An Avalanche Really Is Coming This Time §
Highlights §
- Are we really going to give every student a bag of weed and then set up misconduct panels if they smoke it? (View Highlight)
- The bigger issue isn’t that the assessment won’t work or that our meaning of cheating will change. It’s that if the process of synthesising, processing and summarising existing information is now so easy to automate, it rips the heart out of almost every undergraduate degree – because it will develop skills that society no longer needs (View Highlight)
- One option is to pivot towards the practical and out towards application. This will be easier for some than others, but a glance at the undergraduate degree structure at Roskilde University in Denmark is interesting – because half of the credits are for applied projects. In every subject. Every year. (View Highlight)
- Another option that I’ve heard follows from (generatively) is the idea that all that generative AI does is summarise and synthesize current knowledge. It might do it in a higher order way, but we’ll need new stuff for it to do it with. On that basis the argument goes that given creativity and new knowledge are what matters, all degrees therefore need to become research degrees. (View Highlight)
- What I can see – and this is fuzzy and a bit counterintuitive – is actually something of a move back towards subject immersion rather than modularity, with more groupwork (where groups of staff and students consist of diversities of characteristic, level and skill) work on hard(er) questions. (View Highlight)
- can see that something between a module and a course, run by a team where the teaching “stuff” can grow at a different pace to the research stuff (and in turn a different pace to the pastoral, KE etc) – something that has a long form purpose (say over a year) – could be compelling, immersive and provide “cosier” and more compelling experiences. (View Highlight)
- But fundamental I think is that the individual student writing the individual essay marked by the individual academic is game over if generative AI can play both roles. (View Highlight)
- Knowing that what you spend your days doing is worth it gives you much more agency over the activities you agree to undertake. That’s the kind of power that academics, professional services staff and students will need next. (View Highlight)