May 3, 2025 • 59 mins
Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant redefines academic integrity as more than just avoiding cheating—it's cultivating the courage to uphold universal values like honesty, fairness, and respect, even when it's difficult. Her work as Director of the University of California, San Diego Academic Integrity Office and the Triton Testing Center puts her impressive academic scholarship to practical and impactful use.
Check out Dr. Bertram Gallant's latest book (co-authored with David Rettinger) The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching Integrity in the Age of AI
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Hangout Podcast.
I'm your host, david Shoretta.
I hope you enjoy this show and,if you do, please share it with
your friends and family onsocial media and in the real
world.
Come on in and hang out.
Thank you, dr Bertram Galat.
Welcome to the podcast and Ireally appreciate you giving of
(00:24):
your time this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Sure Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I'd like to start where we start in all of these
conversations, which is withyour origin story, where you
come from and how that informswho you are today and what you
do today.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, I come from Canada born and raised, didn't
move to San Diego until the year2000.
And I was 30 at the time, so Iam thoroughly Canadian.
You might at some point hear alittle bit of an accent when I
say out about house or sorry, ora, if I'm feeling very Canadian
, very Canadian.
(01:10):
I guess the short story is Iended up in San Diego because my
husband had been working on theWest Coast, traveling all the
way.
We were from Ontario, canada,so traveling all the way from
Ontario, and we weren't seeingeach other that often.
And I was working at theuniversity that I did my
bachelor's in and I did mymaster's in.
I knew I wanted to work inhigher education, did my
bachelor's in and I did mymaster's in.
I knew I wanted to work inhigher education, still didn't
(01:32):
know quite what I wanted to do,but I knew it was time for my
PhD, and so we decided for me toapply to schools in his
territory so that we couldactually live where he was
working.
And you know, if you're goingto move across the continent
from Ontario, Canada where elseare you?
going to move other than SanDiego, right?
So I ended up at the Universityof San Diego and in a PhD
program in ed studies, slashleadership studies, and I don't
(01:58):
know if you want me to go intothe whole origin story of
academic integrity.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I would love to.
Now we're going to do the nextquestion.
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I love this story.
So I was in my second year, Iwas doing some stuff in the
School of Education and my deansaid to me the dean over in
College of Arts and Scienceneeds a PhD student to help him
with this conference he'sbringing to campus.
I need you to go over and helphim.
I was like, okay, sure.
(02:24):
So I went over to help him.
His name is Patrick Drinan andhe had been dean for like 16
years, I think.
At that time, a politicalscientist by training, and we
talked about this conferencethat he was bringing the Center
for Academic IntegrityConference, and that was fine.
And then we finished thatconversation.
He said what are you doing yourdissertation on?
And I said well, actually I'min a crisis, you know.
(02:46):
And I told him.
I told him I was in a crisisand I wasn't sure.
And and he just looked at meand I do wish his podcast was
visual, because he just lookedat me with this big, huge grin
on his face, like just eyes litup, and said why don't you do it
on academic integrity?
And I said because I neverheard the phrase before today.
So this was 2002, fall 2002.
And so he was just soenthusiastic he had gone to UVA
(03:10):
as an undergrad, which has anhonor code, and he was just
involved in the Center forAcademic Integrity, essentially
since it started in 1990, 92.
And so I relented and I saidwell, if you do an independent
study with me, I'll look intothe literature and the research
and see if there's anythinginteresting there for me.
And my independent study paperturned out to be our first
(03:34):
journal article together.
I joined the board as a gradstudent with the Center for
Academic Integrity.
We hosted that first conferencein 2003, and the rest is
history.
I've been in academic integrityever since.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
So what is academic integrity?
I mean, I think, as youexperienced when he said that to
you, we know what the two wordsare.
Right, yeah, we can break itdown that way, but what does it
really mean?
Because I think about my timein my undergrad.
I did my undergrad on the EastCoast in Maine, so I had a
(04:15):
migratory journey from cold towarm, yes, and I remember there
was this I think it was theJudiciary Board which was this
board you'd get called to if yousomehow were caught cheating.
This is way before this is evenpre-internet, so this is like
whether you forgot to citesomething in your paper and
pretended it was your own idea,but there was never an
(04:38):
explanation to us other thandon't cheat, and if you do, you
might get kicked out of college.
So, like writ large, how do youdefine academic integrity?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Well, the International Center for
Academic Integrity's definitionis what I use.
What we use here at UC SanDiego is the courage to be, to
uphold honesty, fairness,respect, responsibility and
trustworthiness, even when it'sdifficult to do so.
And so you'll notice a couplethings about that definition.
One is not directly related toacademics, so it is really
(05:11):
focused on the integrity pieceof it, and we're intentional
about that.
It's called the FundamentalValues of Academic Integrity,
and my mentor, patrick Drinan,was part of the original
iteration of that back in the90s, and we're intentional about
that because what we're tryingto display or explain to
students is there is nodifference between having
(05:32):
integrity in academics or inyour personal or in your
professional life.
In order for us to have ademocracy, we need to have trust
right.
We can't have democracy withouttrust.
If I go to a car mechanic, adoctor, whoever, I need to be
able to trust that they'retelling me what my car or my
body needs, not just selling mea drug or selling me a car part
(05:54):
even though I don't need itright.
So our whole society is builton this idea that we can trust
each other at least to someextent.
Honesty, respect all of thosevalues are so important, you'll
also notice that they're veryuniversal.
No matter what country you goto around the world, those
values are in the language,those values are considered
(06:17):
important, and we might notprioritize them the same way, we
might not resolve conflictsbetween them in the same way,
depending on our backgrounds,but it's hard to imagine anybody
where they would say, yeah, Iwant a friend who's dishonest
with me, I don't care if I havefriends that lie to me.
(06:37):
That's just not a thing.
And so that's the importantpart.
And so you're right.
Most people think of academicintegrity in the not definition,
not cheating, not plagiarizing,and what we're saying is no,
academic integrity is.
It's an aspiration, it's anactivity, it's a goal.
It's not easy to do.
You have to consciously bethinking about it all the time,
(07:00):
just like you have toconsciously think about what's
the best ethical thing to do asa superintendent, right Like I'm
in a dilemma which optionshould I choose?
And so we're really trying toinculcate in people this idea
that integrity is not acharacter and a lack of
integrity is not a characterflaw.
(07:21):
What's a character flaw ispretending that you don't need
to work on this and the othercharacter flaw is what's a
character flaw is pretendingthat you don't need to work on
this, and the other characterflaw is making a mistake and not
taking accountability for itand choosing to learn and grow
from it.
That's the character flaw, butthe rest of it is very active.
It's very intentional.
It requires a lot ofself-awareness and willingness
(07:44):
to struggle through difficultdecisions.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I love the courage part of that.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That's genius and a complete paradigm shift for me,
mentally and kind of emotionallytoo right To think about that
idea of behaving a certain wayeven when no one's watching.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
That's.
It kind of reminds me of mygrandma.
You know, yeah, you know, hey,don't.
Don't take a cookie from thecookie jar, not because I told
you not to, but because you know.
For whatever reason, you knowit's not the right thing to do.
Nobody's in the house.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
And yes, and we have to sometimes.
We need help with courage.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And so the example I've been using lately is if
you've got a sweet tooth and yetyou're trying to get fit and
healthy, what's one good thingyou should do to start that
journey?
It's not buying the sweet stuffand putting it in your kitchen,
right?
You don't buy it, put it inyour kitchen and then force
yourself to look at it every day, just so you have the courage
(08:54):
to resist it.
And so we we we do as humans,we're flawed and we do need help
to stick with our values, tostick to our goals, to stick
with our goals with integrity.
And so I say the same thing toteachers, right?
We shouldn't say, oh well, it'sthe courage to have integrity,
even though nobody's watching.
(09:15):
Therefore, I'm going to giveyou a homework assignment, and
but I'm going to tell you not touse Chachi PT, because you got
to have the courage not to useit.
No, we've got to scaffold thosethings for people.
So if you're starting yourworkout journey, you just don't
buy the stuff and put in your.
But after a while you lose yoursweet tooth, you're not really
craving it anymore, and so youcan have it in your house for
guests or something like that,and you'll still resist the
(09:37):
temptation to eat it and we have.
So we have to do the same thingfor our kids, for integrity.
We can't just throw them in thewild and say be courageous.
We have to actually set up someboundaries and some guardrails
for them to help them developthat internal motivation to
stick with integrity even whennobody's watching.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
That's a great life hack just in all areas.
I'm going to leapfrog over yourcomments about that.
Our political system needs tooperate correctly, based on
trust.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Well, I said our democracy.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Our democracy.
I take it back, yes, well,given what's happening in the
world, I'm going to alsoleapfrog over that one.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yes, please do we could do many episodes and I'm
sure, as a Canadian, you haveother layers of interpretation
and I just one of my boardmembers is Canadian, and so
we'll, after a board meeting,I'll say, hey, so can I.
Can I get the Canadianperspective on this?
Yeah, it's an interesting, it'san interesting intellectual
(10:39):
experience.
Yes, can you talk to us aboutwhat I'm not even going to say
an average or typical day,because I'd imagine your days
are very, are varied, but whatmight a day look like for you in
the, in this office department,et cetera, that you, that
(11:00):
you've really sounds like, builtover 20 years of your own
research and academicexploration, and then not just
academic but also real-lifeaction, research and people?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
so I run two offices here that I run, both the
Academic Integrity Office andour Triton Testing Center, and
both are focused on integrity,right.
So we only need testing centersreally for degree integrity in
terms of does the student havethe knowledge and abilities
we're assessing for?
And so you need a testingcenter to again create some of
(11:43):
the guardrails around that.
And so the typical day isobviously I do a lot of meetings
with my team.
I've got on the academicintegrity side I'll stick to
that side.
I've got a case management teamand I've got an education team.
So the case management folks andmyself well, the case
management folks deal with allof the allegations of integrity
(12:06):
violations that get reported toour office.
So faculty are required bySenate policy to report any
integrity violations academicintegrity violations to our
office.
So they initiate those cases,they work with the faculty, they
and myself and other people inthe campus do resolution
meetings with students.
So I've spent a lot of timeover the last two and a half
(12:29):
years, as you can imagine,meeting with a lot of students
about Gen AI misuse.
And then we also do a lot ofcorrespondence and run hearings,
as you mentioned earlier.
You know a judicial hearingprocess, although we call them
academic integrity reviewsbecause it's not a legal process
.
So we try to keep legal languageout of there.
(12:50):
And then my educationmanagement team does all of the
preventative education withstudents and faculty.
I do most of the stuff with thefaculty and we have a robust
something I'm super proud of arobust after-education program
we call it.
So two years after startinghere, I created an academic
(13:11):
integrity seminar and recruitedsome students to be peer
educators, and so we reallybelieve in leveraging that
cheating moment as a teachablemoment that we can learn from
our mistakes and our failures,moment that we can learn from
our mistakes and our failures.
And so we do that through ouracademic integrity seminar,
which still exists, which reallyfocuses on teaching students
ethical decision-making skillsand getting some tools in their
(13:33):
toolkit for how to make thatbetter decision next time when
you're under stress and pressure.
But we also have an integritymentorship program which gives
students who are otherwisefacing a suspension for an
integrity violation a chance tobasically prove that they
shouldn't be suspended.
And so they work one-on-onewith a mentor on a particular
goal that they get to choose,and it could be related to work
(13:58):
or life or school that's up tothem.
And so we manage a lot ofone-on-one appointments, a lot
of group appointments.
We have other workshops as well, like a collaborating with
integrity workshop.
So just a robust.
So my day varies.
I had one-on-one meetings withmy staff.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yesterday I gave a presentation in a teaching
assistant class for one of ouracademic departments.
That was an hour and 20 minutes.
I'm recording a lot of podcastslately, but yeah, so it's
varied.
Sounds like a developmentalexperience, right?
We hope so.
Almost as personalized assomeone's own health needs or
financial needs or all theseareas of our lives that if we
(15:02):
resist being intellectually lazyor jump to the knee-jerk
conclusion, we actually see thateach case is really unique and
individualized and we have tosee the human behind it.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Humans.
Our students are human beingsand they are as flawed as we are
.
And we know that human beingsare notoriously bad at long-term
thinking.
We're very short-term thinkers.
We're kind of like what do Ihave to do next or how do I get
my next goal?
We know that our students areobsessed and not their fault
(15:35):
obsessed with their grades.
The school system, from Kthrough 16, has done that to
them.
And we also know that they, likeother humans, will make bad
decisions under stress andpressure.
And I can tell you, thestudents are under a lot of
stress and pressure, whetherthat is self-imposed or
(15:57):
other-imposed, and so it's nowonder that they'll make bad
decisions.
And you know what we know fromexperiential learning theory,
from constructivism theory, thatpeople can actually learn the
most from their own experiencesright.
(16:18):
But if it's a painfulexperience, like getting caught
cheating, lots of times we'llbury our heads in the sand or
we'll rationalize or justify it.
So we don't have to learn fromit, because learning is painful
and so we know we need to helpthem learn from it.
So that's what all thestructure and support is there
for is to help them learn andgrow from it.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
And I'd imagine that at an elite institution like
UCSD.
I don't know what the averageGPA of incoming students is, but
having a daughter who's at anelite college in the Midwest and
knowing what her GPA was inhigh school, especially with AP
(16:52):
and weighted courses, people arerolling into college with four
point somethings which in highschool I was content with a,
three, three and I was good.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, no, I haven't looked it up for this fall, but
in generally speaking, over thelast several years, the GPA of
the average entering freshman islike a 4.2.
It's better than perfect.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
That's right and then that's that mentality of better
than perfect, right?
What was the impact of COVID?
I mean, we know what the impactof COVID was in general on
education institutions, but inyour specific area, did you see
changes in behavior vis-a-visacademic integrity?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
All over the world.
I mean, let's think about thepandemic.
So if you think about, likeMaslow's hierarchy of needs,
right, what's on the bottom?
Security, safety, survival wewere all operating on the bottom
of Maslow's hierarchy of needsduring the pandemic, Every
single one of us.
Right On top of that, you'vestill got these extrinsically
(18:03):
motivated students who just needthe grades, just need the court
pass the course, just need toget the degree.
And then you layer onto thatemergency remote instruction.
So a whole bunch of faculty nowhaving to teach online courses
that they've never taught before.
They don't have time toactually turn them into.
(18:31):
You know well-designed onlinecourses.
They keep everything the same,so the courses kind of maybe
aren't as good as normal.
Then you layer on top of thatall of the temptations and
opportunities available atstudents' disposal for violating
academic integrity.
It was the textbook definitionof a perfect storm, or probably
an imperfect storm.
I would say so, yeah, so allover the world cheating shot up.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
You know, you mentioned we're all human and
you mentioned professors.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
So what role does?
And you just mentioned thedesign of courses and of course
that was a 180 degree swing witha week of notice, pardon me.
So that was a highly atypicalthing that hopefully we'll have
to deal with again in our livesin general.
Does the design of a course,the behavior, attitude, et
(19:29):
cetera, of a professor all ofthose pieces that come together?
How does that impact studentacademic integrity?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Great question.
I'm going to do a shamelessplug of the book that I have out
with my co-author because it'sthe entire focus of our book.
So the Opposite of Cheating.
Teaching for Integrity in theAge of AI.
It is written for instructors,with some advice in there for
institutions like you mustprovide faculty with time,
training and support to do thesethings, unlike our K-12
(20:04):
colleagues, who actually getteacher training on how to teach
.
We know that university facultyin general do not get that.
Their PhDs are focused on howto do research, not how to teach
, and so that's something thatwe need to do better at in
higher ed.
But, to answer your question,directly in the book we go over
all of those things directly inthe book.
(20:29):
We go over all of those things.
Instructor or course effectsare one of the contributing
variables to decisions studentsmake to cheat, and so things
like helping students focus onintrinsic motivation rather than
their extrinsic motivationsright, and so how do you do that
?
Well, you take a look at yourlearning objectives for the
(20:50):
course.
Are they relevant still in theage of AI?
Are they meaningful?
Are they connected to theactivities you're doing in class
and the assessments that you'vedesigned?
Is there not only an implicitconnection, like you've thought
about it, but you've explicitlyexplained to students what the
(21:11):
connection is between everythingthey're doing and the learning
objectives.
It could include flipping yourclassroom right and having
students engage in real-worldproblem-solving, more authentic,
meaningful assessments toincrease their intrinsic
motivation?
Are you doing things to helpdeal with low self-efficacy?
(21:32):
I don't think I can do this, orI don't think I can do it to
the level that I want to do it.
Are you addressing preconceivednotions that girls aren't good
in math or whatever the case maybe, or organic chemistry is
just super hard and most peopleare going to fail Like?
Are you addressing those things?
Are you focused on masteryrather than performance?
(21:54):
If we give students points,well, you get points for
attending, you get points forsubmitting, you get points for
doing this.
They're going to perform foryou, but they won't necessarily
be learning.
So, yeah, a lot of things.
Do you create a sense ofbelonging?
Basically everything thatyou've been taught about what
helps with inclusivity, whathelps with equity, what helps
(22:15):
with a sense of belonging alsohelps with integrity, because
all of that helps with learning.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
It's so interesting.
I remember when my daughter wasin high school.
She was a senior and I've beenan active person, I've been a
runner and all these things.
And so senior year she comes tome and she says, hey, would it
bother you if I ran the slowestmile at my high school ever?
I'm not going to say the nameof the high school, it's a great
high school.
(22:43):
And I said, well, why are youasking me that question?
You know how I am, I'm type A.
I'm like, try to run as fast asyou can.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I said why do you ask me that question?
She said, well, the teachergave us a point system based on
how fast we could run a mile andI already have 99.9% of all the
points I need and I alreadyhave a four point, whatever GPA.
So my friend and I are tryingto set the record for the
(23:12):
slowest mile and still get an Ain the class, right, I'm like
after I got my ego part, I'mlike I can't blame you Because
the teacher, by design, madethat just a transactional yeah,
and it was it.
It completely was divorced fromwhat was, I think, probably the
(23:36):
original intent of kids doingthis mile thing, which I don't
know, it's kind of an odd thingto do in PE anyway, but which
was supposed to be health andfitness and whatever.
And I remember just going outand she graduated with all A's
and she's never going to, youknow, set the world record in
the mile and I don't really care.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, it's such a great story, and so when we say
all of these things, I reallywant to make sure people
listening don't hear blame orcondemnation or guilt.
Right Again, teachers arehumans, so they make the best
choices they can in the momentand it's just important for us
(24:16):
to all be open to kind offeedback and reflection.
Right, and this act ofrevisiting of what we're doing,
because the students we'reteaching today are not the
students that we taught 20 yearsago and so we just had constant
.
It's just a constant revisitingthing and it's exhausting, but
there's no blame here there's.
(24:37):
There's just people trying tomake the best choices and then,
hopefully, learning from them.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Have you had to go through a process of education
and orientation with the faculty?
Because I'd imagine thatthere's a spectrum, age-wise,
experience-wise, generation-wise, among your faculty.
You see it as among the bestand brightest faculty in the
world, including Nobel laureates, and doesn't always mean a
Nobel laureate's a goodprofessor, if they even ever
(25:07):
teach anything.
But that's not the point.
The best and brightest teach inthe UC system, so do you find
them showing up and being likehere?
Here's this case Kid busted inmy class.
You deal with it.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
We have our faculty area is diverse as the rest of
the human population, and so wehave a lot of faculty who really
, really care about studentslearning and including learning
from their mistakes in theirclass.
It's hard not to.
I spend a lot of time helpingfaculty reframe this.
So you typically hear facultysay things like well, I don't
(25:53):
want to deal with cheatingbecause I didn't sign up to be a
police officer, I signed up tobe an educator, Right?
And you probably hear teachers.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
I hear the same thing , yep.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
And so I have spent my career, and I'll probably
spend the rest of my careersaying to faculty great, because
I don't want you to take youreducator hat off.
Actually, I want you to leaveit on.
And what is your job as aneducator?
You have two kind of main tasksin what we're talking about.
In the small sphere that we'retalking about, your task is to
(26:19):
facilitate student learning andto assess student learning.
Right, those are your two jobs,and so when a student cheats,
you can't assess their learning,you can't validate their
learning, and so that's part ofyour educator hat and then also
part of your educator hat.
I hope that you'd want tofacilitate their learning from
(26:39):
this integrity violation, thatyou'll want them to learn from
their mistake.
Just like if they made aspelling mistake or a content
error mistake, you give themfeedback because you want them
to learn from it.
Right, you want them to learnand improve their writing or
improve their chemistryknowledge or whatever.
Why not the same for anintegrity violation?
Why won't we keep that samegrowth mindset?
(27:00):
Perspective of I'm not sayingyou should say awesome, a
student cheated in my class.
Perspective of I'm not sayingyou should say awesome, a
student cheated in my class, butI kind of am.
I'm kind of like awesome, thestudent is now going to have an
amazing learning experience.
Now I can say that to ourfaculty, because we actually
help students learn after theexperience.
On many university campuses andprobably most K-12 schools,
(27:21):
there's not an intentionaleffort to help the student learn
from that mistake, and so thatcan't be said at every place,
but I can say it to my facultyyou can keep your educator hat
on here.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Can you talk to us a bit about this concept of having
other people do your work foryou and now give them credit?
I in my daughter.
My daughter goes to GrinnellCollege in Grinnell, iowa, and
one of the interesting thingsabout their policy is if you
receive input or feedback on apaper or an assignment from
someone who's not a student andit may even actually be from a
(28:05):
fellow student, I don't know,but I remember my daughter sent
me a Google Doc and said hey,I'm going to ask you to weigh in
on my writing and then I'mgoing to also cite you as one of
the contributors to this paper.
And I thought that was a reallyinnovative way of looking at it
, because in the real worldthere's no author who's I mean
maybe a few, but most people arealways collaborating.
(28:27):
You have people you have, uh,thought partners read your stuff
.
Sometimes they get credit,sometimes they don't.
Your, your spouse, all thesedifferent, all these different
people, um, but then it can goover into the line of like I'm
going to pay you what, howevermuch money, to do my work for me
while I'm going out to a party.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
So how do you address that in your work?
Because I'd imagine it shows upin.
The Internet is just repletewith opportunities to pay people
to write your dissertation foryou, if you want.
I don't know how good they are,they're probably not good at
all.
People to write yourdissertation for you, if you
want.
I don't know how good they are,they're probably not good at
all.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
but who knows now, with the ability of some of the
electronic tools that are out,there, yeah, so what you're
talking about at the extreme endof things is what we in the
industry call contract cheating,and I would.
It's hard to estimate, but mycolleagues who have done
research into this estimate itto probably be a multi-billion
dollar industry, internationalindustry, and they are super
(29:34):
good marketers.
So their websites say thingslike get homework, help get
tutoring.
Some of them are very blatantnow where they'll say you've got
better things to do, let uswrite your essay, plagiarism
free, for you um but not only dothey just do that on the
(29:55):
internet, they will actually um,form a discord chat, pretend
that they're in the class and afellow student with you, and
they'll start conversations likehey, hey, everybody, you know
what essay we got coming up.
Does anybody like want help withthat?
And they kind of seducestudents into it because they
think they're just talking toanother student.
(30:16):
The other thing they do is theyget so say you're hiring me to
do your coursework for you.
So say you're hiring me to doyour coursework for you.
You'll give me your login andyour username and password for
logging into the LMS, thelearning management system, and
so I will log in to do your workfor you.
Then I also have access to allthe other students enrolled in
(30:39):
that course, and so I can juststart messaging them and
recruiting more clients.
I can also then, after I'vecheated for you, send you an
email and I've seen these emailsthat says pay me $20,000 or I'm
going to report you to theuniversity.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Oh, so like Extortion , Hating, blackmail or extortion
, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah.
So it's very, very dangerousfor students to engage with
these companies and moststudents don't.
Most students will do it on onepaper and they'll just hire
them to do the paper and they'llsubmit the paper themselves.
But we do have and this is frommy friends, my colleagues in
Australia people in universitiesaround the world who they call
(31:19):
enrolled persons.
They're there for a visa,they're there for financial aid
fraud, they're there for allsorts of reasons, and so they
have no there for all sorts ofreasons, and so they have no
intention of ever doing any workand so always contract cheaters
are doing their entire coursesfor them.
So that's a huge industry, sothat's at the most extreme level
.
I love your story about yourdaughter because and what her
(31:40):
professor is having her do.
So, yes, in the real world weoften collaborate with people
and we don't give them credit onsomething Right.
But if you think about whatwe're trying to do with students
is we're trying to raise theirmetacognition.
They're thinking about theirthinking and how they got to
point Z from point A, soteaching them to be fully aware
(32:03):
and transparent about who helpedthem, who guided them and how
those people, or, in today's age, how ChatGPT helps them and how
it was useful or not useful, Ithink is just good cognitive
development.
It will make them more awarelater when they are in a
workplace and they're workingwith a team.
And for them to say to theirboss when they get a compliment
(32:24):
for something they've done youknow what thanks for that?
Um, my friends, you know, myteammate sarah really helped me
a lot with this and she did this, this and this, and I really
think you should thank her aswell.
Um, and isn't that just a nicersociety as well?
Speaker 1 (32:40):
so I think that's a great thing so you bring up
generative AI and obviously it'sjust exploded.
It's in everything from yourbank to your seems like every
new technology.
This is the anything AI is to2025, what anythingcom was to
(33:02):
2000,.
What it was was petscom,papercom yeah, my company's
worth $20 billion, and it reallywas.
So some of that's going to getsorted out in the wash over time
, but clearly AI is here to stayand will grow and it's for lack
of a better term it's learning.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
And it's becoming agentic.
Yeah, yeah, not right on itsown.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
So I had this before I ask a question.
I just want to kind of givethis example from a recent
experience I had at work.
We were hiring for a positionand the goal was to try to learn
, to at least verify that thecandidates had a basic kind of
writing ability around a payrollposition.
(33:49):
Yeah, you are on payroll, huh.
And so we assigned a writingassignment and they interviewed
and then they took the computerand they did it right there and
we said look, you can use AI ifyou want, just let us know that
you've used it.
Well, all the responses came inpretty similar.
(34:10):
I'm sure everybody used AI,that's okay.
But what we were really tryingto get to which I don't think we
got to through that was abilityto analyze, ability to problem
solve, ability to decide.
You know when's the right timeto send an email as opposed to
picking up the phone to call.
You know, once payroll is wrong, someone's tax deductions are
(34:33):
wrong, someone didn't get theright deduction from their
paycheck, so their kids aren'tcovered by health insurance, and
now their son broke his leg andall.
So that, like ai doesn't get tothat piece, and so I feel just
kind of uneasy about that yeahguys that we gave.
So, in the context of this fastshifting world that we're in,
(34:55):
how does your work address therole of of ai in society?
Knowing that I mean, I'm justgoing to speak for myself I use
it every day in my work.
I use it every day and most ofmy colleagues do, and I'd
imagine at UCSD people are usingit every day and students use
it.
So how do we make sure thatfolks are responsible with it?
(35:19):
But then also, we don't getaway from, as you say,
demonstrating the integrity of adegree that you've worked years
to get.
So when the regents sign offthat so-and-so has a bachelor's
from UCSD, it actually countsfor something.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
It actually means something, not that I can just
push a button, submit.
This is the question of theages right.
So one thing we talk about isthat we have to stop relying so
much on product over process,and we've used things like,
(35:56):
particularly, essays or theresearch paper written work, in
particular, as an artifact thatis, a valid measure of of
student knowledge and abilities.
Um, and I think that artifacthas been defunct for decades
because of contract cheating,because of plagiarism, because
of whatever right.
Um, and yet we were hesitant tomove away from it for for many
(36:20):
good reasons and some not sogood reasons.
And we just have to reallyrethink our learning objectives
and the skills that we wantstudents to develop.
And how can we assess theirprocess?
What is?
Is it really is?
Well, first, how can we assesstheir process?
Maybe I am going to talk to themabout their process, so it's
(36:43):
not just the written assignment,but then I sit down with them
and I say, okay, talk me throughthis, talk me, what's the
choice you made here?
Why'd you make that choice?
Tell me about this sentence.
It's an amazingly craftedsentence.
You know, again, this raisesstudents' metacognition.
They're thinking about theirthinking, and so that that can
only be a good thing.
Or maybe we decide, you knowwhat?
(37:04):
I don't need to know whether mypayroll person can write,
because chat GPT payroll emailsare kind of generic and kind of
templated already, so maybe chatGPT can do that lifting.
What I need to know is what youmentioned earlier Do they have
the critical thinking skills torealize when an email is not as
(37:26):
good as a phone call and thatyou wouldn't measure by writing,
by getting them to writesomething right in a lab class
through a lab report?
Majority of our students are notgoing to become chemists,
they're not going to beproducing lab reports.
Most of them probably won'teven be reading scientific
(37:49):
studies.
Some will, some won't.
And so really thinking abouthow can we assess that
differently?
Now, having said that, contextmatters.
The situational factors of yourclassroom matters.
If you have 400 students thatyou're trying to assess their
lab knowledge, that's differentthan if you have 20 students.
But we have engineering facultyhere who had an NSF grant to
(38:12):
study how they could scale uporal assessments, and so they
would have students do an examand then they'd have them in for
a 15 or 20-minute oralassessment where they might
focus on, like, one particularquestion that the student didn't
quite get right and give them achance to demonstrate they
actually know, or they mightjust have them describe
something that lacked a littlebit of description, and so I
(38:33):
think it is possible.
We need to really think throughhow AI could maybe free up
faculty and teaching assistanttime from the stuff that doesn't
directly impact students, sothat they have more time to
spend in human-to-humaninteractions with students to
really be able to assess doesthe student have the knowledge
and abilities?
I think they should at thispoint.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
It's so interesting to think about the role of the
oldest form of communication onearth, which is what you and I
are doing here.
I could use AI to fake that Iunderstand organic chemistry and
if you're a chemistry professorin two minutes you'll be able
to tell in a conversation that Ihave no idea what I'm talking
about.
(39:15):
But there's a lot of logisticsto that and at the university
level, with classes of howeverbig they are, that's really
tricky.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
And yet if we don't do it and we haven't been doing
it for decades, and by we I meanuniversities writ large,
especially the largeruniversities then we are
graduating folks who cannot talkto people about their knowledge
because they've never had to.
And, believe me, my husbandworks in the engineering field
and it's torture when engineerscan't talk to marketers or can't
(39:46):
talk to the sales guys or can'ttalk to the president of the
company.
They need to be able to talkabout engineering to
non-engineering people, to otherengineering people, and yet we
have not done a very good job ofthat at the university level
across the board good job ofthat at the university level
(40:06):
across the board.
And so that kind of gets alsoto the shift we have to make
about really thinking about whatwe used to call soft skills,
which always insulted me as asocial scientist that we're now
calling human skills or durableskills.
I'm kind of calling them human,durable skills and we really
have to start focusing on them.
They were always kind of part ofthe hidden curriculum.
Oh yeah, they're gettingdeveloped because we threw
(40:27):
students in groups, so of coursethey're learning how to
collaborate or you know whatever, and so we really need to, I
think be an intentional focus onwhat do humans need to learn to
do?
That makes them an added valueto the AI, because otherwise
they're not going to get the job.
Ai will get the job right.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
It's interesting.
It's like that, reflecting ondoctors and their bedside manner
.
Yeah, like you know, I hadfriends who went to medical
school.
You know I'm an old guy, sothey went to medical school 30
years ago and there was nocoursework in bedside manners.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Or ethics probably.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Yeah, we've all had doctors who we feel are
dismissive and we never go.
Oh, you know, I looked them upand they wrote this paper or
this, and they just ignore thefact that they make me feel like
I'm not a human being and theydidn't give me more than 30
seconds of their time going, wow, this doctor's great or this
doctor's not great, not based onany objective measures of the
(41:34):
science, but yeah, Human tohuman interaction.
Yeah, the human stuff, and Ilove that you push away from
that idea of the soft skillRight.
And I love that you push awayfrom that idea of the soft skill
right.
We used to be like, oh well,the engineers, like your husband
would be the academic.
You know the real tough, that'sthe real academic stuff.
And then us social sciencepeople because I'm in your camp,
(41:54):
soft touchy feeling, it's like,wait a second, you know, we
need both.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Those are hard skills to develop.
They are hard skills and so letme tell you what worries me
actually about our future andwhen we think about the
disconnect that often occursbetween K through 12 education
and higher education.
I see and correct me if I'mwrong.
I'd love to hear from you thatI'm wrong that a lot of the K-12
sector is diving full two feetdeep into AI world, and partly
(42:26):
because a lot of campuses arealready kind of Google
classrooms and then now Google'sGemini is out there and it's
going to just be fullyintegrated and they're really
talking about AI literacy.
I mean, there's a wholenonprofit org up in the Bay Area
that just helps K-12 folksdevelop AI literacy and I'm
(42:46):
worried that we're going to getstudents in a few years at the
university who are AI literatebut actually haven't developed
those human durable skillsoutside of the AI world.
And I'd love to hear from youthat I'm totally wrong about
that.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, I think you're spot on.
Uh-oh I think we saw, we'veseen, and there are a number of
factors right, there's kind of aconscious approach and then
there's most of it's anunconscious yeah.
Following.
You know some of the tools thatpromise to lighten your
workload as a teacher, toevaluate essays really quickly,
(43:28):
to catch on to other studentinformation systems that we've
already been using anyway.
In the early days, Apple lookedlike they were going to corner
the K-12 market.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
From a price point and some other blunders that
didn't work Right Justabsolutely Captured it
Absolutely.
So all the incoming the collegekids who have grown up with a
Chromebook- and yet, and yetthey do not know how technology
works.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
That's right it's become, it's an appendage that
they don't Understand.
You can live and know that yourheart's important without
understanding how a heart muscleworks.
Right, and it's like that.
Yeah, we wrestle with it hereat Albert Einstein Academies.
We've put together a workinggroup to explore AI and have
(44:27):
been working, you know,regularly over the past year.
But what happens is that theriver is moving so quickly that
you and so we can't even we'reso far away from a policy or a
position paper or or anything,because it's just rushing so
quickly.
Meanwhile, the commercial sideof education K-12, which is a
(44:50):
massive multi-billion dollar thePearsons of the world, anytime,
apple is interested in buying astudent information system,
which they did in the past, Ithink, for power school or
whatever you're like.
There's money there, right,when venture capitalists are
buying, are buying some of theseeducation related products, you
know that it's going to bedriven by bottom line and
(45:12):
economies of scale and notnecessarily pedagogy, good
pedagogy.
I think you're spot on.
We face in the public schoolsector.
We face, you know, the fundingpressures.
We face the, the, the stateaccountability measures, you
know, on an endless cycle ofaccountability where you can
(45:35):
look online and see ourdashboards and see where we are,
and all these, all thesestudent subgroups.
I mean you guys have the.
You know other metrics, right?
I'm not sure US Student WorldReport is still something people
look at, but I know for a longtime that was the deal, the
ranking, and so my trepidationaround this has been, as you
(46:00):
mentioned, like, are we going tohave students ready at the
college level who, if aprofessor, were to say, okay,
everybody, I'm going to comearound and verify that your
laptop is offline and I need youto write to this prompt and
then discuss it in the classroom?
(46:22):
You know, no one ever writesperfectly on a first draft,
right?
I mean, talk to ErnestHemingway, yeah, but at least
getting your thoughts down andthen let's talk about it and
defend your thoughts.
I don't know if kids are goingto be able to do that.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Yeah, and we don't yet know if that's going to be
bad for cognition.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Right, right, right, we don't know.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
I do know that spelling the automatic
corrections to spelling has mademe a worse speller.
I routinely misspell words nowthat I never used to misspell
before, like your and your Right.
And so we do know thattechnology and I know with GPS
on my phone I've gotten a bitdumber in terms of navigation
(47:04):
than I used to be.
I used to be much better atnorth, south, east, west and all
that kind of stuff so we doknow that technology can either
hinder or amplify learning andcognition, especially with it
generating, you know, no blankpage syndrome anymore.
Sounds lovely, but what do welose in that process?
(47:26):
And we just won't know fordecades.
And so I don't know.
I guess I would say that I'mglad I could retire in eight
years, and maybe it'll takelonger than that to really hit
the university system, but Idon't know.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
To me it feels a little bit like the difference
between when you and I tookphotos as kids, where it was
like, at least in my case, wedidn't have a lot of money, so
it was like you buy a roll andyou're like, oh my God, load it
the right way in the camerabecause you're going to
overexpose it and it's $7.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
And then take your photos and then you and be very
choosy about what photos youtook.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
That's right, you're not just hanging out thousands
of photos and then you take itand you drop it off and two
weeks later and you're like, ohmy God, my thumb was in front of
this, as opposed to now.
I have 6,000 photos in my on myphone, google, and this and
then that, and they're a lot,but but very few of them are
meaningful to me.
Yeah, and so I think, like Ican remember papers I wrote in
(48:27):
college.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
A topic that I dove deeply into and I wrestled with
this thing and now you can trainAI to mimic your writing style.
That's what I've been playingaround with, where I've uploaded
a bunch of written work andposition papers and some
creative stuff that I've doneinto AI and then had it generate
other essays on topics that Igive it but yeah, previous
(48:55):
writing.
And then you go where's thatline between like original work
or using a tool?
I mean, I don't drive a horseand buggy anymore.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Well, but also, yeah, but also.
This raises a different economyor problem we have to think of.
There's a difference betweenyou doing that and a novice
writer doing that.
True, and so you and I havebeen through the process of
developing our own authorialvoice.
(49:26):
We have been through theprocess of struggling with the
blank page.
We've been through that processof knowing that I can't just
sit down and write, like I haveto think about things and I have
to write and then rewrite, andthen rewrite and write, but our
novice students have not.
Novice students have not.
(49:48):
And so what?
We, every discipline now,whether it's writing or math or
chemistry or whatever, has tofigure out what are the
foundational skills that scienceis still telling us that will
probably matter in terms ofcognition.
And then we have to figure outhow we can scaffold that in.
My concern is that we can'tjust do that at the university
level.
I know we've talked we society,and at least in the US and
(50:08):
Canada, has talked for yearsabout we need more symmetry
between K through 16.
Like there shouldn't be this Kthrough 12 figures, everything
out.
And then we figure everythingout because we influence each
other right.
And so if the professor ofwriting here, decides how to
scaffold in and start where shethinks it should start, which is
struggling with the blank page.
So she's having students inclass struggling with the blank
(50:30):
page, but all through K, throughK, through 12, they didn't have
to do that.
She's actually, you know,starting way further back, and
so I just don't know how that'sgoing to work.
I hate to be so cynical orskeptical or pessimist, but I
think it's something that we, aseducators and people who really
care about learning and thecertifications of learning, we
(50:54):
really have to think through asa community, and this can't just
be on the individual shouldersof individual teachers,
individual instructors.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
What are you hopeful about in this space?
Speaker 2 (51:11):
I'm hopeful that.
I mean there is a lot moreconversation about integrity now
than there was prior to AI.
I mean we talked about it alittle bit during the pandemic,
but we didn't really changeanything, and so I do.
Really.
I am really hopeful that I seepeople making changes.
I see people really saying, ohshoot, this does have an impact.
(51:34):
I've got to change the way I'mdoing things.
So I'm really hopeful aboutthat.
I'm really hopeful about ourstudents, actually, because you
are seeing a lot of studentsthink carefully about this and
think I don't want to offload mybrain to this machine.
There's some really, reallycritically thinking students out
(51:55):
there that are resisting the AIhype.
They're resisting saying thatthey have to have that A1 sauce
with their steak, when theydon't want their A1 sauce, if
you get the reference there.
So I'm hopeful about that.
I'm hopeful that there are someintentional, thoughtful efforts
(52:18):
to use ai and not um what we'veseen in other situations where
they just openly give one of themajor companies millions of
dollars to just infiltrate theirentire education system.
That doesn't make me hopeful.
But intentional choices like kthrough 12, a lot of uh that
(52:39):
people have been using likemagic school, like an
intentional ai that's beendesigned for educational
purposes, not these general l, l, m, m um machines that have not
been intentionally designed.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
So I'm hopeful about those things um yeah, it's
interesting, I never anticipatedthe environmental.
Yeah, that's right, my daughteris very hesitant to use ai at
all, but from her angle it'smore around.
Dad, do you know what it'sdoing in the environment?
(53:14):
I'm like I, you know, I boughtthe 19 a month chat gbt thing
and I thought it was cool andI'm asking it all kinds of weird
stuff and all.
And she said, dad, have youseen the impact?
And so I started to kind ofdive into it a little bit.
And unbeknownst to me, you know, these tech companies are
buying server farms that are 300000 square feet in one
(53:37):
warehouse just to serve to housethese servers, so that this
thing can run in states thatdon't have water, in very dry
states, and these, these serverfarms need a lot of water for
cooling stay cool, so yeah, sothat was something that came out
of nowhere, at least on my veryyeah, I do now when I present
(53:58):
on this topic.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
One, I disclose what images if I've used the tool for
anything particular images andthen I disclose how much energy
that used.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Just to help bring that awareness.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
You have to ask AI to tell you how much energy that
used to help bring thatawareness.
You have to ask AI to tell youhow much energy.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
No, I look at the research.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
Well, you've been so generous with your time and I
appreciate very much yourexpertise and knowledge and that
you've brought some some a 3delement to, to something that
you know, as, as we started outtalking about, people understand
the word academic and theyunderstand the word integrity.
(54:39):
Put them together and what itreally means in real life.
Not so much Um.
Is there anything that we'venot touched on that may be
rattling around in your head foryou, uh, that you'd like to
mention?
And then I have one morequestion for you after that head
for you that you'd like tomention.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
And then I have one more question for you after that
.
I'd just like to put anexclamation point on what you
said earlier about how yourschool system's still struggling
with having a policy.
I'm glad you're doing itthoughtfully, I'm glad you're
doing it intentionally, and Ithink here's where chat, gpt or
Gen AI tools might be helpful toyou to just say let's just get
(55:17):
something done.
It's not going to be perfect.
These are living, breathingdocuments.
We're going to have to changeit, maybe in the fall or maybe
before then, because this stuffmoves so quickly.
But just some common sense,standards and guidance for folks
.
So common things about like,what's an honest use of these
tools?
You know what's, what's, whatprotects the values, what are
(55:39):
our values, and then what, howcan we use or not use these
tools?
Provide some guidance aroundthat in alliance with those
values, and I would focus onintegrity, I would focus on
learning and I would focus onyour job of assessing, you know,
certifying student learning,and then so what does that mean?
So I think, I think being OKwith something that has to be a
living, breathing document.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Thank you for that, because we can get stuck in the
and the endless debate, and sosometimes you have to generate a
product.
My last question is ahypothetical.
Speaker 2 (56:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
Imagine you have the opportunity to create a
billboard on the side of thefreeway.
I've had people say I wouldn'tdo it.
I believe that pollutes theview.
Let's ignore that for now we'regoing to ignore that one.
You have the chance to createthis billboard.
People are seeing it, drivingby at 70 miles an hour.
What does your billboard say tothe world about what you
(56:40):
believe in, about your work,about, uh, your views on life in
general?
Speaker 2 (56:46):
I am.
I'm not the best at putting uhbig things like big ideas into
like a pithy marketing slogan,but it would be something like
what you do matters or somethinglike that, like your choices
matter and how I would expand onthat is just again, people
thinking about getting out oftheir own heads and always
(57:10):
thinking about themselves andthinking about the other people
around them.
So using your signal lightmatters to other people, right?
What you say to your childabout using AI matters.
What you say to them about theimportance of grades matters.
Your actions have reactions.
They impact people.
(57:31):
You can't control how peopleare going to react to you, but
you can control.
You can think carefully aboutyour choices and always say you
know, if I was around me rightnow, how would that impact me
and then maybe make differentchoices.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
Thank you for that and that's a great.
It connects back to your work,right, just in all senses of
understanding how to live a lifeof integrity.
So I thank you so much.
I will attach links to yourbooks in the show notes and
thank you for really againmaking what could be an abstract
(58:11):
topic and an unusual topicright.
I mean, maybe more and moreuniversities have work like
yours Not enough, not enough,right and I think society
doesn't have them.
No, I'm not going to ask thequestion as to whether the White
House should have one.
We'll leave that?
Speaker 2 (58:30):
Yeah, We'll leave that conversation.
We'll just say hashtag, make itsomeone's job.
Speaker 1 (58:35):
There we go Make it someone's job.
Yeah, thank you so much foryour time today and really for
sharing and chatting with me.
I really appreciate it Sure.
Speaker 2 (58:45):
Thank you for asking.
Speaker 1 (58:47):
So we'll cut it there and then I'll let you know,
I'll send you an email when it'sgoing to go live and I don't
think we touched on anythingcontroversial that you don't
want in there.
Yeah, and I'll.
Usually what happens is I justedit for some dead space, some
(59:07):
dead air.
Sometimes I or my coughing thatI had.
Speaker 2 (59:10):
I'll take that out, but other than that, your
content in here and I don'tthink I don't think I'll lose my
American passport for talkingabout a one sauce, but we'll
find out.
Speaker 1 (59:21):
I wasn't.
Yeah, I know I was going to mymy board member, the Canadian
board member.
I always I joke around with her.
She gave me a hard time theother day about a budget thing
and I said it's OK, I'm going toget my revenge.
Aren't you going to be the 51ststate?
Yeah, you just looked at me.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
She gave me this death glare and I go okay, sorry
, I love what Trump since we'reoff the record now I love what
Trump is doing for Canadiansovereignty and Canadian
unification.
I think it's a beautiful sightto behold.
Speaker 1 (59:49):
Well, I was saying the other day I said I've never
run into a pissed off Canadianbefore, like you don't want to
run into us.
I even saw Trudeau saysomething like we're slow to
anger, but when we get mad wewhatever, and I was like I just
never.
It just doesn't seem to be likea like part of the national.
Well, when it happens, I'm sureyou have more, obviously you
(01:00:12):
know, but it's actually betternow.
Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
It's actually better when our anger is extrovert,
like it is right now.
Normally we're passive,aggressive, and so we're a
little bit, yeah, not so nicewith our anger, but at least
we're clear and direct, and youknow exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
This is just.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Well, not that I'm trying to create more work for
myself.
Honestly, I'm so intrigued bythe K-12 system and how you're
all dealing with this.
If you ever want to think aboutincluding me in your
conversations there around AIand AI or just AI, don't
(01:00:49):
hesitate to reach out.
Like I said, I'm, I'm, I can'tbelieve I'm saying trying to
give myself more work, but, um,you know, you're in my community
and, uh, your students mightcome to my university at some
point and they do, yeah, and so.
Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
So I very much appreciate that.
I'll keep that on the on.
Uh, you know on my list ofpeople to reach out to where we
are.
I think we're going to have onemore meeting of that task force
this school year.
But, going forward, it's atopic.
I mentioned previously that ourschools are IB schools,
(01:01:22):
international Baccalaureate,which is great.
Yeah, the IB came out reallysuper early with a statement
about AI.
They were like, hey, it's here,it's a tool, ai.
They were like, hey, it's here,it's a tool.
If you guys use it in yourcommunity, kids need to cite it
the same way they cite something.
And I felt like, okay, at leasttypically the IB is slow on
(01:01:45):
stuff because it's global, so tosynthesize views around the
world as well.
But in this one I was like,okay, they said something, but
then I started to think about it.
I'm like it's not the same asciting a Google search.
Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
No.
Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
This is a thing that is learning from what's out
there, and I've been usingChatGBT since it started and I'm
like you can't compare version1.0 with what's today Right, 50
times more powerful.
So a lot of good thinking stillto come, and but I really
appreciate, uh, your time andand I wish you all the best in
(01:02:20):
the rest of this academic year.
Thanks you, too.
Have a great day okay, byethanks for joining us on the
hangout podcast.
You can send us an email atpodcastinfo at protonme.
Many thanks to my daughter,maya, for editing this episode.
I'd also like to underline thatthis podcast is entirely
(01:02:43):
separate from my day job and, assuch, all opinions expressed
herein are mine and mine alone.
Thanks for coming on in andhanging out.
Welcome to the Hangout Podcast.
I'm your host, david Shoretta.
I hope you enjoy this show and,if you do, please share it with
your friends and family onsocial media and in the real
world.
Come on in and hang out.
Thank you, dr Bertram Galat.
Welcome to the podcast and Ireally appreciate you giving of
(00:24):
your time this morning.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Sure Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I'd like to start where we start in all of these
conversations, which is withyour origin story, where you
come from and how that informswho you are today and what you
do today.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, I come from Canada born and raised, didn't
move to San Diego until the year2000.
And I was 30 at the time, so Iam thoroughly Canadian.
You might at some point hear alittle bit of an accent when I
say out about house or sorry, ora, if I'm feeling very Canadian
, very Canadian.
(01:10):
I guess the short story is Iended up in San Diego because my
husband had been working on theWest Coast, traveling all the
way.
We were from Ontario, canada,so traveling all the way from
Ontario, and we weren't seeingeach other that often.
And I was working at theuniversity that I did my
bachelor's in and I did mymaster's in.
I knew I wanted to work inhigher education, did my
bachelor's in and I did mymaster's in.
I knew I wanted to work inhigher education, still didn't
(01:32):
know quite what I wanted to do,but I knew it was time for my
PhD, and so we decided for me toapply to schools in his
territory so that we couldactually live where he was
working.
And you know, if you're goingto move across the continent
from Ontario, Canada where elseare you?
going to move other than SanDiego, right?
So I ended up at the Universityof San Diego and in a PhD
program in ed studies, slashleadership studies, and I don't
(01:58):
know if you want me to go intothe whole origin story of
academic integrity.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I would love to.
Now we're going to do the nextquestion.
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I love this story.
So I was in my second year, Iwas doing some stuff in the
School of Education and my deansaid to me the dean over in
College of Arts and Scienceneeds a PhD student to help him
with this conference he'sbringing to campus.
I need you to go over and helphim.
I was like, okay, sure.
(02:24):
So I went over to help him.
His name is Patrick Drinan andhe had been dean for like 16
years, I think.
At that time, a politicalscientist by training, and we
talked about this conferencethat he was bringing the Center
for Academic IntegrityConference, and that was fine.
And then we finished thatconversation.
He said what are you doing yourdissertation on?
And I said well, actually I'min a crisis, you know.
(02:46):
And I told him.
I told him I was in a crisisand I wasn't sure.
And and he just looked at meand I do wish his podcast was
visual, because he just lookedat me with this big, huge grin
on his face, like just eyes litup, and said why don't you do it
on academic integrity?
And I said because I neverheard the phrase before today.
So this was 2002, fall 2002.
And so he was just soenthusiastic he had gone to UVA
(03:10):
as an undergrad, which has anhonor code, and he was just
involved in the Center forAcademic Integrity, essentially
since it started in 1990, 92.
And so I relented and I saidwell, if you do an independent
study with me, I'll look intothe literature and the research
and see if there's anythinginteresting there for me.
And my independent study paperturned out to be our first
(03:34):
journal article together.
I joined the board as a gradstudent with the Center for
Academic Integrity.
We hosted that first conferencein 2003, and the rest is
history.
I've been in academic integrityever since.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
So what is academic integrity?
I mean, I think, as youexperienced when he said that to
you, we know what the two wordsare.
Right, yeah, we can break itdown that way, but what does it
really mean?
Because I think about my timein my undergrad.
I did my undergrad on the EastCoast in Maine, so I had a
(04:15):
migratory journey from cold towarm, yes, and I remember there
was this I think it was theJudiciary Board which was this
board you'd get called to if yousomehow were caught cheating.
This is way before this is evenpre-internet, so this is like
whether you forgot to citesomething in your paper and
pretended it was your own idea,but there was never an
(04:38):
explanation to us other thandon't cheat, and if you do, you
might get kicked out of college.
So, like writ large, how do youdefine academic integrity?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Well, the International Center for
Academic Integrity's definitionis what I use.
What we use here at UC SanDiego is the courage to be, to
uphold honesty, fairness,respect, responsibility and
trustworthiness, even when it'sdifficult to do so.
And so you'll notice a couplethings about that definition.
One is not directly related toacademics, so it is really
(05:11):
focused on the integrity pieceof it, and we're intentional
about that.
It's called the FundamentalValues of Academic Integrity,
and my mentor, patrick Drinan,was part of the original
iteration of that back in the90s, and we're intentional about
that because what we're tryingto display or explain to
students is there is nodifference between having
(05:32):
integrity in academics or inyour personal or in your
professional life.
In order for us to have ademocracy, we need to have trust
right.
We can't have democracy withouttrust.
If I go to a car mechanic, adoctor, whoever, I need to be
able to trust that they'retelling me what my car or my
body needs, not just selling mea drug or selling me a car part
(05:54):
even though I don't need itright.
So our whole society is builton this idea that we can trust
each other at least to someextent.
Honesty, respect all of thosevalues are so important, you'll
also notice that they're veryuniversal.
No matter what country you goto around the world, those
values are in the language,those values are considered
(06:17):
important, and we might notprioritize them the same way, we
might not resolve conflictsbetween them in the same way,
depending on our backgrounds,but it's hard to imagine anybody
where they would say, yeah, Iwant a friend who's dishonest
with me, I don't care if I havefriends that lie to me.
(06:37):
That's just not a thing.
And so that's the importantpart.
And so you're right.
Most people think of academicintegrity in the not definition,
not cheating, not plagiarizing,and what we're saying is no,
academic integrity is.
It's an aspiration, it's anactivity, it's a goal.
It's not easy to do.
You have to consciously bethinking about it all the time,
(07:00):
just like you have toconsciously think about what's
the best ethical thing to do asa superintendent, right Like I'm
in a dilemma which optionshould I choose?
And so we're really trying toinculcate in people this idea
that integrity is not acharacter and a lack of
integrity is not a characterflaw.
(07:21):
What's a character flaw ispretending that you don't need
to work on this and the othercharacter flaw is what's a
character flaw is pretendingthat you don't need to work on
this, and the other characterflaw is making a mistake and not
taking accountability for itand choosing to learn and grow
from it.
That's the character flaw, butthe rest of it is very active.
It's very intentional.
It requires a lot ofself-awareness and willingness
(07:44):
to struggle through difficultdecisions.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I love the courage part of that.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That's genius and a complete paradigm shift for me,
mentally and kind of emotionallytoo right To think about that
idea of behaving a certain wayeven when no one's watching.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
That's.
It kind of reminds me of mygrandma.
You know, yeah, you know, hey,don't.
Don't take a cookie from thecookie jar, not because I told
you not to, but because you know.
For whatever reason, you knowit's not the right thing to do.
Nobody's in the house.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
And yes, and we have to sometimes.
We need help with courage.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And so the example I've been using lately is if
you've got a sweet tooth and yetyou're trying to get fit and
healthy, what's one good thingyou should do to start that
journey?
It's not buying the sweet stuffand putting it in your kitchen,
right?
You don't buy it, put it inyour kitchen and then force
yourself to look at it every day, just so you have the courage
(08:54):
to resist it.
And so we we we do as humans,we're flawed and we do need help
to stick with our values, tostick to our goals, to stick
with our goals with integrity.
And so I say the same thing toteachers, right?
We shouldn't say, oh well, it'sthe courage to have integrity,
even though nobody's watching.
(09:15):
Therefore, I'm going to giveyou a homework assignment, and
but I'm going to tell you not touse Chachi PT, because you got
to have the courage not to useit.
No, we've got to scaffold thosethings for people.
So if you're starting yourworkout journey, you just don't
buy the stuff and put in your.
But after a while you lose yoursweet tooth, you're not really
craving it anymore, and so youcan have it in your house for
guests or something like that,and you'll still resist the
(09:37):
temptation to eat it and we have.
So we have to do the same thingfor our kids, for integrity.
We can't just throw them in thewild and say be courageous.
We have to actually set up someboundaries and some guardrails
for them to help them developthat internal motivation to
stick with integrity even whennobody's watching.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
That's a great life hack just in all areas.
I'm going to leapfrog over yourcomments about that.
Our political system needs tooperate correctly, based on
trust.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Well, I said our democracy.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Our democracy.
I take it back, yes, well,given what's happening in the
world, I'm going to alsoleapfrog over that one.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yes, please do we could do many episodes and I'm
sure, as a Canadian, you haveother layers of interpretation
and I just one of my boardmembers is Canadian, and so
we'll, after a board meeting,I'll say, hey, so can I.
Can I get the Canadianperspective on this?
Yeah, it's an interesting, it'san interesting intellectual
(10:39):
experience.
Yes, can you talk to us aboutwhat I'm not even going to say
an average or typical day,because I'd imagine your days
are very, are varied, but whatmight a day look like for you in
the, in this office department,et cetera, that you, that
(11:00):
you've really sounds like, builtover 20 years of your own
research and academicexploration, and then not just
academic but also real-lifeaction, research and people?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
so I run two offices here that I run, both the
Academic Integrity Office andour Triton Testing Center, and
both are focused on integrity,right.
So we only need testing centersreally for degree integrity in
terms of does the student havethe knowledge and abilities
we're assessing for?
And so you need a testingcenter to again create some of
(11:43):
the guardrails around that.
And so the typical day isobviously I do a lot of meetings
with my team.
I've got on the academicintegrity side I'll stick to
that side.
I've got a case management teamand I've got an education team.
So the case management folks andmyself well, the case
management folks deal with allof the allegations of integrity
(12:06):
violations that get reported toour office.
So faculty are required bySenate policy to report any
integrity violations academicintegrity violations to our
office.
So they initiate those cases,they work with the faculty, they
and myself and other people inthe campus do resolution
meetings with students.
So I've spent a lot of timeover the last two and a half
(12:29):
years, as you can imagine,meeting with a lot of students
about Gen AI misuse.
And then we also do a lot ofcorrespondence and run hearings,
as you mentioned earlier.
You know a judicial hearingprocess, although we call them
academic integrity reviewsbecause it's not a legal process
.
So we try to keep legal languageout of there.
(12:50):
And then my educationmanagement team does all of the
preventative education withstudents and faculty.
I do most of the stuff with thefaculty and we have a robust
something I'm super proud of arobust after-education program
we call it.
So two years after startinghere, I created an academic
(13:11):
integrity seminar and recruitedsome students to be peer
educators, and so we reallybelieve in leveraging that
cheating moment as a teachablemoment that we can learn from
our mistakes and our failures,moment that we can learn from
our mistakes and our failures.
And so we do that through ouracademic integrity seminar,
which still exists, which reallyfocuses on teaching students
ethical decision-making skillsand getting some tools in their
(13:33):
toolkit for how to make thatbetter decision next time when
you're under stress and pressure.
But we also have an integritymentorship program which gives
students who are otherwisefacing a suspension for an
integrity violation a chance tobasically prove that they
shouldn't be suspended.
And so they work one-on-onewith a mentor on a particular
goal that they get to choose,and it could be related to work
(13:58):
or life or school that's up tothem.
And so we manage a lot ofone-on-one appointments, a lot
of group appointments.
We have other workshops as well, like a collaborating with
integrity workshop.
So just a robust.
So my day varies.
I had one-on-one meetings withmy staff.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yesterday I gave a presentation in a teaching
assistant class for one of ouracademic departments.
That was an hour and 20 minutes.
I'm recording a lot of podcastslately, but yeah, so it's
varied.
Sounds like a developmentalexperience, right?
We hope so.
Almost as personalized assomeone's own health needs or
financial needs or all theseareas of our lives that if we
(15:02):
resist being intellectually lazyor jump to the knee-jerk
conclusion, we actually see thateach case is really unique and
individualized and we have tosee the human behind it.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Humans.
Our students are human beingsand they are as flawed as we are
.
And we know that human beingsare notoriously bad at long-term
thinking.
We're very short-term thinkers.
We're kind of like what do Ihave to do next or how do I get
my next goal?
We know that our students areobsessed and not their fault
(15:35):
obsessed with their grades.
The school system, from Kthrough 16, has done that to
them.
And we also know that they, likeother humans, will make bad
decisions under stress andpressure.
And I can tell you, thestudents are under a lot of
stress and pressure, whetherthat is self-imposed or
(15:57):
other-imposed, and so it's nowonder that they'll make bad
decisions.
And you know what we know fromexperiential learning theory,
from constructivism theory, thatpeople can actually learn the
most from their own experiencesright.
(16:18):
But if it's a painfulexperience, like getting caught
cheating, lots of times we'llbury our heads in the sand or
we'll rationalize or justify it.
So we don't have to learn fromit, because learning is painful
and so we know we need to helpthem learn from it.
So that's what all thestructure and support is there
for is to help them learn andgrow from it.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
And I'd imagine that at an elite institution like
UCSD.
I don't know what the averageGPA of incoming students is, but
having a daughter who's at anelite college in the Midwest and
knowing what her GPA was inhigh school, especially with AP
(16:52):
and weighted courses, people arerolling into college with four
point somethings which in highschool I was content with a,
three, three and I was good.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, no, I haven't looked it up for this fall, but
in generally speaking, over thelast several years, the GPA of
the average entering freshman islike a 4.2.
It's better than perfect.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
That's right and then that's that mentality of better
than perfect, right?
What was the impact of COVID?
I mean, we know what the impactof COVID was in general on
education institutions, but inyour specific area, did you see
changes in behavior vis-a-visacademic integrity?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
All over the world.
I mean, let's think about thepandemic.
So if you think about, likeMaslow's hierarchy of needs,
right, what's on the bottom?
Security, safety, survival wewere all operating on the bottom
of Maslow's hierarchy of needsduring the pandemic, Every
single one of us.
Right On top of that, you'vestill got these extrinsically
(18:03):
motivated students who just needthe grades, just need the court
pass the course, just need toget the degree.
And then you layer onto thatemergency remote instruction.
So a whole bunch of faculty nowhaving to teach online courses
that they've never taught before.
They don't have time toactually turn them into.
(18:31):
You know well-designed onlinecourses.
They keep everything the same,so the courses kind of maybe
aren't as good as normal.
Then you layer on top of thatall of the temptations and
opportunities available atstudents' disposal for violating
academic integrity.
It was the textbook definitionof a perfect storm, or probably
an imperfect storm.
I would say so, yeah, so allover the world cheating shot up.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
You know, you mentioned we're all human and
you mentioned professors.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
So what role does?
And you just mentioned thedesign of courses and of course
that was a 180 degree swing witha week of notice, pardon me.
So that was a highly atypicalthing that hopefully we'll have
to deal with again in our livesin general.
Does the design of a course,the behavior, attitude, et
(19:29):
cetera, of a professor all ofthose pieces that come together?
How does that impact studentacademic integrity?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Great question.
I'm going to do a shamelessplug of the book that I have out
with my co-author because it'sthe entire focus of our book.
So the Opposite of Cheating.
Teaching for Integrity in theAge of AI.
It is written for instructors,with some advice in there for
institutions like you mustprovide faculty with time,
training and support to do thesethings, unlike our K-12
(20:04):
colleagues, who actually getteacher training on how to teach
.
We know that university facultyin general do not get that.
Their PhDs are focused on howto do research, not how to teach
, and so that's something thatwe need to do better at in
higher ed.
But, to answer your question,directly in the book we go over
all of those things directly inthe book.
(20:29):
We go over all of those things.
Instructor or course effectsare one of the contributing
variables to decisions studentsmake to cheat, and so things
like helping students focus onintrinsic motivation rather than
their extrinsic motivationsright, and so how do you do that
?
Well, you take a look at yourlearning objectives for the
(20:50):
course.
Are they relevant still in theage of AI?
Are they meaningful?
Are they connected to theactivities you're doing in class
and the assessments that you'vedesigned?
Is there not only an implicitconnection, like you've thought
about it, but you've explicitlyexplained to students what the
(21:11):
connection is between everythingthey're doing and the learning
objectives.
It could include flipping yourclassroom right and having
students engage in real-worldproblem-solving, more authentic,
meaningful assessments toincrease their intrinsic
motivation?
Are you doing things to helpdeal with low self-efficacy?
(21:32):
I don't think I can do this, orI don't think I can do it to
the level that I want to do it.
Are you addressing preconceivednotions that girls aren't good
in math or whatever the case maybe, or organic chemistry is
just super hard and most peopleare going to fail Like?
Are you addressing those things?
Are you focused on masteryrather than performance?
(21:54):
If we give students points,well, you get points for
attending, you get points forsubmitting, you get points for
doing this.
They're going to perform foryou, but they won't necessarily
be learning.
So, yeah, a lot of things.
Do you create a sense ofbelonging?
Basically everything thatyou've been taught about what
helps with inclusivity, whathelps with equity, what helps
(22:15):
with a sense of belonging alsohelps with integrity, because
all of that helps with learning.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
It's so interesting.
I remember when my daughter wasin high school.
She was a senior and I've beenan active person, I've been a
runner and all these things.
And so senior year she comes tome and she says, hey, would it
bother you if I ran the slowestmile at my high school ever?
I'm not going to say the nameof the high school, it's a great
high school.
(22:43):
And I said, well, why are youasking me that question?
You know how I am, I'm type A.
I'm like, try to run as fast asyou can.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I said why do you ask me that question?
She said, well, the teachergave us a point system based on
how fast we could run a mile andI already have 99.9% of all the
points I need and I alreadyhave a four point, whatever GPA.
So my friend and I are tryingto set the record for the
(23:12):
slowest mile and still get an Ain the class, right, I'm like
after I got my ego part, I'mlike I can't blame you Because
the teacher, by design, madethat just a transactional yeah,
and it was it.
It completely was divorced fromwhat was, I think, probably the
(23:36):
original intent of kids doingthis mile thing, which I don't
know, it's kind of an odd thingto do in PE anyway, but which
was supposed to be health andfitness and whatever.
And I remember just going outand she graduated with all A's
and she's never going to, youknow, set the world record in
the mile and I don't really care.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, it's such a great story, and so when we say
all of these things, I reallywant to make sure people
listening don't hear blame orcondemnation or guilt.
Right Again, teachers arehumans, so they make the best
choices they can in the momentand it's just important for us
(24:16):
to all be open to kind offeedback and reflection.
Right, and this act ofrevisiting of what we're doing,
because the students we'reteaching today are not the
students that we taught 20 yearsago and so we just had constant
.
It's just a constant revisitingthing and it's exhausting, but
there's no blame here there's.
(24:37):
There's just people trying tomake the best choices and then,
hopefully, learning from them.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Have you had to go through a process of education
and orientation with the faculty?
Because I'd imagine thatthere's a spectrum, age-wise,
experience-wise, generation-wise, among your faculty.
You see it as among the bestand brightest faculty in the
world, including Nobel laureates, and doesn't always mean a
Nobel laureate's a goodprofessor, if they even ever
(25:07):
teach anything.
But that's not the point.
The best and brightest teach inthe UC system, so do you find
them showing up and being likehere?
Here's this case Kid busted inmy class.
You deal with it.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
We have our faculty area is diverse as the rest of
the human population, and so wehave a lot of faculty who really
, really care about studentslearning and including learning
from their mistakes in theirclass.
It's hard not to.
I spend a lot of time helpingfaculty reframe this.
So you typically hear facultysay things like well, I don't
(25:53):
want to deal with cheatingbecause I didn't sign up to be a
police officer, I signed up tobe an educator, Right?
And you probably hear teachers.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
I hear the same thing , yep.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
And so I have spent my career, and I'll probably
spend the rest of my careersaying to faculty great, because
I don't want you to take youreducator hat off.
Actually, I want you to leaveit on.
And what is your job as aneducator?
You have two kind of main tasksin what we're talking about.
In the small sphere that we'retalking about, your task is to
(26:19):
facilitate student learning andto assess student learning.
Right, those are your two jobs,and so when a student cheats,
you can't assess their learning,you can't validate their
learning, and so that's part ofyour educator hat and then also
part of your educator hat.
I hope that you'd want tofacilitate their learning from
(26:39):
this integrity violation, thatyou'll want them to learn from
their mistake.
Just like if they made aspelling mistake or a content
error mistake, you give themfeedback because you want them
to learn from it.
Right, you want them to learnand improve their writing or
improve their chemistryknowledge or whatever.
Why not the same for anintegrity violation?
Why won't we keep that samegrowth mindset?
(27:00):
Perspective of I'm not sayingyou should say awesome, a
student cheated in my class.
Perspective of I'm not sayingyou should say awesome, a
student cheated in my class, butI kind of am.
I'm kind of like awesome, thestudent is now going to have an
amazing learning experience.
Now I can say that to ourfaculty, because we actually
help students learn after theexperience.
On many university campuses andprobably most K-12 schools,
(27:21):
there's not an intentionaleffort to help the student learn
from that mistake, and so thatcan't be said at every place,
but I can say it to my facultyyou can keep your educator hat
on here.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Can you talk to us a bit about this concept of having
other people do your work foryou and now give them credit?
I in my daughter.
My daughter goes to GrinnellCollege in Grinnell, iowa, and
one of the interesting thingsabout their policy is if you
receive input or feedback on apaper or an assignment from
someone who's not a student andit may even actually be from a
(28:05):
fellow student, I don't know,but I remember my daughter sent
me a Google Doc and said hey,I'm going to ask you to weigh in
on my writing and then I'mgoing to also cite you as one of
the contributors to this paper.
And I thought that was a reallyinnovative way of looking at it
, because in the real worldthere's no author who's I mean
maybe a few, but most people arealways collaborating.
(28:27):
You have people you have, uh,thought partners read your stuff
.
Sometimes they get credit,sometimes they don't.
Your, your spouse, all thesedifferent, all these different
people, um, but then it can goover into the line of like I'm
going to pay you what, howevermuch money, to do my work for me
while I'm going out to a party.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
So how do you address that in your work?
Because I'd imagine it shows upin.
The Internet is just repletewith opportunities to pay people
to write your dissertation foryou, if you want.
I don't know how good they are,they're probably not good at
all.
People to write yourdissertation for you, if you
want.
I don't know how good they are,they're probably not good at
all.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
but who knows now, with the ability of some of the
electronic tools that are out,there, yeah, so what you're
talking about at the extreme endof things is what we in the
industry call contract cheating,and I would.
It's hard to estimate, but mycolleagues who have done
research into this estimate itto probably be a multi-billion
dollar industry, internationalindustry, and they are super
(29:34):
good marketers.
So their websites say thingslike get homework, help get
tutoring.
Some of them are very blatantnow where they'll say you've got
better things to do, let uswrite your essay, plagiarism
free, for you um but not only dothey just do that on the
(29:55):
internet, they will actually um,form a discord chat, pretend
that they're in the class and afellow student with you, and
they'll start conversations likehey, hey, everybody, you know
what essay we got coming up.
Does anybody like want help withthat?
And they kind of seducestudents into it because they
think they're just talking toanother student.
(30:16):
The other thing they do is theyget so say you're hiring me to
do your coursework for you.
So say you're hiring me to doyour coursework for you.
You'll give me your login andyour username and password for
logging into the LMS, thelearning management system, and
so I will log in to do your workfor you.
Then I also have access to allthe other students enrolled in
(30:39):
that course, and so I can juststart messaging them and
recruiting more clients.
I can also then, after I'vecheated for you, send you an
email and I've seen these emailsthat says pay me $20,000 or I'm
going to report you to theuniversity.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Oh, so like Extortion , Hating, blackmail or extortion
, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah.
So it's very, very dangerousfor students to engage with
these companies and moststudents don't.
Most students will do it on onepaper and they'll just hire
them to do the paper and they'llsubmit the paper themselves.
But we do have and this is frommy friends, my colleagues in
Australia people in universitiesaround the world who they call
(31:19):
enrolled persons.
They're there for a visa,they're there for financial aid
fraud, they're there for allsorts of reasons, and so they
have no there for all sorts ofreasons, and so they have no
intention of ever doing any workand so always contract cheaters
are doing their entire coursesfor them.
So that's a huge industry, sothat's at the most extreme level
.
I love your story about yourdaughter because and what her
(31:40):
professor is having her do.
So, yes, in the real world weoften collaborate with people
and we don't give them credit onsomething Right.
But if you think about whatwe're trying to do with students
is we're trying to raise theirmetacognition.
They're thinking about theirthinking and how they got to
point Z from point A, soteaching them to be fully aware
(32:03):
and transparent about who helpedthem, who guided them and how
those people, or, in today's age, how ChatGPT helps them and how
it was useful or not useful, Ithink is just good cognitive
development.
It will make them more awarelater when they are in a
workplace and they're workingwith a team.
And for them to say to theirboss when they get a compliment
(32:24):
for something they've done youknow what thanks for that?
Um, my friends, you know, myteammate sarah really helped me
a lot with this and she did this, this and this, and I really
think you should thank her aswell.
Um, and isn't that just a nicersociety as well?
Speaker 1 (32:40):
so I think that's a great thing so you bring up
generative AI and obviously it'sjust exploded.
It's in everything from yourbank to your seems like every
new technology.
This is the anything AI is to2025, what anythingcom was to
(33:02):
2000,.
What it was was petscom,papercom yeah, my company's
worth $20 billion, and it reallywas.
So some of that's going to getsorted out in the wash over time
, but clearly AI is here to stayand will grow and it's for lack
of a better term it's learning.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
And it's becoming agentic.
Yeah, yeah, not right on itsown.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
So I had this before I ask a question.
I just want to kind of givethis example from a recent
experience I had at work.
We were hiring for a positionand the goal was to try to learn
, to at least verify that thecandidates had a basic kind of
writing ability around a payrollposition.
(33:49):
Yeah, you are on payroll, huh.
And so we assigned a writingassignment and they interviewed
and then they took the computerand they did it right there and
we said look, you can use AI ifyou want, just let us know that
you've used it.
Well, all the responses came inpretty similar.
(34:10):
I'm sure everybody used AI,that's okay.
But what we were really tryingto get to which I don't think we
got to through that was abilityto analyze, ability to problem
solve, ability to decide.
You know when's the right timeto send an email as opposed to
picking up the phone to call.
You know, once payroll is wrong, someone's tax deductions are
(34:33):
wrong, someone didn't get theright deduction from their
paycheck, so their kids aren'tcovered by health insurance, and
now their son broke his leg andall.
So that, like ai doesn't get tothat piece, and so I feel just
kind of uneasy about that yeahguys that we gave.
So, in the context of this fastshifting world that we're in,
(34:55):
how does your work address therole of of ai in society?
Knowing that I mean, I'm justgoing to speak for myself I use
it every day in my work.
I use it every day and most ofmy colleagues do, and I'd
imagine at UCSD people are usingit every day and students use
it.
So how do we make sure thatfolks are responsible with it?
(35:19):
But then also, we don't getaway from, as you say,
demonstrating the integrity of adegree that you've worked years
to get.
So when the regents sign offthat so-and-so has a bachelor's
from UCSD, it actually countsfor something.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
It actually means something, not that I can just
push a button, submit.
This is the question of theages right.
So one thing we talk about isthat we have to stop relying so
much on product over process,and we've used things like,
(35:56):
particularly, essays or theresearch paper written work, in
particular, as an artifact thatis, a valid measure of of
student knowledge and abilities.
Um, and I think that artifacthas been defunct for decades
because of contract cheating,because of plagiarism, because
of whatever right.
Um, and yet we were hesitant tomove away from it for for many
(36:20):
good reasons and some not sogood reasons.
And we just have to reallyrethink our learning objectives
and the skills that we wantstudents to develop.
And how can we assess theirprocess?
What is?
Is it really is?
Well, first, how can we assesstheir process?
Maybe I am going to talk to themabout their process, so it's
(36:43):
not just the written assignment,but then I sit down with them
and I say, okay, talk me throughthis, talk me, what's the
choice you made here?
Why'd you make that choice?
Tell me about this sentence.
It's an amazingly craftedsentence.
You know, again, this raisesstudents' metacognition.
They're thinking about theirthinking, and so that that can
only be a good thing.
Or maybe we decide, you knowwhat?
(37:04):
I don't need to know whether mypayroll person can write,
because chat GPT payroll emailsare kind of generic and kind of
templated already, so maybe chatGPT can do that lifting.
What I need to know is what youmentioned earlier Do they have
the critical thinking skills torealize when an email is not as
(37:26):
good as a phone call and thatyou wouldn't measure by writing,
by getting them to writesomething right in a lab class
through a lab report?
Majority of our students are notgoing to become chemists,
they're not going to beproducing lab reports.
Most of them probably won'teven be reading scientific
(37:49):
studies.
Some will, some won't.
And so really thinking abouthow can we assess that
differently?
Now, having said that, contextmatters.
The situational factors of yourclassroom matters.
If you have 400 students thatyou're trying to assess their
lab knowledge, that's differentthan if you have 20 students.
But we have engineering facultyhere who had an NSF grant to
(38:12):
study how they could scale uporal assessments, and so they
would have students do an examand then they'd have them in for
a 15 or 20-minute oralassessment where they might
focus on, like, one particularquestion that the student didn't
quite get right and give them achance to demonstrate they
actually know, or they mightjust have them describe
something that lacked a littlebit of description, and so I
(38:33):
think it is possible.
We need to really think throughhow AI could maybe free up
faculty and teaching assistanttime from the stuff that doesn't
directly impact students, sothat they have more time to
spend in human-to-humaninteractions with students to
really be able to assess doesthe student have the knowledge
and abilities?
I think they should at thispoint.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
It's so interesting to think about the role of the
oldest form of communication onearth, which is what you and I
are doing here.
I could use AI to fake that Iunderstand organic chemistry and
if you're a chemistry professorin two minutes you'll be able
to tell in a conversation that Ihave no idea what I'm talking
about.
(39:15):
But there's a lot of logisticsto that and at the university
level, with classes of howeverbig they are, that's really
tricky.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
And yet if we don't do it and we haven't been doing
it for decades, and by we I meanuniversities writ large,
especially the largeruniversities then we are
graduating folks who cannot talkto people about their knowledge
because they've never had to.
And, believe me, my husbandworks in the engineering field
and it's torture when engineerscan't talk to marketers or can't
(39:46):
talk to the sales guys or can'ttalk to the president of the
company.
They need to be able to talkabout engineering to
non-engineering people, to otherengineering people, and yet we
have not done a very good job ofthat at the university level
across the board good job ofthat at the university level
(40:06):
across the board.
And so that kind of gets alsoto the shift we have to make
about really thinking about whatwe used to call soft skills,
which always insulted me as asocial scientist that we're now
calling human skills or durableskills.
I'm kind of calling them human,durable skills and we really
have to start focusing on them.
They were always kind of part ofthe hidden curriculum.
Oh yeah, they're gettingdeveloped because we threw
(40:27):
students in groups, so of coursethey're learning how to
collaborate or you know whatever, and so we really need to, I
think be an intentional focus onwhat do humans need to learn to
do?
That makes them an added valueto the AI, because otherwise
they're not going to get the job.
Ai will get the job right.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
It's interesting.
It's like that, reflecting ondoctors and their bedside manner
.
Yeah, like you know, I hadfriends who went to medical
school.
You know I'm an old guy, sothey went to medical school 30
years ago and there was nocoursework in bedside manners.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Or ethics probably.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Yeah, we've all had doctors who we feel are
dismissive and we never go.
Oh, you know, I looked them upand they wrote this paper or
this, and they just ignore thefact that they make me feel like
I'm not a human being and theydidn't give me more than 30
seconds of their time going, wow, this doctor's great or this
doctor's not great, not based onany objective measures of the
(41:34):
science, but yeah, Human tohuman interaction.
Yeah, the human stuff, and Ilove that you push away from
that idea of the soft skillRight.
And I love that you push awayfrom that idea of the soft skill
right.
We used to be like, oh well,the engineers, like your husband
would be the academic.
You know the real tough, that'sthe real academic stuff.
And then us social sciencepeople because I'm in your camp,
(41:54):
soft touchy feeling, it's like,wait a second, you know, we
need both.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Those are hard skills to develop.
They are hard skills and so letme tell you what worries me
actually about our future andwhen we think about the
disconnect that often occursbetween K through 12 education
and higher education.
I see and correct me if I'mwrong.
I'd love to hear from you thatI'm wrong that a lot of the K-12
sector is diving full two feetdeep into AI world, and partly
(42:26):
because a lot of campuses arealready kind of Google
classrooms and then now Google'sGemini is out there and it's
going to just be fullyintegrated and they're really
talking about AI literacy.
I mean, there's a wholenonprofit org up in the Bay Area
that just helps K-12 folksdevelop AI literacy and I'm
(42:46):
worried that we're going to getstudents in a few years at the
university who are AI literatebut actually haven't developed
those human durable skillsoutside of the AI world.
And I'd love to hear from youthat I'm totally wrong about
that.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, I think you're spot on.
Uh-oh I think we saw, we'veseen, and there are a number of
factors right, there's kind of aconscious approach and then
there's most of it's anunconscious yeah.
Following.
You know some of the tools thatpromise to lighten your
workload as a teacher, toevaluate essays really quickly,
(43:28):
to catch on to other studentinformation systems that we've
already been using anyway.
In the early days, Apple lookedlike they were going to corner
the K-12 market.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
From a price point and some other blunders that
didn't work Right Justabsolutely Captured it
Absolutely.
So all the incoming the collegekids who have grown up with a
Chromebook- and yet, and yetthey do not know how technology
works.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
That's right it's become, it's an appendage that
they don't Understand.
You can live and know that yourheart's important without
understanding how a heart muscleworks.
Right, and it's like that.
Yeah, we wrestle with it hereat Albert Einstein Academies.
We've put together a workinggroup to explore AI and have
(44:27):
been working, you know,regularly over the past year.
But what happens is that theriver is moving so quickly that
you and so we can't even we'reso far away from a policy or a
position paper or or anything,because it's just rushing so
quickly.
Meanwhile, the commercial sideof education K-12, which is a
(44:50):
massive multi-billion dollar thePearsons of the world, anytime,
apple is interested in buying astudent information system,
which they did in the past, Ithink, for power school or
whatever you're like.
There's money there, right,when venture capitalists are
buying, are buying some of theseeducation related products, you
know that it's going to bedriven by bottom line and
(45:12):
economies of scale and notnecessarily pedagogy, good
pedagogy.
I think you're spot on.
We face in the public schoolsector.
We face, you know, the fundingpressures.
We face the, the, the stateaccountability measures, you
know, on an endless cycle ofaccountability where you can
(45:35):
look online and see ourdashboards and see where we are,
and all these, all thesestudent subgroups.
I mean you guys have the.
You know other metrics, right?
I'm not sure US Student WorldReport is still something people
look at, but I know for a longtime that was the deal, the
ranking, and so my trepidationaround this has been, as you
(46:00):
mentioned, like, are we going tohave students ready at the
college level who, if aprofessor, were to say, okay,
everybody, I'm going to comearound and verify that your
laptop is offline and I need youto write to this prompt and
then discuss it in the classroom?
(46:22):
You know, no one ever writesperfectly on a first draft,
right?
I mean, talk to ErnestHemingway, yeah, but at least
getting your thoughts down andthen let's talk about it and
defend your thoughts.
I don't know if kids are goingto be able to do that.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Yeah, and we don't yet know if that's going to be
bad for cognition.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Right, right, right, we don't know.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
I do know that spelling the automatic
corrections to spelling has mademe a worse speller.
I routinely misspell words nowthat I never used to misspell
before, like your and your Right.
And so we do know thattechnology and I know with GPS
on my phone I've gotten a bitdumber in terms of navigation
(47:04):
than I used to be.
I used to be much better atnorth, south, east, west and all
that kind of stuff so we doknow that technology can either
hinder or amplify learning andcognition, especially with it
generating, you know, no blankpage syndrome anymore.
Sounds lovely, but what do welose in that process?
(47:26):
And we just won't know fordecades.
And so I don't know.
I guess I would say that I'mglad I could retire in eight
years, and maybe it'll takelonger than that to really hit
the university system, but Idon't know.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
To me it feels a little bit like the difference
between when you and I tookphotos as kids, where it was
like, at least in my case, wedidn't have a lot of money, so
it was like you buy a roll andyou're like, oh my God, load it
the right way in the camerabecause you're going to
overexpose it and it's $7.
Speaker 2 (47:59):
And then take your photos and then you and be very
choosy about what photos youtook.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
That's right, you're not just hanging out thousands
of photos and then you take itand you drop it off and two
weeks later and you're like, ohmy God, my thumb was in front of
this, as opposed to now.
I have 6,000 photos in my on myphone, google, and this and
then that, and they're a lot,but but very few of them are
meaningful to me.
Yeah, and so I think, like Ican remember papers I wrote in
(48:27):
college.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
A topic that I dove deeply into and I wrestled with
this thing and now you can trainAI to mimic your writing style.
That's what I've been playingaround with, where I've uploaded
a bunch of written work andposition papers and some
creative stuff that I've doneinto AI and then had it generate
other essays on topics that Igive it but yeah, previous
(48:55):
writing.
And then you go where's thatline between like original work
or using a tool?
I mean, I don't drive a horseand buggy anymore.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Well, but also, yeah, but also.
This raises a different economyor problem we have to think of.
There's a difference betweenyou doing that and a novice
writer doing that.
True, and so you and I havebeen through the process of
developing our own authorialvoice.
(49:26):
We have been through theprocess of struggling with the
blank page.
We've been through that processof knowing that I can't just
sit down and write, like I haveto think about things and I have
to write and then rewrite, andthen rewrite and write, but our
novice students have not.
Novice students have not.
(49:48):
And so what?
We, every discipline now,whether it's writing or math or
chemistry or whatever, has tofigure out what are the
foundational skills that scienceis still telling us that will
probably matter in terms ofcognition.
And then we have to figure outhow we can scaffold that in.
My concern is that we can'tjust do that at the university
level.
I know we've talked we society,and at least in the US and
(50:08):
Canada, has talked for yearsabout we need more symmetry
between K through 16.
Like there shouldn't be this Kthrough 12 figures, everything
out.
And then we figure everythingout because we influence each
other right.
And so if the professor ofwriting here, decides how to
scaffold in and start where shethinks it should start, which is
struggling with the blank page.
So she's having students inclass struggling with the blank
(50:30):
page, but all through K, throughK, through 12, they didn't have
to do that.
She's actually, you know,starting way further back, and
so I just don't know how that'sgoing to work.
I hate to be so cynical orskeptical or pessimist, but I
think it's something that we, aseducators and people who really
care about learning and thecertifications of learning, we
(50:54):
really have to think through asa community, and this can't just
be on the individual shouldersof individual teachers,
individual instructors.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
What are you hopeful about in this space?
Speaker 2 (51:11):
I'm hopeful that.
I mean there is a lot moreconversation about integrity now
than there was prior to AI.
I mean we talked about it alittle bit during the pandemic,
but we didn't really changeanything, and so I do.
Really.
I am really hopeful that I seepeople making changes.
I see people really saying, ohshoot, this does have an impact.
(51:34):
I've got to change the way I'mdoing things.
So I'm really hopeful aboutthat.
I'm really hopeful about ourstudents, actually, because you
are seeing a lot of studentsthink carefully about this and
think I don't want to offload mybrain to this machine.
There's some really, reallycritically thinking students out
(51:55):
there that are resisting the AIhype.
They're resisting saying thatthey have to have that A1 sauce
with their steak, when theydon't want their A1 sauce, if
you get the reference there.
So I'm hopeful about that.
I'm hopeful that there are someintentional, thoughtful efforts
(52:18):
to use ai and not um what we'veseen in other situations where
they just openly give one of themajor companies millions of
dollars to just infiltrate theirentire education system.
That doesn't make me hopeful.
But intentional choices like kthrough 12, a lot of uh that
(52:39):
people have been using likemagic school, like an
intentional ai that's beendesigned for educational
purposes, not these general l, l, m, m um machines that have not
been intentionally designed.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
So I'm hopeful about those things um yeah, it's
interesting, I never anticipatedthe environmental.
Yeah, that's right, my daughteris very hesitant to use ai at
all, but from her angle it'smore around.
Dad, do you know what it'sdoing in the environment?
(53:14):
I'm like I, you know, I boughtthe 19 a month chat gbt thing
and I thought it was cool andI'm asking it all kinds of weird
stuff and all.
And she said, dad, have youseen the impact?
And so I started to kind ofdive into it a little bit.
And unbeknownst to me, you know, these tech companies are
buying server farms that are 300000 square feet in one
(53:37):
warehouse just to serve to housethese servers, so that this
thing can run in states thatdon't have water, in very dry
states, and these, these serverfarms need a lot of water for
cooling stay cool, so yeah, sothat was something that came out
of nowhere, at least on my veryyeah, I do now when I present
(53:58):
on this topic.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
One, I disclose what images if I've used the tool for
anything particular images andthen I disclose how much energy
that used.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Just to help bring that awareness.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
You have to ask AI to tell you how much energy that
used to help bring thatawareness.
You have to ask AI to tell youhow much energy.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
No, I look at the research.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
Well, you've been so generous with your time and I
appreciate very much yourexpertise and knowledge and that
you've brought some some a 3delement to, to something that
you know, as, as we started outtalking about, people understand
the word academic and theyunderstand the word integrity.
(54:39):
Put them together and what itreally means in real life.
Not so much Um.
Is there anything that we'venot touched on that may be
rattling around in your head foryou, uh, that you'd like to
mention?
And then I have one morequestion for you after that head
for you that you'd like tomention.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
And then I have one more question for you after that
.
I'd just like to put anexclamation point on what you
said earlier about how yourschool system's still struggling
with having a policy.
I'm glad you're doing itthoughtfully, I'm glad you're
doing it intentionally, and Ithink here's where chat, gpt or
Gen AI tools might be helpful toyou to just say let's just get
(55:17):
something done.
It's not going to be perfect.
These are living, breathingdocuments.
We're going to have to changeit, maybe in the fall or maybe
before then, because this stuffmoves so quickly.
But just some common sense,standards and guidance for folks
.
So common things about like,what's an honest use of these
tools?
You know what's, what's, whatprotects the values, what are
(55:39):
our values, and then what, howcan we use or not use these
tools?
Provide some guidance aroundthat in alliance with those
values, and I would focus onintegrity, I would focus on
learning and I would focus onyour job of assessing, you know,
certifying student learning,and then so what does that mean?
So I think, I think being OKwith something that has to be a
living, breathing document.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Thank you for that, because we can get stuck in the
and the endless debate, and sosometimes you have to generate a
product.
My last question is ahypothetical.
Speaker 2 (56:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
Imagine you have the opportunity to create a
billboard on the side of thefreeway.
I've had people say I wouldn'tdo it.
I believe that pollutes theview.
Let's ignore that for now we'regoing to ignore that one.
You have the chance to createthis billboard.
People are seeing it, drivingby at 70 miles an hour.
What does your billboard say tothe world about what you
(56:40):
believe in, about your work,about, uh, your views on life in
general?
Speaker 2 (56:46):
I am.
I'm not the best at putting uhbig things like big ideas into
like a pithy marketing slogan,but it would be something like
what you do matters or somethinglike that, like your choices
matter and how I would expand onthat is just again, people
thinking about getting out oftheir own heads and always
(57:10):
thinking about themselves andthinking about the other people
around them.
So using your signal lightmatters to other people, right?
What you say to your childabout using AI matters.
What you say to them about theimportance of grades matters.
Your actions have reactions.
They impact people.
(57:31):
You can't control how peopleare going to react to you, but
you can control.
You can think carefully aboutyour choices and always say you
know, if I was around me rightnow, how would that impact me
and then maybe make differentchoices.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
Thank you for that and that's a great.
It connects back to your work,right, just in all senses of
understanding how to live a lifeof integrity.
So I thank you so much.
I will attach links to yourbooks in the show notes and
thank you for really againmaking what could be an abstract
(58:11):
topic and an unusual topicright.
I mean, maybe more and moreuniversities have work like
yours Not enough, not enough,right and I think society
doesn't have them.
No, I'm not going to ask thequestion as to whether the White
House should have one.
We'll leave that?
Speaker 2 (58:30):
Yeah, We'll leave that conversation.
We'll just say hashtag, make itsomeone's job.
Speaker 1 (58:35):
There we go Make it someone's job.
Yeah, thank you so much foryour time today and really for
sharing and chatting with me.
I really appreciate it Sure.
Speaker 2 (58:45):
Thank you for asking.
Speaker 1 (58:47):
So we'll cut it there and then I'll let you know,
I'll send you an email when it'sgoing to go live and I don't
think we touched on anythingcontroversial that you don't
want in there.
Yeah, and I'll.
Usually what happens is I justedit for some dead space, some
(59:07):
dead air.
Sometimes I or my coughing thatI had.
Speaker 2 (59:10):
I'll take that out, but other than that, your
content in here and I don'tthink I don't think I'll lose my
American passport for talkingabout a one sauce, but we'll
find out.
Speaker 1 (59:21):
I wasn't.
Yeah, I know I was going to mymy board member, the Canadian
board member.
I always I joke around with her.
She gave me a hard time theother day about a budget thing
and I said it's OK, I'm going toget my revenge.
Aren't you going to be the 51ststate?
Yeah, you just looked at me.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
She gave me this death glare and I go okay, sorry
, I love what Trump since we'reoff the record now I love what
Trump is doing for Canadiansovereignty and Canadian
unification.
I think it's a beautiful sightto behold.
Speaker 1 (59:49):
Well, I was saying the other day I said I've never
run into a pissed off Canadianbefore, like you don't want to
run into us.
I even saw Trudeau saysomething like we're slow to
anger, but when we get mad wewhatever, and I was like I just
never.
It just doesn't seem to be likea like part of the national.
Well, when it happens, I'm sureyou have more, obviously you
(01:00:12):
know, but it's actually betternow.
Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
It's actually better when our anger is extrovert,
like it is right now.
Normally we're passive,aggressive, and so we're a
little bit, yeah, not so nicewith our anger, but at least
we're clear and direct, and youknow exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
This is just.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Well, not that I'm trying to create more work for
myself.
Honestly, I'm so intrigued bythe K-12 system and how you're
all dealing with this.
If you ever want to think aboutincluding me in your
conversations there around AIand AI or just AI, don't
(01:00:49):
hesitate to reach out.
Like I said, I'm, I'm, I can'tbelieve I'm saying trying to
give myself more work, but, um,you know, you're in my community
and, uh, your students mightcome to my university at some
point and they do, yeah, and so.
Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
So I very much appreciate that.
I'll keep that on the on.
Uh, you know on my list ofpeople to reach out to where we
are.
I think we're going to have onemore meeting of that task force
this school year.
But, going forward, it's atopic.
I mentioned previously that ourschools are IB schools,
(01:01:22):
international Baccalaureate,which is great.
Yeah, the IB came out reallysuper early with a statement
about AI.
They were like, hey, it's here,it's a tool, ai.
They were like, hey, it's here,it's a tool.
If you guys use it in yourcommunity, kids need to cite it
the same way they cite something.
And I felt like, okay, at leasttypically the IB is slow on
(01:01:45):
stuff because it's global, so tosynthesize views around the
world as well.
But in this one I was like,okay, they said something, but
then I started to think about it.
I'm like it's not the same asciting a Google search.
Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
No.
Speaker 1 (01:01:59):
This is a thing that is learning from what's out
there, and I've been usingChatGBT since it started and I'm
like you can't compare version1.0 with what's today Right, 50
times more powerful.
So a lot of good thinking stillto come, and but I really
appreciate, uh, your time andand I wish you all the best in
(01:02:20):
the rest of this academic year.
Thanks you, too.
Have a great day okay, byethanks for joining us on the
hangout podcast.
You can send us an email atpodcastinfo at protonme.
Many thanks to my daughter,maya, for editing this episode.
I'd also like to underline thatthis podcast is entirely
(01:02:43):
separate from my day job and, assuch, all opinions expressed
herein are mine and mine alone.
Thanks for coming on in andhanging out.
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