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How I changed teaching after AI managed to do all my homework assignments

305 points · 288 comments · azhenley

  1. helsinkiandrew · · focus · HN ↗
    > I now shifted to in-person interactions with a TA. After every assignment, each student needs to schedule a 15-minute meeting with a TA to answer a couple of questions in a live conversation

    Isn't the answer the 'flipped classroom' - students are assigned reading/studying to do before a class and the class becomes more interactive, answering questions/discussing topics/solving problems etc depending on subject. Of course, this is more expensive than a hall with 400 people listening to a lecture with a couple of tests/essays.

    <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fltmag.com&#x2F;the-flipped-classroom&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fltmag.com&#x2F;the-flipped-classroom&#x2F;

    <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Flipped_classroom" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Flipped_classroom

    1. cheesecakegood · · focus · HN ↗
      Flipped classrooms are like, the quintessential siren song for teachers. EVERY teacher dreams of a day when they can focus on what they&#x27;re best at (teaching deep topics, getting &#x27;aha&#x27; moments, making connections, asking questions, and so on) and do less of what they dislike. But sadly this is just not how things work.

      Flipped classrooms have incredibly weak causal evidence. However they are popular in spite of this - perhaps because of this if you&#x27;re cynical - as the educational research field is pretty questionable in its standards and the profit motive is a strong thing lurking in the background. Wikipedia has a big warning on the article for a reason, but even then it has serious issues.

      &quot;Active learning&quot; is a thing (insofar as it has meaning rather than be a useless buzzword catch-all) that does work. But the &quot;flip&quot; specifically does not, or rather, sometimes a mix of extra effort on behalf of the teacher and other loosely related effects occasionally can make a modest impact that makes up for its failings.

      Most of the people pushing flipped classrooms are the same people who think that students learn best when they &quot;discover&quot; concepts on their own, maybe with a bit of guidance. This is the other, more serious, lie in education right now, akin to the whole idea that you didn&#x27;t need to teach phonics to kids when they learn to read.

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