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Comment by abeppu | Hacker News Reader

I'm close to someone who teaches at a university, and they're making heavy use of in-room essays written in blue books. This ensures that the work is purely the students, but I think it also has the side-effect that the grader is also working manually.

I kinda think maybe at earlier levels, most homework should be moved into the classroom and done on paper anyway? What's the point of homework if they're not going to do it themselves and they're not going to learn? So just push that back into the classroom and don't try to take up their time out of school needlessly.

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If we flipped the lecture/homework system upside down it would first solve some of the major issues with how we deliver education, but as a side effect prevent the appearance of doing the work while really it's just the student mindlessly copying prompts and responses.

Assign the material for outside the classroom. Use the in-person contact time to work through the problems, with a mix of small group, pairing and mentoring.

I believe Sal Khan is a big promoter of this approach, and it also largely mirrors how people work in their jobs too.

I think this works well with at least somewhat interested students (like in university), but I'm not so sure before.

My experience when I was younger is that a significant proportion of students don't do anything outside of school. So you're trading not doing the homework with not reading the material. And then you'll essentially have to repeat the material during class hours, unless you're willing to leave half the class totally clueless. At least with the homework at home, the ones not doing anything are only penalising themselves.

I totally agree though that homework at home is dying. It already wasn't great before for a variety of reasons, and now it's basically totally useless.

This is good. I've never understood the value of watching a live lecture without interactivity. You might as well watch a video.

It works on multiple levels: it mitigates the cheating, but also takes advantage of the vast array of learning options available to replace the traditional lecture.

I cringe at the "small group" suggestion, although I acknowledge it's probably good to learn to coordinate with others. Rarely does it work out well though, in a classroom setting. I feel like what you're really learning is how to tolerate partners who are unwilling to cooperate.

> I've never understood the value of watching a live lecture without interactivity.

Because you're rarely just watching. It isn't a movie, you are supposed to ask questions. Similarly, the lecturer will ask the audience questions to gauge their understanding and tweak the lecture on-the-fly. There's also a huge value in interacting with classmates after the lecture, allowing you to discuss and refine your understanding of it while it is still fresh.

The video lecturer might just as well ask some question and unlike the theater of the real one, get a response from every single viewer instead of getting a "gauge". And I don't know what mythical school most students spend the few minutes break getting huge value "discussing and refining" (which, by the way, could also be arranged with an alternative)

I went back to school as an adult and struggled with “flipped” classrooms, where we watched video lectures on our own time and worked through problems in class. I don’t process information well from video, and struggled to hold focus. In-person lectures worked much much better. I could read the text book for things I missed. Some of the flipped classes didn’t even have textbooks, so I resorted to finding other resources to try and learn the material.

It’s true that classes in giant lecture halls might as well be a video in some ways, but the delivery really does hit different for some people.

those large lecture hall classes also have TA sessions that went along with them

Assigning the material outside of class is a great idea, but it only works when caregivers are involved in education. Unfortunately, not all children have that advantage and they will just fall even more behind. It’s already amazing to me how much time teachers spend reviewing the prior year’s material to stop kids from getting lost in the system.

I went back to school about 7 years ago and took freshman physics. It was taught in this "flipped classroom" style. The practice is definitely catching on.

> This ensures that the work is purely the students

I don't know in the US, but in my part of the world, teachers have always assumed that anything that isn't done in person in front of an examiner has not value because students do cheat or get help. Maybe you would get a bit of extra-credits for the homework and that's it.

And for high-stake competitive exams, it's 100% in-person.

How does that work with disability accommodations for students that have to be at home?

A strict system does not contradict making accomodations for those that need them. All countries do it differently but in several European countries you even have graduation certificates that may indicate if you followed a special curriculum or had some accomodations, if relevant for the final result/report.

I meant: how is actual testing carried out?

That’s unfortunate. I got a BA, and while I often question its value, one thing I do think college taught me was how to distill complex ideas, integrate them, and then form my own complex ideas from what I’d learned.

I’d only really fully grok the concepts I was writing about (and the ideas I was trying to convey) after hours of trying to splice things together, staring at my screen, and rewriting and reformulating. Blue book exams have their place, but relying on them to the exclusion of long form essays deprives students of the chance to really sit with their ideas.

(I acknowledge that this is a tough situation for the teachers and that many students are going to bullshit their way through with AI slop if given the chance.)

> relying on them to the exclusion of long form essays deprives students of the chance to really sit with their ideas

I think the crux of the issue is that professors want students to do the deep thinking you're talking about, but they know that if they base the course around writing papers, a bunch of the students aren't actually likely to do it.

But if you tell students that when they do the reading they should be asking themselves "What would the author of reading A think of reading B?" "Which of C or D do you find more convincing and why?" "How would you frame T in terms of S?", "What evidence does W cherry-pick an what do they ignore, and why?", and they know for some material the class discussion will look like that, and they'll be asked questions which both demand recall and synthesis in the blue book essays ... can they be nudged to do some of the thinking you're talking about before they see the specific question? Perhaps even using writing at the computer as a tool (but not necessarily as an output)?

Yep. What I tell my kid is, "The purpose of homework isn't to get correct answers, any more than the purpose of weightlifting is higher weights."

In doing my masters, i've noticed a similar trend coming from TAs in technical programs.

Much more emphasis on "homework" being readings to prepare for lecture. Lecture to cover salient points, but then to reinforce with in person labs, and then the actual "lab" credit in an isolated environment with access to AI tooling network blocked.

I think AI is forcing us to think about what learning actually means, and to rethink how much the ability to think matters, what understanding means, and what knowledge we need to operate in today's world. It will take some getting used to.

> What's the point of homework if they're not going to do it themselves and they're not going to learn?

My theory is that most homework is given to ensure the parents take an active interest in the kids education.

The fact that the kid needs help to do it is part of the goal, but completely impractical in a small family with 2 working parents.

Unfortunately, the homework is all done in the after-care program, where the high school kids who work there spend the time getting the homework done.

Not exactly what the teacher intended.

I don’t have a partner and have 50% custody of my child. It’s difficult to do it on my own, but as long as I capture lost time it works. For example, we do math, reading and spelling while we are in the car.

I also use voices (my kid is 8 so it still works). We have two characters - Monkey and Lulu. They are very useful because Monkey is a monkey so was never educated in a human system. He always has lots of questions (and questionable pronouncements).

If any busy parents want to meet Lulu and Monkey, get in touch and we can set something up. I’m a big fan of characters - they are a great way to review school material and it’s amazing hearing my kid explain things she has learned back to me.

(Edit - I should note that I have a large amount of economic privilege. My situation may not apply to everyone.)

Wait, are you saying you use voices when you're teaching your kid? If so, that's awesome.

Not OP but I'm 16 years senior my youngest sister, when she was a wee child I did exactly this.

Voices were like personas for me.

> I'm close to someone who teaches at a university, and they're making heavy use of in-room essays written in blue books. This ensures that the work is purely the students, but I think it also has the side-effect that the grader is also working manually.

Sometimes the best way to prove authenticity is through inefficiency. It's a foundational principle of cryptography.

I think OCR should be able to help digitize handwritten work, at the cost of the time it takes to snap and upload pics of each copy.

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