this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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Because a huge part about learning is actually figuring out how to extract/summarise information from imperfect sources to solve related problems.
If you use CHATGPT as a crutch because you're too lazy to read between the lines and infer meaning from text, then you're not exercising that particular skill.
I don't disagree, but thats like saying using a calculator will hurt you in understanding higher order math. It's a tool, not a crutch. I've used it many times to help me understand concepts just out of reach. I don't trust anything LLMs implicitly but it can and does help me.
Congrats but there's a reason teachers ban calculators... And it's not always for the pain.
In some cases I'd argue, as an engineer, that having no calculator makes students better at advanced math and problem solving. It forces you to work with the variables and understand how to do the derivation. You learn a lot more manipulating the ideal gas formula as variables and then plugging in numbers at the end, versus adding numbers to start with. You start to implicitly understand the direct and inverse relationships with variables.
Plus, learning to directly use variables is very helpful for coding. And it makes problem solving much more of a focus. I once didn't have enough time left in an exam to come to a final numerical answer, so I instead wrote out exactly what steps I would take to get the answer -- which included doing some graphical solutions on a graphing calculator. I wrote how to use all the results, and I ended up with full credit for the question.
To me, that is the ultimate goal of math and problem solving education. The student should be able to describe how to solve the problem even without the tools to find the exact answer.
Yes.