CTL Invitation – ChatGPT: Moving from Perils to Potentials
Have you overcome your concerns that ChatGPT and other “generative AI” programs can only encourage student cheating and begun to think about them as tools that can help foster learning? Have you been experimenting with these new AI programs in your classes?
The GLCA-GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning invites you to a conversation on ChatGPT designed to help faculty think about the potential value of these generative AI programs, and not just their potential peril. Among other questions, we will be exploring how we can use AI to help deepen (rather than discourage) learning communities in our classrooms, and the ways that ChatGPT can improve student writing or problem-solving skills. We’ll be working in groups with those who have more experience with AI to help everyone brainstorm on the best ways to get the most out of generative AI in our classrooms. Please join us for this webinar on Wednesday, March 29 at noon EST. To register click here:
Teaching and Learning
Why an Active Classroom Doesn’t Always Work (Sarabeth Grant, Inside Higher Ed, March 15, 2023): Rather than positively providing them a self-directed space, it might instead be just one more thing an overworked student has to cope with.
How Colleges Can Bring the World into Their Classrooms (Karin Fischer, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 15, 2023): Tips on globalizing the curriculum.
Better Teaching? You Can Write On It (Patrick Culbert, AAC&U-Liberal Education, Fall 2022): Embrace writing as a form of reflection – your students will be the ultimate beneficiaries.
AI and Higher Education
What You Need to Know About ChatGPT (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 16, 2023): Discusses highlights from a Chronicle webinar on ChatGPT and other AI tools. Includes links to resources.
Faculty Members Still Aren’t Sure What to Make of ChatGPT (Eva Surovell, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 16, 2023): A survey of more than 900 professors found that the vast majority hadn’t developed artificial-intelligence guidelines for their classrooms.
AI Is Impacting Education, but the Best Is Yet to Come (Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed, March 15, 2023): Generative AI already creates lesson plans, grades assignments, advises students and answers learner questions. Can it competently take on class management and other associated administrative tasks?
We’re Asking the Wrong Questions About AI (Paul LeBlanc, Inside Higher Ed, March 13, 2023): It’s not only about academic integrity: higher ed faces much bigger challenges in the face of frightening questions about the future of the knowledge workforce.
10 Ways GPT-4 Is Impressive but Still Flawed (Cade Metz and Keith Collins, New York Times, March 14, 2023): Open AI has upgraded the technology that powers its online chatbot in notable ways. It’s more accurate, but still makes things up.
Coming Your Way: The Impact of Censorship in Many States’ High Schools
“Slavery Was Wrong” and 5 Other Things Some Educators Won’t Teach Anymore (Hannah Natanson, Washington Post, March 6, 2023): What’s out? Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Right of Women, Christopher Columbus’s Journals, data sets on police use of force, and others.
Webinars
From Grades to Growth: Ungrading and Alternative Assessments (Top Hat): March 23, 2023, 2:00 PM Eastern. Jesse Strommel will explore what “ungrading” means, along with approaches to assessment that motivate students. Register here.
“What Works Conference” at Kenyon
The Center for Innovative Pedagogy at Kenyon College invites presentations on teaching and learning for the 2023 What Works virtual conference, to be held the week of May 30-June 2, 2023. They are considering all proposals that would apply to undergraduate education at a small college or university, but we especially want to encourage proposals in three areas:
- collaboration between faculty and staff to support student learning
- new applications of educational technology
- courses that employ pedagogies of diversity, equity and inclusion
Proposals are being accepted at https://forms.gle/C7rRj9aQutzRQMWV6 . The deadline to submit has been extended to March 22. Please feel free to contact Joe Murphy (murphyjm@kenyon.edu) or Alex Alderman (alderman1@kenyon.edu) to discuss your ideas for a session!
On The Bookshelf
Nicholas V. Longo, Practicing Democracy: A Toolkit for Educating Civic Professionals (AAC&U and Campus Compact, 2023). A “toolkit” designed to provide a pathway to civic learning for students in all majors. Free and dowloadable here. A set of online resources related to the book is available here.
John Shelton, The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell). An interview with the author by Susan H. Greenberg (Inside Higher Ed, March 14, 2023).
How College Transforms Students (Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, March 13, 2023): Mintz looks at a number of older books on higher education to think about what undergraduates truly learn in college.
Have a short article or some news related to teaching and learning at your institution that you’d like to share with colleagues? Send your contribution along to us. Also, please email Charla White (white@glca.org) if you have colleagues who would like to receive this weekly report.
GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning
Co-Directors:
Steven Volk (steven.Volk@oberlin.edu)
Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org)
Charla White (white@glca.org)