Ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Stephen Goforth
"A new study of a dozen A.I.-detection services by researchers at the University of Maryland found that they had erroneously flagged human-written text as A.I.-generated about 6.8 percent of the time, on average. 'At least from our analysis, current detectors are not ready to be used in practice in schools to detect A.I. plagiarism,' said Soheil Feizi, an author of the paper and an associate professor of computer science at Maryland." -New York Times
On campus, we’re in a bizarre interlude: everyone seems intent on pretending that the most significant revolution in the world of thought in the past century isn’t happening. The approach appears to be: “We’ll just tell the kids they can’t use these tools and carry on as before.” This is, simply, madness. And it won’t hold for long. -D. Graham Burnett writing in The New Yorker
The Academic DJ - Justin Cerenzia
The AI Edventure - Jason Gulya
AI x Education - Stanford University
AI and How We Teach Writing - Annette Vee
AI, writing, and pedagogy - Anna Mills
The Biblioracle Recommends - John Warner
The Broken Copier - Marcus Luther
The End(s) of Argument - Mike Caulfield
One Useful Thing - Ethan Mollick
Writing Hacks - Jane Rosenzweig
Your Students Need an AI-Aware Professor - Chronicle of Higher Ed
Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence? – The New Yorker
As ChatGPT scores B- in engineering, professors scramble to update courses – The Registrar
How Miami Schools Are Leading 100,000 Students Into the A.I. Future – New York Times
Teaching journalism students generative AI: why I switched to an “AI diary” this semester – Online Journalism Blog
The Professors Are Using ChatGPT, and Some Students Aren’t Happy About It – New York Times
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College – New York Magazine
AI-Aware Teaching Examples - Annette Vee Blog
I'd rather read the prompt – Clayton Ramsey
Is AI Enhancing Education or Replacing It? – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Draft executive order outlines plan to integrate AI into K-12 schools – Washington Post
As ‘Bot’ Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond – Voice of San Diego
Teachers warn AI is impacting students' critical thinking - Axios
Business schools ease their resistance to AI – Financial Times
A Shortcut or a Level Up? Harvard Faculty Debate Generative AI in Academia – The Crimson
AI-Powered Teaching: Practical Tools for Community College Faculty – Faculty Focus
California college professors have mixed views on AI in the classroom – Ed Source
Here's how AI has changed the way Penn faculty grade, teach courses – The Daily Pennsylvanian
Here’s how Carolina faculty use AI – University of North Carolina
Introducing Claude for Education – Anthropic
Teachers Worry About Students Using A.I. But They Love It for Themselves. – New York Times
Teachers warn AI is impacting students' critical thinking – Axios
Preparing science educators to use and teach AI in the classroom – National Science Foundation
Educators seek to combat AI challenges in the classroom – The Hill
AI works best in the classroom with professor guidance, researchers found – EdScoop
What Can College Instructors Offer Their Students in the Age of AI? - Faculty Focus
What's the Future for AI-Free Learning Spaces? - Jason Gulya Blog
What’s Your AI Policy? Communicate your guidelines clearly and talk about them with students - Annette Vee Blog
“I very strongly feel that every student that graduates from any institution of higher education must have at least one core course in AI, or significant exposure to these tools. If we’re not doing that, we are doing a disservice to our students." -Ravi Pendse, chief information officer at the University of Michigan, Inside Higher Ed
“By the end of the first two weeks of the semester, Smith had whittled down the 104 students enrolled in her classes, including those on the waitlist, to just 15. The rest, she’d concluded, were fake students, often referred to as bots. ‘It’s a surreal experience and it’s just heartbreaking,’ Smith said. ‘I’m not teaching, I’m playing a cop now.’” - Voice of San Diego
Last year, I sat in a faculty meeting while a guest lecturer gleefully explained how they had used AI to design their class, craft PowerPoint presentations, and develop exams. At the end of the presentation, a colleague leaned over and asked, “Then what’s our job?” I have thought long and hard about that question. If faculty hope to survive, much less prosper, in the age of AI, they need to come up with a compelling answer to that question: “What’s our job?” -Scott Latham writing in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Two students in Austria created a program that is attending classes and is treated like any other student. It attends lectures, turns in artwork for assignments, collaborates with classmates and will receive grades on submitted work. ‘Flynn’ is testing the boundaries of artificial intelligence tools, and could, in theory, progress toward a diploma.” - Washington Post
Using AI to foster self-directed learning – Times Higher Ed
More Teachers Say They’re Using AI in Their Lessons. Here’s How – Ed Week
I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats – The Walrus
There’s a Good Chance Your Kid Uses AI to Cheat – Wall Street Journal
In the age of AI, colleges need to rethink how students learn – Washington Post
AI detectors are poor western blot classifiers: a study of accuracy and predictive values – PeerJ
AI: Cheating Matters, but Redrawing Assessment ‘Matters Most’ – Inside Higher Ed
Stanford AI Teaching Guides – Stanford
Here’s How Teachers Are Using AI to Save Time – Ed Week
Integrate AI as a peer reviewer in writing classrooms - KJZZ
How AI is reshaping teachers’ jobs – Ed Week
Arizona’s getting an online charter school taught entirely by AI – Tech Crunch
OpenAI Unveils New A.I. That Can ‘Reason’ Through Math and Science Problems – New York Times
Arizona charter school to be taught by AI, not teachers - LinkedIn
ChatGPT outperforms undergrads in intro-level courses, falls short later – Arstechnica
How to identify AI-generated text: 7 ways to tell if content was made by a bot – Mashable
OpenAI releases a teacher’s guide to ChatGPT, but some educators are skeptical – Tech Crunch
Cheating Has Become Normal – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Employers Say Students Need AI Skills. What If Students Don’t Want Them? – Inside Higher Ed
AI-powered tutor, teaching assistant tested as a way to help educators and students – CBS
The Course Is About Literature. Its Textbook Was Generated by AI. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
California college professors have mixed views on AI in the classroom – Ed Source
Instead of policing student use of AI, California teachers need to reinvent homework – Cal Matters
AI-detection software isn’t the solution to classroom cheating — assessment has to shift – The Conversation
Students and Instructors Say AI Tool Helps With Understanding, Confidence in Course Materials – Inside Higher Ed
AI is a game changer for students with disabilities. Schools are still learning to harness it – Associated Press
She lost her scholarship over an AI allegation — and it impacted her mental health – USA Today
Teens Are Doing AI Research Now. Is That a Good Thing? – Chronicle of Higher Ed
OpenAI's new o3 model freaks out computer science majors - Axios
Plagiarism detection software sparks widespread student concern – Phys.org
What Students Are Saying About Teachers Using A.I. to Grade – New York Times
Is Grammarly AI? Notre Dame Says Yes – Inside Higher Ed
Judge Rules in Favor of School That Gave Student a Bad Grade for Using AI – Gizmodo
To Use AI or Not to Use AI? A Student’s Burden – Inside Higher Ed
The Scary Ways AI Has Affected Their Classroom – BuzzFeed
New AI Tools Are Promoted as Study Aids for Students. Are They Doing More Harm Than Good? – Ed Surge
Employers Say Students Need AI Skills. What If Students Don’t Want Them? – Inside Higher Ed
Should You Still Learn to Code in an A.I. World? – New York Times
4 Free AI Tools Designed for Students – Slashgear
New AI Tools Are Promoted as Study Aids for Students. Are They Doing More Harm Than Good? - EdSurge
Cheating Has Become Normal - Chronicle of Higher Ed
Your AI Policy Is Already Obsolete - Inside Higher Ed
California Law Requires Schools to Teach Students About AI – Gov Tech
Is AI Really a Threat to Higher Education? – Psychology Today
Teaching Entrepreneurship Students to Self-Teach With AI - Inside Higher Ed
Parents Sue After School Disciplined Student for AI Use: Takeaways for Educators – Ed Week
Colleges begin to reimagine learning in an AI world - Chronicle of Higher Ed
The art of asking questions: Does AI in the classroom facilitate deep learning in students? – William & Mary
How universities spot AI cheats – and the one word that gives it away – Telegraph
Colleges Race to Ready Students for the AI Workplace – Wall Street Journal
Owning the Unknown: Teaching and Learning With AI – Inside Higher Ed
What Teachers Told Me About A.I. in School - New York Times
5 Small Steps for AI Skeptics: Getting academics to teach with AI is a tough nut to crack – Chronicle of Higher Ed
W&M professor publishes children’s book to teach AI fundamentals - William & Mary
I found myself spending more time giving feedback to AI than to my students. So I quit. - TIME
ChatGPT Can Make English Teachers Feel Doomed. Here’s How I’m Adapting – Ed Week
Some NYC teachers experiment with AI-powered tools, while Education Department develops guidelines – Chalkbeat
What Can AI Chatbots Teach Us About How Humans Learn? – EdSurge
Talk to professors in writing-intensive courses, particularly those teaching introductory or general-education classes, and it sounds as if AI abuse has become pervasive. One professor said she feels less like a teacher and more like a human plagiarism detector, spending hours each week analyzing her students’ writing to determine its authenticity. -Chronicle of Higher Ed
“The students most susceptible to inaccurate accusations are likely those who write in a more generic manner, either because they’re neurodivergent, speak English as a second language or simply learned to use more straightforward vocabulary and a mechanical style. The result is that classrooms remain plagued by anxiety and paranoia over the possibility of false accusations.”
Read more at Bloomberg
Talk through various writing scenarios with the students.
Invite your students to have an honest discussion about these and related questions.
Split assignments into two groups: Where using AI is encouraged, and assignments where using AI can’t possibly help.
Weave ChatGPT into lessons by asking students to evaluate the chatbot’s responses.
Assign reflection to help students understand their own thought processes, motivations for using these tools, and the impact AI has on their learning and writing.
Give them the opportunity to rewrite an essay or retake a test if they don’t do well initially (students are less likely to cheat under those conditions).
Teach students to contest it. Students in every major will need to know how to challenge or defend the appropriateness of a given model for a given question.
We should be telling our undergraduates that good writing isn’t just about subject-verb agreement or avoiding grammatical errors—not even good academic writing. Good writing reminds us of our humanity, the humanity of others and all the ugly, beautiful ways in which we exist in the world.
(from a variety of articles about teaching & AI)
Understanding what AI can and cannot do well within the context of your course will be key as you contemplate revising your assignments and teaching.” -Hechinger Report
The University of Southern California rolled out its AI for Business major last year, a joint degree between the business and engineering schools. In its first year, the major received 713 applications from incoming freshmen for fewer than 50 spots. This year, over 1,000 students applied. -Wall Street Journal
More than 1 in 6 bot conversations seemed to be students seeking help with their homework,” according to a review of nearly 200,000 English-language conversations by The Washington Post. “Some approached the bots like a tutor, hoping to get a better understanding of a subject area. Others just went all-in and copy-and-pasted multiple-choice questions from online courseware software and demanded the right answers. -Washington Post
Faculty will need to improve their own AI literacy. A good way to begin is to ask AI to perform assignments and projects that you typically ask your students to complete — and then try to improve the AI’s response. -Hechinger Report
Three in five college students say they are regular users of AI compared to 36 percent of instructors, according to research released in June by Tyton Partners -Inside Higher Ed
Magic School's Academic Content Generator: Enter your assignment description to receive suggestions on making it more challenging for AI chatbots, promoting higher-level thinking among students. -Magic School
Half of surveyed college students say they would be likely or extremely likely to use generative AI tools, even if they were banned by their instructor, according to research released in June by Tyton Partners. -Inside Higher Ed
What should a young person study in college? JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently said, “It almost doesn't matter because (we're) looking for smart, ethical, decent people. But I do think in business you should learn the language of business. So I think it would help to do accounting, finance, markets, something like that.” -Wall Street Journal
Nearly all college-bound high school seniors are familiar with generative artificial intelligence tools, and the vast majority of them have used those tools, according to a new survey. It found 19 out of 20 students are familiar with generative AI and 69% of college-bound students have used generative AI tools. -The National Desk
There are students who are leaning on AI too much. But it’s not pervasive. The number of students using AI to complete their schoolwork hasn’t skyrocketed in the past year. -Ed Week
If students don’t learn about how AI works, they won’t understand its limitations – and therefore how it is useful and appropriate to use and how it’s not. -The Conversation
The teachers will say, ‘Don’t use AI because it is very inaccurate and it will make up things. But then they use AI to detect AI.’ - a Houston high school senior quoted in EdWeek
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
Suggested questions for teachers and professors to bring up with their classes at the start of the school year:
What AI policies have you had in other classes?
Are you using it and how? (talk about how you are using it)
How could AI be ethically used in education?
What counts as AI-enabled plagiarism?
How could AI be ethically used in the production of media?
When should students rely on AI assistance?
When should students not rely on AI assistance?
Talk about transparency (perhaps show some examples of transparency statements)
Be sure to tell them about your expectations regarding the use of generative AI and when it can be used in the class.
Survey: How Are Profs, Staff Using AI? – Inside Higher Ed
What teachers call AI cheating, leaders in the workforce might call progress – Hechinger Report
Teachers Use AI to Grade Student Work. It’s Harsher Than They Are. Teachers Use AI to Grade Student Work. It’s Harsher Than They Are. – Wall Street Journal
AI can't replace teaching but it can make it better – Wired
AI Copilots Are Changing How Coding Is Taught – IEEE
What's next with AI in higher education? – Phys.org
Morehouse College is Using AI assistants – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Can I Use A.I. to Grade My Students’ Papers? – New York Times
Academic Success Tip: Infusing AI into Curricular Offerings – Inside Higher Ed
Google and MIT launch a free generative AI course for teachers – Zdnet
This AI Tool Cut One Teacher's Grading Time in Half. How It Works – Ed Week
California teachers are using AI to grade papers. Who’s grading the AI? – Cal Matters
Making Progress Against ChatGPT - Inside Higher Ed
A quarter of U.S. teachers say AI tools do more harm than good in K-12 education – Pew Research
How two professors harnessed generative AI to teach students to be better writers – Fast Company
AI, online courses divide students, faculty, administrators – Inside Higher Ed
Professors Ask: Are We Just Grading Robots? Some are riding the AI wave. Others feel like they’re drowning. –Chronicle of Higher Ed
How AI Is Changing The Teaching Profession Forever – Forbes
How a computer science professor is using AI in her classroom – UAB
Are You Ready To Use AI In Your Teaching? – Forbes
Survey: How Are Profs, Staff Using AI? – Inside Higher Ed
More Teachers Are Using AI-Detection Tools. Here’s Why That Might Be a Problem – EdWeek
Actionable strategies for integrating AI into the classroom – Higher Ed Dive
Teachers are embracing ChatGPT-powered grading – Axios
The Responsible Use of Generative AI in Education Technology – Epam
Ban or Embrace? Colleges Wrestle With A.I.-Generated Admissions Essays. - The New York Times
7 AI Tools That Help Teachers Work More Efficiently – Edutopia
Teachers and professors now using AI as a learning tool – Scripts
Claude AI – PDF Analysis for Teachers – The AI English Teacher
Will Chatbots Teach Your Children? - The New York Times
AI Will Shake Up Higher Ed. Are Colleges Ready? – Chronicle of Higher Ed
By infusing GPT with its own database of lesson plans, essays and sample problems, Khan Academy improved accuracy and reduced hallucinations. – Washington Post
How AI Should Change Math Education – Ed Week
How artificial intelligence can help build real intelligence in the classroom – Harvard
Teaching With AI — What You Need To Know – Forbes
UNC Journalism Professors Grapple With Teaching AI as it Upends the Media Landscape - Indy Week
Is early childhood education ready for AI? – Hechinger Reports
Business Schools Are Going All In on AI – Wall Street Journal
Using Generative AI to Teach Philosophy – Daily Nous
Is this moment more like the invention of the calculator, saving me from the tedium of long division, or more like the invention of the player piano, robbing us of what can be communicated only through human emotion? – The Atlantic
There's a natural progression. New tools like the calculator, like Grammarly and editing tools that came out a number of years ago that made all of our writing better, including mine, right? Those are things that are just going to keep on coming. And, we can't stop them from coming, but it's up to us to decide how to integrate them appropriately. – ABC News
As math professors once had to adjust their math teaching in the presence of calculators, writing instructors may need to adjust their teaching in the presence of AI tools. “It would be like micromanaging the use of calculators in in a math class,” Underwood said. “If you’re doing that, it’s a sign that you’re not you’re not taking the opportunity to teach them more advanced math that would actually help them.” – Inside Higher Ed
The question before us is how we can productively use ChatGPT to help our students become knowledge transformers? A writer, a teacher, and an education professor all suggest an analogy from the calculator and math to ChatGPT and writing. In the same way that calculators became an important tool for students in math classes, ChatGPT has potential to become an important tool for writers who want to hone their critical thinking skills along with their communication skills. – Brookings
Much as Google devalued the steel-trap memory, electronic calculators speeded up complex calculations, Wikipedia displaced the printed encyclopedia and online databases diminished the importance of a vast physical library, so, too, platforms like ChatGPT will profoundly alter the most prized skills. According to Chamorro-Premuzic, the skills that will be most in demand will be the ability to: Know what questions to ask. – Inside Higher Ed
It reminds him of what his mother, a high-school math teacher, went through when graphing calculators were introduced. The initial reaction was to ban them; the right answer, he says, was to embrace and use them to enhance learning. “It was a multiyear process with a lot of trying and testing and evaluating and assessing.” Similarly, he anticipates a variety of approaches on his campus. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Gibson, who has been teaching for 25 years, likened it to more familiar tech tools that enhance, not replace, learning and critical thinking. “I don’t know how to do it well yet, but I want AI chatbots to become like calculators for writing,” she says. Gibson’s view of ChatGPT as a teaching tool, not the perfect cheat, brings up a crucial point: ChatGPT is not intelligent in the way people are, despite its ability to spew humanlike text. It is a statistical machine that can sometimes regurgitate or create falsehoods and often needs guidance and further edits to get things right. – Wired
In the past, near-term prohibitions on slide rules, calculators, word processors, spellcheck, grammar check, internet search engines and digital texts have fared poorly. They focus on in-course tactics rather than on the shifting contexts of what students need to know and how they need to learn it. Reframing questions about AI writers will drive assignment designs and assessments that can minimize academic integrity concerns while promoting learning outcomes. – Inside Higher Ed
Judging from the reaction on TikTok, teachers on the app see ChatGPT as a tool to be treated the same way calculators and cell phones are used in class — as resources to help students succeed but not do the work for them. – Mashable
Professors wondered whether students would lean on the technology as a crutch. “Just as some feared that pocket calculators would cause schoolchildren to forget their multiplication tables, some professors worry that students will learn how to use graphical calculators without learning the concepts of mathematics,” The Chronicle reported in 1992. “[Students] know the information is a quick Google search away,” one professor wrote in a 2015 op-ed for The Chronicle encouraging professors to ban the use of calculators found on laptops and phones during exams. “What’s the point of memorizing it, they want to know.” Despite those fears, the use of calculators in math classrooms and the drum of keyboards in lecture halls are now commonplace. “The calculator changes the kinds of questions that you can ask students,” one professor told The Chronicle in 1992. “A lot of problems we used to assign were very artificial, so the numbers would come out nicely. Today we don’t need to worry about that so much. The problems aren’t harder, but they’re not as neat.” – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Every time a new technology is introduced, we find ourselves struggling with how it forces people to rethink the things they do. The best comparison, he said, is calculators, which, like ChatGPT, many found threatening to education. The worry, he explained, was about the possibility of calculators and statistical software eventually replacing mathematicians. – Grid
The New York City Department of Education has banned ChatGPT in its schools, as has the University of Sciences Po, in Paris, citing concerns it may foster rampant plagiarism and undermine learning. Other professors openly encourage use of chatbots, comparing them to educational tools like a calculator, and argue teachers should adapt curriculums to the software. “Do you want to go to war with your students over AI tools?” said Ian Linkletter, who serves as emerging technology and open-education librarian at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. “Or do you want to give them clear guidance on what is and isn’t okay, and teach them how to use the tools in an ethical manner?” “There are lots of years when the pocket calculator was used for all math ever, and you walked into a classroom and you weren’t allowed to use it,” he said. “It took probably a generational switch for us to realize that’s unrealistic.” Educators must grapple with the concept of “what does it mean to test knowledge.” In this new age, he said, it will be hard to get students to stop using AI to write first drafts of essays, and professors must tailor curriculums in favor of other assignments, such as projects or interactive work. “Pedagogy is going to be different,” he said. “And fighting [AI], I think it’s a losing battle.” – Washington Post
In an academic context, we should approach language models as engines for provisional reasoning — “calculators for words,” as British programmer Simon Willison calls them. Instead of assuming that the model already has an answer to every question in memory, this approach provides, in the prompt, any special assumptions or background knowledge the model will be expected to use. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Once calculators became prevalent, elementary schools pivoted to translating real-world problems into math formulations rather than training for arithmetic speed. Once online search became widely available, colleges taught students how to properly cite online sources. Some have explored banning AI in education. That would be hard to enforce; it’s also unhealthy, as students will need to function in an AI-infused workplace upon graduation. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Every generation of students comes of age with new technology. From the calculator and the personal laptop to smartphones to Zoom, each has been initially met with angst about the disruption to traditional teaching. We fear foundational knowledge will be replaced by robotic inputs and outputs, or that personal interactions unmediated by screens will be eliminated. And so the new technology can seem an obstacle to the parts of the educational experience we love the most — the look when a student first grasps a difficult concept, the spark from an original idea during a brainstorming session, the give-and-take of a classroom debate. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Practically speaking, I’m treating GPT like a calculator: Most of us used calculators in math class and still didn’t get perfect grades. After discovering my first ChatGPT essay, I decided that going forward, students can use generative A.I. on assignments, so long as they disclose how and why. I’m hoping this will lead to less banging my head against the kitchen table–and, at its best, be its own kind of lesson. – Slate
As academe adjusts to a world with ChatGPT, faculty will need to find fresh ways to assess students’ writing.The same was true when calculators first began to appear in math classrooms, and professors adapted the exams. “Academic integrity is about being honest about the way you did your work.” Spell checkers, David Rettinger, president emeritus at the International Center for Academic Integrity, pointed out, are a prime example of artificial intelligence that may have been controversial at first, but are now used routinely without a second thought to produce papers. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Just as calculators and the internet once upended teaching and learning, generative AI represents “a new, major disruption,” says Mike Prizament, senior product marketing manager at Adobe. “It’s also an opportunity to tackle the main challenges in higher education.” – EdTech
(Some researchers ran) a workshop for low-performing seven graders at a New York City junior high school, teaching them about the brain and about effective study techniques. Half the group also received a presentation on memory, but the other half were given an explanation of how the brain changes as a result of effortful learning: that when you try hard and learn something new, the brain forms new connections, and these new connections, over time, make you smarter. This group was told that intellectual development is not the natural unfolding of intelligence but results from the new connections that are formed through effort and learning.
After the workshop, both groups of kids filtered back into their classwork. Their teachers were unaware that some had been taught that effortful learning changes the brain, but as the school year unfolded, those students adopted what (the researchers) call a "growth mindset," a belief that their intelligence was largely within their own control, and they went on to become much more aggressive learners and higher achievers than students from the first group, who continued to hold the conventional view, what (the researchers) called a "fixed mindset" that they're intellectual ability was set at birth by the natural talents they were born with.
(The) research had been triggered by curiosity over why some people become helpless when they encounter challenges and fail at them, whereas others respond to failure by trying new strategies and redoubling their effort. (They) found that a fundamental difference between the two responses lies in how a person attributes failure: those who attribute to their own inability-"I'm not intelligent"-become helpless. Those who interpret failure as a result of insufficient effort or an ineffective strategy dig deeper and try different approaches.
Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III,, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
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