Brian Mitchell, former president of Bucknell University and Washington & Jefferson College, draws on his experience to offer insight in his newest Forbes contribution. He also offers a stern warning: “Boards, administrators, and faculty must wake up to the new realities they now face… the faculty can no longer live in a world that no longer exists… institutional change will happen at a speed to which they are unaccustomed and potentially unwilling to accept.”President Mitchell then goes on to offer some immediate steps that can be taken. Perhaps the most important is to “abandon the approach to governance where trustees are updated in their periodic board meetings.”
Incremental change is possible, but transformational change may not be.
Therein lies the conundrum about which Rosenberg writes in his new book. Higher ed’s own systems are inhibiting needed transformational change.
Also just published was the book, “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education” by Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College. Articles on Rosenberg’s observations, analysis, and cautions have appeared this month in both The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed, the two leading higher education publications in the US.
Addendum on 10/6/23:
Higher Education as Its Own Worst Enemy — from insidehighered.com/ by Susan H. Greenberg In a wide-ranging discussion about his new book, Brian Rosenberg explains how shared governance, tenure and other practices stifle change on college campuses.
He argues that the institutions designed to foster critical inquiry and the open exchange of ideas are themselves staunchly resistant to both.
The other would be some serious thinking about pedagogy and how students learn. Because the research is there if people were willing to take it seriously and think about ways of providing an education that is not quite as reliant upon lots of faculty with Ph.D.s. Is that easy to do? No, but it is something that I think there should at least begin to be some serious discussions about.
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Shared governance is one of those things that if you ask any college president off the record, they’ll probably express their frustration, then they’ll go back to their campus and wax poetic about the wonders of shared governance, because that’s what they have to do to survive.
Student Use Cases for AI: Start by Sharing These Guidelines with Your Class — from hbsp.harvard.edu by Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick
To help you explore some of the ways students can use this disruptive new technology to improve their learning—while making your job easier and more effective—we’ve written a series of articles that examine the following student use cases:
Earlier this week, CETL and AIG hosted a discussion among UM faculty and other instructors about teaching and AI this fall semester. We wanted to know what was working when it came to policies and assignments that responded to generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google Bard, Midjourney, DALL-E, and more. We were also interested in hearing what wasn’t working, as well as questions and concerns that the university community had about teaching and AI.
Then, in class he put them into groups where they worked together to generate a 500-word essay on “Why I Write” entirely through ChatGPT. Each group had complete freedom in how they chose to use the tool. The key: They were asked to evaluate their essay on how well it offered a personal perspective and demonstrated a critical reading of the piece. Weiss also graded each ChatGPT-written essay and included an explanation of why he came up with that particular grade.
After that, the students were asked to record their observations on the experiment on the discussion board. Then they came together again as a class to discuss the experiment.
Weiss shared some of his students’ comments with me (with their approval). Here are a few:
Asked to describe the state of generative AI that they would like to see in higher education 10 years from now, panelists collaboratively constructed their preferred future. .
Julie York, a computer science and media teacher at South Portland High School in Maine, was scouring the internet for discussion tools for her class when she found TeachFX. An AI tool that takes recorded audio from a classroom and turns it into data about who talked and for how long, it seemed like a cool way for York to discuss issues of data privacy, consent and bias with her students. But York soon realized that TeachFX was meant for much more.
York found that TeachFX listened to her very carefully, and generated a detailed feedback report on her specific teaching style. York was hooked, in part because she says her school administration simply doesn’t have the time to observe teachers while tending to several other pressing concerns.
“I rarely ever get feedback on my teaching style. This was giving me 100 percent quantifiable data on how many questions I asked and how often I asked them in a 90-minute class,” York says. “It’s not a rubric. It’s a reflection.”
TeachFX is easy to use, York says. It’s as simple as switching on a recording device.
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But TeachFX, she adds, is focused not on her students’ achievements, but instead on her performance as a teacher.
ChatGPT Is Landing Kids in the Principal’s Office, Survey Finds — from the74million.org by Mark Keierleber While educators worry that students are using generative AI to cheat, a new report finds students are turning to the tool more for personal problems.
Indeed, 58% of students, and 72% of those in special education, said they’ve used generative AI during the 2022-23 academic year, just not primarily for the reasons that teachers fear most. Among youth who completed the nationally representative survey, just 23% said they used it for academic purposes and 19% said they’ve used the tools to help them write and submit a paper. Instead, 29% reported having used it to deal with anxiety or mental health issues, 22% for issues with friends and 16% for family conflicts.
Part of the disconnect dividing teachers and students, researchers found, may come down to gray areas. Just 40% of parents said they or their child were given guidance on ways they can use generative AI without running afoul of school rules. Only 24% of teachers say they’ve been trained on how to respond if they suspect a student used generative AI to cheat.
The prospect of AI-powered, tailored, on-demand learning and performance support is exhilarating: It starts with traditional digital learning made into fully adaptive learning experiences, which would adjust to strengths and weaknesses for each individual learner. The possibilities extend all the way through to simulations and augmented reality, an environment to put into practice knowledge and skills, whether as individuals or working in a team simulation. The possibilities are immense.
Thanks to generative AI, such visions are transitioning from fiction to reality.
Video: Unleashing the Power of AI in L&D — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman An exclusive video walkthrough of my keynote at Sweden’s national L&D conference this week
Highlights
The wicked problem of L&D: last year, $371 billion was spent on workplace training globally, but only 12% of employees apply what they learn in the workplace
An innovative approach to L&D: when Mastery Learning is used to design & deliver workplace training, the rate of “transfer” (i.e. behaviour change & application) is 67%
AI 101: quick summary of classification, generative and interactive AI and its uses in L&D
The impact of AI: my initial research shows that AI has the potential to scale Mastery Learning and, in the process:
reduce the “time to training design” by 94% > faster
reduce the cost of training design by 92% > cheaper
increase the quality of learning design & delivery by 96% > better
Research also shows that the vast majority of workplaces are using AI only to “oil the machine” rather than innovate and improve our processes & practices
Practical tips: how to get started on your AI journey in your company, and a glimpse of what L&D roles might look like in a post-AI world
Preparing Students for the AI-Enhanced Workforce— from insidehighered.com by Ray Schroeder Our graduating and certificate-completing students need documented generative AI skills, and they need them now.
The common adage repeated again and again is that AI will not take your job; a person with AI skills will replace you. The learners we are teaching this fall who will be entering, re-entering or seeking advancement in the workforce at the end of the year or in the spring must become demonstrably skilled in using generative AI. The vast majority of white-collar jobs will demand the efficiencies and flexibilities defined by generative AI now and in the future. As higher education institutions, we will be called upon to document and validate generative AI skills.
Think all incoming teachers have a natural facility with technology just because most are digital natives? Think again.
Teacher preparation programs have a long way to go in preparing prospective educators to teach with technology, according to a report released September 12 by the International Society for Technology in Education, a nonprofit.
In fact, more than half of incoming teachers—56 percent—lack confidence in using learning technology prior to entering the classroom, according to survey data included with the report.
AI-Powered Higher Ed — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman What a House of Commons round table discussion tells us about how AI will impact the purpose of higher education
In this week’s blog post I’ll summarise the discussion and share what we agreed would be the most likely new model of assessment in HE in the post-AI world.
But this in turn raises a bigger question: why do people go to university, and what is the role of higher education in the twenty first century? Is it to create the workforce of the future? Or an institution for developing deep and original domain expertise? Can and should it be both?
In my previous position with Richmond Public Schools, we chose to dive in with computational thinking, programming and coding, in that order. I recommend building computational thinking (CT) competency first by helping students recognize and apply the four elements of CT to familiar problems/situations. Computational thinking should come first because it’s the highest order of problem-solving, is a cross-curricular skill and is understandable to both machines and humans. Here are the four components of CT and how to help students understand them.
So much of the way that we think about education and work is organized into silos. Sure, that’s one way to ensure a depth of knowledge in a field and to encourage learners to develop mastery. But it also leads to domains with strict boundaries. Colleges are typically organized into school sub-domains, managed like fiefdoms, with strict rules for professors who can teach in different schools.
Yet it’s at the intersections of seemingly-disparate domains where breakthrough innovation can occur.
Maybe intersections bring a greater chance of future work opportunity, because that young person can increase their focus in one arena or another as they discover new options for work — and because this is what meaningful work in the future is going to look like.
From DSC: This posting strikes me as an endorsement for interdisciplinary degrees. I agree with much of this. It’s just hard to find the right combination of disciplines. But I supposed that depends upon the individual student and what he/she is passionate or curious about.
A lot of people have been asking if AI is really a big deal for the future of work. We have a new paper that strongly suggests the answer is YES. .
Consultants using AI finished 12.2% more tasks on average, completed tasks 25.1% more quickly, and produced 40% higher quality results than those without. Those are some very big impacts. Now, let’s add in the nuance.
The bigger picture: Culture is exceedingly hard to change, especially after trust evaporates in a crisis. And crises can be particularly wrenching when institutions haven’t established cultures of transparency and accountability during good times. Instead, trust continues to erode in a vicious cycle.
And I thought to myself, the scope of Rick’s conclusion could likely be expanded/applied to institutions of higher education as a whole.
This is the first faculty research conducted by EDUCAUSE since 2019. Since then, the higher education landscape has been through a lot, including COVID-19, fluctuations in enrollment and public funding, and the rapid adoption of multiple instructional modalities and new technologies. In this report, we describe the findings of the research in four key areas:
Modality preferences and the impacts of teaching in non-preferred modes
Experiences teaching online and hybrid courses
Technology and digital availability of course components
Types of support needed and utilized for teaching
From DSC: Polling the faculty members and getting their feedback is not as relevant and important to the future of higher education as better addressing the needs and wants of parents and students who are paying the bills. Asking faculty members what they want to post online is not as relevant as what students want and need to see online.
“It’s an example of the streamlined admissions practices that colleges across the country are using to combat the ongoing problem of low student enrollment.”
DC: But it’s not getting at the problem of *not providing enough value* for the price. https://t.co/Ye1FFep48z
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) August 25, 2023
From DSC: More fringe responses — versus overhauling pricing, updating curriculum, providing more opportunities to try out jobs before investing in a degree, and/or better rewarding those adjunct faculty members who are doing the majority of the teaching on many campuses.
Before the pandemic, online learning programs were typically for people going back to school to augment or change their career or pursuing a graduate degree to enhance their career while they work. That attitude is shifting as students juggle learning with jobs, family responsibilities, and commutes. In California, 4 in 5 community college classes were in person before the pandemic. By 2021, just 1 in 4 were in person, while 65% were online, according to the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.
Younger students are also opting for online classes. EducationDynamics found in 2023 that the largest share of students pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees online is 35 or younger. That said, 35% of students pursuing online undergraduate degrees are between
Generative AI will require skills upgrades for workers, according to a report from IBM based on a survey of executives from around the world. One finding: Business leaders say 40% of their workforces will need to reskill as AI and automation are implemented over the next three years. That could translate to 1.4 billion people in the global workforce who require upskilling, according to the company.
10 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Instructional Design — from er.educause.edu by Robert Gibson Artificial intelligence (AI) is providing instructors and course designers with an incredible array of new tools and techniques to improve the course design and development process. However, the intersection of AI and content creation is not new.
What does this mean for the field of instructional and course design? I have been telling my graduate instructional design students that AI technology is not likely to replace them any time soon because learning and instruction are still highly personalized and humanistic experiences. However, as these students embark on their careers, they will need to understand how to appropriately identify, select, and utilize AI when developing course content.
Here are a few interesting examples of how AI is shaping and influencing instructional design. Some of the tools and resources can be used to satisfy a variety of course design activities, while others are very specific.
GenAI Chatbot Prompt Library for Educators — from aiforeducation.io We have a variety of prompts to help you lesson plan and do adminstrative tasks with GenAI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, and Perplexity.
Also relevant/see:
AI for Education — from linkedin.com Helping teachers and schools unlock their full potential through AI
Check out https://t.co/sfWeOiOzP5, “Helping teachers bring AI to the classroom critically, ethically, & responsibly.”
You can submit assignments to their curated collection. From the amazing @SarahWNewman at @metalabharvard. (She also did the Data Nutrition Project).
— Anna Mills, amills@mastodon.oeru.org, she/her (@EnglishOER) August 18, 2023
Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE) is getting a major new feature: it will be able to summarize articles you’re reading on the web, according to a Google blog post. SGE can already summarize search results for you so that you don’t have to scroll forever to find what you’re looking for, and this new feature is designed to take that further by helping you out after you’ve actually clicked a link.
Weeks after The New York Times updated its terms of service (TOS) to prohibit AI companies from scraping its articles and images to train AI models, it appears that the Times may be preparing to sue OpenAI. The result, experts speculate, could be devastating to OpenAI, including the destruction of ChatGPT’s dataset and fines up to $150,000 per infringing piece of content.
NPR spoke to two people “with direct knowledge” who confirmed that the Times’ lawyers were mulling whether a lawsuit might be necessary “to protect the intellectual property rights” of the Times’ reporting.
The majority of survey participants report increased student demand for online and hybrid learning juxtaposed with decreased demand for face-to-face courses and programs. Most participants also say that their institutions are aligning or working to align their strategic priorities to meet this demand. Notable findings from the 50+-page report include:
Face-to-Face enrollment is stagnant or declining.
Online and hybrid enrollment is growing.
Institutions are quickly aligning their strategic priorities to meet online/hybrid student demand.
So, as educators, mentors, and guides to our future generations, we must ask ourselves three pivotal questions:
What value do we offer to our students?
What value will they need to offer to the world?
How are we preparing them to offer that value?
The answers to these questions are crucial, and they will redefine the trajectory of our education system.
We need to create an environment that encourages curiosity, embraces failure as a learning opportunity, and celebrates diversity. We need to teach our students how to learn, how to ask the right questions, and how to think for themselves.
Leveraging ChatGPT for learning is the most meaningful skill this year for lifelong learners. But it’s too hard to find resources to master it.
As a learning science nerd, I’ve explored hundreds of prompts over the past months. Most of the advice doesn’t go beyond text summaries and multiple-choice testing.
That’s why I’ve created this article — it merges learning science with prompt writing to help you learn anything faster.
Midjourney AI Art for Teachers (for any kind of teacher, not just Art Teachers) — from The AI Educator on YouTube by Dan Fitzpatrick
From DSC: This is a very nice, clearly illustrated, free video to get started with the Midjourney (text-to-image) app. Nice work Dan!
In the new-normal of generative AI, how does one articulate the value of academic integrity? This blog presents my current response in about 2,500 words; a complete answer could fill a sizable book.
Massive amounts of misinformation are disseminated about generative AI, so the first part of my discussion clarifies what large language models (Chat-GPT and its counterparts) can currently do and what they cannot accomplish at this point in time. The second part describes ways in which generative AI can be misused as a means of learning; unfortunately, many people are now advocating for these mistaken applications to education. The third part describes ways in which large language models (LLM), used well, may substantially improve learning and education. I close with a plea for a robust, informed public discussion about these topics and issues.
Many of the more than a dozen teachers TIME interviewed for this story argue that the way to get kids to care is to proactively use ChatGPT in the classroom.
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Some of those creative ideas are already in effect at Peninsula High School in Gig Harbor, about an hour from Seattle. In Erin Rossing’s precalculus class, a student got ChatGPT to generate a rap about vectors and trigonometry in the style of Kanye West, while geometry students used the program to write mathematical proofs in the style of raps, which they performed in a classroom competition. In Kara Beloate’s English-Language Arts class, she allowed students reading Shakespeare’s Othello to use ChatGPT to translate lines into modern English to help them understand the text, so that they could spend class time discussing the plot and themes.
I found that other developed countries share concerns about students cheating but are moving quickly to use AI to personalize education, enhance language lessons and help teachers with mundane tasks, such as grading. Some of these countries are in the early stages of training teachers to use AI and developing curriculum standards for what students should know and be able to do with the technology.
Several countries began positioning themselves several years ago to invest in AI in education in order to compete in the fourth industrial revolution.
AI in Education— from educationnext.org by John Bailey The leap into a new era of machine intelligence carries risks and challenges, but also plenty of promise
In the realm of education, this technology will influence how students learn, how teachers work, and ultimately how we structure our education system. Some educators and leaders look forward to these changes with great enthusiasm. Sal Kahn, founder of Khan Academy, went so far as to say in a TED talk that AI has the potential to effect “probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen.” But others warn that AI will enable the spread of misinformation, facilitate cheating in school and college, kill whatever vestiges of individual privacy remain, and cause massive job loss. The challenge is to harness the positive potential while avoiding or mitigating the harm.
Generative AI and education futures — from ucl.ac.uk Video highlights from Professor Mike Sharples’ keynote address at the 2023 UCL Education Conference, which explored opportunities to prosper with AI as a part of education.
Bringing AI Literacy to High Schools— from by Nikki Goth Itoi Stanford education researchers collaborated with teachers to develop classroom-ready AI resources for high school instructors across subject areas.
To address these two imperatives, all high schools need access to basic AI tools and training. Yet the reality is that many underserved schools in low-income areas lack the bandwidth, skills, and confidence to guide their students through an AI-powered world. And if the pattern continues, AI will only worsen existing inequities. With this concern top of mind plus initial funding from the McCoy Ethics Center, Lee began recruiting some graduate students and high school teachers to explore how to give more people equal footing in the AI space.
Excerpts from the Too Long Didn’t Read (TLDR) section fromAIxEducation Day 1: My Takeaways — from stefanbauschard.substack.com by Stefan Bauschard (emphasis DSC)
* There was a lot of talk about learning bots.This talk included the benefits of 1:1 tutoring, access to education for those who don’t currently have it (developing world), the ability to do things for which we currently don’t have enough teachers and support staff (speech pathology), individualized instruction (it will be good at this soon), and stuff that it is already good at (24/7 availability, language tutoring, immediate feedback regarding argumentation and genre (not facts :), putting students on the right track, comprehensive feedback, more critical feedback).
* Students are united. The student organizers and those who spoke at the conference have concerns about future employment, want to learn to use generative AI, and express concern about being prepared for the “real world.” They also all want a say in how generative AI is used in the college classroom. Many professors spoke about the importance of having conversations with students and involving them in the creation of AI policies as well.
* I think it’s fair to say that all professors who spoke thought students were going to use generative AI regardless of whether or not it was permitted, though some hoped for honesty.
* No professor who spoke thought using a plagiarism detector was a good idea.
* Everyone thought that significant advancements in AI technology were inevitable.
* Almost everyone expressed being overwhelmed by the rate of change.
“Enrollment is driving everything right now,” said James Sparkman, the founder of Alpha Education…
DC: Enrollment = sales
Welcome to the realization that HE is a business. Welcome to a world & dynamics that other co’s/organizations have known for years. https://t.co/VBbOcWZxPw
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) August 2, 2023
Per Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera CEO: “This system-wide industry micro-credential program sets an innovative blueprint for the future of higher education.”
The University of Texas and Coursera, the online learning platform and a pioneer of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS), are launching a large-scale, industry-recognized micro-credential program. The collaboration was announced today in a blogpost by Coursera.
Through the new partnership, every student, faculty, and staff (and even alumni) across all nine universities in the University of Texas (UT) System will gain access to Courser’s Career Academy for no additional cost to them.
Are we on the frontier of unveiling an unseen revolution in education? The hypothesis is that this quiet upheaval’s importance is far more significant than we imagine. As our world adjusts, restructures, and emerges from a year which launched an era of mass AI, so too does a new academic year dawn for many – with hope and enthusiasm about new roles, titles, or simply just a new mindset. Concealed from sight, however, I believe a significant transformative wave has started and will begin to reshape our education systems and push us into a new stage of innovative teaching practice whether we desire it or not. The risk and hope is that the quiet revolution remains outside the regulator’s and ministries’ purview, which could risk a dangerous fragmentation of education policy and practice, divorced from the actualities of the world ‘in and outside school’.
“This goal can be achieved through continued support for introducing more new areas of study, such as ‘foresight and futures’, in the high school classroom.”
Four directions for assessment redesign in the age of generative AI— from timeshighereducation.com by Julia Chen The rise of generative AI has led universities to rethink how learning is quantified. Julia Chen offers four options for assessment redesign that can be applied across disciplines
Direction 1: From written description to multimodal explanation and application
Direction 2: From literature review alone to referencing lectures
Direction 3: From presentation of ideas to defence of views
Direction 4: From working alone to student-staff partnership
If you are just back from vacation and still not quite sure what to do about AI, let me assure you that you are not the only one. My advice for you today is this: fill your LinkedIn-feed and/or inbox with ideas, inspirational writing and commentary on AI. This will get you up to speed quickly and is a great way to stay informed on the newest movements you need to be aware of.
My personal recommendation for you is to check out these bright people who are all very active on LinkedIn and/or have a newsletter worth paying attention to. I have kept the list fairly short – only 15 people – in order to make it as easy as possible for you to begin exploring.
Understanding the nature of generative AI is crucial for educators to navigate the evolving landscape of teaching and learning. In a new report from the Next Level Lab, Lydia Cao and Chris Dede reflect on the role of generative AI in learning and how this pushes us to reconceptualize our visions of effective education. Though there are concerns of plagiarism and replacement of human jobs, Cao and Dede argue that a more productive way forward is for educators to focus on demystifying AI, emphasizing the learning process over the final product, honoring learner agency, orchestrating multiple sources of motivation, cultivating skills that AI cannot easily replicate, and fostering intelligence augmentation (IA) through building human-AI partnerships.
Have you used chatbots to save time this school year? ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence (AI) have changed the way I think about instructional planning. Today on the blog, I have a selection of ChatGPT prompts for ELA teachers.
You can use chatbots to tackle tedious tasks, gather ideas, and even support your work to meet the needs of every student. In my recent quick reference guide published by ISTE and ASCD, Using AI Chatbots to Enhance Planning and Instruction, I explore this topic. You can also find 50 more prompts for educators in this free ebook.
Professors Craft Courses on ChatGPT With ChatGPT — from insidehighered.com by Lauren Coffey While some institutions are banning the use of the new AI tool, others are leaning into its use and offering courses dedicated solely to navigating the new technology.
Maynard, along with Jules White at Vanderbilt University, are among a small number of professors launching courses focused solely on teaching students across disciplines to better navigate AI and ChatGPT.
The offerings go beyond institutions flexing their innovation skills—the faculty behind these courses view them as imperative to ensure students are prepared for ever-changing workforce needs.
That’s a solid report card for a freshman in college, a respectable 3.57 GPA. I recently finished my freshman year at Harvard, but those grades aren’t mine — they’re GPT-4’s.
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Three weeks ago, I asked seven Harvard professors and teaching assistants to grade essays written by GPT-4 in response to a prompt assigned in their class. Most of these essays were major assignments which counted for about one-quarter to one-third of students’ grades in the class. (I’ve listed the professors or preceptors for all of these classes, but some of the essays were graded by TAs.)
Here are the prompts with links to the essays, the names of instructors, and the grades each essay received…
The impact that AI is having on liberal-arts homework is indicative of the AI threat to the career fields that liberal-arts majors tend to enter. So maybe what we should really be focused on isn’t, “How do we make liberal-arts homework better?” but rather, “What are jobs going to look like over the next 10–20 years, and how do we prepare students to succeed in that world?”
The great assessment rethink — from timeshighereducation.com by How to measure learning and protect academic integrity in the age of ChatGPT
