That sounds like a reasonable process. The rewriting, I personally feel, is much easier than trying to graft in personal touches. Recommendation letter writing is a particular genre than mirrors college essay writing in its essential attributes. I think we can maintain integrity through the process as long as we continue to foreground and control our voices in the final stages of writing and editing. Good luck with your recs, Roberto! Always a pleasure corresponding!
Hi Nick. At this time of year I am assaulted by letters of recommendation for college. Between all other duties it can be exhausting. I have been using GPT by inserting my students’ qualities and interests in the prompt for a letter of recommendation. From there I rewrite the letter in my voice. I need support with that initial step or I might not get started.
The ethical dilemma surrounding the use of LLMs for college applications is less about the technology and more about the systemic issues in higher education that make students turn to AI for help.
I have looked at one college essay so far this school year from a student, and provided feedback. I enjoy the idea of using LLMs as brainstorming and through-line tools. If I were to want a student to do that, I would want to meet with them and model for them usage of AI for their essay that would maintain the integrity of their work.
Would be a great activity for classrooms. A procedure that trains students to use AI effectively while maintaining the personal and academic integrity of their writing.
Thanks, Nathan. Yes, modeling will definitely be a key component. And yet, students are already using these products for their essays, and so I thought I'd put down some good parameters in print to guide the unfolding process already at work behind the scenes. In reality, students are finding the products resulting from 90 LLM -10 human reliance dynamics -- or similar proportionalities -- very unsatisfying, so the process is kind of self-correcting.
What I hope to see happening inside the high school curriculum in months or years to come is the kind of modeling you suggest... as we start to build this curriculum from the ground up... all the while, trying to protect the core competencies that make such multi-modal processes possible in the first place. Definitely another case of building the plane while flying it. Ha! Such an overused but useful metaphor.
Thanks Sahar for the perspective and the link. I am interested to see how the student as curator method progresses. Personally, I believe that something special happens cognitively through the immersive process of writing, so I am not ready to give up on it yet. Even after the rise of calculators we have continued teaching students basic arithmetic because learning those process opens up reasoning pathways that become useful in a variety of other settings. I plan on taking on some of these topics in some upcoming posts. Stay tuned.
That sounds like a reasonable process. The rewriting, I personally feel, is much easier than trying to graft in personal touches. Recommendation letter writing is a particular genre than mirrors college essay writing in its essential attributes. I think we can maintain integrity through the process as long as we continue to foreground and control our voices in the final stages of writing and editing. Good luck with your recs, Roberto! Always a pleasure corresponding!
Hi Nick. At this time of year I am assaulted by letters of recommendation for college. Between all other duties it can be exhausting. I have been using GPT by inserting my students’ qualities and interests in the prompt for a letter of recommendation. From there I rewrite the letter in my voice. I need support with that initial step or I might not get started.
Thanks so much for your writing.
The ethical dilemma surrounding the use of LLMs for college applications is less about the technology and more about the systemic issues in higher education that make students turn to AI for help.
Students in the age of generative AI should be editors, not writers. I appreciate Stratechery's POV on the topic https://stratechery.com/2022/ai-homework
I have looked at one college essay so far this school year from a student, and provided feedback. I enjoy the idea of using LLMs as brainstorming and through-line tools. If I were to want a student to do that, I would want to meet with them and model for them usage of AI for their essay that would maintain the integrity of their work.
Would be a great activity for classrooms. A procedure that trains students to use AI effectively while maintaining the personal and academic integrity of their writing.
Thanks, Nathan. Yes, modeling will definitely be a key component. And yet, students are already using these products for their essays, and so I thought I'd put down some good parameters in print to guide the unfolding process already at work behind the scenes. In reality, students are finding the products resulting from 90 LLM -10 human reliance dynamics -- or similar proportionalities -- very unsatisfying, so the process is kind of self-correcting.
What I hope to see happening inside the high school curriculum in months or years to come is the kind of modeling you suggest... as we start to build this curriculum from the ground up... all the while, trying to protect the core competencies that make such multi-modal processes possible in the first place. Definitely another case of building the plane while flying it. Ha! Such an overused but useful metaphor.
Thanks Sahar for the perspective and the link. I am interested to see how the student as curator method progresses. Personally, I believe that something special happens cognitively through the immersive process of writing, so I am not ready to give up on it yet. Even after the rise of calculators we have continued teaching students basic arithmetic because learning those process opens up reasoning pathways that become useful in a variety of other settings. I plan on taking on some of these topics in some upcoming posts. Stay tuned.