Even if the students type the textbook into ChatGPT at least they read the material.
This is beside the point of whether current education needs to be improved, and whether GPT is going to force some change here - but this is a useful stopgap.
teachers who take an approach like OP need to be stopped.
I once turned in a math exam written using LaTeX and the professor initially declined to grade it. I did concede that I hadn't followed the directions (handwritten answers only), but the professor did eventually grade it.
> I once turned in a math exam written using LaTeX and the professor initially declined to grade it.
This is just weird though. I used LaTeX for the majority of my homeworks and also exams. It was about an even split between LaTeX and handwriting for math people iirc.
the specific exam I am referring to indicated hand written as a requirement. It's also unlikely that the prof. failing me would have survived the scrutiny of the administration.
The other 10% were books the publisher only had physical prints of or which I could find pdf copies from other locales of.
> LaTeX
I submitted a lot of things done in LaTeX that professors hated grading for the sheer reason that I made them count words manually instead of letting them skim-count based on the number of words on a Word page. I eventually wrangled the `Geometry` and `mla.sty` packages into submission and even made my own custom version of Garamond that added an extra en-space to periods following a character followed by a space just to be boring.
Why bother with books when it's so easy to fabricate?
If you are searching for a specific piece of information - digital all the way.
If you are trying to digest material in a linear fashion, I find a physical book works better for me. Less distractions.
With a physical book I might remember that the equation I'm looking for was near the bottom of a series of equations on the bottom half of a left hand page, and the right hand page had a particular graph, and this was somewhere in the third quarter of the book.
It is then just a matter of quickly fanning through that general region of the book to find it.
With digital I can do a digital search but it is hard to find search terms that don't return a ton of hits all through the book. As I read a digital book I don't get a sense of movement through it that I get from a physical book, so I'm less likely to be able to remember how far into the book what I seek should be.
For research I think it's good to use a mix. You won't get good "unknown unknowns" if all you do is search for facts. Some reading of articles and books is good.
I for some reason find it much quicker to read and find stuff in a physical book. I also hate reading on a screen (didn't have any e ink device).
Maybe but I've had ChatGPT tell me it doesn't know many things.