English professors double down on requiring printed copies of readings
by cmsefton on 2/1/2026, 3:58:23 PM
Comments
by: recursivedoubts
I have mentioned this in a few comments: for my CS classes I have gone from a historical 60-80% projects / 40-20% quizzes grade split, to a 50/50 split, and have moved my quizzes from being online to being in-person, pen-on-paper with one sheet of hand-written notes<p>Rather than banning AI, I'm showing students how to use it effectively as a personalized TA. I'm giving them this AGENTS.md file:<p><a href="https://gist.github.com/1cg/a6c6f2276a1fe5ee172282580a44a7ac" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/1cg/a6c6f2276a1fe5ee172282580a44a7ac</a><p>And showing them how to use AI to summarize the slides into a quiz review sheet, generate example questions with answer walk throughs, etc.<p>Of course I can't ensure they aren't just having AI do the projects, but I tell them that if they do that they are cheating themselves: the projects are designed to draw them into the art of programming and give them decent, real-world coding experience that they will need, even if they end up working at a higher level in the future.<p>AI can be a very effective tool for education if used properly. I have used it to create a ton of extremely useful visualizations (e.g. how twos complement works) that I wouldn't have otherwise. But it is obviously extremely dangerous as well.<p>"It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good."
2/1/2026, 4:28:41 PM
by: ageitgey
> “Over the years I’ve found that when students read on paper they're more likely to read carefully, and less likely in a pinch to read on their phones or rely on chatbot summaries,” Shirkhani wrote to the News. “This improves the quality of class time by orders of magnitude.”<p>This is the key part. I'm doing a part-time graduate degree at a major university right now, and it's fascinating to watch the week-to-week pressure AI is putting on the education establishment. When your job as a student is to read case studies and think about them, but Google Drive says "here's an automatic summary of the key points" before you even open the file, it takes a very determined student to ignore that and actually read the material. And if no one reads the original material, the class discussion is a complete waste of time, with everyone bringing up the same trite points, and the whole exercise becomes a facade.<p>Schools are struggling to figure out how to let students use AI tools to be more productive while still learning how to think. The students (especially undergrads) are incredibly good at doing as little work as possible. And until you get to the end-of-PhD level, there's basically nothing you encounter in your learning journey that ChatGPT can't perfectly summarize and analyze in 1 second, removing the requirement for you to do anything.<p>This isn't even about AI being "good" or "bad". We still teach children how to add numbers before we give them calculators because it's a useful skill. But now these AI thinking-calculators are injecting themselves into every text box and screen, making them impossible to avoid. If the answer pops up in the sidebar before you even ask the question, what kind of masochist is going to bother learning how to read and think?
2/1/2026, 4:40:21 PM
by: sashank_1509
At some level, this is a problem of unmotivated students and college mostly being just for signaling as opposed to real education.<p>If the sole purpose of college is to rank students, and funnel them to high prestige jobs that have no use for what they actually learn in college then what the students are doing is rational.<p>If however the student is actually there to learn, he knows that using ChatGPT accomplishes nothing. In fact all this proves is that most students in most colleges are not there to learn. Which begs the question why are they even going to college? Maybe this institution is outdated. Surely there is a cheaper and more time efficient way to ranking students for companies.
2/1/2026, 5:04:07 PM
by: zkmon
>This academic year, some English professors have increased their preference for physical copies of readings, citing concerns related to artificial intelligence.<p>I didn't get it. How can printing avoid AI? And more importantly is this AI-resistance sustainable?
2/1/2026, 4:18:16 PM
by: 2b3a51
Quote from OA<p>"<i>TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.</i>"<p>And later in OA it states that the cost to a student is $0.12 per double sided sheet of printing.<p>In all of my teaching career here in the UK, the provision of handouts has been a central cost. Latterly I'd send a pdf file with instructions and the resulting 200+ packs of 180 sides would be delivered on a trolley printed, stapled with covers. The cost was rounding error compared to the cost of providing an hour of teaching in a classroom (wage costs, support staff costs, building costs including amortisation &c).<p>How is this happening?
2/1/2026, 5:18:18 PM
by: anilakar
At 150 eurobucks apiece, printed freshman coursebooks were prohibitively expensive in uni. We just pirated everything as a consequence.
2/1/2026, 4:27:50 PM
by: bko
Who is behind this over digitization of primary school? My understanding is that in the Us pretty much all homework and tests are done on computers or iPads.<p>This obv isn’t a push by parents because I can’t imagine parents I know want their kids in front of a screen all day. At best they’re indifferent. My only guess is the teachers unions that don’t want teachers grading and creating lesson plans and all the other work they used to do.<p>And since this trend kid scores or performance has not gotten better, so what gives?<p>Can anyone comment if it’s as bad as this and what’s behind it.
2/1/2026, 4:24:31 PM
by: edge17
This is a bit off topic, but why are used books so expensive on abebooks, thriftbooks, amazon so expensive compared to booksales, etc? I recall a time when a lot of these online stores were selling them for a few cents (granted, it was a long time ago and it was still called zShops on Amazon).
2/1/2026, 5:20:01 PM
by: azinman2
Computers have not advanced education — the data shows the opposite. I think we should just go back to physical books (which can be used!), and pen and paper for notes and assignments.
2/1/2026, 4:37:35 PM
by: dlcarrier
In pretty much any school system, just complain that the printout is not compatible with your text-to-speech engine, and the instructor will be required to provide an electronic version, no questions asked.
2/1/2026, 4:37:40 PM
by: arnavpraneet
I might be wrong but I fear this strategy might unfairly punish e-readers which imo offer the best of both worlds
2/1/2026, 4:49:10 PM
by: crazygringo
> <i>TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.</i><p>This made sense a couple of decades ago. Today, it's just <i>bizarre</i> to be spending $150 on a phonebook-sized packet of reading materials. <i>So much</i> paper and toner.<p>This is what iPads and Kindles are for.
2/1/2026, 4:35:41 PM
by: everybodyknows
> This semester, she is requiring all students to have printed options.<p>What could it mean for an "option" to be "required"?
2/1/2026, 4:22:21 PM
by: 6stringmerc
My thesis paper about a course for Freshman Composition Writing to stress fundamentals by way of using quill, pencil, pen, and finally a typewriter, was written 20 YEARS AGO in response to Spell Check and Auto Predict at the time...2006...<p>This isn't my article nor do I know this Educator but I like her approach and actions taken:<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2026/01/28/nx-s1-5631779/ai-schools-teachers-students" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2026/01/28/nx-s1-5631779/ai-schools-teac...</a>
2/1/2026, 5:44:46 PM
by: subhobroto
I have been thinking about this and it seems like it's an asset that students want to do as little work as possible to get course credits. They also love playing games of various sorts. So instead of killing trees, printing pages of materials out and having students pay substantial sums to the printing press so we can inject distance between students reading the material and ChatGPT, why not turn it around completely?<p>1. Instead of putting up all sorts of barriers between students and ChatGPT, have students explicitly use ChatGPT to complete the homework<p>2. Then compare the diversity in the ChatGPT output<p>3. If the ChatGPT output is extremely similar, then the game is to critique that ChatGPT output, find out gaps in ChatGPT's work, insights it missed and what it could have done better<p>4.If the ChatGPT output is diverse, how do we figure out which is better? What caused the diversity? Are all the outputs accurate or are there errors in some?<p>Similarly, when it comes to coding, instead of worrying that ChatGPT can zero shot quicksort and memcpy perfectly, why not game it:<p>1. Write some test cases that could make that specific implementation of `quicksort` or `memcpy` fail<p>2. Could we design the input data such that quicksort hits its worst case runtime?<p>3. Is there an algorithm that would sort faster than quicksort for that specific input?<p>4. Could there be architectures where the assumptions that make quicksort "quick", fail to hold true? Instead, something simpler and worse on paper like a "cache aware sort" actually work faster in practice than quicksort?<p>I have multiple paragraphs more of thought on this topic but will leave it at this for now to calibrate if my thoughts are in the minority
2/1/2026, 5:44:42 PM
by: Mathnerd314
If you are flipping through the reading to find a quote, then printed readings are hard to beat, unless you can search for a word with digital search. But speed reading RSVP presentation beats any kind of print reading by a mile, if you are aiming for comprehension. So, it is hard to say where the technology is going. Nobody has put in the work to really make reading on an iPad as smooth and fluid as print, in terms of rapid page flipping. But the potential is there. It is kind of laughable how the salesman will be saying, oh it has a fast processor, and then you open up a PDF and scroll a few pages fast and they start being blank instead of actually having text.
2/1/2026, 4:27:18 PM
by: jmclnx
While I fully agree with this, this quote bothers me:<p>>Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option<p>Does a student need to print out multiple TYCO Packets ? If so, only the very rich could afford this. I think educations should go back to printed books and submitting you work to the Prof. on paper.<p>But submitting printed pages back to the Prof. for homework will avoid the school saying "Submit only Word Documents". That way a student can use the method they prefer, avoiding buying expensive software. One can then use just a simple free text editor if they want. Or even a typewriter :)
2/1/2026, 4:28:26 PM
by: raincole
If textbooks weren't so expensive I'd be more cheering on them.<p>> TYCO Print is a printing service where professors can upload course files for TYCO to print out for students as they order. Shorter packets can cost around $20, while longer packets can cost upwards of $150 when ordered with the cheapest binding option.<p>Lol $150 for reading packets? Not even textbooks? Seriously the whole system can fuck off.
2/1/2026, 4:40:11 PM