#or extra knowledge that i didn't know from undergrad

[nohkalikai]

3 months after completing my master's degree requirements, i can confidently say it was a waste of time and money.

[thegreatimpersonator]

I just read a vice article on how students have started using AI to write homework and essays for them to cut down on the time it takes to finish tasks like that (from 2 hours to 20mins), and the comment section (on reddit) was filled with people trying to solve the problem with a lot of bad points lmaooo but I gotta talk about it

I love seeing how humans can find loopholes no matter how strict a system might be and then relying on those loopholes to make life easier or simpler because that's how it should be. If teachers are giving assignments that are easy for an AI to complete and students have realized that, then they're not doing their jobs well, and I'm speaking as someone with a teaching degree that used to work in the field. Instead of giving students pages worth of writing assignments, ask them verbal questions they have to think about just as much as the writing assignments and have them answer verbally. And anyone with social anxiety that's not comfortable with that kind of assessment can simply take an open book exam with questions that they wouldn't be able to answer well without knowing the subject material in depth. Just to clarify, this is about students further into education, I'm not talking about freshmen, they have to learn the core of what it takes to write papers and make good arguments first to be able to handle the same thing in the future just in a modified way. This way, not only will teacher be able to check the knowledge of the students, but they can also avoid the whole plagiarism issue that writing has a lot of and it's tough to get around. And cut down on assignments and the time it takes to finish them. The best professor I had by far was able to teach the lessons in class so well, that just by paying attention and taking notes here and there, you'd be able to pass the exams with no studying whatsoever, and it was open book exams like I mentioned before. She was incredible and truly passionate about getting students to truly learn but she did give out a ton of homework for extra credit and stuff which a lot of people just didn't do and didn't like her for, because of the workload and because it was an elective class that didn't really weigh in on whether you graduate or not as long as you pass. It was her teaching that actually helped me most while I was working as a teacher myself to help my students better understand the subject matter in a way that works for them (she taught different methodologies for teaching and assessment, different types of IQ and how best to engage students with each type, classroom management, etc)and all of it worked so well that over 90% if my students had high marks and my subject was their favorite because of her teaching methods because they work perfectly for pretty much anyone. I wish for everyone to have at least one teacher in life like her. Anyway, back to the main point, any thoughts on how to work around AI and assignments to check students' knowledge that I may have overlooked? Thanks!

You made some very good points! As an undergrad right now, I personally like written assignments the most because they give me an opportunity to explore the topic in detail (as opposed to, say a group presentation that will mainly test your patience lmao) and a lot of my friends have tried out AI to work on their assignments but it just. doesn't work every time? I mean you'll get a few paragraphs that meet your word limit, sure, but you'd be able to tell on the first read itself that this assignment was not an individual effort ykwim? At least that's what I've seen so far, but what one of our profs does is they ask us questions based on our submitted papers two days after the deadline, just to see if we actually knew what we were writing or simply paraphrased a wikipedia article lol

[sonic-spirit]

"Back in my day, we didn't know water existed!"

Context:

When I went to school at SIU, and switched into their Equine Science program, one of our horses died. Which is normal, except when it isn't.

She was an older, blind mare named Orchid. Now, not every blind horse is unridable--with a lot of work to help them adapt to their disability and trust their rider, they can be fine. But she wasn't. Horses are big jumpy babies who think plastic bags are going to kill them, loss of sight is a big barrier to climb. So she just lived in pasture and didn't really have a job.

Except for the feed study. We were doing a feed study for Purina that just kept stretching longer and longer. As an undergrad, I wasn't privvy to the details. It was Purina Senior, and we had to bring a bunch of horses in that didn't get used in lessons or classwork every morning and grain them. Whether they needed it or not. We were being taught stable management on one hand, and expected to do things and not ask questions about them from the other. Including feeding horses that didn't appear to need it extra.

Fine, whatever, maintenance is a thing, and while some of them were kinda fat, they weren't concerningly fat. We had questions but no answers, annoying, especially at a school, but it happens.

Except Orchid got choke. Which is pretty much what it sounds like. When a horse chokes on their food, scar tissue starts to build up in their esophagus, so every time it happens that horse becomes more likely to choke again. And, yanno, a thousand pound animal being unable to breathe because they ate too fast is terrifying. Choke's no joke, and just like with humans can be deadly.

Okay, so take her out of the feed study, right? Right? I mean, she's one of the ones who is kinda fat, she doesn't have work, she doesn't need the extra food she's choking on, anyway.

They did not. She stayed in. The culture at the school was such that I couldn't ask more questions than I did, and I didn't get an answer.

And she kept choking.

Finally, they decided to put her down. She was old, she kept choking, and she didn't have a job, anyway. Her pasture friend, the horse who looked out for her, would be sad, but she'd get over it. We had a whole lab day with the vet coming out, learning about euthanasia and what it looked like. Educational.

Last year, I started working with horses again. And yanno the thing we do here, for the old horses? The horses with bad teeth, who have trouble eating anymore. The horses who eat too fast, and have choked trying to scarf their dinners down. Sometimes, just in case...!

We fucking wet their damn food. From just absorbed to absolutely soupy, we just wet it. That's it, that's the big trick. Wet the damn food.

WHY WEREN'T WE DOING THIS FOR ORCHID? Was it PART of the feed study!? The fuck!? For years I was raging that we didn't simply remove her from the study, since to my knowledge, she was only choking on her grain and could eat her roughage fine. But that there was SUCH a simple trick!? And they didn't bother to teach it to us!? The absolute fuck!?

So yeah. Despite soaking being the only way to feed beet pulp, a fact we DID cover in class, we'd apparently never heard of water.