November 9, 2023 • 34 mins
Ever wondered if artificial intelligence could grade your college essays better than your professor, or do we risk losing the essence of critical thinking in the process? Hold on to your hats as we explore the fascinating world of AI, its ethical implications, and its far-reaching impact on higher education. Be prepared for a thrilling discussion on the good, the bad, and the ugly of using AI in higher education, and a verdict that might just leave you pondering!
As you journey with us, you'll uncover intriguing insights about the use of AI in classroom activities, both as a boon and a bane. From AI creation of academic rubrics and plot summaries to its potential misuse in assignments, we're leaving no stone unturned. Listen carefully as we share our perspective on the necessary steps educators are taking to make the use of AI a responsible choice for their students, and not a destructive one.
In the concluding phase of this episode, we're diving deep into the influence of AI on education and critical thinking. You'll learn about the changing face of writing, the increasing need for students to master AI as a tool, and the possible consequences for critical thinking. Hear us out as we discuss whether AI could be a timesaver for research, or a detractor from original thought. So, tune in and join us as we navigate the future of education in the age of AI!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Stay tuned to the Ask Dr Ross podcast.
It's created to give you infoto succeed at college.
Our hosts are highly qualified.
Dr Catherine Ross is a memberof the University of Texas
Systems Academy of DistinguishedTeachers.
She's also a popular professorof 19th century English
literature.
Her co-host and multimediaeditor, nathan Witt, provides a
(00:26):
student perspective.
Ask Dr Ross is a communityservice of the University of
Texas at Tanya.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hi, I'm Catherine Ross, and this is a podcast for
parents, students in school whoare thinking about going to
college, college students whoare already here, adults who are
thinking of maybe going back tocollege and really anyone who
wants to know more about whatlife in colleges and
universities is like today inthe US of A.
I'm here with my friend, nathanWitt, who's a student here.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
If you'd like to ask Dr Ross a question, you can
email us atADRquestionsatgmailcom.
Today we're going to talk aboutall things AI or artificial
intelligence.
So the big question is is AIethical in college?
But also, how is AI going toinfluence the next couple of
(01:21):
years?
Dr Ross, you and I agree thatit's not going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It's here for sure to stay, just like computers and
cell phones and calculators.
I think that we want toconsider AI a tool, and we want
to remember, too, that guess whocreated it?
A bunch of college students atPrinceton, and I had the
occasion last week to sit in ona session where one of the
(01:46):
creators of chat, gpt, thisyoung recent Princeton graduate,
was talking to a bunch ofeducators about his tool and
what he hopes to do.
One of the things I find veryinteresting is he's very
concerned that it be usedhonorably and responsibly as
well.
Now, I've been playing with itfor a while I don't know if you
have too, of course.
(02:07):
Yeah, the first thing I did wasI just threw in some things like
tell me about CharlotteBronte's novel Jane Eyre,
something I teach, just to seeif it brought me up some
responsible information.
Then a little while later Iread I guess it was an editorial
in something like the New YorkTimes by a student at Columbia
who was using it and he saidlook folks, you have no idea how
(02:29):
we're using it.
What he told us was that wedon't just have it write our
papers for us, we have it do.
Here's where we get into theissue that I think most of us
who are educators are mostconcerned about is AI going to
cause the end of criticalthinking?
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Listen to what he did , to see how he uses AI, to
maybe do his critical thinkingfor him, but also to help him.
What he told us he does is hesays okay.
So for example I don't rememberif this is precise example used
, but it's the sort of thing.
Let's say you asked me to writean argument at Vessay about
(03:07):
some aspect of the Iliad.
I won't just say write me theessay.
The student said I will ask itto give me 10 arguments that can
be made about the Iliad, butthey don't stop there.
Then he says then when I pickone, let's say I pick number
three.
Now chat GPT, give me anoutline for this essay on
argument number three and thenI'll plug in all the facts.
(03:29):
The good news on that is thatthey do the factual work.
What's the bad news?
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, like you said, a lot of the critical thinking,
a lot of the decision making iseased.
I wouldn't say taken away fromthe student, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
So he's anxious.
I think what he's saying ishe's anxious about being able to
make an argument, and that'swhere educators have to come in.
We've got to help them learnhow to make arguments, but then
to find the crux where you couldsay a pro or a con about this
particular part of the greatpoem, but then also organizing
your thinking about it.
(04:02):
That's another part of criticalthinking.
So I was really delighted tohear the details of what he did,
and then he went on to say hethought two things.
One is that faculty need to nolonger give written tests.
Your tests should be oral tests, especially if we're doing
(04:22):
online classes, because it's soeasy for students to assemble
additional information when theydo that.
But the other thing hechallenges to do, which is to
rethink the way we teach, andwe've been having to do that for
a long time, anyway, thanks toonline education.
So I'll stop there for a minuteand hear what you're thinking
about.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I want to ask you the big, bold question, which I
think will probably be thecaption of this episode Is using
AI in higher ed unethical?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Not necessarily.
It depends on how you use it.
Before AI came along, I starteddoing something which got me
into trouble with some of mycolleagues.
I started using course heroesonline learning resources with
my students Because I knew mystudents were going to look for
these things anyway and I was inan academic advisory position
with this company called CourseHero, which has an incredible
(05:14):
amount of resources for students.
And, by the way, course Herowas created again by a student
who needed help and he wentonline and he started getting
friends to help him.
And a lot of academics think, oh, these online programs are just
, they just invite students tocheat and, of course, students
(05:36):
can do that.
But what I've found is thatthere's a lot of really useful
stuff on there that can be usedpartly by teachers or high
school teachers, as well asuniversity professors at the
sort of lower levels, at leastin literature.
This is the area I'm familiarwith.
But I started having curatingtheir site and sending my
students to it intentionally andsaying look, and I'll just tell
(05:58):
you real briefly, when youstudy a novel, you really need
to read it a couple of times toreally get what's going on if
you're studying it.
As a literary scholar and whohas time to read a novel twice
right.
And so what I found, of course,here is they had not only Plot
Summary the whole novel but theyhad chapter by chapter Plot
Summary.
And so what I'd do is I gavethat to my students that time,
said read the Plot Summary,you're going to know the story
(06:20):
before you start reading it.
But also it helps to center you.
So these are difficult textsand if you read a modern
American language version of thePlot Summary of a chapter, that
was demanding and then so youknow what you're looking for,
then you read it in the original.
It actually helps them study itbetter.
I found it was useful to havethese detailed Plot Summaries
(06:43):
available to me to remind mewhere we want to see, where this
is.
Week seven we're in chapter 14,or is it 15, which chapter is
that?
And so I'd use that to promptmy memory.
So I was already using that andI wrote an article about it
which the Times Higher EducationOnline Magazine published.
I think I called it a map and acompass and I said look, the
(07:04):
map of the novel is the PlotSummary, and then I give the
students a compass, which is aseries of guiding questions.
Anyway, let's get to the realdeal.
Are they cheating?
Of course, students going tocheat.
Unfortunately, a lot of students, especially in courses that
they have to take, like arequired course, where they
don't really care much about it.
(07:24):
They have to take it.
They don't care so much aboutreally doing the deal as they do
about just getting through.
And I try to talk to mystudents in those classes.
I always, by the way, I think Itold you this I always teach
core classes because I thinkthat's where students learn how
to be students, and so I alsoget a lot of students who don't
want to be in English majors fora million bucks, but with what
(07:46):
I teach it, with a lot of reallyvaluable skills, and that's
what I emphasize to them isyou're building skills.
I'm not trying to make it inEnglish major.
I want you to learn how to be areader and a person who knows.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I agree with you with the ethics question.
It's this gray area because itreally depends on how you use it
.
I like when you described it asa tool, when you described AI
as a tool and I agree with thatyou kind of likened it to a
calculator or something likethat, and I think that's the
approach that we have to havewith it is, now that we have
(08:17):
this tool, that's utilize it andalso, yeah, you probably have
to shift.
I'm sure when calculators cameout and became widely available,
the math curriculum probablychanged a lot.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And teachers are saying you cannot bring a
calculator to class and that'scheating and that's
irresponsible and dishonest.
And to get to the cheatingissue students come to college,
it's their time, it's theirmoney and if that's the way
they're going to do it, who arethey cheating?
Cheating themselves or robbingthemselves of an opportunity.
(08:52):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
I think and this is where I have probably an opinion
you won't agree with as aprofessor, because I think that
the objective and I thinkcheating for a core class that
you just have to take or a majorrequirement that you don't
really care about, it's notreally for your field of
business that you want to gointo and cheating for your
(09:16):
career classes are two differentthings, because I think the
system we have created is one inwhich we say, when you all boil
it down, objective is A Right,get an A.
Objective is get an A Right.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
No objective is learn skills that will get you the A
Should be.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
That should be the case.
That should be the case, drRoss, and we definitely agree on
that.
But I think I hope that we canagree that in the current system
of not just higher ed butschool in general in America,
you should be focused onactually learning the knowledge.
But the system we have built isaround getting the grades.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Oh, about the grades, getting the?
Speaker 3 (09:57):
grades.
Yeah, I think that there'ssomething to say about students
who cheat in core classes orclasses that don't go towards
their career.
Maybe they're cheatingthemselves, but also maybe they
are trying to get that objectiveby any means, which means
sometimes they learn to thinkoutside the box.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, and I will add this this is one of the reasons
why I encourage students to useonline things, because I can't
teach you everything in class.
You have to teach yourself, youhave to learn to teach yourself
, you have to learn to findanswers, you have to learn to
teach each other, and so Iencourage them to be resourceful
and creative about findingsources, because if you've left
(10:39):
the class, you still don'tunderstand what I thought I
taught you then who's on that?
Who's that on?
That's on me.
That was my error, and I willadd this if a student feels as
though the only way they can dowell in a class is by cheating,
that's also on the professor.
We have got to create classesthat invite students to want to
(11:01):
do the work, to see the purposeof it, and this is one of my
biggest.
I'm often invited to giveorientation to new faculty and I
always say to them especiallyif they're teaching the lower
division classes 17, 18, or even19-year-old student doesn't
know why you have to take acourse in rhetoric, why you have
(11:22):
to take a course in politicalscience and why you have to take
a course in natural sciences.
They just think those are thingsthat we've thrown in your way
and what we've got to do is say,okay, now I know you want to be
a digital design person, or Iknow you want to be an
accountant and you do notunderstand why in the world you
need to study Byron's poetry.
But I'm going to show you why.
(11:42):
Studying in this field andlearning these particular skills
about learning to look fordetails, learning to notice that
there's a context in whichsomething was created, knowing
that there's a certain waycertain things are written all
of those are transferable skillsto every other field.
If they know why it's important, if they know a lot of kids
that have never made an A inEnglish before in their lives
(12:03):
make A's in my classes, butguess what?
I didn't give them that grade.
They earned it because I gotthem to see why it mattered.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Yeah, well, and you added excitement.
I think that's one thing that Iwish we had for more college
professors is your excitementfor the subject, because I think
that really does transfer tothe student.
I know in my personalexperience as an example, like
when a teacher is excited abouta subject, it doesn't matter
what the subject is, it gives meexcitement, and so there's that
(12:33):
.
I think if you let yourpersonality show, don't be this
like, yeah, figurine of aprofessor and you don't have any
personality and I'm just hereto read you the book and
whatever which is why, when wesuddenly start using chat, gpt
and robots to do our teachingfor us, I get really worried.
I don't know it's a bigconversation of, and I don't
(12:53):
know if you've considered it of.
Can you tell that something waswritten by chat GPT or not?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
yes and no.
I used to always be able totell really easily if something
just didn't sound like thenatural flow of a student's work
.
Yeah, recently I'm pretty surethere was a student who used
chat GPT on a final paper frommy class, wow, and I didn't
realize it until too late andI'll tell you I'm not sure.
(13:19):
And one of the things that thisfella at Princeton who created
chat to be GPT is working on itand several they've already
created some engines that canhelp to detect it.
Yeah, I tell you what I'm notreal interested in detecting it
because that makes me the policeperson.
I want students to not want tocheat.
(13:40):
I want to teach students how touse it, just like I teach them
how to use the research lab andI use the librarians a lot and
they help them learn how to dostuff.
One of the things thisconference.
I just went to one of theworkshops.
The leader of it said okay, Iwant all the faculty members in
this room to pull up your one ofyour paper assignments and ask
chat GPT to create a rubric forit.
(14:01):
And you know the rubric isthat's the thing we used to
score a paper and they're reallysometimes very painful to
create and we have to discernthe difference between it was C
and is C plus and to be minus,and detailing what you're
looking for.
And I thought that's aninteresting request, and so I
typed in this term paper thatI've got my students getting
ready to do, and it came up witha pretty credible rubric.
(14:24):
Yeah, and I was going wow, thatjust saved me an hour of work.
Yeah, now I'm not going to useit exactly as it is, because I
want to refine it, I want todefine it, make it better, but
it saved me time yes and anotherthing is just like I gave
students here's the link to gosee the the course hero plot
summary.
So you know the plot summary.
I still require my students toread the book and I have ways to
(14:45):
make sure they do.
I'm thinking that what I'mgoing to do this year is I'm
gonna just abruptly come to thepoint, talk about it with
freshmen all the way up toseniors and grad students and
say here's what I know we can do.
Yeah, and here's some of thetemptations.
I hope you won't do that.
And the truth is, nathan, theyare adults, they're not high
(15:09):
school kids, and if his child inhigh school gets in trouble in
college, you could actually geta zero and f.
It's a pretty big, high priceto pay, and so my hope is that
increasingly, students areself-monitoring.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Yeah, you do have to be careful In high school and F
is an F.
In college, an F or a zeromight mean your scholarship.
It might cost you significantlymore than it would in high
school.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
It's going to keep you out of grad school.
If a graduate student's schoolsees that you made an F and it
came from dishonesty, you canforget it.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Certainly, but keeping in mind that this
podcast is directed to incomingcollege students and maybe
families of those incomingcollege students.
As a professor, what do you sayto incoming students who want
to use chat DBT on theirassignments, who feel like they
see it as a tool and they wantto use it?
What do you say to them?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Of course, I have no control over students outside of
my own classroom, but I cancertainly make some
recommendations to them, and Iwill say this our Center for
Teaching here and at othersplaces as well, lots of places
right now are gearing up forfaculty to have discussions
about what are we going to doabout AI, how are we going to
use it, how are we going toprotect students from making big
(16:26):
, dumb mistakes with it, butalso how can we use it
positively.
And so I think, as I told you,I'm going to talk to my students
about it and I'm going to talkto them about how I think we can
use it productively and okay.
Another thing I got in thisconference a bunch of us
networked and a professor ofphysics down in Mexico emailed
me and she said so how are youusing it?
(16:47):
I told her, and she doesn'tknow how to use it yet, and I'm
hoping most faculty are gettinggeared up to figure out how to
use it, how it can be usedusefully, like creating a rubric
.
I'll tell you another example Iuse for it.
So this assignment I've got isI'm inviting students to do a
project on a Victorian novelthat I offered them 25 Victorian
novels.
I didn't want to write the plotsummaries for all 25 novels.
(17:08):
Yes, what I did chat GPT giveme a three paragraph plot
summary and I knew them and Iread them and made sure they
were good.
And so I think that if studentsthink they're going to have to
use chat GPT to pass, thenthey're in trouble already, and
if they think that they're goingto trick their teachers,
(17:31):
they're probably wrong too.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
You think so?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Oh yeah, because we're all paying attention.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
And one of the biggest reasons is to quote a
friend of mine in highereducation who said is this the
end of thinking?
Speaker 3 (17:42):
See, I really contest both of the things that you
just said there.
First of all, I think there's aton of ways to in the current
form of education and how we dothings.
I think that there's multipleways to cheat and get away with
it and that you would nevernotice you might be surprised at
how many things we do notice.
I might be, because of course Idon't know, but what I do know,
(18:06):
and I'm not sure we want to runthis, but go ahead, let's keep
talking.
I guess I won't talk about thedifferent ways that we can get
away with it.
No, because I do want toinclude this part because I've
been watching AI very closely,this I've been working with my
hometown school district to dowhat you're saying and can we
help these teachers make it atool and embrace it instead of
(18:27):
trying to reject it and make ita big battle.
I always equate it to theinternet, and it's so funny.
One of my favorite things tolook at in retrospect is this
article from some big papermaybe it was the New York Times,
I don't know.
I just saw a clipping of it.
That was an opinion piecesaying you know, the internet is
a fad that has come and gone,and it's pretty much saying that
(18:48):
in a year or two, no one willeven care about the internet
anymore.
And it's like wow, how wrongwere you?
And I feel like that's thesituation we're in with AI right
now.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Let me tell you one thing I am interested in
following is that because ituses natural language, models it
writes pretty smoothly, and oneof the things that I heard
someone say in this conferencewhere we talked about AI was
you're going to have to be ableto write better than a robot if
you want to have a job that hasany kind of writing involved,
(19:20):
and there are a lot of jobs thathave that Lawyers anybody who
writes any kind of marketingmaterials or so I disagree.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
There I do agree For a long time.
Automation is not a new thing.
We've been automating away jobsfor a long time and what always
happens is you start at theleast human required, like jobs
with AI.
The stuff that will getautomated away is stuff like
writing your rubrics right,Stuff like writing boring
paperwork and files and formsand all that kind of stuff.
(19:52):
That stuff will get automatedaway.
Some receptionists might needto be worried.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
A lot of reception.
There's a lot of sort of clerklevel jobs that may be lost,
which is of concern, but goahead.
I'm not disagreeing with youyet.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
And that always happens, but I think that's part
of the human species evolving.
As we evolve these jobs, we canautomate that away and those
people who are receptionists cannow go into other positions
when, for example, ai now hasopened up a job position that is
growing of people who know howto properly prompt AI, as you
(20:30):
were saying.
That's why I want to returnback to this concept that I'm
seeing everywhere.
Is this the death of thinking?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I don't think it is either.
I don't think it's a death ofthinking, but I think it could
be a way that students couldavoid the hard work of thinking.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
I think it is a way in which the students' hard
thinking will shift from what itwas and become more AI
influenced.
So, for your example, forwriting the paper, the Iliad,
instead of their criticalthinking about how do I come up
with an argument for the Iliad,it's how do I utilize this tool?
(21:08):
Because AI is a tool.
We agree that the criticalthinking is how do I use this
tool best to give me the bestprompts to run with and then
from there, how do I best promptthis tool?
How do I best utilize this tool?
It's the same with thecalculator I press the right
button to do the equations.
How do I use this tool best tocreate the structure of this
(21:30):
essay?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
But again okay.
So if you're to say, okay, AIrobot, tell me what are some of
the most interesting things thathave been said about the Iliad.
Now, first of all, that'scluing you into the corpus of
Western thought and Easternthought about this great work,
(21:52):
and so it's saving you the timeof reading 15 articles about it.
And then, once you find the whatare some of the most
interesting things that havebeen said, then if your
intellect grabs, hold, okay, Ithink that one's interesting.
Then there's an opportunity todevelop that Now you could, of
course, the next step would beokay.
So I thought the fourth thingyou said was the most
(22:14):
interesting.
Tell me what's been said aboutthat, and that will save you the
trouble learning how toresearch, although the AI
developer told us don't alwaysget it right.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
No, because it's a yeah, it's a conversation model,
it's not a search engine.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yep, and sometimes they just make stuff up
Apparently and there'shallucinations and all these
different things in it.
But so I think we're not toofar apart, Nathan, in the sense
that.
But here's the difference.
I know how to think critically.
I have been trained without amachine to teach me how to do
all these things.
We've got to keep teachingyoung people how to think
(22:53):
critically and how to do theirown research and do a lot of
things, because, although I willtell you I haven't done my own
math in years, I use mycalculator all the time.
But I know medical doctors who Ihope they're doing some of
their own math.
You know they're calculating orpharmacists are calculating the
number of millisumthings ofthis drug that's going to go
(23:14):
into my husband's body.
But anyway, what are youworried about?
Speaker 3 (23:18):
With AI?
I'm worried.
What am I worried about with AI?
I'm not sure that I would usethe word worried.
I think I'm excited.
If I had to say there was aconcern, my concern would be
that education as a whole and,of course, higher ed, because
for some reason higher ed seemsto be the slowest moving machine
(23:38):
.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Oh yes, although we've moved pretty fast into
being able to use online stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I will definitely, especially UT Tyler.
I will give them their rosesthat they have embraced the
evolution of technology.
I mean, look at what we'redoing right now Podcasting.
You know how the College ofArts and Sciences has embraced
podcasting so much.
So I will definitely give themtheir roses.
If I were to have a concern, itwould be that we don't evolve
(24:02):
and embrace this change Because,again, I don't think critical
thinking is going away.
I think that getting the skillsof critical thinking is now
going to come from a differentplace in the process and I think
that our current form ofeducation and testing and
grading does not cater to thatpart of the critical thinking
(24:27):
and getting it from that area.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
I remember John Stuart Mill, who was a very
famous 19th century philosopher,who was the provost of St
Andrews University, and he wasresponding in his opening
address to arguments at thattime for helping students to
become better doctors, lawyersand businessmen, and he said
help to make them betterthinkers and better men, and
(24:52):
they will make themselves betterdoctors, lawyers and
businessmen and we get you topartly two of the jobs of higher
education which a lot of peopleforget about, which is
character building and mindbuilding.
We know that a lot of kids allthey want to do is get as much
of college done in high schoolas possible.
Get on straight to their career.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I think we have to get students to stop thinking in
the mindset of checklists.
Yeah, and we do it since pre-K.
It's this checklist, it'severything, and it's checklists
inside of bigger checklists,inside of bigger checklists,
where every assignment is achecklist, every grade is a
checklist, every year is achecklist.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
And in college it's the checklist of.
You've got to get the corecurriculum done and you pick
your major.
You've got a certain number ofcourses that you have to
checklist in the major.
You have to have a minor, butyou've got to think broader than
that.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
You have to think and I love the terminology soft
skills, because that's reallywhat this is about.
It's about developing thesesoft skills and what I was
hoping you would get into when Iasked your advice to college
students that might want to usechatGBT.
In my opinion, you might beable to get away with it.
Maybe you won't, I don't know.
I personally haven't tried,because I think that you should
(26:07):
want to take the courseseriously, not because you care
about English or that'simportant to you or whatever.
Hopefully you do, I'm sure youhope the students do but because
of the soft skills that itteaches you.
It teaches you discipline,which I think, if there's
anything that we're losing, itmay not be critical thinking, it
may be discipline, and it's notjust because it's
(26:27):
self-discipline.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
And self-discipline and the ability to stay on task,
given though it's boring.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yeah, to see something through, to follow out
a task, just because.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I think I shared with you Chickering and Risers,
Seven Vectors, yeah, and I don'tknow that there's any other
time and place in a person'slife except from about 17 to
about 22 or 3, when you reallyhave the freedom to work on
those things without paying aterrible price.
And while I absolutely get itthat people are spending very
(27:01):
high numbers of dollars on aneducation, there's some things
you cannot put a dollar price on, but they make all the
difference in the world in yourbeing hired If you are
detectable as a person who hasthese sorts of cultural and
character traits.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, these soft skills.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, and column soft skills.
Some of them are pretty hardlike planning is pretty hard and
being a good team member ispretty hard but I think we're on
the same page.
Now here's the thing I hopewe're not gonna get to the point
where we have nothing but fullscale AI cheating all semester.
I'm trying to createassignments that one will make
(27:44):
it hard to complete withoutdoing your own work, because
it's my job to make sure youlearn how to do that work.
If in my class you never have tothink hard, you never have to
write clearly, you never have tomake a good argument, then
they're not paying me.
They shouldn't pay me If Ican't hold you to a standard
there.
Now, again, I tell you honestly, nathan, I rely upon my
(28:08):
relationship with students forthat to be the case.
I tell them I don't want you tobe dishonest.
I want you to do the hard work.
I'll make it possible for youto do it and I'll make it
possible for you to believe youcan get there.
And another whole big part ofthis conference that came from
we're talking about AI was we'retalking about classrooms of
care and how many facultymembers treat their students
(28:33):
with the kind of respect youreally would like to be treated.
It's important I want every oneof my students to know that I
really care that you do well inthis class, that you get the
work done and you feel confident, and I think that cheating
partly comes from students whodon't feel cared about.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
I would agree.
I would agree.
Let me ask you this about AI.
Is AI the new calculator,specifically chat GBT?
Is that to English and writingand critical thinking, what a
calculator was to math?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Mathematics?
Probably yeah, although ofcourse I didn't take higher math
myself.
But I'm guessing it isn'tprobably as powerful as a
calculator.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Interesting but it could get there, do you think?
I don't know, I don't know.
I wonder if there's potential,in the same way that the
introduction of a calculatorinto a classroom shifted the
focus of math classes and mathcurriculum from more basic level
math into a deeper, and I'mwondering if AI doesn't do that
(29:40):
for us with English writing andcritical thinking.
I'm wondering if it doesn'tjust evolve the curriculum into
requiring us to dive a lotdeeper and get a lot heavier
into what it means to write.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
That's an interesting perspective, and it could very
well be that, instead of havingto read 15 articles, it tells
you what the 15 articles said,and so you can step on the
shoulders of that and go to anext level.
That could very well be theonly I think the only
restriction there is.
Just I don't know that chat GBTcan read all the articles about
(30:17):
the British Romantic period andhave them all in there, but I
guess one day they will.
I guess one day everything willbe fed into this great robot
brain in the sky and I won'thave to do a Google search, or
right now we have tools likeJSTOR.
It's the thing that searchesfor all the articles on
Coleridge's, the writing of theancient mariner, and you can
(30:38):
sort it by which language thearticles were written in and
when they were written, andstuff like that.
That's a skill, a soft skillthat you might call it actually
more of a professional skillthat we teach is how to search,
define stuff.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Circle back to the lead question is using AI in
higher ed unethical?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
The answer is yes, depends on how you use it.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Depends on how you use it, and we'll see.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, we'll see, and my advice to students and
professors is spend the nextcouple months, learn it about it
and then talk about it openlywith each other, so that we can
all be on the same page.
Let's not make a big fight overit.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Let's make it a community effort and maybe, if
you're a student and you'reconsidering using AI to cheat,
realize that it's not as muchthe information or the A, the
grade that's important.
It's the self-discipline, it'sthe critical thinking.
Those are the skills thatyou're getting from this
(31:43):
assignment.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And if that's the way you get your A's, I don't
reckon you'll ever be very proudof them.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
You probably won't be very proud of them and it'll
probably catch up to yousomewhere.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Oh, it always does, it always does.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
It always does.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
And I remember years ago it was real interesting I
had a graduate student.
By the time they get to be agraduate student, you think
they're pretty solid and she wasa real experience.
Grown up and bless her heart,she did plagiarize on a paper
and I talked to her about it andit was a real turning point in
her life, the way we talkedabout it and what happened and
(32:15):
she ended up going on to be alinguistics professor herself.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah, and every now and then I get a note from her
saying I'm glad we had that talkBecause small dishonesties out
of emotional trouble, and that'swhere it came from.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
And here's an anecdote for someone that didn't
get turned around there was avaledictorian a couple years
ahead of me at my high schoolwho cheated all through high
school and was known among thestudents, the kids, all knew.
I was kind of proud of how goodthey were at cheating, went off
to college and I knew throughother friends who went to that
(32:50):
same college that they cheated,and very proudly cheated,
through all of college andsomehow they made it through all
of that without getting caughtor any major repercussions.
But what happened was when theygot out into the real world and
were ready to start a career inthis field that they supposedly
spent four years studying, theyhad no idea what they were
(33:11):
doing.
They got fired and they movedback in with their parents
because they have this littlepiece of paper that says college
graduate.
But they didn't get anythingother than the piece of paper
and now they're not able to havethe life that they want to have
because they cheated througheverything.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
And that's a mistake writ large.
It always does catch up withyou Somewhere sometime it's
karma.
So there you go.
Good luck with all of this AIstuff.
Huh, it's going to beinteresting fall.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, it's something to watch, and that's as scary as
exciting.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, new doesn't have to be bad, does it?
Speaker 3 (33:44):
No, it doesn't, as long as we embrace it, and
that's how I feel about it.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
And inter-transparent and talking about it together.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah, open dialogue.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
All righty.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
This has been the Ask Dr Ross podcast.
Close it out.
If you have any questionsfurther questions about AI or
anything about higher ed,college or what the experience
is like getting ready for it,you can ask us on our email.
It's adrquestions at gmailcom.
We'd love to answer them.
(34:12):
Sure, would Talk to you guys.
Thanks for listening.
Stay tuned to the Ask Dr Ross podcast.
It's created to give you infoto succeed at college.
Our hosts are highly qualified.
Dr Catherine Ross is a memberof the University of Texas
Systems Academy of DistinguishedTeachers.
She's also a popular professorof 19th century English
literature.
Her co-host and multimediaeditor, nathan Witt, provides a
(00:26):
student perspective.
Ask Dr Ross is a communityservice of the University of
Texas at Tanya.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hi, I'm Catherine Ross, and this is a podcast for
parents, students in school whoare thinking about going to
college, college students whoare already here, adults who are
thinking of maybe going back tocollege and really anyone who
wants to know more about whatlife in colleges and
universities is like today inthe US of A.
I'm here with my friend, nathanWitt, who's a student here.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
If you'd like to ask Dr Ross a question, you can
email us atADRquestionsatgmailcom.
Today we're going to talk aboutall things AI or artificial
intelligence.
So the big question is is AIethical in college?
But also, how is AI going toinfluence the next couple of
(01:21):
years?
Dr Ross, you and I agree thatit's not going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
It's here for sure to stay, just like computers and
cell phones and calculators.
I think that we want toconsider AI a tool, and we want
to remember, too, that guess whocreated it?
A bunch of college students atPrinceton, and I had the
occasion last week to sit in ona session where one of the
(01:46):
creators of chat, gpt, thisyoung recent Princeton graduate,
was talking to a bunch ofeducators about his tool and
what he hopes to do.
One of the things I find veryinteresting is he's very
concerned that it be usedhonorably and responsibly as
well.
Now, I've been playing with itfor a while I don't know if you
have too, of course.
(02:07):
Yeah, the first thing I did wasI just threw in some things like
tell me about CharlotteBronte's novel Jane Eyre,
something I teach, just to seeif it brought me up some
responsible information.
Then a little while later Iread I guess it was an editorial
in something like the New YorkTimes by a student at Columbia
who was using it and he saidlook folks, you have no idea how
(02:29):
we're using it.
What he told us was that wedon't just have it write our
papers for us, we have it do.
Here's where we get into theissue that I think most of us
who are educators are mostconcerned about is AI going to
cause the end of criticalthinking?
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Well.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Listen to what he did , to see how he uses AI, to
maybe do his critical thinkingfor him, but also to help him.
What he told us he does is hesays okay.
So for example I don't rememberif this is precise example used
, but it's the sort of thing.
Let's say you asked me to writean argument at Vessay about
(03:07):
some aspect of the Iliad.
I won't just say write me theessay.
The student said I will ask itto give me 10 arguments that can
be made about the Iliad, butthey don't stop there.
Then he says then when I pickone, let's say I pick number
three.
Now chat GPT, give me anoutline for this essay on
argument number three and thenI'll plug in all the facts.
(03:29):
The good news on that is thatthey do the factual work.
What's the bad news?
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, like you said, a lot of the critical thinking,
a lot of the decision making iseased.
I wouldn't say taken away fromthe student, but yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
So he's anxious.
I think what he's saying ishe's anxious about being able to
make an argument, and that'swhere educators have to come in.
We've got to help them learnhow to make arguments, but then
to find the crux where you couldsay a pro or a con about this
particular part of the greatpoem, but then also organizing
your thinking about it.
(04:02):
That's another part of criticalthinking.
So I was really delighted tohear the details of what he did,
and then he went on to say hethought two things.
One is that faculty need to nolonger give written tests.
Your tests should be oral tests, especially if we're doing
(04:22):
online classes, because it's soeasy for students to assemble
additional information when theydo that.
But the other thing hechallenges to do, which is to
rethink the way we teach, andwe've been having to do that for
a long time, anyway, thanks toonline education.
So I'll stop there for a minuteand hear what you're thinking
about.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I want to ask you the big, bold question, which I
think will probably be thecaption of this episode Is using
AI in higher ed unethical?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Not necessarily.
It depends on how you use it.
Before AI came along, I starteddoing something which got me
into trouble with some of mycolleagues.
I started using course heroesonline learning resources with
my students Because I knew mystudents were going to look for
these things anyway and I was inan academic advisory position
with this company called CourseHero, which has an incredible
(05:14):
amount of resources for students.
And, by the way, course Herowas created again by a student
who needed help and he wentonline and he started getting
friends to help him.
And a lot of academics think, oh, these online programs are just
, they just invite students tocheat and, of course, students
(05:36):
can do that.
But what I've found is thatthere's a lot of really useful
stuff on there that can be usedpartly by teachers or high
school teachers, as well asuniversity professors at the
sort of lower levels, at leastin literature.
This is the area I'm familiarwith.
But I started having curatingtheir site and sending my
students to it intentionally andsaying look, and I'll just tell
(05:58):
you real briefly, when youstudy a novel, you really need
to read it a couple of times toreally get what's going on if
you're studying it.
As a literary scholar and whohas time to read a novel twice
right.
And so what I found, of course,here is they had not only Plot
Summary the whole novel but theyhad chapter by chapter Plot
Summary.
And so what I'd do is I gavethat to my students that time,
said read the Plot Summary,you're going to know the story
(06:20):
before you start reading it.
But also it helps to center you.
So these are difficult textsand if you read a modern
American language version of thePlot Summary of a chapter, that
was demanding and then so youknow what you're looking for,
then you read it in the original.
It actually helps them study itbetter.
I found it was useful to havethese detailed Plot Summaries
(06:43):
available to me to remind mewhere we want to see, where this
is.
Week seven we're in chapter 14,or is it 15, which chapter is
that?
And so I'd use that to promptmy memory.
So I was already using that andI wrote an article about it
which the Times Higher EducationOnline Magazine published.
I think I called it a map and acompass and I said look, the
(07:04):
map of the novel is the PlotSummary, and then I give the
students a compass, which is aseries of guiding questions.
Anyway, let's get to the realdeal.
Are they cheating?
Of course, students going tocheat.
Unfortunately, a lot of students, especially in courses that
they have to take, like arequired course, where they
don't really care much about it.
(07:24):
They have to take it.
They don't care so much aboutreally doing the deal as they do
about just getting through.
And I try to talk to mystudents in those classes.
I always, by the way, I think Itold you this I always teach
core classes because I thinkthat's where students learn how
to be students, and so I alsoget a lot of students who don't
want to be in English majors fora million bucks, but with what
(07:46):
I teach it, with a lot of reallyvaluable skills, and that's
what I emphasize to them isyou're building skills.
I'm not trying to make it inEnglish major.
I want you to learn how to be areader and a person who knows.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I agree with you with the ethics question.
It's this gray area because itreally depends on how you use it
.
I like when you described it asa tool, when you described AI
as a tool and I agree with thatyou kind of likened it to a
calculator or something likethat, and I think that's the
approach that we have to havewith it is, now that we have
(08:17):
this tool, that's utilize it andalso, yeah, you probably have
to shift.
I'm sure when calculators cameout and became widely available,
the math curriculum probablychanged a lot.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And teachers are saying you cannot bring a
calculator to class and that'scheating and that's
irresponsible and dishonest.
And to get to the cheatingissue students come to college,
it's their time, it's theirmoney and if that's the way
they're going to do it, who arethey cheating?
Cheating themselves or robbingthemselves of an opportunity.
(08:52):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
I think and this is where I have probably an opinion
you won't agree with as aprofessor, because I think that
the objective and I thinkcheating for a core class that
you just have to take or a majorrequirement that you don't
really care about, it's notreally for your field of
business that you want to gointo and cheating for your
(09:16):
career classes are two differentthings, because I think the
system we have created is one inwhich we say, when you all boil
it down, objective is A Right,get an A.
Objective is get an A Right.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
No objective is learn skills that will get you the A
Should be.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
That should be the case.
That should be the case, drRoss, and we definitely agree on
that.
But I think I hope that we canagree that in the current system
of not just higher ed butschool in general in America,
you should be focused onactually learning the knowledge.
But the system we have built isaround getting the grades.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Oh, about the grades, getting the?
Speaker 3 (09:57):
grades.
Yeah, I think that there'ssomething to say about students
who cheat in core classes orclasses that don't go towards
their career.
Maybe they're cheatingthemselves, but also maybe they
are trying to get that objectiveby any means, which means
sometimes they learn to thinkoutside the box.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, and I will add this this is one of the reasons
why I encourage students to useonline things, because I can't
teach you everything in class.
You have to teach yourself, youhave to learn to teach yourself
, you have to learn to findanswers, you have to learn to
teach each other, and so Iencourage them to be resourceful
and creative about findingsources, because if you've left
(10:39):
the class, you still don'tunderstand what I thought I
taught you then who's on that?
Who's that on?
That's on me.
That was my error, and I willadd this if a student feels as
though the only way they can dowell in a class is by cheating,
that's also on the professor.
We have got to create classesthat invite students to want to
(11:01):
do the work, to see the purposeof it, and this is one of my
biggest.
I'm often invited to giveorientation to new faculty and I
always say to them especiallyif they're teaching the lower
division classes 17, 18, or even19-year-old student doesn't
know why you have to take acourse in rhetoric, why you have
(11:22):
to take a course in politicalscience and why you have to take
a course in natural sciences.
They just think those are thingsthat we've thrown in your way
and what we've got to do is say,okay, now I know you want to be
a digital design person, or Iknow you want to be an
accountant and you do notunderstand why in the world you
need to study Byron's poetry.
But I'm going to show you why.
(11:42):
Studying in this field andlearning these particular skills
about learning to look fordetails, learning to notice that
there's a context in whichsomething was created, knowing
that there's a certain waycertain things are written all
of those are transferable skillsto every other field.
If they know why it's important, if they know a lot of kids
that have never made an A inEnglish before in their lives
(12:03):
make A's in my classes, butguess what?
I didn't give them that grade.
They earned it because I gotthem to see why it mattered.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
Yeah, well, and you added excitement.
I think that's one thing that Iwish we had for more college
professors is your excitementfor the subject, because I think
that really does transfer tothe student.
I know in my personalexperience as an example, like
when a teacher is excited abouta subject, it doesn't matter
what the subject is, it gives meexcitement, and so there's that
(12:33):
.
I think if you let yourpersonality show, don't be this
like, yeah, figurine of aprofessor and you don't have any
personality and I'm just hereto read you the book and
whatever which is why, when wesuddenly start using chat, gpt
and robots to do our teachingfor us, I get really worried.
I don't know it's a bigconversation of, and I don't
(12:53):
know if you've considered it of.
Can you tell that something waswritten by chat GPT or not?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
yes and no.
I used to always be able totell really easily if something
just didn't sound like thenatural flow of a student's work
.
Yeah, recently I'm pretty surethere was a student who used
chat GPT on a final paper frommy class, wow, and I didn't
realize it until too late andI'll tell you I'm not sure.
(13:19):
And one of the things that thisfella at Princeton who created
chat to be GPT is working on itand several they've already
created some engines that canhelp to detect it.
Yeah, I tell you what I'm notreal interested in detecting it
because that makes me the policeperson.
I want students to not want tocheat.
(13:40):
I want to teach students how touse it, just like I teach them
how to use the research lab andI use the librarians a lot and
they help them learn how to dostuff.
One of the things thisconference.
I just went to one of theworkshops.
The leader of it said okay, Iwant all the faculty members in
this room to pull up your one ofyour paper assignments and ask
chat GPT to create a rubric forit.
(14:01):
And you know the rubric isthat's the thing we used to
score a paper and they're reallysometimes very painful to
create and we have to discernthe difference between it was C
and is C plus and to be minus,and detailing what you're
looking for.
And I thought that's aninteresting request, and so I
typed in this term paper thatI've got my students getting
ready to do, and it came up witha pretty credible rubric.
(14:24):
Yeah, and I was going wow, thatjust saved me an hour of work.
Yeah, now I'm not going to useit exactly as it is, because I
want to refine it, I want todefine it, make it better, but
it saved me time yes and anotherthing is just like I gave
students here's the link to gosee the the course hero plot
summary.
So you know the plot summary.
I still require my students toread the book and I have ways to
(14:45):
make sure they do.
I'm thinking that what I'mgoing to do this year is I'm
gonna just abruptly come to thepoint, talk about it with
freshmen all the way up toseniors and grad students and
say here's what I know we can do.
Yeah, and here's some of thetemptations.
I hope you won't do that.
And the truth is, nathan, theyare adults, they're not high
(15:09):
school kids, and if his child inhigh school gets in trouble in
college, you could actually geta zero and f.
It's a pretty big, high priceto pay, and so my hope is that
increasingly, students areself-monitoring.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Yeah, you do have to be careful In high school and F
is an F.
In college, an F or a zeromight mean your scholarship.
It might cost you significantlymore than it would in high
school.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
It's going to keep you out of grad school.
If a graduate student's schoolsees that you made an F and it
came from dishonesty, you canforget it.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Certainly, but keeping in mind that this
podcast is directed to incomingcollege students and maybe
families of those incomingcollege students.
As a professor, what do you sayto incoming students who want
to use chat DBT on theirassignments, who feel like they
see it as a tool and they wantto use it?
What do you say to them?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Of course, I have no control over students outside of
my own classroom, but I cancertainly make some
recommendations to them, and Iwill say this our Center for
Teaching here and at othersplaces as well, lots of places
right now are gearing up forfaculty to have discussions
about what are we going to doabout AI, how are we going to
use it, how are we going toprotect students from making big
(16:26):
, dumb mistakes with it, butalso how can we use it
positively.
And so I think, as I told you,I'm going to talk to my students
about it and I'm going to talkto them about how I think we can
use it productively and okay.
Another thing I got in thisconference a bunch of us
networked and a professor ofphysics down in Mexico emailed
me and she said so how are youusing it?
(16:47):
I told her, and she doesn'tknow how to use it yet, and I'm
hoping most faculty are gettinggeared up to figure out how to
use it, how it can be usedusefully, like creating a rubric
.
I'll tell you another example Iuse for it.
So this assignment I've got isI'm inviting students to do a
project on a Victorian novelthat I offered them 25 Victorian
novels.
I didn't want to write the plotsummaries for all 25 novels.
(17:08):
Yes, what I did chat GPT giveme a three paragraph plot
summary and I knew them and Iread them and made sure they
were good.
And so I think that if studentsthink they're going to have to
use chat GPT to pass, thenthey're in trouble already, and
if they think that they're goingto trick their teachers,
(17:31):
they're probably wrong too.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
You think so?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Oh yeah, because we're all paying attention.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
And one of the biggest reasons is to quote a
friend of mine in highereducation who said is this the
end of thinking?
Speaker 3 (17:42):
See, I really contest both of the things that you
just said there.
First of all, I think there's aton of ways to in the current
form of education and how we dothings.
I think that there's multipleways to cheat and get away with
it and that you would nevernotice you might be surprised at
how many things we do notice.
I might be, because of course Idon't know, but what I do know,
(18:06):
and I'm not sure we want to runthis, but go ahead, let's keep
talking.
I guess I won't talk about thedifferent ways that we can get
away with it.
No, because I do want toinclude this part because I've
been watching AI very closely,this I've been working with my
hometown school district to dowhat you're saying and can we
help these teachers make it atool and embrace it instead of
(18:27):
trying to reject it and make ita big battle.
I always equate it to theinternet, and it's so funny.
One of my favorite things tolook at in retrospect is this
article from some big papermaybe it was the New York Times,
I don't know.
I just saw a clipping of it.
That was an opinion piecesaying you know, the internet is
a fad that has come and gone,and it's pretty much saying that
(18:48):
in a year or two, no one willeven care about the internet
anymore.
And it's like wow, how wrongwere you?
And I feel like that's thesituation we're in with AI right
now.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Let me tell you one thing I am interested in
following is that because ituses natural language, models it
writes pretty smoothly, and oneof the things that I heard
someone say in this conferencewhere we talked about AI was
you're going to have to be ableto write better than a robot if
you want to have a job that hasany kind of writing involved,
(19:20):
and there are a lot of jobs thathave that Lawyers anybody who
writes any kind of marketingmaterials or so I disagree.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
There I do agree For a long time.
Automation is not a new thing.
We've been automating away jobsfor a long time and what always
happens is you start at theleast human required, like jobs
with AI.
The stuff that will getautomated away is stuff like
writing your rubrics right,Stuff like writing boring
paperwork and files and formsand all that kind of stuff.
(19:52):
That stuff will get automatedaway.
Some receptionists might needto be worried.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
A lot of reception.
There's a lot of sort of clerklevel jobs that may be lost,
which is of concern, but goahead.
I'm not disagreeing with youyet.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
And that always happens, but I think that's part
of the human species evolving.
As we evolve these jobs, we canautomate that away and those
people who are receptionists cannow go into other positions
when, for example, ai now hasopened up a job position that is
growing of people who know howto properly prompt AI, as you
(20:30):
were saying.
That's why I want to returnback to this concept that I'm
seeing everywhere.
Is this the death of thinking?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I don't think it is either.
I don't think it's a death ofthinking, but I think it could
be a way that students couldavoid the hard work of thinking.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
I think it is a way in which the students' hard
thinking will shift from what itwas and become more AI
influenced.
So, for your example, forwriting the paper, the Iliad,
instead of their criticalthinking about how do I come up
with an argument for the Iliad,it's how do I utilize this tool?
(21:08):
Because AI is a tool.
We agree that the criticalthinking is how do I use this
tool best to give me the bestprompts to run with and then
from there, how do I best promptthis tool?
How do I best utilize this tool?
It's the same with thecalculator I press the right
button to do the equations.
How do I use this tool best tocreate the structure of this
(21:30):
essay?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
But again okay.
So if you're to say, okay, AIrobot, tell me what are some of
the most interesting things thathave been said about the Iliad.
Now, first of all, that'scluing you into the corpus of
Western thought and Easternthought about this great work,
(21:52):
and so it's saving you the timeof reading 15 articles about it.
And then, once you find the whatare some of the most
interesting things that havebeen said, then if your
intellect grabs, hold, okay, Ithink that one's interesting.
Then there's an opportunity todevelop that Now you could, of
course, the next step would beokay.
So I thought the fourth thingyou said was the most
(22:14):
interesting.
Tell me what's been said aboutthat, and that will save you the
trouble learning how toresearch, although the AI
developer told us don't alwaysget it right.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
No, because it's a yeah, it's a conversation model,
it's not a search engine.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yep, and sometimes they just make stuff up
Apparently and there'shallucinations and all these
different things in it.
But so I think we're not toofar apart, Nathan, in the sense
that.
But here's the difference.
I know how to think critically.
I have been trained without amachine to teach me how to do
all these things.
We've got to keep teachingyoung people how to think
(22:53):
critically and how to do theirown research and do a lot of
things, because, although I willtell you I haven't done my own
math in years, I use mycalculator all the time.
But I know medical doctors who Ihope they're doing some of
their own math.
You know they're calculating orpharmacists are calculating the
number of millisumthings ofthis drug that's going to go
(23:14):
into my husband's body.
But anyway, what are youworried about?
Speaker 3 (23:18):
With AI?
I'm worried.
What am I worried about with AI?
I'm not sure that I would usethe word worried.
I think I'm excited.
If I had to say there was aconcern, my concern would be
that education as a whole and,of course, higher ed, because
for some reason higher ed seemsto be the slowest moving machine
(23:38):
.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Oh yes, although we've moved pretty fast into
being able to use online stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I will definitely, especially UT Tyler.
I will give them their rosesthat they have embraced the
evolution of technology.
I mean, look at what we'redoing right now Podcasting.
You know how the College ofArts and Sciences has embraced
podcasting so much.
So I will definitely give themtheir roses.
If I were to have a concern, itwould be that we don't evolve
(24:02):
and embrace this change Because,again, I don't think critical
thinking is going away.
I think that getting the skillsof critical thinking is now
going to come from a differentplace in the process and I think
that our current form ofeducation and testing and
grading does not cater to thatpart of the critical thinking
(24:27):
and getting it from that area.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
I remember John Stuart Mill, who was a very
famous 19th century philosopher,who was the provost of St
Andrews University, and he wasresponding in his opening
address to arguments at thattime for helping students to
become better doctors, lawyersand businessmen, and he said
help to make them betterthinkers and better men, and
(24:52):
they will make themselves betterdoctors, lawyers and
businessmen and we get you topartly two of the jobs of higher
education which a lot of peopleforget about, which is
character building and mindbuilding.
We know that a lot of kids allthey want to do is get as much
of college done in high schoolas possible.
Get on straight to their career.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I think we have to get students to stop thinking in
the mindset of checklists.
Yeah, and we do it since pre-K.
It's this checklist, it'severything, and it's checklists
inside of bigger checklists,inside of bigger checklists,
where every assignment is achecklist, every grade is a
checklist, every year is achecklist.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
And in college it's the checklist of.
You've got to get the corecurriculum done and you pick
your major.
You've got a certain number ofcourses that you have to
checklist in the major.
You have to have a minor, butyou've got to think broader than
that.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
You have to think and I love the terminology soft
skills, because that's reallywhat this is about.
It's about developing thesesoft skills and what I was
hoping you would get into when Iasked your advice to college
students that might want to usechatGBT.
In my opinion, you might beable to get away with it.
Maybe you won't, I don't know.
I personally haven't tried,because I think that you should
(26:07):
want to take the courseseriously, not because you care
about English or that'simportant to you or whatever.
Hopefully you do, I'm sure youhope the students do but because
of the soft skills that itteaches you.
It teaches you discipline,which I think, if there's
anything that we're losing, itmay not be critical thinking, it
may be discipline, and it's notjust because it's
(26:27):
self-discipline.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
And self-discipline and the ability to stay on task,
given though it's boring.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yeah, to see something through, to follow out
a task, just because.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
I think I shared with you Chickering and Risers,
Seven Vectors, yeah, and I don'tknow that there's any other
time and place in a person'slife except from about 17 to
about 22 or 3, when you reallyhave the freedom to work on
those things without paying aterrible price.
And while I absolutely get itthat people are spending very
(27:01):
high numbers of dollars on aneducation, there's some things
you cannot put a dollar price on, but they make all the
difference in the world in yourbeing hired If you are
detectable as a person who hasthese sorts of cultural and
character traits.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, these soft skills.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, and column soft skills.
Some of them are pretty hardlike planning is pretty hard and
being a good team member ispretty hard but I think we're on
the same page.
Now here's the thing I hopewe're not gonna get to the point
where we have nothing but fullscale AI cheating all semester.
I'm trying to createassignments that one will make
(27:44):
it hard to complete withoutdoing your own work, because
it's my job to make sure youlearn how to do that work.
If in my class you never have tothink hard, you never have to
write clearly, you never have tomake a good argument, then
they're not paying me.
They shouldn't pay me If Ican't hold you to a standard
there.
Now, again, I tell you honestly, nathan, I rely upon my
(28:08):
relationship with students forthat to be the case.
I tell them I don't want you tobe dishonest.
I want you to do the hard work.
I'll make it possible for youto do it and I'll make it
possible for you to believe youcan get there.
And another whole big part ofthis conference that came from
we're talking about AI was we'retalking about classrooms of
care and how many facultymembers treat their students
(28:33):
with the kind of respect youreally would like to be treated.
It's important I want every oneof my students to know that I
really care that you do well inthis class, that you get the
work done and you feel confident, and I think that cheating
partly comes from students whodon't feel cared about.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
I would agree.
I would agree.
Let me ask you this about AI.
Is AI the new calculator,specifically chat GBT?
Is that to English and writingand critical thinking, what a
calculator was to math?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Mathematics?
Probably yeah, although ofcourse I didn't take higher math
myself.
But I'm guessing it isn'tprobably as powerful as a
calculator.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Interesting but it could get there, do you think?
I don't know, I don't know.
I wonder if there's potential,in the same way that the
introduction of a calculatorinto a classroom shifted the
focus of math classes and mathcurriculum from more basic level
math into a deeper, and I'mwondering if AI doesn't do that
(29:40):
for us with English writing andcritical thinking.
I'm wondering if it doesn'tjust evolve the curriculum into
requiring us to dive a lotdeeper and get a lot heavier
into what it means to write.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
That's an interesting perspective, and it could very
well be that, instead of havingto read 15 articles, it tells
you what the 15 articles said,and so you can step on the
shoulders of that and go to anext level.
That could very well be theonly I think the only
restriction there is.
Just I don't know that chat GBTcan read all the articles about
(30:17):
the British Romantic period andhave them all in there, but I
guess one day they will.
I guess one day everything willbe fed into this great robot
brain in the sky and I won'thave to do a Google search, or
right now we have tools likeJSTOR.
It's the thing that searchesfor all the articles on
Coleridge's, the writing of theancient mariner, and you can
(30:38):
sort it by which language thearticles were written in and
when they were written, andstuff like that.
That's a skill, a soft skillthat you might call it actually
more of a professional skillthat we teach is how to search,
define stuff.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Circle back to the lead question is using AI in
higher ed unethical?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
The answer is yes, depends on how you use it.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Depends on how you use it, and we'll see.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, we'll see, and my advice to students and
professors is spend the nextcouple months, learn it about it
and then talk about it openlywith each other, so that we can
all be on the same page.
Let's not make a big fight overit.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Let's make it a community effort and maybe, if
you're a student and you'reconsidering using AI to cheat,
realize that it's not as muchthe information or the A, the
grade that's important.
It's the self-discipline, it'sthe critical thinking.
Those are the skills thatyou're getting from this
(31:43):
assignment.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And if that's the way you get your A's, I don't
reckon you'll ever be very proudof them.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
You probably won't be very proud of them and it'll
probably catch up to yousomewhere.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Oh, it always does, it always does.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
It always does.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
And I remember years ago it was real interesting I
had a graduate student.
By the time they get to be agraduate student, you think
they're pretty solid and she wasa real experience.
Grown up and bless her heart,she did plagiarize on a paper
and I talked to her about it andit was a real turning point in
her life, the way we talkedabout it and what happened and
(32:15):
she ended up going on to be alinguistics professor herself.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah, and every now and then I get a note from her
saying I'm glad we had that talkBecause small dishonesties out
of emotional trouble, and that'swhere it came from.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
And here's an anecdote for someone that didn't
get turned around there was avaledictorian a couple years
ahead of me at my high schoolwho cheated all through high
school and was known among thestudents, the kids, all knew.
I was kind of proud of how goodthey were at cheating, went off
to college and I knew throughother friends who went to that
(32:50):
same college that they cheated,and very proudly cheated,
through all of college andsomehow they made it through all
of that without getting caughtor any major repercussions.
But what happened was when theygot out into the real world and
were ready to start a career inthis field that they supposedly
spent four years studying, theyhad no idea what they were
(33:11):
doing.
They got fired and they movedback in with their parents
because they have this littlepiece of paper that says college
graduate.
But they didn't get anythingother than the piece of paper
and now they're not able to havethe life that they want to have
because they cheated througheverything.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
And that's a mistake writ large.
It always does catch up withyou Somewhere sometime it's
karma.
So there you go.
Good luck with all of this AIstuff.
Huh, it's going to beinteresting fall.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, it's something to watch, and that's as scary as
exciting.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, new doesn't have to be bad, does it?
Speaker 3 (33:44):
No, it doesn't, as long as we embrace it, and
that's how I feel about it.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
And inter-transparent and talking about it together.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah, open dialogue.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
All righty.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
This has been the Ask Dr Ross podcast.
Close it out.
If you have any questionsfurther questions about AI or
anything about higher ed,college or what the experience
is like getting ready for it,you can ask us on our email.
It's adrquestions at gmailcom.
We'd love to answer them.
(34:12):
Sure, would Talk to you guys.
Thanks for listening.
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