Lance and I had a blog-debate about What to do about students using ChatGPT to do their Homework.
Some commenters pointed out that we've been here before. I will now list past technologies that looked like they were a problem for student assignments and ponder what happened.
If students can consult diagrams in their text then they will lose the ability to I DON"T KNOW AND I DON"T CARE . I did a post about this titled In the 1960's students protested the Vietnam war!/In 1830 students protested...Math? I suspect that students eventually got to consult their texts. Actually, the entire topic of geometry of conic sections, seems to have gone away.
If students learn how to read then they will lose the ability to listen to their elders tell stories and also lose the ability to memorize. I've heard this was a concern though I don't really know if it was. In any case people are probably worse at memorizing than they used to be, but the plus of having books and reading far outweighs the negative of less good memories.
If students use spellcheck they will forget how to spell I think people are sloppier with first drafts than they used to be since they know that spellcheck will catch their spelling errors. And even before ChatGPT there were programs to check grammar as well. My spell check wants me to replace ChatGPT with catgut. This points to the need to use spellcheck carefully which foreshadows having to use ChatGPT carefully. My spellcheck does think that spellcheck is spelled correctly.
If students have calculators they will forget that 7*8 equals... hmm, I forgot: I think we ask much fewer questions depending on calculation than we used to. Do kids in grade school still memorize times-tables? If so, then up to what number? In my blog post on Numbers That Look Prime But Aren't, I casually mentioned that students learn up to 12x12 but I do not know if that's true.
SO- for those of you who have kids in grade school, leave a comment on if they
a) Memorize Times Tables.
b) Learn an algorithm for multiplication ( O(n^2) or O(n^{1.58}) or O(n log n)) . I used Wikipedia for the pointer to the O(n^{1.58}). The entry describes the algorithm very well. I used Wikipedia for the O(nlog n) algorithm. That entry just says that there is a galactic algorithm (one that needs very large n to be worth using). They did not give the algorithm or a pointer to a paper that has it.)
c) Are allowed calculators on exams.
d) Some combination of the above or something else.
If students use Encyclopedias they will not be using primary sources. Over time Encyclopedias became seen as primary sources. My proofreader relayed the following to me: When I was in fourth grade they weren't supposed to use Encyclopedias for their reports if the library had suitable books. So the trick was to find a topic that the library did not have suitable books on. My proofreader is only a few years older than me, and lived in the same state, but I was allowed to use Encyclopedias.
If students use Wikipedia they will not be using primary sources. I don't hear this debated anymore but I am not sure how the issue was resolved, or if it was resolved. If someone who has kids in school knows, please leave a comment.
Annie and Lance Fortnow had a blog entry about the Wikipedia issue.
I reviewed a book titled Should you Believe Wikipedia? by Amy Bruckman. The review is here. Spoiler alert: She thinks yes but I am more skeptical.
I once needed a list of ER-complete problems and asked an expert if there was a survey. He said that the best source was the Wikipedia page. For other examples of Wikipedia being the only source see this blog post.
A similar issue is referring to papers on arXiv that have not been refereed. That might be the topic for a future blog post.
If the first programming language is in a high-level language the students will not learn assembly code and stuff about how computers really work. This has happened. I think students do not know as much about low-level code as they used to. Is that a problem? This type of concern happens whenever a higher level language is available. Students using ChatGPT to write code for you is another example of this issue, though it also has other problems.
If students learn typing too early they will not learn cursive. I am an early example of this---my handwriting was bad (still is) so I eagerly took a typing class in my school in 5th grade (the class was 13 girls whose parents wanted them to be secretaries, and me) and worked really hard at it and began handing in typed book reports.
The only letters I know how to do in cursive are
W I L L I A M G A S A R C H
and only in that order.
ANYWAY, people have lost the ability to write in cursive, or even write in print neatly. Drew Faust, a former history professor at Harvard (she retired in 2018) has pointed out that students have a hard time reading cursive in her article Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive.
I ask non-rhetorically, is losing the ability to read or write cursive a problem?
Takeaways:
1) (From the prior blog on ChatGPT) Grading has been broken for a long time. ChatGPT just makes that more obvious.
2) When a new technology comes along we may have to rethink education.