I have a friend that teaches uni labs… God, EVERYBODY uses AI to code the most basic, most boring, most intuitive and easy hello worlds, if / else chains, basic arithmetic, basic UI templates, the list goes on.
If uni students are like this I can’t imagine what is lower. It must be abysmal.
I understand using AI, I really do, but come on, if you can ask it to write an assignment, you can fucking ask it to explain it to you as well… Even AI can grasp and explain such basic starter uni bullshit… BUT THEY JUST DON’T BOTHER. They LITERALLY JUST DON’T CARE. IN UNI.
It’s mind boggling to think that a fucking 18 year old that made it to uni is so fucking incredibly idiotic.
Add a new part that needs to be done in class with no AI on the existing project.
Add this new feature
Fix these bugs.
Explain how you addressed these problems and what kind of complications you ran into and how it could have been easier to manage.
The PR is part of what you get graded on.
This has been an issue with schools since forever. Focusing on grades instead of learning means many kids will do what is needed to get a good grade, pass the class and get the degree.
When we stop valuing grades and start valuing knowledge directly, learning improves. Knowledge should be the reward and what we laud. The grade is just a mechanic for evaluation, but should be considered no value in itself. That’s what kids need to be taught and shown from day one.
When your kid comes home from school, ask them what they learned. Ask them to teach you as if you don’t know, or maybe you really don’t. Don’t correct them, instead ask questions that might lead them to the correct answer, if you know it. People learn best by teaching others. When you give your kid the expectation that they will be teaching you what they learned, even casually, they pay attention in class and do much better.
It’s much better than doomscrolling tiktok for both of you, trust me.
Grades are the measure of kids are progress in what learning and what knowledge they actual have, you can call it something else like in Montessori where they change the system of grading where they use terms like mastery but they still have a system in place to track progress.
I think you’re confusing grades with teaching to the test, thanks No Child Left Behind btw, here which okay is a very valid point but end of they day standardized tests are a way to measure your actual grasp of the material being taught. Sure, how you get there needs adjustment at least in America where our math scores and reading comprehension scores are abysmal but to say it’s grades is the issues is kind of reductive when it’s such a more complex issue that involves how we teach, how we deal with disparate incomes, new thing is low enrollment, and why the hell aren’t we teaching phonics when whole-language and three-cueing methods are proven to be ineffective for literally decades now.
There’s a reason why colleges are moving back to requiring ACT/SAT scores in their applications again because in particular with items like math, kids were graduating and then finding out that they didn’t understand basic concepts like Algebra.
Also, this conversation has nothing to do with the article and AI.
Nah, the person you are replying to had a way better take on this than you.
It’s the difference between a distinguished educator and a proficient educator.
you can’t measure knowledge though.
schools teachers and students are measured, they are judged by numerical performance metrics.
also, after grammar school parents have no clue what their kids are doing or learning. most adults can’t do algebra or read beyond a 7th grade level.
plus what you are implying would require massively more teachers and time in education, something nobody wants.
How do you mark that? You can’t just give them a zero
Yes you can; it’s easy. Make the policy clear that any generative AI use will result in disqualification of the whole team. Then enforce it.
Even better, use of Gen AI is a violation of the Academic Honesty code and will result in punitive actions. Either learn to cheat well or don’t cheat at all.
disqualification of the whole team.
Oh fuck no. I’ve been stuck on teams with deadweights before. Teachers refused to do anything about them contributing nothing at all. Still pissed that asshole graduated.
I swear group assignments are probably the best exposure to real-life work that the school can offer. You will run into people just as lazy throughout your life. Better to recognize them early on and come up with a plan for dealing with them.
Sure, great, it’s one thing if it’s costing the employer money. It’s quite another if I’m paying for an education and the school is fucking me over
administration won’t let you do that. you will lose your job if you try to fail students.
they will force you to pass students.
also a lot of parents straight up bribe teachers now for grades.
Who the fuck enrolls in an educational course, if they wish to skip learning?
Increasingly higher ed in america is being treated as a degree mill, where students are “customers” and the degree is a “product.”
It’s disgusting, but it’s a natural consequence of a commodified education system in which colleges and universities are treated as businesses.
I personally think we need to cut out the parasitic administrators and let the department faculty run the schools like co-ops, and possibly hire out the few administrative tasks that are actually necessary.
That would be far cheaper than paying these enormous administrative salaries, so it could lower tuition while increasing faculty pay.
But has anyone considered those poor shareholders?
Wn also need to address companies gutting any internal training programs and then gate keeping jobs that really have no need for a college degree behind a requirement for any bachelor’s degree at all to be eligible for consideration. There’s way too many jobs that that in my father’s time had a 6 month probation period where they taught you the basics of a trade, where now they just contract college grads and hope a BA means they can figure it out on their own, in lieu of having proper in house training programs.
There are a lot of people who don’t really have any need for, or even interest in, a higher education who are going just because it’s become the bare minimum to get an okay job through this inflation of requirements for entry level positions. They get saddled with debt they don’t need (and can likely I’ll afford), while the curriculum gets dumbed down for everyone, in order to keep the schools’ numbers looking good.
To be clear, this isn’t a knock on any of these folks. I just think there need to be more viable routes to a career with a living wage for people who don’t want to go to university. Maybe they come back later in life, maybe they don’t, but they should still be able to find a job that affords them a dignified life.
Oh, you’d be surprised.
I used to teach english for non native speakers, and after chatgpt’s debut in 2023, almost every single essay, homework, and presentation was entirely done with LLMs. We had to demand handwritten essays, and presentations had to be done in the classroom (we gave the theme, they worked out a presentation, and then presented it the same day without leaving the class).
And even then, some students would ask to go to the bathroom, use their phones, memorize a whole ass paragraph from chatgpt and then come inside class to write it down.
As all the others say, they want the cert and the status that comes with the cert.
It’s part of the reason everyone needs three years experience for an entry level job, a good student fresh out of education is worth little but then worth a lot if they learn fast. A bad student fresh out of education won’t learn at all and will be an active detriment, if only because they’re taking a seat someone better could take.
People who use AI for everything aren’t guaranteed to be bad students, but bad students probably will use AI for everything. The trick will be figuring out the difference.
Yeah, ultimately I think the root of the problem is how much HR is part of hiring and selection processes despite not really knowing how to evaluate the specific skills required to do the job. If skills were being evaluated rather than resumes and interview skills, then cheating your way to a degree would be pointless.
Just for the cert or whatever at the end.
most people hate learning. because it’s difficult and requires effort and time.
cheating is easy. you get results with less time or effort.
The mentally bankrupt
Wools that just want the cert
Make them write out the pseudo code by hand for thier projects? from what I can gather, the issue is that they don’t understand the underlying code that the Ai created? Thus bug testing or altering values manually is not in thier wheel house?
I’m not an expert on this matter but I don’t hear anything about pseudo code, which allows you to write code for anything… Just got to translate it into code/a language that the computer can use?
So i imagine if a student doing a video game course is doing it because they are passionate about gaming, and these students are willing to use AI to shortcut something they actively want to do, then its not a big leap to assume they are using it to deal with all the other subjects they find tedious.
I feel like we are heading for a future of flesh robots interfacing with the internet to steer their lives, and the second the internet goes down people will be wandering around aimlessly, looking dazed in an internal conflict between wondering where to start and being confused that the black glass in their hand cant give them answers.
ugh,we’re so fucked
Stupid in, stupid out applies to teaching as well. 🥲
honestly, if you live in a western nation, this is probably your only way to aactually succeed in the game industry. I don’t blame them. Its disgusting, but it is what it is.
I can forgive the modern reliance on LLMs, but anyone creating software still needs to understand how it actually works, or else it will come out as garbage. Games are no exception.
I would’ve wanted to see exactly what kind of games these students were putting out.
QWOP
GIRP?
That’s unfair towards QWOP.
My two cents on this is that the education system is lagging.
Implied, thing’s are changing quickly too soon for any education to happen. A lot of education platforms are training companies llm modules. Students are adapting by using llms but it doesn’t produce more data. All big tech that’s invested in llms are pushing it harder down your throat to the point of canceling contracts as threats.
And then there’s always the “which studio will be shut down today?”
On one hand employers are telling their employees to use more AI, like their jobs depend on it and in the other hand an educational game dev program is punishing people for using it. I’m not pro-AI, but you’ve got to admit there are some mixed messages going on.
It’s a program for learning how to develop games. There’s no point in trying to teach someone who isn’t willing to learn. Businesses don’t give a shit about the wellbeing and continued professional development of their employees, they just want to see Line Go Up™. Therefore, they want employees to use the slop machine.
Those employers are just trying to get employees to code themselves out of a job. If AI is doing the work for you then there’s no sense in keeping you around, and no sense in teaching you anything.
If you’re going to be a developer you will have to learn how to use AI. It’s as simple as that. Obviously there’s a big difference in AI assisted coding and asking Claude to make you a Mario clone.
You’re saying that as if the learning how to use AI with coding is the hard part and needs to be done from the start, rather than people learning the foundation that means you will understand not just what to tell the AI but what it is doing so you can think of the pitfalls it might not consider as well as have an idea of when something is taking longer than it should (or going much quicker than it should, which could mean it’s not really doing what you expected).
Stupid in, stupid out applies to teaching as well. 🥲
Better they don’t learn anything at all then the lazy ones pass, right?!
I think this is stupid. Ai use is a symptom and can be controlled. But it is helpful when learning to see more advanced work so you learn how it all comes together.
Edit: I think you’re missing the point: the kids who want to make a game and learn are punished by removing this, and the kids who want to slack off aren’t being hurt by cutting corners.
But are they learning anything other than “AI will do it for me”?
Are they learning anything when you take the fun exercise away from the motivated kids?
That’s more my issue.
If the other kids are using AI fix THAT. Don’t take away the fun projects.
You missed the point. No one was doing the “fun exercise”.
I can’t read the article because of adblock, was there truly not a single kid that submitted something not vibecoded?
I’d love to know and see the games myself. There was not a single kid mentioned in the article. It mentions “some kids” did it, but the article is speculation citing a reddit post, no one knows if AI was the reason for the programs shutdown from what I read.
That same person also suggested, however, that funding cutbacks could have been an even bigger factor in the decision, saying that “projects like this are the first to get cut” when government budgets get tight.
Feels like AI is engagement bait here 🪤
Well then give us the solution then to this problem of being able to easily differentiate student made projects and pure AI slop.
I’m sure the organizers and judges of this competition who literally started they cannot easily do so would love your answer.
Ask the student to explain how their program works in front of the class, with time for questions at the end.
They’ll still be able to start with vibe code, but they’ll be forced to actually think.
100% in a classroom setting but that’s not what this is. It’s not reasonable for the organizers of this national competition to be demanding source code, peer review it, understand it, and then asking the entrant to explain the code and how things work.
Keep running it, and let the ones who can learn learn? Although it was formatted as a competition, the main point of it was to assist learning, and that wouldn’t change for the kids who did put in the effort.
The main point of this was the competition, the fun was the competition for both the kids and the organizers/judges. Turning it into something else isn’t a solution to the problem the organizers were attempting to fix here since again the point and the fun here was the competition.
What’s the proposed solution for being able to easily differentiate student made projects and pure AI slop?
If I take a math course and everything is submitted from someone else solving it for me I’ll come off learning nothing.
And usually when it comes to advanced work it builds on the understanding of previous ones, so if you come off learning nothing from the one before then you hit a road block.
If you are able to do something with zero knowledge then it is something they don’t need you for, and you’ll probably lack the skills required for the advanced ones that do if you couldn’t even do the basics yourself.
As I posted on another comment:
Are they learning anything when you take the fun exercise away from the motivated kids?
That’s more my issue.
If the other kids are using AI fix THAT. Don’t take away the fun projects.
When learning something like derivatives my teacher made me do it the painful slow way of doing through graphing as opposed to using a formula. Afterwards we were allowed to use formulas and then later just our calculators.
Same thing applies to coding. AI bypasses learning fundamentals if the intent of the class is to teach the basics. If people run it through AI then there’s little reason for the class to exist and funds are better spend elsewhere.
Later on: “I can’t code or figure out code… how did this happen? I took courses and I chose the AI that passed them… why don’t I know the skills they were supposed to teach? “
No reason to look at all this and assume anyone learns anything.
What drives me nuts is that they’re still getting diplomas from good schools, so now interviews are a grueling multi-day gauntlet.
