The academia/higher education macrothread

[Josquius]

Continuing the chat in here to keep the Brexit thread for monitoring the death of the UK.
This is a ongoing discussion started there though do feel free to go off in other directions .

But surely with a take home exam you don't necessarily need this?
If you ask me to write an essay about the causes of WW1 and I haven't got a clue when WW1 even started, even assuming pre-AI here, easy enough to look that up.

I don't understand what you mean.

You ask for a writeup on the causes of WW1. Assume a terrible student who knows nothing. This is pre-AI.

Exam- ....he's screwed. Has to guess and make stuff up.

Essay- given enough time if he cares he can read about all the relevant stuff to write his essay. The purpose of asking for the essay is a success.

Take home exam- not enough time to read up too thoroughly. Maybe he will go through wikipedia and some other surface level sources?
What is the goal?

But, as you may perhaps suspect, this is yet another example of something AI can quickly produce a text on. Because historians, and archeologists, have written on that too - and quite extensively.

Trying to find niche topics is a losing proposition anyway - and my sense is that there are very few niche topics that do not have a few sources already gobbled up by AI.

As said I've ran into them myself. Not quite so niche as plot a trip in 1735 but looking for say the history of my home county chat gpt has an idea of some books I can look at but doesn't know the text. Surely locally, especially since its in French, there'll be a bunch of similar cases?

It's going to be covered at some point. More realistically, perhaps, AI will be polluted by garbage sooner - the free versions will be useless, and the premium versions that rich students will have access to, will be better. 

Even the paid for versions I imagine will be polluted.
It could get us to a place where what you're actually testing is tech-skills (or yes, money), can someone configure a AI well enough, get enough of the right databases, whilst excluding the shit....Come to think could also perhaps loop around to good Historian skills in recognising invalid sources.

But that will not be the way they want, and it will not be their thoughts. Thoughts come, and get structured, by the necessity to find the language, the turn of phrase, that can imperfectly convey the myriads of meaning you wish to impart on the amorphous reality. It will be the way an AI tells them is the way they want. Rather than work on language acquisition - which I recognize is hard - they will simply run it through the AI. Which is something I have seen.

As I say it depends how you use the AI.
If I type into chat GPT "Write me an essay on the causes of WW1" then yes. Thats not me.
If on the other hand I put together a draft and ask for feedback, grammar correction and so on.... then it can be better. It does sometimes go over board and completely rewrites everything just for the sake of it. But it can also be a useful writing aid too.

As for people with disabilities, it's a very hard conversation to have. At some point, a BA in history isn't really about acquiring facts, or rather, it's only partially about acquiring facts. People who work in the field of history, or history-adjacent fields, will not be expected to simply have a command of past events. They have to think about the way to convey a sense of the past, to structure it in a narrative, whether it is in an heritage evaluation, a ministerial report, a museum pannel, etc. It's a core skill.

There I guess we're getting into the point of any degrees. If you're studying a topic are you actually studying a topic primarily or rather more the presentation, research, etc... skills around it. I do get the impression it heavily leans this way at current. It would be nice to see a bit more of a shift away from that. Though of course it does run the risk of really trashing courses like history where the practical application is less direct so poorer kids won't study it even if they really love it (already a thing...I mean.....Hi).

There are all sorts of linguistic disabilities. Some of them simply require more time from the student to ensure the letters or syllables are in their proper place - for which there are university resources, and accommodations. But if your linguistic disabilities are such that expressing your ideas with written words is near-impossible, *and you want to get a good grade*, maybe consider a different field. There is no shame in it.

But isn't this the case for every field?
Even in computer science you need to write essays.

And that's really the rub: students want to get the good grade - they want the grade to reflect the idea they have of themselves, and of their circumstances. That they get the A, because it is appropriate to the effort they put in, and the difficulties they faced, and the virtue they exhibit. I have to work very hard to dissociate their worth as a person, the efforts they made, from the result - which is the only thing I can judge. It is a perverse reversal, but not an unexpected one, that sees them wanting the grade, because they think it will reflect on who they are - and thus, the recourse to AI.

It used to be that many cheaters came from B+ students, who couldn't cope with the fact that they thought of themselves as A students. Other cheaters were often slackers who didn't want to put in the effort, and simply sought a passing grade. But the strange thing now, is that the cheaters who don't want to put in the effort, are ALSO seeking the validation of a higher grade. 

Thats another topic....something I really love about uni in Sweden vs. the UK- grades don't matter anywhere near as much.
In Sweden it was passing the course that was the challenge. Not whether you get a VG or G. Many modules are just pass or fail.
In the UK on the other hand passing tends to be a piece of piss.... but things are such that failing is better than passing with the lowest grade.

Of course. Well, French, in my case, now that I have returned to Canada.

How does this work if say I was on your course? :p
I think I've a pretty firm grasp of the history, I'm confident I could get through several topics of undergrad history quite easily even without much new reading.... But me and French.....ahhh.......
A friend says this is a pretty common thing with Chinese students in their department. They'll pick their modules such to go for more practical and less theoretical courses as give them a maths module and its universal, they crush it. But then ask them for an essay and its poor at best (pre-AI. Now of course they're first to cheat).