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Comment by srveale | Hacker News Reader

> Flipped classroom is just having the students give lectures, instead of the teacher.

Not quite. Flipped classroom means more instruction outside of class time and less homework.

> This is called "proctored exams" and it's been pretty common in universities for a few centuries. None of this addresses the real issue

Proctored exams is part of it. In-class assignments is another. Asynchronous instruction is another.

And yes, it addresses the issue. Students can use AI however they see fit, to learn or to accomplish tasks or whatever, but for actual assessment of ability they cannot use AI. And it leaves the door open for "open-book" exams where the use of AI is allowed, just like a calculator and textbook/cheat-sheet is allowed for some exams.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom

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Flipped classroom sounds horrible to me. I never liked being given time to work on essays or big projects in class. I prefer working at home, where the environment is much more comfortable and I can use equipment the school doesn't have, where I can wait until I'm in the right mood to focus, where nobody is pestering me about the intermediary stages of my work, etc.

It also seems like a waste of having an expert around to be doing something you could do at home without them.

Exams should increasingly be written with the idea in mind that students can and will use AI. Open book exams are great. They're just harder to write.

I should add that upon reflection, I did have some really good "flipped classroom" experiences in college, especially in highly technical math and philosophy courses. But in those cases (a) homework was really vital, (b) significant work was never done in class, and (c) we never watched lectures at home. Instead, the activity at home (which did replace lectures) was reading textbooks (or papers) and doing homework. Then class time was like collective office hours.

Failure to do the homework made class time useless, the material was difficult, and the instructors were willing to give out failing grades. So doing the homework was vital even when it wasn't graded. Perhaps that can also work well here in the context of AI, at least for some subjects.

That's a good point, and maybe I was preaching the gospel of flipping too hard. It is by no means a silver bullet.

Should we let the kids who cheat using AI drop by the wayside, never learning a thing for themselves? Or should we do the same for kids who, for whatever reason, just will not do school work outside a classroom? Maybe it works really well for some subjects and not others? Or only for some age ranges? What about the students like you, and there are probably a lot of them, where it would be unfair to judge their abilities at specific times in specific settings?

I guess the reason I bring it up now is that AI has tipped it over the edge, where cheating is now so easy and effective that it is starting to tempt kids who would not otherwise cheat.

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