faculty/staff

A quick and sobering guide to cloning yourself — from oneusefulthing.substack.com by Professor Ethan Mollick
It took me a few minutes to create a fake me giving a fake lecture.

Excerpt:

I think a lot of people do not realize how rapidly the multiple strands of generative AI (audio, text, images, and video) are advancing, and what that means for the future.

With just a photograph and 60 seconds of audio, you can now create a deepfake of yourself in just a matter of minutes by combining a few cheap AI tools. I’ve tried it myself, and the results are mind-blowing, even if they’re not completely convincing. Just a few months ago, this was impossible. Now, it’s a reality.

To start, you should probably watch the short video of Virtual Me and Real Me giving the same talk about entrepreneurship. Nothing about the Virtual Me part of the video is real, even the script was completely AI-generated.

.

From DSC:
Also, I wanted to post the resource below just because I think it’s an excellent question!

If ChatGPT Can Disrupt Google In 2023, What About Your Company? — from forbes.com by Glenn Gow

Excerpts:

Board members and corporate execs don’t need AI to decode the lessons to be learned from this. The lessons should be loud and clear: If even the mighty Google can be potentially overthrown by AI disruption, you should be concerned about what this may mean for your company.
…
Professions that will be disrupted by generative AI include marketing, copywriting, illustration and design, sales, customer support, software coding, video editing, film-making, 3D modeling, architecture, engineering, gaming, music production, legal contracts, and even scientific research. Software applications will soon emerge that will make it easy and intuitive for anyone to use generative AI for those fields and more.
.

What can work colleges teach the rest of higher ed? [Spitalniak]

On 02/07/2023, in adjunct faculty, career development, colleges, cost of getting a degree, experimentation, faculty/staff, funding / grants, higher education, passions, real-world assignments, reinvent, skills, strategy, student-related, by Daniel Christian

What can work colleges teach the rest of higher ed? — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak
Amid high worries about higher ed’s value in the job market, work colleges offer lessons on integrating classroom learning with employment opportunities.

Excerpt:

To qualify as a work college, an institution must be nonprofit, offer four-year degrees and provide students with employment through a work-learning-service program that will contribute to their education.
…
It found work colleges’ strengths — reduced or free tuition, job experience and mentorship from college faculty and staff — address student concerns over the cost and real-world applicability of a college degree. Work colleges can also make adult learners’ lives logistically easier by combining academics and work, the report found.

The intentional connection of learning, work and service is the most compelling part of the model, according to Louis Soares, chief learning and innovation officer at ACE and one of the report’s authors.

Introducing: ChatGPT Edu-Mega-Prompts [Hardman] + several other items re: AI

On 02/06/2023, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, bots, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, education, education technology, emerging technologies, faculty/staff, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, journalism, K-12 related, languages and translation, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning theories, liberal arts, memory, Natural Language Processing (NLP), open courseware and systems, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, psychology, skills, streams of content, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

Introducing: ChatGPT Edu-Mega-Prompts — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman; with thanks to Ray Schroeder out on LinkedIn for this resource
How to combine the power of AI + learning science to improve your efficiency & effectiveness as an educator

From DSC:
Before relaying some excerpts, I want to say that I get the gist of what Dr. Hardman is saying re: quizzes. But I’m surprised to hear she had so many pedagogical concerns with quizzes. I, too, would like to see quizzes used as an instrument of learning and to practice recall — and not just for assessment. But I would give quizzes a higher thumbs up than what she did. I think she was also trying to say that quizzes don’t always identify misconceptions or inaccurate foundational information.

Excerpts:

The Bad News: Most AI technologies that have been built specifically for educators in the last few years and months imitate and threaten to spread the use of broken instructional practices (i.e. content + quiz).

The Good News: Armed with prompts which are carefully crafted to ask the right thing in the right way, educators can use AI like GPT3 to improve the effectiveness of their instructional practices.

As is always the case, ChatGPT is your assistant. If you’re not happy with the result, you can edit and refine it using your expertise, either alone or through further conversation with ChatGPT.

For example, once the first response is generated, you can ask ChatGPT to make the activity more or less complex, to change the scenario and/or suggest more or different resources – the options are endless.

Philippa recommended checking out Rob Lennon’s streams of content. Here’s an example from his Twitter account:

Everyone’s using ChatGPT.

But almost everyone’s STUCK in beginner mode.

10 techniques to get massively ahead with AI:

(cut-and-paste these prompts?)

— Rob Lennon ? | Audience Growth (@thatroblennon) January 3, 2023

Also relevant/see:

3 Trends That May Unlock AI’s Potential for L&D in 2023 — from learningguild.com by Juan Naranjo

Excerpts:

AI-assisted design and development work
This is the trend most likely to have a dramatic evolution this year.
…
Solutions like large language models, speech generators, content generators, image generators, translation tools, transcription tools, and video generators, among many others, will transform the way IDs create the learning experiences our organizations use. Two examples are:

1. IDs will be doing more curation and less creation:

Many IDs will start pulling raw material from content generators (built using natural language processing platforms like Open AI’s GPT-3, Microsoft’s LUIS, IBM’s Watson, Google’s BERT, etc.) to obtain ideas and drafts that they can then clean up and add to the assets they are assembling. As technology advances, the output from these platforms will be more suitable to become final drafts, and the curation and clean-up tasks will be faster and easier.
Then, the designer can leverage a solution like DALL-E 2 (or a product developed based on it) to obtain visuals that can (or not) be modified with programs like Illustrator or Photoshop (see image below for Dall-E’s “Cubist interpretation of AI and brain science.”

2. IDs will spend less, and in some cases no time at all, creating learning pathways

AI engines contained in LXPs and other platforms will select the right courses for employees and guide these learners from their current level of knowledge and skill to their goal state with substantially less human intervention.

The Creator of ChatGPT Thinks AI Should Be Regulated — from time.com by John Simons

Excerpts:

Somehow, Mira Murati can forthrightly discuss the dangers of AI while making you feel like it’s all going to be OK.
…
A growing number of leaders in the field are warning of the dangers of AI. Do you have any misgivings about the technology?

This is a unique moment in time where we do have agency in how it shapes society. And it goes both ways: the technology shapes us and we shape it. There are a lot of hard problems to figure out. How do you get the model to do the thing that you want it to do, and how you make sure it’s aligned with human intention and ultimately in service of humanity? There are also a ton of questions around societal impact, and there are a lot of ethical and philosophical questions that we need to consider. And it’s important that we bring in different voices, like philosophers, social scientists, artists, and people from the humanities.

Whispers of A.I.’s Modular Future — from newyorker.com by James Somers; via Sam DeBrule

Excerpts:

Gerganov adapted it from a program called Whisper, released in September by OpenAI, the same organization behind ChatGPTand dall-e. Whisper transcribes speech in more than ninety languages. In some of them, the software is capable of superhuman performance—that is, it can actually parse what somebody’s saying better than a human can.
…
Until recently, world-beating A.I.s like Whisper were the exclusive province of the big tech firms that developed them.

Ever since I’ve had tape to type up—lectures to transcribe, interviews to write down—I’ve dreamed of a program that would do it for me. The transcription process took so long, requiring so many small rewindings, that my hands and back would cramp. As a journalist, knowing what awaited me probably warped my reporting: instead of meeting someone in person with a tape recorder, it often seemed easier just to talk on the phone, typing up the good parts in the moment.

From DSC:
Journalism majors — and even seasoned journalists — should keep an eye on this type of application, as it will save them a significant amount of time and/or money.

Microsoft Teams Premium: Cut costs and add AI-powered productivity — from microsoft.com by Nicole Herskowitz

Excerpt:

Built on the familiar, all-in-one collaborative experience of Microsoft Teams, Teams Premium brings the latest technologies, including Large Language Models powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, to make meetings more intelligent, personalized, and protected—whether it’s one-on-one, large meetings, virtual appointments, or webinars.

Best Document Cameras for Teachers [Edwards]

On 02/04/2023, in A/V -- audio/visual, adjunct faculty, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, digital learning, digital video, distance education, education technology, experimentation, faculty/staff, higher education, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, learning ecosystem, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, multimedia, online learning, online media, online tutoring, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, remote teaching and learning, student teaching/teacher education, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, telelegal, telemedicine / telehealth / virtual health, tools, United States, universities, vendors, videoconferencing, visualizing information, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Best Document Cameras for Teachers — from techlearning.com by Luke Edwards
Get the best document camera for teachers to make the classroom more digitally immersive

Along the lines of edtech, also see:

Tech & Learning Names Winners of the Best of 2022 Awards — from techlearning.com by TL Editors
This annual award celebrates recognizing the very best in EdTech from 2022

.
The Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence: Best of 2022 celebrate educational technology from the last 12 months that has excelled in supporting teachers, students, and education professionals in the classroom, for professional development, or general management of education resources and learning. Nominated products are divided into three categories: Primary, Secondary, or Higher Education.

Take Your Words From Lecture to Page [Toor]

On 01/31/2023, in adjunct faculty, career development, colleges, communications, community colleges, faculty/staff, higher education, productivity / tips and tricks, publishing, real-world assignments, research, skills, story, storytelling, United States, universities, writing, by Daniel Christian

Take Your Words From Lecture to Page — from chronicle.com by Rachel Toor
What compelling lecturers do, and how their techniques can translate to good writing.

Excerpts:

Thing is, many of the moves that the best lecturers make on the stage can translate to the page and help you draw in readers. That is especially important in writing textbooks and other work for general readers. If you can bring the parts of yourself that work in the classroom to the prose, you will delight readers as much as you do your students.

Narrative can be key. Data and research aren’t enough in either the classroom or on the page. People like to be told stories. If you want to be persuasive in both realms, use narrative to make arguments. Don’t forget that much scholarly work is really a quest. What journey can you take a reader on?
…
It’s a performance on the page, too. A great lecture is a performance. So is great writing.
…
Raise real questions the reader will want answers to.

ChatGPT can’t be credited as an author, says world’s largest academic publisher [Vincent]

On 01/28/2023, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, Europe, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), learning ecosystem, policy, research, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

ChatGPT can’t be credited as an author, says world’s largest academic publisher — from theverge.com by James Vincent; with thanks to Robert Gibson on LinkedIn for the resource
But Springer Nature, which publishes thousands of scientific journals, says it has no problem with AI being used to help write research — as long as its use is properly disclosed.

Excerpt:

Springer Nature, the world’s largest academic publisher, has clarified its policies on the use of AI writing tools in scientific papers. The company announced this week that software like ChatGPT can’t be credited as an author in papers published in its thousands of journals. However, Springer says it has no problem with scientists using AI to help write or generate ideas for research, as long as this contribution is properly disclosed by the authors.

On somewhat-related notes:

Uplevel your prompt craft in ChatGPT with the CREATE framework — from edte.ch by Tom Barrett

Excerpt:

The acronym “CREATE” is a helpful guide for crafting high-quality prompts for AI tools. Each letter represents an important step in the process.

The first four CREA are all part of prompt writing, where TE, the final two are a cycle of reviewing and editing your prompts.

Let’s look at each in more detail, with some examples from ChatGPT to help.

BuzzFeed to Use ChatGPT Creator OpenAI to Help Create Quizzes and Other Content — from wsj.com by Alexandra Bruell (behind paywall)
CEO Jonah Peretti intends for artificial intelligence to play a larger role in the company this year

Retrieval Practice, Scaffolding, and the Socratic Method [Zakrajsek]

On 01/28/2023, in adjunct faculty, colleges, community colleges, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty/staff, higher education, instructional design, law schools, learning, Learning Experience Design, learning theories, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, pedagogy, teaching & learning, universities, by Daniel Christian

Retrieval Practice, Scaffolding, and the Socratic Method — from scholarlyteacher.com by Todd Zakrajsek
Revisit the Socratic method by using it to enact retrieval practice and scaffolding in courses and refresh thinking about applying recommendations from the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL)

Excerpt:

When students think they know course material because they have collected reams and reams of information, retrieval practice, much like Socratic questioning, forces students to stop, think, reflect, and reconsider. It meets students where they are (e.g., overwhelmed with information), encourages effortful struggle associated with learning (e.g., presents a desirable difficulty), and offers the discipline of practice (or, perhaps, the practice of discipline). The goal of retrieval practice, getting information out, reflects the goal of so many of Socrates’s questions, to make his interlocutors give an account of and become more aware of their thinking.

When faculty chunk up material, assist students as they move through Bloom’s taxonomy, model approaches to help students get started and maintain momentum, make the student an active participant in developing and reflecting on knowledge, they are incorporating key elements of some of the most important recommendations from the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. All these techniques help students build or generate knowledge.

Let’s develop a nationwide, direct-to-learner campaign: “Learn how to learn.” [Christian]

On 01/23/2023, in 24x7x365 access, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, career development, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, education, faculty/staff, future, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, hybrid learning, Hyflex learning, ideas, informal learning, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning theories, legislatures / government / legal, liberal arts, library / librarians, lifelong learning, love of learning, metacognition / metacognitive skills, microlearning, mobile learning, online learning, online media, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, psychology, skills, society, sociology, strategy, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, traditional / tradition, training / L&D, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Let’s put together a nationwide campaign that would provide a website — or a series of websites if an agreement can’t be reached amongst the individual states — about learning how to learn. In business, there’s a “direct-to-consumer” approach. Well, we could provide a “direct-to-learner” approach — from cradle to grave. Seeing as how everyone is now required to be a lifelong learner, such a campaign would have enormous benefits to all of the United States. This campaign would be located in airports, subway stations, train stations, on billboards along major highways, in libraries, and in many more locations.

We could focus on things such as:

Quizzing yourself / retrieval practice
Spaced retrieval
Interleaving
Elaboration
Chunking
Cognitive load
Learning by doing (active learning)
Journaling
The growth mindset
Metacognition (thinking about one’s thinking)
Highlighting doesn’t equal learning
There is deeper learning in the struggle
…and more.

A learn how to learn campaign covering airports, billboards, subways, train stations, highways, and more

NOTE:
The URL I’m using above doesn’t exist, at least not at the time of this posting.
But I’m proposing that it should exist.

A group of institutions, organizations, and individuals could contribute to this. For example The Learning Scientists, Daniel Willingham, Donald Clark, James Lang, Derek Bruff, The Learning Agency Lab, Robert Talbert, Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain, Eva Keffenheim, Benedict Carey, Ken Bain, and many others.

Perhaps there could be:

discussion forums to provide for social interaction/learning
scheduled/upcoming webinars
how to apply the latest evidence-based research in the classroom
link(s) to learning-related platforms and/or resources

Some example components of a learning ecosystem [Christian]

On 01/20/2023, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), blended learning, blogs / blogging / vlogging, bots, Canvas - and other Instructure-related items, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital audio, digital learning, digital textbooks, digital video, e-books, e-publishing related items (EPUB and more), education technology, educational games / serious games, elearning, face-to-face, faculty/staff, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, Hyflex learning, informal learning, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, law schools, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, learning theories, library / librarians, lifelong learning, microlearning, mobile learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, online learning, online media, online tutoring, open courseware and systems, parents/guardians, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, platforms, play, podcasting, professional development, social learning / networks, social media, society, streams of content, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, universities, videoconferencing, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vocational / trades, webinars, by Daniel Christian

A learning ecosystem is composed of people, tools, technologies, content, processes, culture, strategies, and any other resource that helps one learn. Learning ecosystems can be at an individual level as well as at an organizational level.

Some example components:

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) such as faculty, staff, teachers, trainers, parents, coaches, directors, and others
Fellow employees
L&D/Training professionals
Managers
Instructional Designers
Librarians
Consultants
Types of learning
- Active learning
- Adult learning
- PreK-12 education
- Training/corporate learning
- Vocational learning
- Experiential learning
- Competency-based learning
- Self-directed learning (i.e., heutagogy)
- Mobile learning
- Online learning
- Face-to-face-based learning
- Hybrid/blended learning
- Hyflex-based learning
- Game-based learning
- XR-based learning (AR, MR, and VR)
- Informal learning
- Formal learning
- Lifelong learning
- Microlearning
- Personalized/customized learning
- Play-based learning
Cloud-based learning apps
Coaching & mentoring
Peer feedback
Job aids/performance tools and other on-demand content
Websites
Conferences
Professional development
Professional organizations
Social networking
Social media – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook/Meta, other
Communities of practice
Artificial Intelligence (AI) — including ChatGPT, learning agents, learner profiles,
LMS/CMS/Learning Experience Platforms
Tutorials
Videos — including on YouTube, Vimeo, other
Job-aids
E-learning-based resources
Books, digital textbooks, journals, and manuals
Enterprise social networks/tools
RSS feeds and blogging
Podcasts/vodcasts
Videoconferencing/audio-conferencing/virtual meetings
Capturing and sharing content
Tagging/rating/curating content
Decision support tools
Getting feedback
Webinars
In-person workshops
Discussion boards/forums
Chat/IM
VOIP
Online-based resources (periodicals, journals, magazines, newspapers, and others)
Learning spaces
Learning hubs
Learning preferences
Learning theories
Microschools
MOOCs
Open courseware
Portals
Wikis
Wikipedia
Slideshare
TED talks
…and many more components.

These people, tools, technologies, etc. are constantly morphing — as well as coming and going in and out of our lives.

Shared Course Preparation Checklist — from facultyecommons.com

Excerpt:

Utilizing the same master shell between multiple faculty is a great way to ensure students have the same experience regardless of who is facilitating the course. When developing and facilitating the course, you may want to consider the following areas within the course design and adjust elements to meet your personal preferences. You’ll want to review the following pages of the course and ensure the elements are tailored to meet your expectations and needs.

Rubric for Quality Course Videos — from facultyecommons.com

Excerpt:

Are you concerned about the quality of your recorded videos for your online courses? The Course Video Scoring Rubric below provides you with additional guidance on how to improve the quality of your online course multimedia content.

The rubric is divided into four criteria: Content, Audio, Visuals (Camera), and Visuals (Screen Capture). Each of those criteria contain multiple standards for which you can review your existing content. These specific standards are graded on a scale of 0-2 points, for a total of 26 points.

Download the Video Scoring Rubric to begin analyzing the video content in your courses! For more information on creating quality video in your online course, check out our on-demand webinar Recording Video for Your Online Course.

15 Insights From Learning Science That Help You Master New Things Faster — from medium.com by Eva Keiffenheim

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Learning how to learn is the meta-skill that accelerates everything else you do.

Once you understand the fundamentals of learning science, you can save hours every time you learn something new. You become more strategic in approaching new subjects and skills instead of relying on often ineffective learning methods many pick up in school.
…
Below are key insights I’ve learned about how we learn. Every single one will help you understand how your brain learns. By doing so, you’ll make better decisions on your journey to wisdom.

How Instructors Are Adapting to a Rise in Student Disengagement — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young

Excerpt:

SAN MARCOS, Texas — Live lecture classes are back at most colleges after COVID-19 disruptions, but student engagement often hasn’t returned to normal.

In the past year, colleges have seen a rise in students skipping lectures, and some reports indicate that students are more prone to staring at TikTok or other distractions on their smartphones and laptops during lecture class.

To see what teaching is like on campus these days, I visited Texas State University in October and sat in on three large lecture classes in different subjects.

ChatGPT Advice Academics Can Use Now — from insidehighered.com by Susan D’Agostino
To harness the potential and avert the risks of OpenAI’s new chat bot, academics should think a few years out, invite students into the conversation and—most of all—experiment, not panic.

Excerpt:

Faculty members and administrators are now reckoning in real time with how—not if—ChatGPT will impact teaching and learning. Inside Higher Ed caught up with 11 academics to ask how to harness the potential and avert the risks of this game-changing technology. The following edited, condensed advice suggests that higher ed professionals should think a few years out, invite students into the conversation and—most of all—experiment, not panic.

Next, consider the tools relative to your course. 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? Will you add an AI writing code of conduct to your syllabus? Do these changes require structural shifts in timetabling, class size or number of teaching assistants?

From DSC:
Faculty members, librarians, academic support staff, instructional designers, and more are going to have to be given some time to maneuver through this new environment. Don’t expect them to instantly have answers. No one does. Or rather, let me say, no one should claim that they have all of the answers.

Reflections on “What factors help active learning classrooms succeed?” [Talbert]

On 01/16/2023, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, culture, Daniel S. Christian, design, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, distance education, education technology, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, face-to-face, faculty/staff, higher education, instructional design, interactivity, IT in HE, law schools, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, liberal arts, participation, pedagogy, research, social learning / networks, social media, strategy, student-related, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, universities, user experience (UX), using teams, videoconferencing, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

What factors help active learning classrooms succeed? — from rtalbert.org Robert Talbert

Excerpt:

The idea that the space in which you do something, affects the thing you do is the basic premise behind active learning classrooms (ALCs).
…
The biggest message I get from this study is that in order to have success with active learning classrooms, you can’t just build them — they have to be introduced as part of an ecosystem that touches almost all parts of the daily function of a university: faculty teaching, faculty development and support, facilities, and the Registrar’s Office to name a few. Without that ecosystem before you build an ALC, it seems hard to have success with students after it’s built. You’re more likely to have an expensive showcase that looks good but ultimately does not fulfill its main purpose: Promoting and amplifying active learning, and moving the culture of a campus toward active engagement in the classroom.

From DSC:
Thank you Robert for your article/posting here! And thank you for being one of the few faculty members who:

Regularly share information out on LinkedIn, Twitter, and your blog (something that is all too rare for faculty members throughout higher education)
Took a sabbatical to go work at a company that designs and develops numerous options for implementing active learning setups throughout the worlds of higher education, K12 education, and the corporate world as well. You are taking your skills to help contribute to the corporate world, while learning things out in the corporate world, and then taking these learnings back into the world of higher education.

This presupposes something controversial: That the institution will take a stand on the issue that there is a preferred way to teach, namely active learning, and that the institution will be moving toward making active learning the default pedagogy at the institution. Putting this stake in the ground, and then investing not only in facilities but in professional development and faculty incentives to make it happen, again calls for vigorous, sustained leadership — at the top, and especially by the teaching/learning center director.

Robert Talbert

“A resume is NOT a CV. They are completely different documents.”

On 01/07/2023, in adjunct faculty, business, career development, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, faculty/staff, higher education, productivity / tips and tricks, reinvent, skills, surviving, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
A few items re: ChatGPT — with some items pro-chat and other items against the use of ChatGPT (or at least to limit its use).

How About We Put Learning at the Center? — from insidehighered.com by John Warner
The ongoing freak-out about ChatGPT sent me back to considering the fundamentals.

Excerpt:

So, when people express concern that students will use ChatGPT to complete their assignments, I understand the concern, but what I don’t understand is why this concern is so often channeled into discussions about how to police student behavior, rather than using this as an opportunity to exam the kind of work we actually ask students (and faculty) to do around learning.

If ChatGPT can do the things we ask students to do in order to demonstrate learning, it seems possible to me that those things should’ve been questioned a long time ago. It’s why I continue to believe this technology is an opportunity for reinvention, precisely because it is a threat to the status quo.

Top AI conference bans use of ChatGPT and AI language tools to write academic papers — from theverge.com by James Vincent; with thanks to Anna Mills for this resource
AI tools can be used to ‘edit’ and ‘polish’ authors’ work, say the conference organizers, but text ‘produced entirely’ by AI is not allowed. This raises the question: where do you draw the line between editing and writing?

Excerpt:

The International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) announced the policy earlier this week, stating, “Papers that include text generated from a large-scale language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT are prohibited unless the produced text is presented as a part of the paper’s experimental analysis.” The news sparked widespread discussion on social media, with AI academics and researchers both defending and criticizing the policy. The conference’s organizers responded by publishing a longer statement explaining their thinking. (The ICML responded to requests from The Verge for comment by directing us to this same statement.)

I am protective of my organic writing process, but when it’s time to edit, ChatGPT sometimes helps me notice which sentences aren’t quite put together as they should be. When I ask it why it suggested a revision, it sometimes describes a word choice nuance I hadn’t thought of.

— Anna Mills, amills@mastodon.oeru.org, she/her (@EnglishOER) January 5, 2023

How to… use AI to teach some of the hardest skills — from oneusefulthing.substack.com by Ethan Mollick
When errors, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies are actually very useful

Excerpt:

Instead, I want to discuss the opportunity provided by AI, because it can help us teach in new ways. The very things that make AI scary for educators — its tedency to make up facts, its lack of nuance, and its ability to make excellent student essays — can be used to make education better.

This isn’t for some future theoretical version of AI. You can create assignments, right now, using ChatGPT, that we will help stretch students in knew ways. We wrote a paper with the instructions. You can read it here, but I also want to summarize our suggestions. These are obviously not the only ways to use AI to educate, but they solve some of the hardest problems in education, and you can start experimenting with them right now.

NYC education department blocks ChatGPT on school devices, networks — from ny.chalkbeat.org by Michael Elsen-Rooney

Excerpt:

New York City students and teachers can no longer access ChatGPT — the new artificial intelligence-powered chatbot that generates stunningly cogent and lifelike writing — on education department devices or internet networks, agency officials confirmed Tuesday.

Teachers v ChatGPT: Schools face new challenge in fight against plagiarism — from straitstimes.com by Osmond Chia; with thanks to Stephen Downes for this resource

Excerpt:

SINGAPORE – Teachers in Singapore say they will likely have to move from assignments requiring regurgitation to those that require greater critical thinking, to stay ahead in the fight against plagiarism.

This comes on the back of the rise of ChatGPT, an intelligent chatbot that is able to spin essays and solve mathematical equations in seconds.

ChatGPT Is Not Ready to Teach Geometry (Yet) — from educationnext.org by Paul T. von Hippel
The viral chatbot is often wrong, but never in doubt. Educators need to tread carefully.

Excerpt:

Can ChatGPT provide feedback and answer questions about math in a more tailored and natural way? The answer, for the time being, is no. Although ChatGPT can talk about math superficially, it doesn’t “understand” math with real depth. It cannot correct mathematical misconceptions, it often introduces misconceptions of its own; and it sometimes makes inexplicable mathematical errors that a basic spreadsheet or hand calculator wouldn’t make.

Here, I’ll show you.

Addendum on 1/9/23:

9 ways ChatGPT saves me hours of work every day, and why you’ll never outcompete those who use AI effectively. — from .linkedin.com by Santiago Valdarrama

A list for those who write code:

1. Explaining code…
Improve existing code…
Rewriting code using the correct style…
Rewriting code using idiomatic constructs…
Simplifying code…
Writing test cases…
Exploring alternatives…
Writing documentation…
Tracking down bugs…

Teaching: Will ChatGPT Change the Way You Teach? — from Chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie

Excerpt:

Want to get involved in the conversation around AI writing tools? Here are a few resources you might find helpful.

Anna Mills has put together several documents:

Elsewhere, a group of professors is compiling examples of how instructors are using text generation technologies in their assignments. The results will be published in an open-access collection. You can find out more about the project on this site, Teaching with Text Generation Technologies.

If you’re rather listen to a discussion, here are a couple of webinars:

Playing with ChatGPT: now I’m scared (a little) — from tonybates.ca by Tony Bates

Excerpt:

Over the holiday season, lots of people play games such as Scrabble, cards or crossword puzzles. I decided to play with ChatGPT by testing it in areas where I consider myself an expert. (For more about ChatGPT, go to Broom, 2022)

I will first of all show you the responses I got from ChatGPT, then I will discuss the results, comparing them to what I wrote about these topics in Teaching in a Digital Age.

Example questions that Tony asked (emphasis DSC):

What is the difference between synchronous and asynchronous learning? Give references.
What are the limitations of teaching chemistry online? Give references
What are the affordances of video in teaching? Give references

Learning Ecosystems

Take Your Words From Lecture to Page [Toor]

Retrieval Practice, Scaffolding, and the Socratic Method [Zakrajsek]

“Shared Course Preparation Checklist” + other related items that faculty might be interested in

“A resume is NOT a CV. They are completely different documents.”

Categories

Tags