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
Emotional Stress Remains a Top Challenge to Keeping Students Enrolled (Julian Roberts-Grmela, Inside Higher Ed, March 23, 2023): 69% of students who considered stopping their coursework in the past six months cited emotional stress as a reason.
What Students Want (and Don’t) from Their Professors (Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, March 24, 2023): The latest Student Voice survey reveals perceived barriers to academic success and the top actions students think professors should take. Mixing up teaching styles and being more flexible rank high.
Students Shouldn’t Always Choose Higher-Paying Majors (Zachary Bleemer, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 20, 2023): A focus on small differences in future-earnings statistics can lead students astray.
Free-speech Issues on Campus
The Real Source of Self-Censorship (Megan Zahneis, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 22, 2023): Perhaps the free speech surveys aren’t revealing a “worsening crisis of free expression,” but rather only reporting what we already know: Students may not always share their thoughts because they are working to figure out what they think and why, and how to talk through tough subjects.
AI and Higher Education
ChatGPT Just Got Better. What Does That Mean for Our Writing Assignments? (Anna R. Mills, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 2023): An educator who tested the new GPT-4 before its release offers advice for faculty members on how to respond.
Resisting the AI Hype Cycle in Education (John Warner, Inside Higher Ed, March 21, 2023): Warner proposes a framework for thinking about the “deluge” of AI based educational technology.
For those with access to the New York Times: Kevin Roose and Cade Metz are hosting a one-week crash course on A.I. You can sign up for their newsletter.
DEI
The Assault on DEI (a package of articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education)
Webinars
Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse webinar on “Student Perspectives on Their Academic Lives” – Wednesday, March 29 at 2:00 PM Eastern. Issues include the factors that students see as barriers to success; the importance of transparency in grading; and students’ course material preferences. Register here.
On The Bookshelf
Michael P. Jeffries, Black and Queer on Campus (NYU Press, 2023). Interview with the author by Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed (March 16, 2023).
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)