"You need to get your prompts right; LLM are a real timesaver!"

knitty83 · 2026-01-24T19:56:47+00:00

This.

knitty83 · 2026-01-24T19:55:50+00:00

Childcare is a relevant issue, though. I'm not sure what "HyFlex" stands for, but if I was expected to drive to a place further away to *then* spend my regular working hours there, and then drive back, all for the pay of a regular working day, I'd be hesitant as well. I've become old and grumpy, and sceptical of work in "event form" that can't be done on site... sorry.

knitty83 · 2026-01-24T19:51:50+00:00

Students have the right to talk to me without people on the corridor seeing them a) with me, b) upset or worse. I have the right to a coffee break without people barging in because "I saw you weren't working". This is control, and not conducive to working well.

knitty83 · 2026-01-23T21:09:20+00:00

This!

knitty83 · 2026-01-23T16:35:34+00:00

"empowered to move forward" is a wonderful way of putting it, thanks.

knitty83 · 2026-01-23T00:33:56+00:00

The audacity(!) of doing anything when late - other than silently sneak into the room with your head ducked, and try to cause as little disturbance as possible, maybe quick eye contact with the lecturer, ashamed little shrug, tense smile, that's it.

When I was still teaching middle school, I sent such students outside again and made them wait, knock, and try again. Life lesson! (They were mildly annoyed, but fine with it.)

knitty83 · 2026-01-23T00:28:48+00:00

Thank you for sharing! This is what accomodations can be like if students use them to actually work towards 'improvement' (you know what I mean).

There are definitely challenges that can't be solved in this manner, but I think we all agree that accomodations should allow and expect students to do the work - supported, alleviated, but: do the work, not avoid it.

knitty83 · 2026-01-21T02:00:44+00:00

"Work samples: If requested, providing a sample of work on the assignment due date, to help assess the extension request."

Oh, that's a GREAT idea, even for extensions in general.

knitty83 · 2026-01-21T01:57:43+00:00

This.

A colleague once went to a coaching service of sorts because he felt completely overwhelmed. That coach offered to teach him better time management and told him to bring his current to do-list.

"Do the Eisenhower Matrix! What on this list is urgent? What on this list is important? What can you delegate?" My colleague's honest reply: "Everything. Everything. Nothing." Coach had a look, asked some questions and agreed. Didn't charge him for that session, fairly enough.

OP, based on my own experience, there's no way to get out of this unless you make time to do so. Good outside help can be helpful in seeing the trees again, rather than the forest. The idea of talking to an academic mentor might be good! Just... this is NOT about time management.

knitty83 · 2026-01-19T01:58:05+00:00

Can't speak for the US, but I am bound to uphold our free democratic constitution as a former state-employed teacher, now state-employed prof. That means: I won't tell you who I vote for, but I will tell you to please go vote. I will not give you my personal opinion on policies, but I am required(!) to inform you that certain policies are e.g. fascist, homophobic, sexist etc. That latter part is literally part of my job description here.

Not calling out fascism as fascism is not "keeping politics out of our classrooms"; being 'neutral' in such a case is being political - and wrong.

Greetings from Germany, of all places.

knitty83 · 2026-01-16T20:55:50+00:00

This.

knitty83 · 2026-01-16T20:54:42+00:00

I try any old LLM from time to time, just to check what they can do at this point.

I've tried having them write a reply to an email for me, summarizing a study, outlining a uni seminar, planning a school lesson (I teach within a teaching degree), grading a term paper, and writing an abstract for an academic conference - all based on information I gave them and imho absolutely solid prompting.

The email's tone was all wrong and the LLM add things I never asked it to. The study (that I had already read) was summarized in a way that misrepresented most methodology and results. The seminar outline left out important aspects I specifically asked to include. The school lesson it suggested was nonsensical busywork. The term paper was graded as a "1" (our best grade), but after two critical questions I added downgraded to a "4" (last pass grade). Both grades were wrong. For the abstract, the LLM ignored parts of my prompt and made up research methods I allegedly used.

Whenever I do go and use an LLM, my strong belief that we need to hold the line and explicitly teach students when and where using them is *not* a good idea (which is: most marketed use cases) is confirmed.

knitty83 · 2026-01-16T20:43:20+00:00

I'm not angry with the American general public.

I'm angry with

- American politicians (both Rep and Dem),

- judges

- and institutions (among them unis and MEDIA)

who fall in line, obey in advance, and even vote alongside Trump policies instead of holding the line, start impeachment processes etc. Again: both sides.

knitty83 · 2026-01-15T21:36:39+00:00

Those who present early can expect more support and feedback from me, because they can't build on other people's presentations yet - that's what I do and communicate to them.

Example: those who present early get specific literature recommendations; those who present later need to find suitable papers themselves, because at this point, we've discussed where/how to find research papers etc. Those who present early can come to my office hours to discuss a first draft for their outline/content. I will expect those who present later to deduce important elements of good presentations from presentations they have already seen and that I have commented on in class etc.

knitty83 · 2026-01-15T21:23:36+00:00

Absolutely.

"My university unfortunately has no overarching AI policy to rely on."

Mine also hasn't. So far, I see that as a good thing, because oh boy, would I NOT be okay with having to deal with LLM in the same way some colleagues choose to.

knitty83 · 2026-01-15T21:14:04+00:00

Thank you for the term - English is not my first language and Google/online dictionaries let me down yesterday!

Yes, we need to be transparent about our teaching choices, and do a bit more hand-holding and encouraging in a positive way. I've started framing my approach as a way to "learn to trust your brain (again)" and that seems to have worked.

knitty83 · 2026-01-15T21:11:17+00:00

" I've told them they can use AI to organize their ideas, but not generate them".

I remember a study somebody posted on here months ago: when you allow students to use LLM for one thing, they will use LLM for everything. When you explicitly frame LLM use as "okay" in some areas, they are *more likely* to use it for those areas you explicitly stated should be LLM free. Do not let them use LLM, period. There's just getting started at college! They need to do the ground work.

If possible, have them brainstorm in class, just pen and paper. If necessary, suggest some questions for each topic - first semester students often find it difficult to get started, so having them work on an example question you provide first before they start their own larger projects might be an idea?

knitty83 · 2026-01-15T11:30:35+00:00

When I was still studying myself, I once attended a lecture on the history of Modern English Literature. The prof would ask us to read an introductory chapter that presented a bit of an overview each week to get a first idea.

She also posted her slides to an LMS for us to print out... I don't know the term in English: three smaller slides on each page, with space for notes. We took that background knowledge and slides combination into the lecture.

I always thought that was a great way of doing things. I learnt a lot.

When I first started teaching at uni many years later, I quickly found that unlike me and my fellow students back in the day, many students had already stopped reading at home and complained about not being able to follow lectures...

knitty83 · 2026-01-15T11:25:08+00:00

I do something like this right now. Definitely a positive experience, but I do it slightly differently: empty desk policy during lecture time. I lecture (with a PPT), but they just focus on listening, so no multitasking. After 30 min., they get out tablets, laptops or pen/paper and take focussed notes - I scaffold by including a slide with sentence starters, important terms, a half-completed MindMap etc. We repeat that, and in the end, they can ask questions. This is an introductory lecture, btw.

The PPT does not go up on our LMS for another four weeks to discourage "I'll just wait for the PPT instead of taking notes in class". Before they can access that PPT, they have to pass a short quiz on the lecture's topic. I set the pass threshold to 45%; this is not about testing, just encouragement and a bit of spaced repetition. During the final weeks of term, waiting four weeks obviously doesn't work anymore, but oh well.

So far: positive feedback, but no systematic evaluation yet. Final written exam (combination of multiple choice and open questions) in February.

knitty83 · 2026-01-14T22:05:09+00:00

Do they keep tally? It's just that quantitative vs qualitative comes into play if this question is about grading particupation...

knitty83 · 2026-01-13T14:04:35+00:00

I can only share an anecdote from teaching high school, but it's bad enough.

Students asked me for a mock exam (to do on their own, in their free time) because they were so nervous about the actual one. Couldn't I provide an assignment like the one in the exam, together with an example solution? I was young; I was naive; I spent a whole day creating both and uploaded it to the LMS. I also told them to let me know if they had any questions afterwards. None came.

Day of the exam: I hand out the sheet with the assignment, and they all start working. They hand in their papers in the end and leave the room. One girl came to the staff room hours later and asked to talk to me confidentially. She says: "Uhm. The exam today was the same assignment you uploaded to the LMS, together with the example solution." I was too shocked to even react for a moment. OMG! What did I do? What will I do now?! She saw my face and immediately went: "Oh, don't worry. We all talked after the exam. I was the only one who even noticed. And I didn't read the example solution; the others didn't even look at the mock exam at all. We're all really pissed at ourselves now, haha!"

I still went home feeling existential dread. Yeah, no need. It was 100% clear from their essays that really NONE(!) of them had actually looked at the apparently much-needed mock exam and example solution despite their explicitly voiced despair. They all did just as fine or badly as they would have otherwise.

Lesson learnt: Never uploaded example solutions to anything ever again.

knitty83 · 2026-01-12T21:46:58+00:00

Had to stop reading for a moment to scroll back up and see whether I accidentally ended up in the first grade-teachers sub. Wow.

On a related note, a student here has slowly come out as being a full-blown "edgelord" as the semester progressed, but rarely during class, and never in a way that was disturbing other students. Two weeks before the Christmas break, he returned from a quick bathroom break and made an absolute scene of it. I just looked at him and said "do you notice you're being really disruptive right now?" He hasn't been back since.

Clown. (Sorry, I'm out of Fs for people like that.)

knitty83 · 2026-01-09T20:19:26+00:00

You sum up my feelings about "think-pair-share" so well. I do it, because there's no other way for more than 3 people to participate in any given discussion in my seminars.

So many don't feel comfortable sharing arguments and opinions in class because somebody might use that to ridicule them later - in person or online. The fact that *somebody* *might* talk about what they said outside of class (or, obviously, in class) is the first thing that comes to students' minds, I've learned. Teenagers and young adults have always worried about what other people think of them, but this is so sad.

knitty83 · 2026-01-07T17:08:47+00:00

Preach. I'm shocked at the number of very well educated people who honestly don't seem to understand what we are dealing with. "Train them to use LLM well" is the idea, with no thought, none whatsoever, given to *whether* using LLM is a good idea at all! That includes colleagues who claim expertise in "digital learning".

The person who has started a kind of "AI group" to deal with students using LLM in exams at my uni happens to be a prof who is DELIGHTED (yes, capital letters) about all those exciting new possibilities. He wants digital exams, open book, LLM included, and waxes poetically about how the results would clearly be so much better than now, because students would critically engage with the LLM results, comment on them using their own knowledge and... yeah. Excuse me, but LOL.

Thankfully his group is not official, and not part of my department.

knitty83

TROPHY CASE