>whereas my post is about how it will force much-needed improvements to education and free students from the drudgery of pointless essays that ask them to regurgitate content (as opposed to essays that teach writing skills or critical thinking, which remain valuable)
OK ... what's wrong with essays that demonstrate knowledge of a particular topic (as you call it "regurgitate content')? And why wouldn't those teach writing skills?
Yes, developing critical thinking skills is important, and sometimes you want to focus projects, assignment, homework towards that end. But don't discount the value of being able to synthesize and summarize existing knowledge in a particular area of knowledge. In fact, that's almost always a pre-requisite to making cogent arguments that exercise 'critical thinking' skills.
>In fact, it seems to be this kind of essay where language models are doing particularly well, with assignments such as “Write five good and bad things about biotech”. As an educator, I think this assignment is close to useless if the goal is to learn about biotech.
WHY?? Why is it 'close to useless' for a student to investigate current issues in biotech?
And by the way, with academics (and especially in public education), it is almost always the case that a student gets out of it what they put in. That is, if the student is aiming for the absolute minimum and takes every shortcut, neither AI, nor the assignment structure will a make a difference. Going back to this 'close to useless' question, a keen student can really sink their teeth into it and make this topic their own - because this question obviously is open-ended, and leaves room for the student to provide an independent and critical evaluation of the issues that concern the field .... OR ... they can spend 15 mins googling around or using AI, to throw a bunch of stuff together, call it a day, and go back to playing Call of Duty.
OK ... what's wrong with essays that demonstrate knowledge of a particular topic (as you call it "regurgitate content')? And why wouldn't those teach writing skills?
Yes, developing critical thinking skills is important, and sometimes you want to focus projects, assignment, homework towards that end. But don't discount the value of being able to synthesize and summarize existing knowledge in a particular area of knowledge. In fact, that's almost always a pre-requisite to making cogent arguments that exercise 'critical thinking' skills.
>In fact, it seems to be this kind of essay where language models are doing particularly well, with assignments such as “Write five good and bad things about biotech”. As an educator, I think this assignment is close to useless if the goal is to learn about biotech.
WHY?? Why is it 'close to useless' for a student to investigate current issues in biotech?
And by the way, with academics (and especially in public education), it is almost always the case that a student gets out of it what they put in. That is, if the student is aiming for the absolute minimum and takes every shortcut, neither AI, nor the assignment structure will a make a difference. Going back to this 'close to useless' question, a keen student can really sink their teeth into it and make this topic their own - because this question obviously is open-ended, and leaves room for the student to provide an independent and critical evaluation of the issues that concern the field .... OR ... they can spend 15 mins googling around or using AI, to throw a bunch of stuff together, call it a day, and go back to playing Call of Duty.