It is clear to me that we are losing the academic race. We are in a position where most students I teach at the community college level are using LLMs to do as much of the work as possible. In short, they are making no effort to learn and every weak effort to pass off that ‘learning’ to a system that can do it for them. I suppose an argument can be made that CC students are not the top shelf students who attend university straight out of high school. While experience has shown this to be true from my own anecdotal standpoint, this is not necessarily the case. Many CC students go on to a 4 year, carrying their CC experiences as their lower level (100, 200) credits. It is also my experience that those lower level courses serve as a foundation for 300+ courses. If they cannot or will not do the lower level work themselves, what expectation is there that it will or even can happen in upper level courses?
We’ve been taking shortcuts forever. In my college era it was cliff notes and those like it. These tools provided shortcuts to actual learning, however. LLMs don’t teach you anything. In fact, many students who send me assignments produced by the machines have not even looked at the work being produced. Quite a few research assignments contain hallucinations, leading me to realize that nothing is being learned or gained through the experience.
I’m working on ways to curb the appeal of the strategy. Process work, in class learning at each stage of a thing are strong deterrents, since you have to speak to the work and the choices the machine makes. This is not foolproof–especially in the online environment. I’m at a point of wondering how much of a police officer I am vs. a teacher. What is my role meant to be in all of this?
My philosophy is meet students where they are at, and take them as far as they are willing to go. Lately, they aren’t willing to go anywhere on their own.
Some Thoughts:
- Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Lionel Messi will play Lamine Yamal in World Cup final 19 years after viral baby photo”