I truly appreciate your careful evaluation of the current call to action and your hopefulness. However, I am wondering how all of this labor-intensive, bold and brilliant pedagogic innovation and dedication can and will come from an exhausted, untrained and grossly overworked and underpaid contingent faculty that constitutes up to 70% of our current higher education faculty. Not to mention the plight of the K-12 public school teacher. And this is a serious question; I myself work within this system and see the struggles, both in the classroom and in our general economy,, daily...
You are correct in your assessment that this is not only a call for educators but also for policymakers. Education in the post AI era needs to become personal again. And that requires to rethink educator workloads. I am in the fortunate position to work in a design college. We rarely have more than 20 students in the classroom. But I acknowledge that this is a privilege.
Thank you @Michael Wagner for a great piece here! I agree that bringing back personal connection and intention with assessments is a compelling and attractive future state of our assessments. It requires creativity and raises new opportunities. I have found interest from students when I start to get them to reflect through AI conversations through role play exercises applying that day’s lecture content with a professional experience in their intended field.
Appreciating that many faculty will need support to redesign their assessments, we should work together and share our conversations to navigate this time together.
A great article. What do we do if we work in community college that is all about "speeding" to the end goal, and we have 30+ students in each of the 5 courses we are required to teach? Project learning failed dismally as students were overscheduled between full course loads (which they shouldn't be taking), jobs, and sometimes family. They just couldn't figure out how to collaborate no matter how I tried to guide it- too many didn't even know the tech needed for asynchronous group work, like google docs. Oral assessment is out of the question with 150 students/semester. Instead of the old-school 'student success" courses which are basically analog, I wish we could implement a 1st semester module on using AI in the ways you wrote about. Some colleges move SO slowly toward any kind of change.
"This transformation demands courage. It requires abandoning comfortable but outdated assessment methods and embracing more labor-intensive but pedagogically superior alternatives."
For the aprprox. 60% of the faculty in my department (of English) who teach by contract, precisely this requirement of extra labour is the new problem.
Co-creating is not only a contradiction in terms but, a vile conformist cope + submission to techno bro/bra capture-culture viscosities & entrapments … a latest from of (on)going along to get along, rationalizing mediocrity & mid-wittery as the final take/hand over for post-literate bureaucratic cog-minds…?
Co-authorship is a relatively old term that emerged in the late 90s out of the emerging field of game studies. It just emphasizes the process of creating in a flow state initiated by some form of interactive technology. This is nothing specific to AI.
In the most recent (and perhaps relevant) context, co-creating is a proxy-Marxist educational methodological (pedagogy) term for decentering author or instructional authority, effectively off loading basic needs for independent, meritocratic responsibility information dissemination.
Then you are misinterpreting the term in this context, giving it deeper meaning than it actually has. It is just a way to say that creation evolves with the interaction with the tools we use.
Ask students to write two or three in-class, supervised essays at the start of a term. On any topic. Then, using a comparative/detection tool (not sure if they exist, but they should and easily could), plug each essay through the tool to compare the idiosyncratic voice of the originals (that we all have when we write—our lexical DNA—and that would surely give the game away) to the essays students hand in.
Am I just being naive that this should do the job?
(I think the mean of student writing these days is pretty low, unfortunately, so all the more evident.
No, this comparative detection might not work completely, and there would be a cacophony of whining at the outset, but it’d give definite clues. I think the onus should be on students to prove their mettle, not the other way around. Sure, this will make the job more onerous and sticky in the short term, for teachers and students alike, but academe needs a bit of friction and shake-up! Stop letting the kids dictate the game, I say!)
It only allows you to identify the students that do not have the proper AI literacy to properly use the tools at their disposal. And because of that it gives teachers the incorrect impression that they can identify AI use. On top of everything it is always a probabilistic result and thus the word of the teacher stands against the word of the student with no clear certainty about who is right and who is wrong. It’s a loosing battle that distracts from what teachers are really supposed to do: educate students.
Most people write better given some time to reflect, use basic editing tools, and rewrite for clarity, all of which we would do at home over a couple days. I don't think we can compare that to in-class "timed" writing. At least that has been my experience.
But the college/university student’s obligation is to learn, and they either don’t appear to want to or can’t. Socratic instruction won’t be popular among the anxiety-riddled children (sorry, young adults) raised on trigger warnings and Adderall!
I truly appreciate your careful evaluation of the current call to action and your hopefulness. However, I am wondering how all of this labor-intensive, bold and brilliant pedagogic innovation and dedication can and will come from an exhausted, untrained and grossly overworked and underpaid contingent faculty that constitutes up to 70% of our current higher education faculty. Not to mention the plight of the K-12 public school teacher. And this is a serious question; I myself work within this system and see the struggles, both in the classroom and in our general economy,, daily...
You are correct in your assessment that this is not only a call for educators but also for policymakers. Education in the post AI era needs to become personal again. And that requires to rethink educator workloads. I am in the fortunate position to work in a design college. We rarely have more than 20 students in the classroom. But I acknowledge that this is a privilege.
Thank you @Michael Wagner for a great piece here! I agree that bringing back personal connection and intention with assessments is a compelling and attractive future state of our assessments. It requires creativity and raises new opportunities. I have found interest from students when I start to get them to reflect through AI conversations through role play exercises applying that day’s lecture content with a professional experience in their intended field.
Appreciating that many faculty will need support to redesign their assessments, we should work together and share our conversations to navigate this time together.
Thanks! The idea of role playing exercises is indeed an interesting one.
A great article. What do we do if we work in community college that is all about "speeding" to the end goal, and we have 30+ students in each of the 5 courses we are required to teach? Project learning failed dismally as students were overscheduled between full course loads (which they shouldn't be taking), jobs, and sometimes family. They just couldn't figure out how to collaborate no matter how I tried to guide it- too many didn't even know the tech needed for asynchronous group work, like google docs. Oral assessment is out of the question with 150 students/semester. Instead of the old-school 'student success" courses which are basically analog, I wish we could implement a 1st semester module on using AI in the ways you wrote about. Some colleges move SO slowly toward any kind of change.
Thanks! On the positive side, I do see many educators moving in the right direction.
"This transformation demands courage. It requires abandoning comfortable but outdated assessment methods and embracing more labor-intensive but pedagogically superior alternatives."
For the aprprox. 60% of the faculty in my department (of English) who teach by contract, precisely this requirement of extra labour is the new problem.
Co-creating is not only a contradiction in terms but, a vile conformist cope + submission to techno bro/bra capture-culture viscosities & entrapments … a latest from of (on)going along to get along, rationalizing mediocrity & mid-wittery as the final take/hand over for post-literate bureaucratic cog-minds…?
Co-authorship is a relatively old term that emerged in the late 90s out of the emerging field of game studies. It just emphasizes the process of creating in a flow state initiated by some form of interactive technology. This is nothing specific to AI.
In the most recent (and perhaps relevant) context, co-creating is a proxy-Marxist educational methodological (pedagogy) term for decentering author or instructional authority, effectively off loading basic needs for independent, meritocratic responsibility information dissemination.
Then you are misinterpreting the term in this context, giving it deeper meaning than it actually has. It is just a way to say that creation evolves with the interaction with the tools we use.
This is what I don’t get.
Detection vs. Comparative Detection.
Ask students to write two or three in-class, supervised essays at the start of a term. On any topic. Then, using a comparative/detection tool (not sure if they exist, but they should and easily could), plug each essay through the tool to compare the idiosyncratic voice of the originals (that we all have when we write—our lexical DNA—and that would surely give the game away) to the essays students hand in.
Am I just being naive that this should do the job?
(I think the mean of student writing these days is pretty low, unfortunately, so all the more evident.
No, this comparative detection might not work completely, and there would be a cacophony of whining at the outset, but it’d give definite clues. I think the onus should be on students to prove their mettle, not the other way around. Sure, this will make the job more onerous and sticky in the short term, for teachers and students alike, but academe needs a bit of friction and shake-up! Stop letting the kids dictate the game, I say!)
It only allows you to identify the students that do not have the proper AI literacy to properly use the tools at their disposal. And because of that it gives teachers the incorrect impression that they can identify AI use. On top of everything it is always a probabilistic result and thus the word of the teacher stands against the word of the student with no clear certainty about who is right and who is wrong. It’s a loosing battle that distracts from what teachers are really supposed to do: educate students.
Most people write better given some time to reflect, use basic editing tools, and rewrite for clarity, all of which we would do at home over a couple days. I don't think we can compare that to in-class "timed" writing. At least that has been my experience.
But the college/university student’s obligation is to learn, and they either don’t appear to want to or can’t. Socratic instruction won’t be popular among the anxiety-riddled children (sorry, young adults) raised on trigger warnings and Adderall!
That is a reasonable concern. But I think it is our job to find alternatives. AI is here to stay and our ability to detect it diminishes by the hour.