Comment by baobun
11 days ago
The writing is a mandatory part of the learning process. Outsourcing it to tools is skipping and cheating. Nothing new here. It was the same when the tool was your buddy or upwork before LLMs.
Banning advanced graph calculators on undergrad math exams is not because "they don't want to use new tools", either.
Sure but there's also a continuum of practice between banning outright and letting the students use llm's to just write for them.
Use it as a peer review. Use it during brainstorming. Use it to clarify ambiguous thoughts. Use it to challenge your arguments and poke holes in your assumptions.
Are the examples you mentioned actually banned, as opposed to not actively used in classes? I'd think even where LLMs don't belong in the curriculum, self-studies in various forms as complimentary to the curriculum wouldn't be any of the teachers business?
BTW if you haven't, I encourage reading this.
https://zenodo.org/records/17065099
Correct. The faculty at my institution do not want any use of LLM or 'AI' technology. End of sentence. If they learn that a student used an LLM, regardless of how it was used, they send a formal academic discipline complaint to administration. It's a fucking joke.
I'm not saying throw the doors open and let loose. I'm saying that we need to find places where using these tools makes sense, follows a sense of professional ethics, and encourages (rather than replaces) critical thinking.
And the problem with your cited paper is that people who kick and scream the loudest about this at my institution (again, this is just at mine and is in no way indicative of any other institution) are the ones who have not updated their courses since I was in college. I mean that quite literally. I attended the institution I currently work at. Decades later and I could turn in papers that I wrote for their classes my freshman year and pass their classes.
Three of them sent me that same linked article. But instead of seeing the message "we need to think about how to use these things responsibly" they just read "you can do what you've done for years and nothing needs to change."
That "research" article isn't as impactful as the faculty at my institution thought.
I'm all for the thoughtful integration or rejection of these technologies based on sound pedagogical practices rooted in student learning theory. At my institution, and I want to stress n=1, they literally do not want to take time updating lessons, regardless of the reason. Llm's are just a convenient scapegoat right now.
I would argue that it's more unethical to not update your classroom lessons in over 2 decades than it is to use llm's to supplement learning.
The sad difference that makes a difference is that banning graphing calculators from proctored exams is enforceable in practice.
Appealing to honor is a partial solution at best. Cheating is a problem at West Point, let alone the majority of places with a less disciplined culture. It's sad, but true. The fact that you and I would never cheat on exams simply does not generalize.
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2021/04/18/51-west-...
edit: good on West Point for actually following up on the cheating. I've witnessed another institution sweeping it under the rug even when properly documented and passed up two or three levels of reporting. As an academic director and thus manager of professors this was infuriating and demoralizing for all concerned.
I dont see anything reason at all to expect West Point to have less cheating then anywhere else. Army people dont commit crimes less then civilians either.
Time to crack out the faraday cage!