write them out yourself, even if you copy line by line. CC, JSM

२६/१०/२६, ३:५९ PM
James K म्हणाले...

I stopped grading all homework years ago, even before AI was an issue. There was no way to verify students were doing their own work. I give out homework as practice, and then have in-class quizzes and exams with pencil and paper. Fortunately my classes are small. If I had classes with 50 or more students I would have to resort to multiple choice and something like Scantron (which in my experience didn't work very well).

२६/१०/२६, ४:११ PM
Dr Weevil म्हणाले...

It doesn't take AI to tailor tests to the individual student, or at least to make sure every student has different, but equally difficult, problems to solve. Back in the '70s or '80s, my father taught whatever the opposite of pure mathematics is - "practical"? "technical"? - at a university. I forget the jargon, but is was mostly for engineers.

He had an HP programmable calculator, so a typical test problem would be "You are building a bridge: how thick does the concrete have to be so it won't fall down?" Your test would specify a bridge 400 feet long and 25 feet wide, the next guy's test 325' x 35', and so on. I think he used the calculator's random number generator, with specified maximum and minimum and rounding (nearest 5') to make the list of questions. Once he set up the formula, the calculator would give him the answer sheet. Of course, the whole point was whether the students could set up the formula themselves, as well as do the calculations. And yes, they had to show their work.

२६/१०/२६, ४:१४ PM
n.n म्हणाले...

AI, unlike AI, can be graded for discernment and creativity.

२६/१०/२६, ४:२५ PM
Quaestor म्हणाले...

The solution to cheating: No take-home assignments for grades. All graded work must be done in the classroom with nothing but a pen.

२६/१०/२६, ४:४१ PM
Spiros म्हणाले...

So the kids are going to be forced to hand write exams and then the teachers are going to use AI to grade the exams?

२६/१०/२६, ५:१८ PM
loudogblog म्हणाले...

I understand why students cheat, but one of the things that you realize as you get past college is that cheating is, almost entirely, pointless. If you don't want to actually be in school, then don't go to school. There are plenty of good paying jobs out there that don't require a college degree.

Another thing that you realize about college, as you get older, is that a lot of homework can also be pretty pointless, too. But humans do a lot of pointless things every day, just to do them.

It used to be that grading, although flawed, was the best way to see if someone was actually spending their time trying to learn and if they were actually learning things. But now it looks like there needs to be a new way developed to teach and determine how effective the teaching is.

२६/१०/२६, ५:२२ PM
loudogblog म्हणाले...

As a Theatre major, most of your "homework" involves doing projects outside of class and then discussing them later in class. You'd have a lighting design due by a certain date, a sound design done by a certain date, a set design due by a certain date, a script done by a certain date, direct a play for performance on a certain date, ect, ect. And we also had shop classes. Costume shop, scene shop, prop shop, lighting shop, makeup shop ect, ect. We had to learn our way around a sewing machines, sound equipment, lighting equipment, and hand and power tools. And if you focused in design, you had to work a lot with CAD and spreadsheets.

२६/१०/२६, ५:४२ PM
RJ म्हणाले...

I used to get a lot of information about how well students understood the stuff I was teaching by giving them a reverse question. Grossly simplified, I would reveal the output of a process, and all but one of the inputs and ask them to figure out the missing input value. I gave up doing that over the years as the students became less capable. AI and the dimishing capability of the students is a major challenge, and I'm happy to be retired and not fighting that battle.

२६/१०/२६, ५:५४ PM
Big Mike म्हणाले...

For a few years after I retired and relocated to a lower cost of living area I taught advanced IT classes in the MBA program at the local university's School of Business. My attitude was (1) my students would not be IT workers themselves (they'd have gone for a computer science degree in the first place), but (2) they probably would eventually be managing some number of techies, and therefore (3) they needed to be able to understand the types of problems they might face in the real world.

I did assign and grade homework, but it didn't count for a large part of their final grade. I assumed that the students were likely to collaborate, and I actually encouraged it somewhat. Out in the real world, people working on real problems collaborate to solve them. All. The. Damned. Time. Nothing wrong with it.

My exams were open book, open notes, and open laptop. That meant no stupid question like what is the speed of a Cat 5E connector. Hell, if I need to know it, I can look it up in less than a minute. Or ask an expert who works for me. To the best of my ability I presented realistic scenarios in a business setting and ask the students to figure our what's wrong, or the type of technologies they'd use to address a design situation that they might encounter, or the pros and cons of two different approaches to building something.

२६/१०/२६, ६:०२ PM
R C Belaire म्हणाले...

Way back when I checked and graded homework and written exams for a couple of professors in my department. I never knew the underclassmen but after a few weeks I could easily tell who did their own homework and who collaborated with others. Doing so with AI in the mix would present a challenge for sure.

२६/१०/२६, ६:१४ PM
ALP म्हणाले...

I am reminded of an incident during my landscape architecture program. Professors declined to give grades for smaller projects leading up to the big final, but would still offer commentary. Nearly all students freaked out at the prospect of not getting a grade. This is a creative discipline, however. My partner noted his homework was never graded in hos engineering program bit you did it otherwise you couldn't pass the next test.

२६/१०/२६, ६:१५ PM
Narr म्हणाले...

My comments reflect my own limited experience of STEM topics and practices--I took only the minimum of math and science classes, enough to check the required boxes for graduation, and was glad to put them behind me.

That said, it has been clear to me since undergraduate days that your average pre-med, math, or engineering student could master historical studies easier and quicker than I could master their subjects--assuming they cared.

२६/१०/२६, ७:०५ PM
typingtalker म्हणाले...

1. Students are given homework. The homework is graded. The homework grade has no effect on the final course grade.
2. Students are given one or more tests in class. Final course grade is calculated using the grade(s) of in-class tests.

No chance to cheat. Either they do the work or they don't. Either they know the subject or they don't. Just like becoming a lawyer -- either you pass the Bar Exam or you don't become a lawyer.

२६/१०/२६, ७:४४ PM
boatbuilder म्हणाले...

The irony is that (in theory) the students are paying the professor lots of money to help them learn and understand the subject. But the people (theoretically) paying the money to be taught are trying to fool the person they are paying lots of money to into believing that they have actually learned anything. And the people being paid benefit by pretending that their students are actually learning--i.e., scoring well on tests, getting high grades. And both benefit by pretending that teaching and learning is actually happening.
The problem is that the people paying for all of this have very little to do with the process.

२६/१०/२६, ८:१७ PM
Paul म्हणाले...

Bullshit Professor Richard Borcherds. Bullshit.

२६/१०/२६, ८:२३ PM
John henry म्हणाले...

Here's an idea:Oral exams for everything.

I was at a SI conference a couple weeks ago and there was a professor of education from SMU. He talked about the problem of students using SI to cheat exams and how hard it is to catch them. He talked about oral exams as a solution.

There are several companies including https://www.socraticmind.com and https://www.integrevise.com

Not at all related to this but I saw some amazing examples of Physical SI in Robotics last week at PackExpo. Yaskawa had a random bunch of fruit on a table. A random visitor could walk up and say "Put 3 apples and a lemon in the bowl." the robot would then put 3 apples and a lemon in the bowl. (It was much more impressive than my telling)

John Henry

२६/१०/२६, ९:३३ PM
hanuman_prodigious_leaper म्हणाले...

With Neuralink AI can activate voice box !!

२६/१०/२६, १०:३२ PM
hanuman_prodigious_leaper म्हणाले...

Test score and class standing never mattered to me - was that wrong?

२६/१०/२६, १०:३६ PM
Sebastian म्हणाले...

If AI can teach (esp. personalized language/math/physics/econ/finance/accounting), the question is not just why have professors, but why have/go to college.

२६/१०/२६, १०:४४ PM

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