This is a classic pitfall faced by novice teachers. I fell for it too.
Assign the second prompt, and I guarantee you’ll get something like this as a submission:
“Bro, the novel sucks. Trust me.”
You can’t even give this a bad grade, based on the prompt. You can't say it’s not convincing, because they’ll say “you’re not my friend, this would convince my friend”
You can’t say it’s too short, because they’ll say you didn’t provide a minimum.
You can’t say it didn’t cite the novel, because you said to do whatever.
You can’t say it didn’t compare to other literature, because you said “ideally”.
Lesson 1 of being a teacher: give the students an inch and they will take a mile.
Teaching students is not unlike programming computers, in that they both take instructions very literally. If you are vague with a computer program, you know ahead of time because the program doesn’t compile.
If you are vague with an assignment you don’t know until you get it back. The more vague the assignment, the wider the variety of submissions. If you don’t tell them the font face you get a cursive one. If you don’t tell them the font size you get huge and tiny. If you don’t tell them the margins you get wide and thin.
So even if you would personally make a good faith effort at this assignment, it’s really better for everyone to be specific and follow the same format.
I covered this point in my last paragraph. The problem with students isn't that they can't follow directions or collaborate; it's that the hate school and don't want to be there.
One of the reasons they hate school and don't want to be there is that they are compelled to do pointless, grinding busywork, all day, every day. That's why they're using GPT-3 to fake their essays. Even three hours of reprieve from the system is worth cheating and dishonesty, and all the better if it helps their GPA.
I harbor no beliefs that a teacher can walk into the modern school system with a creative, exciting lesson plan and inspire students to perform. The system is broken and fundamentally flawed. It cannot be fixed. You are certainly correct that the best way to get consistent results out of your institutionalized students is to grade to a rigorous, clear format, but in doing so you've only played your part in reinforcing the exact system that drives them to cheat with GPT-3.
> The problem with students isn't that they can't follow directions or collaborate; it's that the hate school and don't want to be there.
I'd say it's a mix of both.
> That's why they're using GPT-3 to fake their essays.
I'm not actually sure about the motivation for most students. For students who I've caught using copilot on assignments, it's not because of the reasons you cite. Maybe it is for others.
> It cannot be fixed.
The main improvement that would fix most of this is to have higher teacher to student ratios. That alone would be a massive improvement, because then teachers would have time to engage students at a different level of attention.
Although the general gist of what you're replying to certainly evokes a response in me, I was not going to reply until I read your response and agreed with it's point.
Having taught writing in universities over a six-year-long stint, my experience agrees with yours.
Pragmatically, the reasons the assignments are structured they way they are isn't because bad faith by instructors, but rather because of the needs of students.
I don't blame the students-- they have a lot of shit going on.
At the same time, you're absolutely correct that making assignments in the general form we see them has more to do with what students actively demand: they absolutely do not want the kind of assignment suggested by the GP because anything other than a list of boxes to check causes profound anxiety in students.
Our comment threads here are excellent examples of what short writing prompts and assessments could look like, and I've gotten invaluable feedback on my writing from participating in internet threads. In this form of writing, there are distinct grades in the form of karma. And there are real stakes for communication, as I can easily fail to get my points across or even upset people. I even sometimes get useful responses that improve my understanding of the world or some topic.
As useful as that practice can be, if I had my academic advancement tied to these prompts it would cause me a great deal of stress: how the hell do I know in which contexts someone will read any given post?
In the context of the general internet I have a lot of easy ways out. I don't have to listen to dumb people, the poorly informed, or malicious trolls.
In the context of a classroom, I can't just tell the teacher "that's just, like, your opinion, man" because they are going to write down a letter and that's going to make my life easier or harder.
I'm not a big fan of contemporary education for reasons I could develop in book-length diatribes (I quite a PhD during my dissertation), but I get where students are coming from when they demand some clarity on how they are being assessed.
Assign the second prompt, and I guarantee you’ll get something like this as a submission:
“Bro, the novel sucks. Trust me.”
You can’t even give this a bad grade, based on the prompt. You can't say it’s not convincing, because they’ll say “you’re not my friend, this would convince my friend”
You can’t say it’s too short, because they’ll say you didn’t provide a minimum.
You can’t say it didn’t cite the novel, because you said to do whatever.
You can’t say it didn’t compare to other literature, because you said “ideally”.
Lesson 1 of being a teacher: give the students an inch and they will take a mile.
Teaching students is not unlike programming computers, in that they both take instructions very literally. If you are vague with a computer program, you know ahead of time because the program doesn’t compile.
If you are vague with an assignment you don’t know until you get it back. The more vague the assignment, the wider the variety of submissions. If you don’t tell them the font face you get a cursive one. If you don’t tell them the font size you get huge and tiny. If you don’t tell them the margins you get wide and thin.
So even if you would personally make a good faith effort at this assignment, it’s really better for everyone to be specific and follow the same format.