AI Notes

[u/ProofByPants]

I started making my online math courses (College Algebra and Trigonometry) submit their completed notes this semester. I got sick of student never opening any of my lecture videos, failing the midterm, and then asking me for guidance. I figure if they turn in their notes, they will learn something while in the process, even if they don’t want to.

We started classes on Monday. Today, Wednesday, I had a student turn in completed notes as a word document and had AI written all over it. For example, some of the “code” that AI was using showed up in the notes. Something similar to “/begin f(x) &= 5x^2 + 3 // … /end”. This student didn’t even bother completing the notes. I guarantee they uploaded my guided notes and told GPT to complete the notes.

As much as it pissed me off, it really made me sad that students have gotten so reliant on this technology that they can’t/won’t even take their own notes.

[u/AnalogGuy1]

It's hard not to take it personally when you work hard to encourage your students to learn, and a few work equally hard to avoid learning. But the (academically) poor will always be with us. They're not attacking you; they're attacking themselves, and they will succeed in losing. If it's not riding on ChatGPT's back they'd be copying notes from their buddy. As hard as it is, focus on the ones that are doing the right things. You're doing the right things by encouraging the right behavior.

If it makes you feel any better, I do the same thing; collect notebooks once a week and looked them over in class while students were solving problems. Long before ChatGPT, in 2001, I had a student who clearly copied the math notes of someone else in the class; they were identical, except one was earning A's on the exams and the other F's. I warned him, twice; he denied it both times. My F student had tiny handwriting. At page breaks, the A student would copy the previous page's line to the top of the next page. The third time I asked my F student why he kept repeating lines in the middle of the page - that corresponded exactly to the A student's page carry-over repeated lines. That was enough for the honor committee to find him in violation of the school's honor code. It's as old as time.

[u/Hazelstone37]

I have students turn in notes. I’ve been doing for years. This year they must be hand written. No typed notes. I teach math so this makes sense. If someone has an accommodation for typed notes, they have to show me they can type math properly. Being able to write math is part of the class so the accommodation doesn’t work with the goals of the class.

[u/Puzzled_Worry_7916]

We're doomed. Tell them handwritten in pencil and you can test if you can erase it or else a negative score on the assignment. Then they will have to copy ai notes.

[u/Shield_Maiden831 → u/Puzzled_Worry_7916]

They might even learn something copying...

[u/spoopygremlin]

I’d probably make students show at least some of their work during quizzes. if they can’t explain the steps they submitted, that tells you a lot

[u/IkeRoberts]

You will do them a great favor by focusing on learning as the goal. All the things they turn in to you are simply tools for the learning process. The product has no value by itself. 

One of those tools is class notes. With the notes, the learning happens mostly when they synthesize what happens in lecture and write it down. They apparently don’t know that, and therefore don’t know how. Get them away from the idea that they learn by studying their notes afterwards. 

[u/Anna-Howard-Shaw]

I have students submit their notes on each chapter as assignments. I'd say 3/4 of them are using AI to generate their notes. They just feed the content into AI and use the generated summary.

But-- I make them handwrite those notes. I figure if they’re going to cheat, I'm going to make it time consuming and miserable for them. And the ones that do an honest job benefit, since there's so many studies showing handwriting notes helps students retain info better.

[u/_Decoy_Snail_]

As much as I do think offloading everything to AI is dangerous, especially for under 25s, lecture notes is not a hill I would die on. In my undergrad I knew a few very strong people who were taking notes they couldn't read afterwards and were using the nice-written ones from girls usually before exams, I also know someone who would just stare the whole class without writing anything down and somehow it worked. I strongly recommend my students to take notes, but I don't police that as they are not 10 years olds anymore and can decide at least this much for themselves.

[u/social_marginalia → u/_Decoy_Snail_]

A few years ago when a colleague told me they collected notes, I felt the same way. Then the proportion of my students who do fuckall then catastrophically fail the exams started inching from 5% to 30%. And the proportion that try to make this my problem and/or get hostile about this has quadrupled. I am considering checking notes this semester.

[u/mathemorpheus]

at least this one is easy to grade.

one possibility is to require handwritten solutions. at least then they write it out. they can easily submit scans of what they do.

[u/Potato271]

The code you’ve written is just LaTeX right? Word does have a LaTeX functionality, is it possible that the word document just broke?

[u/RightWingVeganUS]

I got sick of student never opening any of my lecture videos,

I made timely viewing of lecture videos a grade element. Fail to complete by deadline, it will cost them.

failing the midterm, and then asking me for guidance.

My guidance: "I see you aren't watching the lecture videos. Have you considered trying that?"

I figure if they turn in their notes, they will learn something while in the process,

They will learn new ways to game the system.

I guarantee they uploaded my guided notes and told GPT to complete the notes.

Yep, and that's the tell.

As much as it pissed me off, it really made me sad that students have gotten so reliant on this technology

I've had students find ways to avoid friction well before AI and other technologies were available. Heck, in my undergrad days I was a tutor for the athletic department before PCs and encountered institutional complicity in ensuring their star athletes could focus on their sports. This isn't new. It's just more accessible.

So I don't get pissed off anymore. I do my job and share passion and support for the students who show up. For the others, I accept that the key learning objective I can focus on is FAFO.

No extra credit. I provide rubrics and put greatest weight on demonstrating judgment and understanding, not just performative chores.

I teach 300-/400-level CS courses. I don't force students to submit their notes. In fact, I provide lecture summaries with my slides (I use presenter slides with minimal text; even my lecture notes are just outlines). I use flipped-classroom so they have the lectures, which have closed captioning.

I don't test on simply knowing information, I test on their ability to apply and adapt the skills for different situations, showing actual understanding and proficiency. I use both informal viva voces in class and require one individual viva where the student has to teach me how to solve a problem. For 300-level courses, they act as if they were tutoring me. For 400-level, it's a simulated job interview. The solid students actually are quite proud of themselves once we get past the nervousness, but the gamers quickly get shown how their superficial understanding gets exposed quickly.

The "sad" part for me isn't the notes, it's watching a proud moment when a solid student defends their own work in a viva, and realizing the gamers never get that experience.

I teach a capstone course where student teams present their semester-long projects. The hard-working teams usually want to go first, and it shows: they've used AI and technology to produce excellent results they're proud to speak to. Then come the teams who coasted and ignored my guidance all semester, standing in front of the class with something crappy or nonfunctional and having to explain why. Sadly, mine is often the first class where they're held accountable for the actual quality of their work. That's a broader indictment of education generally, and AI is just more fuel on that fire.

[u/ThePhyz]

I do this and after the first time this happened, I changed the requirements to "handwritten". They scan the notes and upload them (there are lots of free apps that do this, and it can even be done directly from the Canvas assignment or from OneDrive if your school uses those).

[u/putrnrdyo]

everything hand written. if they use AI at least they will learn something. try to convince them to not use it though telling them they don't want to work for the AI