The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brains
The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brains
i much prefered writing notes on paper but i’d cry if i had to write an essay by hand, i hope those students aren’t torturing themselves this way
Every English class at my uni has huge, like 10-page essays (can you even call them essays at this point?) where we cover scientific developments in our field we discovered in that month.
Everything is handwritten because “there were students who used LLMs, and they need to be sure at least some effort is put into admission”. Like, just to spite on LLM users and all of us just in case.
o.o holy shit- i mean that’s a valid move, using AI for a handwritten piece sounds like a pain in the ass, but so does just writing 10 pages by hand, AI or not!
i’m glad i got through my higher education marginally before the AI boom hit (i graduated 3 years ago). i only had Turnitin yell “PLAGIARISM???” at me when i used a common phrase that another student used at some point somewhere (think - “The research suggests…”, or sometimes even the page numbers), good times good times
LLM boom has certainly affected education - complicating things for honest students and at the same time empowering cheaters.
Having studied both pre- and post-boom, I can say the amount of times I was offered to use LLMs overall and ChatGPT/Gemini specifically to generate answers as a student has gone through the roof.
And as a soon-to-be educator (I currently pursue PhD and aspire to teach others), I collect ideas on how to combat it, as it tanks the quality of education so much it may as well be nonexistent. But in any case, students that genuinely complete their assignments should not be harshly affected.
When I was in undergrad I had to write lots of essays by hand. I’d say about every other course in one of my majors had midterms and finals that were a single question essay to be completed in class during the testing period. I figured that was pretty typical.