Fantastic post and the hardest of hard agrees. AI should present educators and administrators with an opportunity to create learning experiences for students that are dynamic, personalised, and authentic. Instead, many of them are blaming AI (which is in essence nothing more than a tool) for the systemic failings of education institutes over the last few decades and a lack of willingness to update from a method of teaching which still feels grounded in the European monasteries of the 1500s...
Thanks Sam! Curious in the spirit of "SLOW" how do you think about the speed of deployment of so many different apps, tools, services that educators and administrators have to figure out if/how to integrate in order to create those beautiful learning experiences.
Excellent question! For individual educators and researchers, I recommend people trying variety fo tools and see which ones work for them. At the institutional level it should be about finding the tools that can offer the best safeguarding of student data, whilst still allowing for a good user experience. For many this will be copilot, as it has quite good localised settings to stop training on data and is already integrated across the Microsoft Suite which most institutions heavily really on.
AI is wonderfully empowering for students when used for actual learning. Teachers and schools need to understand the technology better and not demonize it. I let students use AI as long as they disclose and show the class how and why they used it. I use it and it saves me lots of time.
Can you share more of what you teach and what age? I'd also love to know what you think the best uses of AI by your students has been and what feels meh?
Sure thing. I teach public speaking, media 101 and dynamics of comms at a community college and film marketing at nyu. Most students are 18-20.
When I first started I required more written work and now I require the students to verbally present their papers and journals in addition to handing them in. So they’re focused on the ideas and discussing with peers more than just the written component.
I require they all use the free version of Grammarly.
The best use is how it helps ESL students share a classroom and learn together with native speakers. At the community college the ESL kids are from Central and South America, at NYU they are from Asia. Cool to see how it helps people across continents and the economic spectrum overcome language and culture barriers.
The fun use cases is the movie posters and campaigns my film students can now create with gen AI…the production value has dramatically increased over the last 3 years.
As far as meh, there are still cases where a student clearly exerted minimal effort, but that’s just part of the deal.
I really appreciate your urge to not judge the students, that’s not helpful. Teachers and institutions need to try new things and meet the moment!
As a former professor who now works with college students informally, I support your idea for a collaborative approach between students and teachers. I am skeptical, though, because the relationship has always been hierarchical encouraging passivity and reaction rather than power sharing. Also grade inflation, the time involved with true collaboration and qualitative feedback as well as artificiality and relative ease of quantitative measurement militates against breaking through these habits and cultures. What do you think of starting a class with the discussion of fairness and what participants think that would be? Then move to establishing 3-5 goals a class has for learning and enjoyment and how they would assess success? Of course, a level of trust and openness as well as effective facilitation would benefit such a process. It's all a big challenge. Ruth Schimel. www.ruthschimel.comruth@ruthschimel.com 202.659.1772
Fantastic post and the hardest of hard agrees. AI should present educators and administrators with an opportunity to create learning experiences for students that are dynamic, personalised, and authentic. Instead, many of them are blaming AI (which is in essence nothing more than a tool) for the systemic failings of education institutes over the last few decades and a lack of willingness to update from a method of teaching which still feels grounded in the European monasteries of the 1500s...
Thanks Sam! Curious in the spirit of "SLOW" how do you think about the speed of deployment of so many different apps, tools, services that educators and administrators have to figure out if/how to integrate in order to create those beautiful learning experiences.
Excellent question! For individual educators and researchers, I recommend people trying variety fo tools and see which ones work for them. At the institutional level it should be about finding the tools that can offer the best safeguarding of student data, whilst still allowing for a good user experience. For many this will be copilot, as it has quite good localised settings to stop training on data and is already integrated across the Microsoft Suite which most institutions heavily really on.
AI is wonderfully empowering for students when used for actual learning. Teachers and schools need to understand the technology better and not demonize it. I let students use AI as long as they disclose and show the class how and why they used it. I use it and it saves me lots of time.
Can you share more of what you teach and what age? I'd also love to know what you think the best uses of AI by your students has been and what feels meh?
Sure thing. I teach public speaking, media 101 and dynamics of comms at a community college and film marketing at nyu. Most students are 18-20.
When I first started I required more written work and now I require the students to verbally present their papers and journals in addition to handing them in. So they’re focused on the ideas and discussing with peers more than just the written component.
I require they all use the free version of Grammarly.
The best use is how it helps ESL students share a classroom and learn together with native speakers. At the community college the ESL kids are from Central and South America, at NYU they are from Asia. Cool to see how it helps people across continents and the economic spectrum overcome language and culture barriers.
The fun use cases is the movie posters and campaigns my film students can now create with gen AI…the production value has dramatically increased over the last 3 years.
As far as meh, there are still cases where a student clearly exerted minimal effort, but that’s just part of the deal.
I really appreciate your urge to not judge the students, that’s not helpful. Teachers and institutions need to try new things and meet the moment!
As a former professor who now works with college students informally, I support your idea for a collaborative approach between students and teachers. I am skeptical, though, because the relationship has always been hierarchical encouraging passivity and reaction rather than power sharing. Also grade inflation, the time involved with true collaboration and qualitative feedback as well as artificiality and relative ease of quantitative measurement militates against breaking through these habits and cultures. What do you think of starting a class with the discussion of fairness and what participants think that would be? Then move to establishing 3-5 goals a class has for learning and enjoyment and how they would assess success? Of course, a level of trust and openness as well as effective facilitation would benefit such a process. It's all a big challenge. Ruth Schimel. www.ruthschimel.com ruth@ruthschimel.com 202.659.1772