Comment on A generation taught not to think: AI in the classroom

undrwater@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• otter@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I always saw the rules against Wikipedia to be around citations (and accuracy in the early years), rather than it harming learning. It’s not that different from other tertiary sources like textbooks or encyclopedias. It’s good for learning a topic and the interacting pieces, but you need to then search for primary/secondary sources relevant to the topic you are writing about.

  Generative AI however

  • is a text prediction engine that often generates made up info, and then students learn things wrong
  • does the writing for the students, so they don’t actually have to read or understand anything

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  • Disillusionist@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I see these as problems too. If you (as a teacher) put an answer machine in the hands of a student, it essentially tells that student that they’re supposed to use it. You can go out of your way to emphasize that they are expected to use it the “right way” (since there aren’t consistent standards on how it should be used, that’s a strange thing to try to sell students on), but we’ve already seen that students (and adults) often choose to choose the quickest route to the goal, which tends to result in them letting the AI do the heavy lifting.

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  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You don’t even need to search, just scroll down to the “references” section and read/cite them instead.

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    • undrwater@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s great! I felt the “no Wikipedia” was short sighted (UNLESS one of the teaching goals was doing research in an actual library!).

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  • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Encyclopedias in general are not good sources. They’re too surface level. Wikipedia is a bad source because it’s an encyclopedia not because it’s crowd sourced.

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    • undrwater@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Wikipedia is better than an encyclopedia, IMO, because the references are super easy to follow.

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• avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Still, those students who WANT to learn will not be held back by AI.

  Our society probably won’t survive if only the students who want to learn do so. 😔

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  • Disillusionist@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I share this concern.

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• Jankatarch@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  College professors are making tests and homeworks harsher to make up for cheating students so students who WANT to learn may actually be held back by the literal sense.

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    or they are using AI themselves and accusing students of cheating on thier papers, when its not, which blurs the line. but i wonder how common this is.

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  • undrwater@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Can you provide an example?

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• Disillusionist@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Great to get the perspective of someone who was in education.

  Still, those students who WANT to learn will not be held back by AI.

  I think that’s a valid point, but I’m afraid that the desire to learn might have a harder time winning that battle if what you’re fighting against is actually the norm, and if the way you’re being taught in the classroom looks more like what everyone else is doing. I feel like making it harder to choose to learn the “old hard way” still sounds likely to result in fewer students deciding to make that choice.

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  • undrwater@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    My optimism tells me this issue will be short lived. Unless someone can find a very creative way to monetize AI so that it is sustainable, it will likely crash (with local instances continuing to get development).

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    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      i think its a symptom of a larger problem, the students are likely already below reading level, writing as it is. now LLM, means they dont even need to try learning how to write, read, do mathemtics.

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• Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  my community college was like that, they were pretty “nazi” about the use of wiki and would get mad if you even hover/ lurk on a computer where its on the wiki page for any amount of time(computer labs are monitored"

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• scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The best AI tools will also cite references, like Wikipedia, so you can click all the way through.

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  • undrwater@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I believe the early Microsoft one did that well, but the popular ones (grok, chathpt, Gemini) will only when asked (in my experience).

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    wiki isnt a good reference though. it would cite actual sources, papers in the general subject.

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    • scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      No, I mean: “As Wikipedia cites sources, so do these AI tools.”

      Ie: these tools cite sources, like Wikipedia.

      I realize now that was unclear.

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