Encouraging Independent Thinking

Students often don’t know why they’re learning something. Asking why is so important to kids and they deserve a better answer than “because it will be on the test.” By the time kids reach middle school, they give up asking and focus on getting a good grade. To in- crease curiosity, it is important to address the “why” questions. Why are we reading Hamlet? Why are we solving quadratic equations? When teachers answer these questions, it prompts kids to think more deeply about the implications of what they’re learning.

Parents can elicit curiosity in their children through similar methods. We don’t need to have the right answers all the time, but we need to encourage kids to ask the right questions. If we don’t know the answer, we can say, “Let’s find out. Do some research on Google, and we can go from there.”  

When we support curiosity, what we’re really developing is a child’s imagination. Which brings me to creativity, a wonderful by-product of independence and curiosity.

Esther Wojcicki, How to Raise Successful People

When Children Ask “Why?”

Children not only need to hear our conclusions, but they also need to know the thought process that got us to those conclusions. They need context. Offering only orders and rules is not teaching.

It's hard work to articulate the why. Some parents hesitate out of fear. Perhaps they will discover our secret weaknesses or find flaws in our reasoning. Rather than hiding our imperfections, if we let them know we are fallible as they are, we share with them a common bond and an authentic honesty. Rather than just opening their heads and pouring in our truths, we can help them make the marvelous discovery that they have something to contribute to our lives as well. We are fellow strugglers, learning how to live right in a confusing and challenging world.

Stephen Goforth

Academic Leaders Disagree on Students using AI

“What constitutes legitimate use of AI and what is out of bounds? Academic leaders don’t always agree whether hypothetical scenarios described appropriate uses of AI or not: For one example—in which a student used AI to generate a detailed outline for a paper and then used the outline to write the paper—the verdict (in a recent survey) was completely split.” -Inside Higher Ed

The advantages of flexibility

Flexibility is valuable in almost any aspect of life – in school, on the job, in intimate relations with other people, and even in dealing with oneself. Just think of how much more effective teachers could be if they accommodated themselves to the varied styles of thinking in their classrooms, or how easy it would be to work for people who allowed us to be ourselves and to get our work done in ways that are effective for us, or how enjoyable it would be to be in a relationship with someone who fully appreciated us for ourselves – for our own likes and dislikes – rather than for what they would like us to be. The advantages of flexibility are so overwhelming that one wonders why we don’t emphasize it much more than we do in our teaching of our children, our students, and our employees. 

Robert Sternberg, Thinking Styles

Bot Trained to Provide Students Feedback on Assignments

A communication professor at the University of Washington, developed a custom A.I. chatbot by training it on versions of old assignments that she had graded. It can now give students feedback on their writing that mimics her own at any time, day or night. It has been beneficial for students who are otherwise hesitant to ask for help, she said.  “Is there going to be a point in the foreseeable future that much of what graduate student teaching assistants do can be done by A.I.?” she said. “Yeah, absolutely.” - New York Times

Self-Reflection is Not Enough

Arthur Chickering writes that helping “students deepen their understanding about reaching for authenticity and spiritual growth ... starts and ends with self-reflection and employs that throughout.”

To say the journey is all about self-reflection is too restrictive. The learning adventure may dip into navel-gazing occasionally, but discovering the insights of other people who have gone before will not happen quickly. A fruitful journey requires a shift away from the self toward a focus on something greater. A student must sort through the dirt to discover valuable nuggets of truth. This often happens through reading the great thinkers and then wrestling with the questions and ideas we discover. We stand on the shoulders of others to peer down the road a bit further than we could on our own. We can waste time and energy by insisting on clearing a path by ourselves.

The Chickering quote comes from his book "Encouraging Authenticity and Spirituality in Higher Education." Chickering understands the value of encouraging students to read great works. But his goal, he writes, is to help them evolve their “own" answers. However, good teaching goes beyond applauding young people just for coming to their own conclusions. Will the answers stand up to criticism? Can they effectively defend their positions? More importantly, can they live those answers?

Stephen Goforth

Deep Reading

Research in cognitive science, psychology and neuroscience has demonstrated that deep reading — slow, immersive, rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral complexity — is a distinctive experience, different in kind from the mere decoding of words. Although deep reading does not, strictly speaking, require a conventional book, the built-in limits of the printed page are uniquely conducive to the deep reading experience. A book’s lack of hyperlinks, for example, frees the reader from making decisions — Should I click on this link or not? — allowing her to remain fully immersed in the narrative. 

That immersion is supported by the way the brain handles language rich in detail, allusion and metaphor: by creating a mental representation that draws on the same brain regions that would be active if the scene were unfolding in real life. The emotional situations and moral dilemmas that are the stuff of literature are also vigorous exercise for the brain, propelling us inside the heads of fictional characters and even, studies suggest, increasing our real-life capacity for empathy.

Unlike the ability to understand and produce spoken language, which under normal circumstances will unfold according to a program dictated by our genes, the ability to read must be painstakingly acquired by each individual. The “reading circuits” we construct are recruited from structures in the brain that evolved for other purposes—and these circuits can be feeble or they can be robust, depending on how often and how vigorously we use them. 

This is not reading as many young people are coming to know it. Their reading is pragmatic and instrumental: the difference between what literary critic Frank Kermode calls “carnal reading” and “spiritual reading.” If we allow our offspring to believe that carnal reading is all there is—if we don’t open the door to spiritual reading, through an early insistence on discipline and practice—we will have cheated them of an enjoyable, even ecstatic experience they would not otherwise encounter. And we will have deprived them of an elevating and enlightening experience that will enlarge them as people.  

Observing young people’s attachment to digital devices, some progressive educators and permissive parents talk about needing to “meet kids where they are,” molding instruction around their onscreen habits. This is mistaken. We need, rather, to show them someplace they’ve never been, a place only deep reading can take them. 

Annie Murphy Paul writing in the Brilliant Report

Love Means Putting yourself out of business

The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift. We feed children in order that they soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching. The hour when we can say “They need me no longer” should be our reward.

My own profession – that of a university teacher – is in this way dangerous. If we are any good we must always be working towards the moment at which our pupils are fit to become our critics and rivals. We should be delighted when it arrives, as the fencing master is delighted when his pupil can pink and disarm him. Any many are. But not all.

CS Lewis, The Four Loves

Why praising people for their intelligence can hurt them

Dr. Carol Dweck gave every child a test that consisted of fairly easy puzzles. Afterward the  researcher informed all the children of their scores, adding a single six-word sentence of praise. Half the kids were praised for their intelligence (“You must be smart at this”) and half were praised for their effort (“You must have worked really hard”).

The kids were tested a second time but this time they were offered a choice between the harder test and an easier test. Ninety percent of the kids who’d been praised for their effort choice the harder test. A majority of the kids who’d been praised for the intelligence, on the other hand, chose the easy test. Why? “When we praise children for their intelligence.” Dweck wrote, “we tell them that that's the name of the game: look smart, don't risk making mistakes.”

The third level of tests was uniformly harder; none of the kids did well. However, the two groups of kids--the praised-for-effort group and the praised-for-intelligence group--responding very differently to the situation. “(The effort group) dug in and grew very involved with the test, trying solutions, testing strategies,” Dweck said. “They later said they liked it. But the group praised for its intelligence hated the harder test. They took it as proof they weren’t smart.

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code

15 Quotes about Teaching & AI

While it’s not necessary in every discipline, there are certain ones — like computer science or writing — where colleges will need to prepare their students for a future with AI in it. Chronicle of Higher Ed 

The advice that I gave to faculty was that you need to be trying this out. You need to at least be conversant in what your students are able to do, and think about your assignments and what this tool enables. What policies or what guidance are you gonna give students in terms of whether they are allowed to use it? In what way would you be allowed to use it? MIT Tech Review

There’s more of a danger in not teaching students how to use AI. If they’re not being taught under the mentorship of scholars and experts, they may be using it in ways that are either inappropriate or not factual or unethical. Chronicle of Higher Ed 

I am no less human because I received help in thinking about things. All AI is, when understood, is a little help, a guide on the road to insight. I hope we continue to teach our students, using all tools available, and not deter them from the pursuit of knowledge and experience. Washington Post

If you’re teaching, you need to realize that the world has AI now. And so students need to be prepared for a world where this is going to be integrated in industries in different ways. MIT Tech Review

Learning how to engineer prompts is likely to be a transitional skill. Soon more sophisticated programs with specialized uses will be on the market. Faculty members would be better off focusing less on prompt engineering and more on determining the problems they would like to solve. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Bruno Ribeiro, an associate professor of computer science at Purdue, gives students unique coding problems that seem simple on the surface but have slight variations that often trip AI up. He then has students identify where the program went wrong and fix the code. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Students can, for instance, analyze a conversation with ChatGPT as an assignment and identify signs of fabrication, biases, inaccuracies, or shallow reasoning. Or faculty members can have students use AI to write a first draft of an essay and show what they might change. Or instructors could include AI as a contributor to group discussions. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Some professors think we should carry on as before, assigning take-home essays but writing ever-more-artful questions that GPT-4 or some other form of AI can’t answer. I’m dubious whether that can be done. Even if it could, I’m not interested in making my questions elusive enough to outsmart a machine. At a certain point, it risks demanding too much of the students: expecting a superhuman effort on their part, just for the sake of proving their humanity. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Something has gone very wrong when the advent of a machine that can produce merely competent essays is causing intelligent and committed educators to give up on assigning substantial student papers, which, as Robin acknowledges, are central to the educational enterprise as we have long conceived it. Chronicle of Higher Ed

A survey of students in grades 6-12, released by the nonpartisan think tank Center for Democracy & Technology, found that students with special needs are more likely than their peers to use generative AI and be disciplined for doing so. Center for Democracy & Technology

Some professors think that it’s the pressure and “high stakes” of our grading and assessment regimes that produce those feelings of discomfort in our students. I think it’s intrinsic to the work, if you’re doing it right. Our goal shouldn’t be to eliminate this discomfort. We need to teach students that it’s part of the process, and develop strategies for coping with it. Chronicle of Higher Ed 

Bridging the gap, and easing fears, will lie in getting educators acquainted with AI — a training need underscored by the fact that 96 percent of the 1,000 educators said they have not received professional development on the topic. Schools have recognized these needs, although training of generative AI specifically is still nascent. EdSerge

As teachers grapple with these big questions about what AI means for their profession, they need to have access to frequent training about it. “You need to give teachers time to experiment with it, and preferably learn in small cohorts, where they can share what they’re discovering.” EdSurge

Like a dishwasher or a vacuum cleaner, ChatGPT automates drudgery so we can focus on something more important. The promise of AI is, that by freeing us from the values of mere competence, we can focus more intentionally on cultivating distinctively human values. Chronicle of Higher Ed 

The Best Professors

The best professors.. were no longer high priests, selfishly guarding the doors to the kingdom of knowledge to make themselves look more important. They were fellow students – no, fellow human beings – struggling with the mysteries of the universe, human society, historical development, or whatever. They found affinity with their students in their own ignorance and curiosity, in their love of life and beauty, in their mixture of respect and fear, and in that mix they discovered more similarities than differences between themselves and the people who populated their classes. A sense of awe at the world and the human condition stood at the center of their relationships with those students.

Most important, that humility, that fear, that veneration of the unknown spawned a kind of quiet conviction on the part of the best teachers that they and their students could do great things together.

Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do

Eight Suggestions about AI for Those Teaching this Fall

The challenges that generative AI poses to teaching requires campus-wide faculty discussions. Most students will have to use generative AI when they move into their careers, and it would be a shame for them to graduate without understanding how to use it and without having wrestled with its ethical limits. As you prepare for your fall classes consider these suggestions: 

Have a Class Discussion. Talk openly and frankly with your students about your expectations regarding the use of generative AI in your classes as well as how you are using it yourself. Invite your students to share with you in an honest discussion about these and related questions. Keep in mind that the line between which AI is acceptable and which is not is often blurry because AI is being integrated into many different apps and programs.

Keep the Door Open. Cultivate an environment in which students will feel comfortable approaching you if they need more direct support—whether from you, their peers, or a campus resource to successfully complete an assignment. Talk to them about their motivations for turning to generative AI: time pressure, curiosity, burn out, etc.  Barnard College 

AI Bias. Make the students aware that AI can reflect societal prejudices. If the AI training sets underrepresent the views of marginalized populations, then the essays they produce may omit those views as well. Bloomberg

Vulnerable Students. Consider how chatting with AI systems might affect vulnerable students, including those with depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Privacy Issues. It is important for students to be aware that personal information provided to generative AI tools has the potential to be shared with third parties. This can may raise serious privacy concerns for your students and perhaps in particular, those students who are from marginalized backgrounds. Barnard College 

Think Through the Pedagogical Impact. What are the cognitive tasks students need to perform without AI assistance? When should students rely on AI assistance? Where can an AI aid facilitate a better outcome? Are there efficiencies in grading that can be gained? Are new rubrics and assignment descriptions needed? Inside Higher Ed 

A Syllabus Statement. Include a syllabus statement that gives clear guidance regarding your expectations for the use of generative AI in your classes. The Sentient Syllabus Project

AI Detectors. If you plan to put students’ work through an AI detector, please inform them in advance, keeping in mind that a reliable detection tool has yet to be developed. False positives carry real harm when a student is wrongly accused. English language learners, international students, and students with learning challenges might write in a style that instructors wrongly assume is AI when it is not. Washington Post

“There’s more of a danger in not teaching students how to use AI. If they’re not being taught under the mentorship of scholars and experts, they may be using it in ways that are either inappropriate or not factual or unethical.” Johanna Inman, quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Ed

13 thoughts on the problems of teaching with AI

There is a reason why educational video games are not as engaging as regular video games. There is a reason why AI-generated educational videos will never be as engaging as regular videos. Brenda Laurel pointed to the ‘chocolate-covered broccoli’ problem over 20 years ago … her point still stands. EdSurge

While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success,” said Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Education. Mashable 

This tech is being primarily pitched as a money-saving device—so it will be taken up by school authorities that are looking to save money. As soon as a cash-strapped administrator has decided that they’re happy to let technology drive a whole lesson, then they no longer need a highly-paid professional teacher in the room—they just need someone to trouble-shoot any glitches and keep an eye on the students. EdSurge 

Some commentators are urging teachers to introduce ChatGPT into the curriculum as early as possible (a valuable revenue stream and data source). Students, they argue, must begin to develop new skills such as prompt engineering. What these (often well-intentioned) techno-enthusiasts forget is that they have decades of writing solo under their belts. Just as drivers who turn the wheel over to flawed autopilot systems surrender their judgment to an over-hyped technology, so a future generation raised on language models could end up, in effect, never learning to drive. Public Books

Some professors have leapt out front, producing newsletters, creating explainer videos, and crowdsourcing resources and classroom policies. The one thing that academics can’t afford to do, teaching and tech experts say, is ignore what’s happening. Sooner or later, the technology will catch up with them, whether they encounter a student at the end of the semester who may have used it inappropriately, or realize that it’s shaping their discipline and their students’ futures in unstoppable ways. Chronicle of Higher Ed

(There is a) notion that college students (can) learn to write by using chatbots to generate a synthetic first draft, which they afterwards revise, overlooks the fundamentals of a complex process. Since text generators do a good job with syntax, but suffer from simplistic, derivative, or inaccurate content, requiring students to work from this shallow foundation is hardly the best way to empower their thinking, hone their technique, or even help them develop a solid grasp of an LLM’s limitations. The purpose of a college research essay is not to teach students how to fact-check and gussy up pre-digested pablum. It is to enable them to develop and substantiate their own robust propositions and truth claims. Public Books  

If a professor runs students’ work through a detector without informing them in advance, that could be an academic-integrity violation in itself.  The student could then appeal the decision on grounds of deceptive assessment, “and they would probably win.” Chronicle of Higher Ed

We are dangerously close to creating two strata of students: those whom we deem smart and insightful and deeply thoughtful, if sometimes guilty of a typo, and those who seem less engaged with the material, or less able to have serious thoughts about it. Inside Higher Ed

The challenge here is in communicating to students that AI isn’t a replacement for real thinking or critical analysis, and that heavy reliance on such platforms can lead away from genuine learning. Also, because AI platforms like ChatGPT retrieve information from multiple unknown sources, and the accuracy of the information cannot be guaranteed, students need to be wary about using the chatbot’s content. The Straits Times 

It seems futile for faculty members to spend their energies figuring out what a current version can’t do. Chronicle of Higher Ed

It is important to be aware that ChatGPT’s potential sharing of personal information with third parties may raise serious privacy concerns for your students and perhaps in particular for students from marginalized backgrounds. Barnard College

How might chatting with AI systems affect vulnerable students, including those with depression, anxiety, and other mental-health challenges? Chronicle of Higher Ed 

Students need considerable support to make sure ChatGPT promotes learning rather than getting in the way of it. Some students find it harder to move beyond the tool’s output and make it their own. “It needs to be a jumping-off point rather than a crutch.” MIT Tech Review

Also:

21 quotes about cheating with AI & plagiarism detection                        

13 quotes worth reading about Generative AI policies & bans                   

20 quotes worth reading about students using AI                                    

27 quotes about AI & writing assignments                                                               

27 thoughts on teaching with AI            

22 quotes about cheating with AI & plagiarism detection        

Students’ Views on Chatbots and Cheating

A new study finds more than a third of the students surveyed regularly use AI tools like ChatGPT. Read more here or watch the video below.

The Best Teachers

The best teachers … sometimes discard or place less emphasis on traditional goals in favor of the capacity to comprehend, to use evidence to draw conclusions, to raise important questions, and to understand one’s thinking. In most disciplines, that means they emphasize comprehension, reasoning, and brilliant insights over memory, order punctuality, or the spick-and-span. Spelling, the size of margins or fonts, and the style of footnotes and bibliographies are trivial in comparison to the power to think on paper; conceptual understanding of chemistry is more important than remembering individual details; the capacity to think about one’s thinking — to ponder metacognitively – and to correct it in progress is far more worthy than remembering any name, date, or number. 

The ability to understand the principles and concepts in thinking critically through a problem outranks any capacity to reach the correct answer on any particular question. These teachers want their students to learn to use a wide range of information, ideas, and concepts logically and consistently to draw meaningful conclusions. They help their students achieve those levels by providing meaningful directions and exemplary feedback that quietly yet forcefully couple lofty ideals with firm confidence in what students can do – without making any judgments of their worth as human beings. Most significant, they help students shift their focus from making the grade to thinking about personal goals of development. 

Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do

Feedback

Some professors argue that they don’t want to hear their students talk about a subject because they don’t know enough… But I always think of piano teachers; they would never keep their students away from the keyboard simply because those pupils couldn’t yet play Mozart. Sure they have to endure a lot of bad notes, but they would never push someone off the bench and refuse to let them play until they somehow became better.

Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do