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Just Chat! / Re: The fair use of LLM and AI in education.
« on: 14/04/2024 16:50:34 »
Literary criticism, and to some extent the whole subject of literary studies, has been neatly summed up as "hundreds of pages of bad English written about a few pages of good English", and I guess the same could be said in any other language, so the value of essays in that area must be close to zero and their purpose is difficult to imagine.
Undergraduate essays in factual (e.g. geography) or presumed factual (history) subjects really boil down to a single question: "have you read the book?" So AI has revealed that a great deal of student and teacher time is, frankly, wasted by regurgitation of secondhand facts and opinions.
On the presumption that studying the humanities has some purpose, it is therefore incumbent on those who profit from teaching them to introduce some form of laboratory practical. The pub quiz format is ideal since it tends to the requisite gaussian curve of marks with a large number of questions and candidates, and does test retention of facts (including the written opinions of third parties).
Having established the candidate's diligence in reading or attending lectures, we now need to determine whether he can form and express an opinion clearly, so a very brief viva will waste less of everyone's time than writing and marking a thousand word essay. Though written, Churchill's memo to Montgomery: "Pray let me have, on half a sheet of paper, your plan for invading Italy" sets the tone for a good viva question. From the examiner's point of view it would be a lot more fun than adjudicating a brass band contest, where the scope for interpretation of the test piece is rather limited.
Undergraduate essays in factual (e.g. geography) or presumed factual (history) subjects really boil down to a single question: "have you read the book?" So AI has revealed that a great deal of student and teacher time is, frankly, wasted by regurgitation of secondhand facts and opinions.
On the presumption that studying the humanities has some purpose, it is therefore incumbent on those who profit from teaching them to introduce some form of laboratory practical. The pub quiz format is ideal since it tends to the requisite gaussian curve of marks with a large number of questions and candidates, and does test retention of facts (including the written opinions of third parties).
Having established the candidate's diligence in reading or attending lectures, we now need to determine whether he can form and express an opinion clearly, so a very brief viva will waste less of everyone's time than writing and marking a thousand word essay. Though written, Churchill's memo to Montgomery: "Pray let me have, on half a sheet of paper, your plan for invading Italy" sets the tone for a good viva question. From the examiner's point of view it would be a lot more fun than adjudicating a brass band contest, where the scope for interpretation of the test piece is rather limited.
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