Gaywallet (they/it)

I’m gay

  • 16 Posts
  • 14 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: January 28th, 2022

help-circle

  • How would you propose adapting to this? Do you believe it’s the teacher’s responsibility to enact this change rather than (for example) a principal or board of directors?

    To be clear, I’m not blaming anyone here. I think it’s a tough problem and frankly, I’m not a professional educator. I don’t think it’s the teacher’s responsibility and I don’t blame them for a second for deciding that nah, this isn’t worth my time.

    This article is about PhD students coasting through their technical writing courses using chatbots. This is an environment/application where the product (writing a paper) is secondary to the process (critical analysis), so being able to use a chatbot is missing the point.

    Completely agreed here. I would have just failed the students for cheating if it were me. But to be clear, I was talking in more the abstract, since the article is written more about the conundrum and the pattern than it is about a solution. The author decided to quit, not to tackle the problem, and I was interested in hearing them follow that thread a bit further as they’re the real expert here.


  • While I think there may be more to pull apart here, I think we’re missing the necessary context to weigh in any deeper. How many assignments there are, what the assignments look like, whether they feel like just busy work, how much else is going on in the students life, etc. I think it would be telling (albeit not all that surprising as some are still just looking for a degree at that level) if they were using chatgpt on their doctorate, but even in that case I would perhaps argue that learning to use chatgpt tactfully or in ways which aren’t the direct writing might be useful skills to have for future employment.


  • Is it because they don’t give a shit? Or are the stakes too high and they don’t trust their own abilities? Do they have the time to even try between their work shifts?

    Likely a mix of all these factors and more. I think the author fails to critically examine how much skill is necessary for the average person and sets a bar of mastery for which many of her students are clearly uninterested in clearing.

    While I don’t say this as a criticism of the author, it is worth pointing out that she’s also failed to adapt to the new technologies. She talks about how teachers will need to adapt to the new tools but ultimately places the blame on the students rather than reconsidering who her audience is. I’m guessing these are not individuals who are honestly pursuing a career in writing as those individuals would likely be much more engaged on the subject and willing to grow their skills (unless it’s purely a means to an end- the acquisition of any degree). Using a tool which obscures stylistic choices may be “good enough” for these individuals and being able to accommodate the use of this tool effectively would necessarily require a shift in teaching style which gets them asking questions of the output. She recognizes this, but rather than questioning her teaching style it’s written off as a failure of the student’s ability to withstand the ‘temporary discomfort of not knowing’.









  • I was going to reflect that it’s wild to me that only 3% take public transit, but when I lived in the suburbs, I took the bus maybe a few times per year outside of specific time-frames where it was most convenient to take the bus because I didn’t have access to other transportation. Now that I live in the city, being central to public transit was an important part of that - and this 3% is a reflection of how car-centric our country is and how little public transit we really have.