The thing that this person seems to have either forgotten, or not understood in the first place, is that homework, and your education in general, is not for the teacher, it’s for you. If you choose to cheat your way through you will gain less than if you actually put the work in yourself. This gets more important the further through education you go.
Probably the best outcome for an essay question is if you discuss it with your friends, all share your understanding of the subject, then write it up individually, incorporating anything new you learned from your discussions.
This does come with the issue that those who cheat could end up getting good grades if there is no ‘live’ check of their understanding, either through closed book exams, class tests, group discussions, or similar.
Indeed, it’s not that LLM is totally uncorrelated to factual basis, it is correlated well enough for most educational fodder that is supremely well trodden and doesn’t seek surprises. It’s practice with backgrounds the teachers can actually already know and credibly provide feedback on. It’s so well known that any teacher knows, so it’s correlated with AI output that has been trained on verbatim prompts and essays that are on the exact same topic, and so the narrative correlated with the prompt is just very likely to also correlate to the facts of relevance.
Just like a pocket calculator can make short work of elementary school math. It’s not that we expect those kids to do some crazy novel stuff that calculators can’t do, it’s just that they need to operate in a context to actually illustrate they have the foundational understanding.
Depends, with homework, the goal is to learn, but with tests, it’s already less clear, a good teacher needs to know the level of it’s class in order to curate it’s teaching to their understanding. Moreover, some formation recruit based on grades and in this context, the point op is making is very relevant
When I am struggling with Language Arts and excelling at Math, the extra time spent on unmastered Language homework benefits me. The extra time spent on Math serves only to waste my time and distract me from the Language work that needs my central focus.
The intention of homework is to benefit the student. The reality is that most students would be best served by skipping the homework and getting some exercise instead.
In the gradebook, the unit test score should be the floor for all homework scores in that unit. Score a 95% on the test, and even if you turn in zero homework, a 95% should be recorded for each assignment. S
Turn in 95% on each and every homework assignment, but score a 65% on the test? You keep your 95% scores showing you put in the work, even though you clearly haven’t mastered the material.
Turn in no homework, and score a 65% on the test? Every homework assignment is now a 65%.
With this system, doing the homework can only help you. Skipping the homework is risky, but allowable.
You were so close. Right up until you mentioned closed book exams. How many times in your job have you ever not been allowed to look something up? The reality is that closed book exams only test your memorization capabilities and some of us don’t memorize shit very well. The best teachers allow open book exams because if you know where the information is then you can find it in time but if you don’t know where the information is you’re not gonna be able to take the test in the time given.
I’m a language teacher. It happens all the time that I want to say something and can’t look it up. Think about the last time you were in a group of six or more people: the conversation doesn’t stay on one topic long enough to look up a word before responding to someone’s comment. I also wouldn’t want to take a moment to double check a word and hold up the whole line when the cashier at the grocery store asks me a question.
I think that situation is going to entirely depend on your friends. But your point is taken, however I still feel like you’re describing the same paradigm I was in which you know enough about your subject to look up the word if you wanted to or needed to but you don’t need to because you know enough about your subject to say other words that mean the same thing. My point was that it’s more important to know how to find the information than it is to simply have the information. Just being given the information is literally vibecoding.
How many times in your job have you ever not been allowed to look something up?
It’s rare, but not unheard of, that I can’t look things up, but the point of closed book exams is is to demonstrate that you know the subject well enough that you don’t need to look things up. Obviously, exactly what this entails is going to vary depending on the level if the exam. If it’s testing foundational knowledge, then it should all be in your head, if it’s more advanced, a crib sheet with key facts (say certain more complex, but necessary, equations for a non maths subject, or similar support prompts).
If you’re working, you can’t be stopping every few minutes to look up basic information. A computer programmer who has to keep looking up the syntax of their language, or basic algorithms, for example, won’t get very far.
There’s a big difference between double checking things occasionally, and needing to look up fundamental things. I’ve been a sysadmin for, well, a long time, and there have been many occasions where I’ve been pulled in to rescue a situation and had to rely on what I knew, without being able to refer to other material, either due to intense time pressure, or enough being down that there isn’t anything to reference.
Besides, exams should be testing your core understanding of the subject, the sort of knowledge everything else is built on, and your ability to apply that knowledge in different scenarios. Practical tests, are better suited to assessing how you use novel information, do more advanced things, and handle reference material. Maybe we’re talking about the same sort of thing in different ways?
I think both closed book exams, and practical tests/discussions and the like have an important role to play in assessing your performance, whether a teacher sets them or you challenge yourself.
The algorithms one in particular is a bugbear of mine, because if you don’t already know the computational complexities of the operations on the common basic data structures then no way are you taking the time to look them all up each and every time you declare one. And yet one of the bitchwhiniest complaints I frequently see online about coding interviews is how dare hiring managers ask you to prove you understood CS201 Data Structures & Algorithms…
This is one of those “you won’t need it, but the smart kids will” things.
I’ve used Pythagoras at least four times in my professional life, and not one of those occasions was the problem presented to me in the form of a neat “Here is a right-angled triangle; what is the length of this hypotenuse?” that I could have then looked up in response if I didn’t already know.
Right, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point I’m trying to make is during any of those times was there a point in which you couldn’t look up what the Pythagorean formula was?
I feel like you haven’t understood my point either. If I didn’t already know Pythagoras, I wouldn’t have known that it was a valid solution to the problem I had, therefore I wouldn’t have known to look it up.
No, that was literally my point. That it’s more important to know how to find information and where the correct information is then it is to memorize the exact information. Knowing Pythagoras and having the formula memorized are two very different things especially for things that get more complicated than Pythagoras.
The thing that this person seems to have either forgotten, or not understood in the first place, is that homework, and your education in general, is not for the teacher, it’s for you. If you choose to cheat your way through you will gain less than if you actually put the work in yourself. This gets more important the further through education you go.
Probably the best outcome for an essay question is if you discuss it with your friends, all share your understanding of the subject, then write it up individually, incorporating anything new you learned from your discussions.
This does come with the issue that those who cheat could end up getting good grades if there is no ‘live’ check of their understanding, either through closed book exams, class tests, group discussions, or similar.
Indeed, it’s not that LLM is totally uncorrelated to factual basis, it is correlated well enough for most educational fodder that is supremely well trodden and doesn’t seek surprises. It’s practice with backgrounds the teachers can actually already know and credibly provide feedback on. It’s so well known that any teacher knows, so it’s correlated with AI output that has been trained on verbatim prompts and essays that are on the exact same topic, and so the narrative correlated with the prompt is just very likely to also correlate to the facts of relevance.
Just like a pocket calculator can make short work of elementary school math. It’s not that we expect those kids to do some crazy novel stuff that calculators can’t do, it’s just that they need to operate in a context to actually illustrate they have the foundational understanding.
Depends, with homework, the goal is to learn, but with tests, it’s already less clear, a good teacher needs to know the level of it’s class in order to curate it’s teaching to their understanding. Moreover, some formation recruit based on grades and in this context, the point op is making is very relevant
When I am struggling with Language Arts and excelling at Math, the extra time spent on unmastered Language homework benefits me. The extra time spent on Math serves only to waste my time and distract me from the Language work that needs my central focus.
The intention of homework is to benefit the student. The reality is that most students would be best served by skipping the homework and getting some exercise instead.
In the gradebook, the unit test score should be the floor for all homework scores in that unit. Score a 95% on the test, and even if you turn in zero homework, a 95% should be recorded for each assignment. S
Turn in 95% on each and every homework assignment, but score a 65% on the test? You keep your 95% scores showing you put in the work, even though you clearly haven’t mastered the material.
Turn in no homework, and score a 65% on the test? Every homework assignment is now a 65%.
With this system, doing the homework can only help you. Skipping the homework is risky, but allowable.
You were so close. Right up until you mentioned closed book exams. How many times in your job have you ever not been allowed to look something up? The reality is that closed book exams only test your memorization capabilities and some of us don’t memorize shit very well. The best teachers allow open book exams because if you know where the information is then you can find it in time but if you don’t know where the information is you’re not gonna be able to take the test in the time given.
I’m a language teacher. It happens all the time that I want to say something and can’t look it up. Think about the last time you were in a group of six or more people: the conversation doesn’t stay on one topic long enough to look up a word before responding to someone’s comment. I also wouldn’t want to take a moment to double check a word and hold up the whole line when the cashier at the grocery store asks me a question.
I think that situation is going to entirely depend on your friends. But your point is taken, however I still feel like you’re describing the same paradigm I was in which you know enough about your subject to look up the word if you wanted to or needed to but you don’t need to because you know enough about your subject to say other words that mean the same thing. My point was that it’s more important to know how to find the information than it is to simply have the information. Just being given the information is literally vibecoding.
It’s rare, but not unheard of, that I can’t look things up, but the point of closed book exams is is to demonstrate that you know the subject well enough that you don’t need to look things up. Obviously, exactly what this entails is going to vary depending on the level if the exam. If it’s testing foundational knowledge, then it should all be in your head, if it’s more advanced, a crib sheet with key facts (say certain more complex, but necessary, equations for a non maths subject, or similar support prompts).
If you’re working, you can’t be stopping every few minutes to look up basic information. A computer programmer who has to keep looking up the syntax of their language, or basic algorithms, for example, won’t get very far.
I’ve been a computer programmer for 15 years, Not once have I ever been in such a time crunch that I couldn’t double check something.
There’s a big difference between double checking things occasionally, and needing to look up fundamental things. I’ve been a sysadmin for, well, a long time, and there have been many occasions where I’ve been pulled in to rescue a situation and had to rely on what I knew, without being able to refer to other material, either due to intense time pressure, or enough being down that there isn’t anything to reference.
Besides, exams should be testing your core understanding of the subject, the sort of knowledge everything else is built on, and your ability to apply that knowledge in different scenarios. Practical tests, are better suited to assessing how you use novel information, do more advanced things, and handle reference material. Maybe we’re talking about the same sort of thing in different ways?
I think both closed book exams, and practical tests/discussions and the like have an important role to play in assessing your performance, whether a teacher sets them or you challenge yourself.
The algorithms one in particular is a bugbear of mine, because if you don’t already know the computational complexities of the operations on the common basic data structures then no way are you taking the time to look them all up each and every time you declare one. And yet one of the bitchwhiniest complaints I frequently see online about coding interviews is how dare hiring managers ask you to prove you understood CS201 Data Structures & Algorithms…
This is one of those “you won’t need it, but the smart kids will” things.
I’ve used Pythagoras at least four times in my professional life, and not one of those occasions was the problem presented to me in the form of a neat “Here is a right-angled triangle; what is the length of this hypotenuse?” that I could have then looked up in response if I didn’t already know.
Right, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point I’m trying to make is during any of those times was there a point in which you couldn’t look up what the Pythagorean formula was?
I feel like you haven’t understood my point either. If I didn’t already know Pythagoras, I wouldn’t have known that it was a valid solution to the problem I had, therefore I wouldn’t have known to look it up.
No, that was literally my point. That it’s more important to know how to find information and where the correct information is then it is to memorize the exact information. Knowing Pythagoras and having the formula memorized are two very different things especially for things that get more complicated than Pythagoras.
Most teachers don’t understand that