Teaching Humans

I kind of miss teaching in the pre-AI days

Some student's comments would sound a bit off, and in their essays, their citations would come from all over the place in terms of sources.

Some good. Some not-so-good. Some are just what?

..and generally, you can roughly tell if a paper was pieced together by copy and paste from the Internet.

I feel nostalgic for the days I spent hunting around my hard disks, searching for my greatest hits of lectures, deciding whether to change the screenings and edit the slides.

That all seems so old fashioned, so dated, so 2022. 

Over a year ago, ChatGPT popularized AI writing and teaching with that, there goes those old ways rapidly. 

Word count. Writing quality. Grammar. Refutations. Original ideas (interesting or not), just meant effort and that students are at least thinking.

That's all meaningless now. 

Texts can be made in a few minutes of prompt engineering, and except for very obvious cases, an author, who was silent all semesters, is suddenly a genius. 

Grading, at least on first glance, has become an exercise to check for authenticity, instead of plagiarism and citations. 

Generative AI writing tools have some benefits, much like the impact spell check had on my own generation. I remember the days where my Journalism teacher will disable spell check on all the MS Words, just to make sure we keep checking thoroughly our spelling and grammar, and especially to avoid run-ons. 

 AI writing tools is a thing for sure. Some students use it for good. Some for bad. 

Ultimately, what I care about, (and what I like) are those students who are intrinsically motivated, who want to learn how to think better and who love knowledge.

I have learnt to pivot away from evaluating the work, but to evaluate the worker(s). 

As AI tools continue to evolve, our roles will evolve too. 

Because yes, AI can write assignments, summarize concepts and transcribe lectures which is all nice things, but here's the thing... it can’t care.

But I can.

Oh... and one other important thing. It still works to give handwritten exams in the classroom without access to electronic devices... and an oral presentation of a written essay.

About Sean Cheong

Sean is a familiar practitioner in the Singapore Television Industry.  Over the last 15 years, his work has spanned in both above and below the line positions, as we He also lectures at various tertiary institutions and is an event host and moderator for finance related topics.  As a self-taught trader, Sean has lost too much money in the finance market, but still finds a way to live to tell the tale.  Above all of those different roles, Sean is most proud of the role of Dad to his kids, Mikaela and Micah.