Ars Technica
To teach in the time of ChatGPT is to know pain
LLM use is the most demoralizing problem I’ve faced as a college instructor.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/to-teach-in-the-time-of-chatgpt-is-to-know-pain/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Apr 13 at 11:05amArsBot 🤖
Show threadedsanders23d ago

@arstechnica

Strangely enough, it seems like going backwards (really far back) is the way forward. Testing, even through the medium of writing, is much more “gamable” than an oral exam. It seems that Socrates guy was onto something.

Show threadMike Owens3d ago
@arstechnica college lecturer here. I dont deal with essays much so can't comment on that, but I did have a student the other week use an LLM to prep for a debate. She could provide no rebuttal or answers to points of information but just stood there and read a summary of the digital protection act (UK) when supposed to be arguing against banning social media for under 16s. Was completely slated by her team afterwards.
Show threadNiceMicro3d ago
@mowenzi @arstechnica Until last year I was teaching chemistry in college, and the university was really trying to push us to use LLMs in our lectures... somehow.
Luckily I wasn't doing stuff that requires a lot of writing of text, so I could kind of stay out of the hype cycle.
Show threadMike Owens3d ago
@nicemicro @arstechnica organic by any chance? I used to teach high school chem. We had an inspection one day when I was teaching organic mechanisms and the management checked the students work, went wide-eyed and later told me it looked fine.
Show threadOmnivore3d ago

@arstechnica

#alttext

A woman sits at a desk with a blackboard in the background. She has removed her glasses and is pinching the bridge of her nose.
Credit: EvgeniyShkolenko / Getty Images

Show threadUSB Type-Steve 3d ago
@arstechnica Just being a student in this time is really bad as well. I just finished a master's program, and I found in the later years of it (LLM era onward), the portions where students need to interact with one another is just a dead internet ChatGPT fest. I was able to spot it instantly with the usual tropes of em dashes, random tonal shifts, sycophantism, and regurgitating others' words via prompt output. The effort is gone.
Show threadMarianne3d ago
@USBTypeSteve @arstechnica so depressing :(
Show threadRadek Průša3d ago

@arstechnica It's so demoralizing to see my fellow students submit AI-generated text essentially with almost no edits on assignments and discussions.

Last week's discussion board about the war in Ukraine had 6 student posts to it. 5 of the posts looked really similar, talking about the exact same topic, using similar vocabulary and the first 3 sentences were almost identical, the entire posts almost certainly AI-generated.

Show threadRadek Průša3d ago
@arstechnica Almost everyone I've seen submit AI text got 90%+ points for their submissions. It makes me worried instructors and administrators will see this as an indicator that assignments need to be harder, and more numerous, which will in turn lead overwhelmed students who might not want to use AI to resort to it just to avoid missing deadlines.
Show threadMikalai3d ago
@arstechnica
Quote: “The friction matters, Sam!”
Show threadMikalai3d ago
@arstechnica
Another gold nugget: Failure is a useful part of learning
Show threadMikalai3d ago
@arstechnica
Quote:
I haven’t encountered any students who think they’re learning when they let LLMs do their work, despite the face that college administrators and LLM advertising try to put on this.
Show threadRobotistry3d ago

@arstechnica
Quote:
One was complaining about an assignment they needed to do that night, and another incredulously asked why they wouldn’t just have ChatGPT do it. The first replied, “This is my major, I actually need to learn stuff in this class. I use AI for my other classes."
--

Schools are evaluated and accredited based in part on how credits from different disciplines count towards a degree. A Bachelor's degree requires not just depth in the major but breadth across disciplines.

This literally undermines the entire accreditation process, since the students are now choosing in which classes they will learn and in which classes they will perform pretend learning.

Show threadBishop6 (Ed Alan T.)3d ago
@arstechnica I come from a family of educators (between parents, grandparents, aunts & uncles I have eight people who have taught at levels K-12 to college) and had often thought of pivoting my IT career into academia. The past couple years made me give up that idea. Fighting the AI trend sounds like just too much work at my age.
Show threadK. Lessin1d ago
@arstechnica Force Scholl pupils to write everything by Hand. AI gen-Text will get prerty uncomfortable if the have to transfer it to paper by Hand 😁