How I changed teaching after AI managed to do all my homework assignments
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How I changed teaching after AI managed to do all my homework assignments
Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.
nfrankel · · focus · HN ↗
* Alternate between theory and practice in the course of a single 2-hours slot. Theory is necessary, but the attention span of people is very limited. * Grade either a homework assignment in the form of a real project with specifications. You give the assignment half-semester, so that students who start early can ask questions. Otherwise, grade a in-session exam, with every resource available, including the course and the whole Internet. However, you don't assess the knowledge, but if the student is able to apply their knowledge to the different tasks at hand.
These approaches are now completely moot in the age of AI.
I was surprised the first time a colleague asked me to do an oral exam. I thought it was a burden on people with poor social interaction skills. It went surprisingly well: you could see in a couple of minutes if the student had integrated the concepts of the course, even if they were shy. Now I wonder if it's the way to go. There's one caveat, though: it doesn't scale.
BeetleB · · focus · HN ↗
2 hours is a lot! In my universities, classes were either 50 minutes, or 70 minutes. I could handle 50 minute ones just fine, but would often have trouble with challenging courses that had 70 minutes. Particularly for stuff like math, I hadn't properly digested the material in the first half, and now he's already proving theorems with that material in the 2nd half. I can follow the logic, but the ideal is when you can digest the prior material before being exposed to theorems relying on them.
Even when alternating theory/application like you say, the amount of attention I'd give to the application in the 70 minute class was less than the 50 minute one. I could follow, but I wouldn't think critically.