Comment by tdeck
4 hours ago
> students were refusing to think for themselves even when given open ended projects. They were just having ChatGPT come up with the project idea for them instead of taking advantage of the freedom to do something they enjoyed.
Those kinds of projects are a big trap for certain kinds of people. If I had used ChatGPT in college, maybe I wouldn't have come up with overly-ambitious projects that seemed doable at the time but instead took several full weeks of work and basically made my semester miserable.
I agree that they can be a trap, but I think that is remedied by requiring a small project proposal step.
Ensures that students have a plan, that the goals are achievable, and can help to spread out the project's points.
Also helps when profs make it clear that they're more concerned about seeing what you know/learned and how you approached the problem, not whether or not you achieved exactly what you promised.