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A chart is making the rounds purporting to represent looming advances of Large Language Learning in ChatGPT, showing where we are now (version 3) vs. where we will be soon (version 4) in the automated generation of human-like communication. The thought of ChatGPT 3 alarmed and overwhelmed me enough when I learned students could use the tool to create plausible written documents that I asked both TMU’s AIO and Turnitin.com about ways to safeguard academic integrity. What I learned was not reassuring. This post records what I’ve discovered so far. Undoubtedly a number of you have much more to say on this subject.
My impression of Turnitin.com’s response to AI-created writing is that they’re nowhere near integrating academic-integrity safeguards that we can rely on. TMU’s Office of Academic Integrity currently (February, 2023) admits that it’s not yet possible to detect AI content, nor has Policy 60 been updated to address this issue.
We did have enough notice in September to add a note in our syllabi; however without a reliable tool to combat this kind of plagiarism, we really can’t do much, save having private, probing conversations with students–not a pleasant option. A professor at Innis College’s Writing & Rhetoric program at U of T has told me she may start assigning in-class essays. We could always return to the hand-written in-class writing assignments of yesteryear, but major grumbling, not to mention the headache of marking cursive, are not attractive prospects.
TMU’s Office of Academic Integrity has created a community of practice and provided regular workshops for instructors grappling with this issue. You could ask to be included in the community of practice, and you’ll get a D2L organization on your Brightspace page, where you can see what other members are thinking and can find leads on ways to manage the challenges. Allyson Miller (allyson.miller@torontomu.ca) appears to be the AI point person for the AIO. Topics for the latest workshop’s roundtable discussions reflect the most pressing ones that have emerged at other universities: “how to design assessments that either 1) thwart student use of AI, 2) leverage AI, or 3) challenge and/or critique AI.”
To be honest, I was surprised at how quickly surrender was promoted. Back in December 2022, an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education took this view. Our own AIO office recommended a tip sheet for integrating ChatGPT into the classroom, despite its incoherence and indirect invitation to be a commodity audience. Further afield, Manchester Met has sponsored an open slideshare inviting academics to post their ideas, and so far contributors are more excited than fearful. A common refrain is that we surrender to the ghost in the machine and try to learn from its bloodless shuffling of coherent-sounding sentences.
It’s understandable and probably realistic to contemplate how we’ll adapt, given the inevitable expansion of this tool’s capabilities. Nonetheless, possibly because of my early training and temperament, I prefer to begin with resistance and questions like those produced by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centred AI. Though as CUPE lecturers we’re mostly teaching “practical” writing skills, I’d argue we’re also instilling agency and allowing individual students to discover what they’re capable of as communicators. Do we really want to farm out the responsibility for a very human exchange to a non-human voice? I fear that in our effort to discover a solution to simple challenges we’re reaching for the stars but finding the green light on our computer monitors or the mirror image of a blinking cursor from a faceless stranger’s blank page.
Now that we’ve been invited to consider HyFlex teaching (and some of us are well versed already), it may be time to dip into some explanations. Educause has published a short info sheet that you may find helpful. Another quick read is an article by a teacher who has experience with this mode, and she shares how she’s solved some of the problems encountered so far. If you want more, you could turn to this free online book, which includes chapters on HyFlex learning.
Not surprisingly, The Chronicle of Higher Education has recent articles on the subject. If you have a subscription, you can access two of them. In “How to Engage Students in a Hybrid Classroom” (referring to the HyFlex model), an academic-technology expert at Stanford University advises teachers to “design a fully online class and think of the in-person part of it as an enhancement to the core of your coursework.” The reason is that trying to keep remote and in-person students engaged simultaneously can be counterproductive. If you’re worried about logistical frustrations, Kevin Gannon corroborates those fears with an amusing scenario of what it can be like to operationalize this mode of teaching in “Our Hyflex Experiment: What’s Worked and What Hasn’t”:
Enter the physical classroom.
Wipe down the instructor station.
Log in. Log in to Blackboard. Log in to Zoom.
Start the Zoom meeting.
Greet the students who are attending in person.
DON’T FORGET TO HIT “RECORD” LIKE YOU DID LAST CLASS.
Share the computer screen.
Make sure you’re not walking too far from the mic.
Repeat the in-person student’s question so the students on Zoom can hear it.
Ask for a response from the Zoom students.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
Repeat the question.
Realize you didn’t turn up the volume.
Take off your glasses because they’re fogging up again, even with your new mask that was supposed to minimize that.
I hasten to add that the article doesn’t just stress “what hasn’t” worked. If any of you have some tips about what has worked for you, please share them in the comments.
Ger Zielinski drew my attention to this Chronicle story which describes a poignant reality of virtual courses. What happens when a student and instructor discover that the professor who created the course has died? The article raises some interesting questions about the nature of mentorship and the need for transparency about a lead professor’s role.
Petar Jandric, a professor teaching at the University of Zagreb, in Croatia, decided to document how this strange interlude has had an impact on our lives as university teachers. In early March, he sent out a call to academics for testimonials. The resulting compilation was published in June in an issue of Post Digital Scienceand Education, as “Teaching in the Age of COVID.” These brief first-person accounts are both familiar and unfamiliar–the writers are working in different institutions in different cities and different disciplines, but the worries about standards, student engagement and anxiety and the true nature of institutions of higher learning are ones we already know intimately.
Needless to say, a common theme was adapting to change. For academics this has meant adjusting delivery modes to optimize learning and fulfillment. However, it wasn’t long after universities shut down that wholesale reimagining of course delivery and curricula emerged inside and outside the academy. As early as June 1 of this year, a report by RBC entitled The Future of Post-Secondary Education: On Campus, Online and On-Demand, ponders the opportunities for replacing the traditional classroom. Faculty and student responses to such visions of expanding virtualization were predictably negative, but it’s unlikely the drive for transformation will wane when the dust has finally settled. Grand schemes will always be on the horizon.
Still, it’s possible the Guardian’sSteven Jones’s early prediction of a more modest transformation of universities will become our new normal. He points out how the pandemic has helped the university community appreciate our mutually supportive roles, and he raises the possibility that we might do away with unnecessary practices, now that we’ve managed quite well without them.
Some of this futurism will look quaint no doubt, once we’ve laboured through to the other side.
In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article, a research scientist at MIT describes a way to encourage class discussion in a Zoom class. The approach, derived from tech industry practice, is to post a shared document during class and then to lead a discussion of various parts of the document in a shared folder.
He felt that the usual awkward, fragmented “discussion” that can occur in a typical Zoom class is replaced by a dynamic exchange of insights. I think the text-based work we do would lend itself well to this strategy.
Yes, the Modern Language Association has a blog, “Behind the Style,” devoted to both well-known and obscure grammar and style practices. You may find material that you can use in a course you’re teaching or to answer questions in an office hour. The level is quite basic and would be suitable for first-year students.
Is the title of the blog a bemused acknowledgement that worrying about “the rules” is unfashionable? Perhaps another page explaining why grammar is relevant to today’s writing, “Helping Students Use Grammar to Support Their Writing Goals,” is an answer.
Here’s a great opportunity for an assistant professorship in Communication for anyone who’d like to move to Calgary. Applications will be reviewed after January 11, 2021 until the position is filled.
