It is worthwhile spending some time on social media to see the relentless bombardment faced by students from influencers peddling AI tools that straddle the line between aiding study and blatantly enabling cheating.
"... it's clear that [in-person exams] isn't going to be an effective long-term solution since OpenAI gave developers the opportunity to build third-party apps using multimodal features." Won't the students be disallowed from having their phones out in classrooms during an exam? No phone, no app. Original exam, no cheating.
"Automate reading". This sort of bollocks won't survive contact with the real world, it's not a credible or sustainable approach to life. As soon as assessments include more exams, face-to-face presentation and live Q&A sessions then students cannot cheat.
As Katherine Ryan joked: the best way to cheat is to hide it in your brain. Then you can just walk right into the exam hall and they won't suspect a thing.
The future of AI in education is actually quite bright, I feel. It's using AI to authentically assist in putting meaningful stuff in your brain.
Surely if there are now new and better ways for learning through the use of AI, then the students will be able to learn more during their limited duration at universities. They should not learn more and more about less and less or their specialisation will finish up in knowing all about nothing!
While I've never had TikTok, years ago, during a snow day, I watched TikTok videos on Pinterest. In them, you'd see "How to get an A from an A student." That last part always caught my attention--"From an A student."
And for the record, I'm Napoleon.
Anyways, I've talked about that genre for years in my classroom. Most of the time, they'd repackage common sense as a "hack." And many of the proto-cheating tricks, I'd explain, were flat out wrong. They'd spend less time just *doing* the task rather than avoiding it.
But doing anything to avoid reading--how often does that stem from bad pedagogy at the elementary levels rather than laziness? You know, the kids "hate" reading because they quite literally can't. Because they had the whole word method rather than phonics? Maybe that's neither here nor there...
Thanks for this insight! I’m interested in how technology and social media detracts from the capability for deep work, and how we can strike an effective balance to harness tech to illustrate novel thinking.
" I hope Ashley recovers from her concussion shortly and is able to resume her coursework, but it looks like it hasn't impacted her ability to produce content and promote it online to her audience." lol
Some of the tools and features that I've seen are a lot like "productivity" tools in the workplace: otter ai, grammarly. It will be hard (but not impossible) to separate the tool from the use/intention in classrooms.
Lots to unpack here. From my very specific vantage point as an independent HS teacher, we are not seeing this (yet), at least not in my school or most of our peer schools. I'm going to go out on a limb and say some of this is the (understandable) fault of colleges for not tackling the issue head on - the absolute crickets at most educational institutions on AI use provides a gigantic hole for students to crash through - how are individual teachers supposed to completely upend decades of educational practice overnight in the absence of any guidance by administrators? The Stanford study (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/technology/chatbot-cheating-schools-students.html) from earlier this year seemed to suggest that cheating has not changed much as a result of AI. Time will tell how accurate that is and whether the trend holds true. But I think the larger issue is the glut of AI products saturating the marketplace making it impossible for the average educator, let alone administrator, to figure out which ones might be worthwhile. Enterprising and resourceful students are going to be in the driver's seat until schools step up and have an honest conversation about all the pedagogical implications of genAI and I'm just not seeing it.
I strongly recommend this excellent historical survey of higher ed in America. It suggests that higher ed has either rarely or NEVER been about undergraduate learning--instead, it's been about undergraduate networking, about community boosting through athletics, and in one particular period (from the atom bomb in WWII until the 1960s revolt against Vietnam), about defense department funding for research.
"... it's clear that [in-person exams] isn't going to be an effective long-term solution since OpenAI gave developers the opportunity to build third-party apps using multimodal features." Won't the students be disallowed from having their phones out in classrooms during an exam? No phone, no app. Original exam, no cheating.
"Automate reading". This sort of bollocks won't survive contact with the real world, it's not a credible or sustainable approach to life. As soon as assessments include more exams, face-to-face presentation and live Q&A sessions then students cannot cheat.
As Katherine Ryan joked: the best way to cheat is to hide it in your brain. Then you can just walk right into the exam hall and they won't suspect a thing.
The future of AI in education is actually quite bright, I feel. It's using AI to authentically assist in putting meaningful stuff in your brain.
Thanks for the screenshots. Prevalence of these prove it’s urgent to get teachers on board.
Surely if there are now new and better ways for learning through the use of AI, then the students will be able to learn more during their limited duration at universities. They should not learn more and more about less and less or their specialisation will finish up in knowing all about nothing!
While I've never had TikTok, years ago, during a snow day, I watched TikTok videos on Pinterest. In them, you'd see "How to get an A from an A student." That last part always caught my attention--"From an A student."
And for the record, I'm Napoleon.
Anyways, I've talked about that genre for years in my classroom. Most of the time, they'd repackage common sense as a "hack." And many of the proto-cheating tricks, I'd explain, were flat out wrong. They'd spend less time just *doing* the task rather than avoiding it.
But doing anything to avoid reading--how often does that stem from bad pedagogy at the elementary levels rather than laziness? You know, the kids "hate" reading because they quite literally can't. Because they had the whole word method rather than phonics? Maybe that's neither here nor there...
Thanks for this insight! I’m interested in how technology and social media detracts from the capability for deep work, and how we can strike an effective balance to harness tech to illustrate novel thinking.
" I hope Ashley recovers from her concussion shortly and is able to resume her coursework, but it looks like it hasn't impacted her ability to produce content and promote it online to her audience." lol
Some of the tools and features that I've seen are a lot like "productivity" tools in the workplace: otter ai, grammarly. It will be hard (but not impossible) to separate the tool from the use/intention in classrooms.
Great read!
Oh no.... thanks for doing this work!
Lots to unpack here. From my very specific vantage point as an independent HS teacher, we are not seeing this (yet), at least not in my school or most of our peer schools. I'm going to go out on a limb and say some of this is the (understandable) fault of colleges for not tackling the issue head on - the absolute crickets at most educational institutions on AI use provides a gigantic hole for students to crash through - how are individual teachers supposed to completely upend decades of educational practice overnight in the absence of any guidance by administrators? The Stanford study (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/technology/chatbot-cheating-schools-students.html) from earlier this year seemed to suggest that cheating has not changed much as a result of AI. Time will tell how accurate that is and whether the trend holds true. But I think the larger issue is the glut of AI products saturating the marketplace making it impossible for the average educator, let alone administrator, to figure out which ones might be worthwhile. Enterprising and resourceful students are going to be in the driver's seat until schools step up and have an honest conversation about all the pedagogical implications of genAI and I'm just not seeing it.
"I've not got an hour to watch this video" - he's far too busy making TikToks
I strongly recommend this excellent historical survey of higher ed in America. It suggests that higher ed has either rarely or NEVER been about undergraduate learning--instead, it's been about undergraduate networking, about community boosting through athletics, and in one particular period (from the atom bomb in WWII until the 1960s revolt against Vietnam), about defense department funding for research.
https://www.amazon.com/History-American-Higher-Education/dp/1421428830
This context makes the challenge of promoting the value of learning seem nearly impossible, I fear.
I’ve been trying to run down some of this info—thank you for collecting it here!!