Teaching Students to Struggle Despite AI
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The missing link between scientific journals and relationship counseling. The Last Show with David Cooper.
For students, if AI can write their essays in seconds, what is the point of anything? Does using large language models make students worse at thinking? And if so, how best can we teach them? Well, one English professor says the real lesson people need to understand is that learning isn't what to write, but learning is knowing when to struggle. I am here with Christy Gerd Harry, an English professor at Babson College. Christy, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
So you're an English prof. I could generate an essay and submit it to you right now in 30 seconds. This presents kind of a crisis in teaching, doesn't it?
What challenges do students face with AI in essay writing?
Like AI, is it good? Is it bad? Or is it more complicated than good or bad?
Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated than good or bad. You're right that right now students can just generate an essay.
Does using AI hinder students' critical thinking skills?
Is it good? Maybe. Will they learn anything from just generating? Probably not. But I think what we kind of misunderstand is that we associate AI as just cheating. I work with a lot of students as an educator, as a researcher, and leftists don't want to outsource their thinking.
What is the importance of struggle in the learning process?
They are looking to be taught how to effectively, ethically use the tools to kind of enhance their learning, enhance their outputs in ways that doesn't just totally crush all the learning along the way.
Even if you use it to kind of generate everything and you string along, you get B minuses, whatever, fine, you get your degree, you don't get caught. At the very end of it, like, what have you learned? That's the scary thing. You've kind of robbed yourself of that experience of learning.
Absolutely. And I think students fear that as much as we do. That, you know, I think that instructors need to be really transparent with their students. And I actually think that's a good pedagogical practice anyway. Like when you're teaching someone, they should know, like, why? Why am I being assigned this? Why is this the right assessment?
How can educators adapt to the AI-driven landscape?
And so I kind of... lead with my own values with students. Like, you know, I want you to get this out of this thing. And I try to be transparent. So, you know, if you're going to, let's say, go into a career or go into like a family where you think you might ever need to make an argument, then practicing it here or you can write a thesis statement or a central claim, and you could make mistakes, right? You can get feedback in a way that the stakes aren't as high. I mean, grades feel very high stakes to students, but really, if we're focusing on the learning, then this is a practice. It's great for students.
I'm going to take you on a little tangent here. I used to do a lot of standup comedy and early on when I was doing it, someone who was kind of like better than me, mentoring me, whatever, said you should never steal jokes. And it's not because if you steal a joke, you get called out and you get called a hack and joke thievery is this taboo thing in comedy. But when you do that, you've robbed yourself of the creative process of like writing a mediocre joke, performing it, it not going well, rewriting it, restructuring it, thinking how you might write a good joke and through that process developing your voice. So really the crime is not to the comedian you've stolen from, which it is, but you've really robbed yourself of that process.
And I feel like creative writing and writing in general, it's the exact same thing.
Yeah, I mean, I think about it as it's like a muscle, right? And so like we're in March Madness time right now, it's basketball. And like, you know, those players are incredible, but they didn't like come out of the womb, like shooting free throws, right? So they like saw something, they got some coaching and they practiced and they had to try and try and try. And it's that kind of, like when I talk about struggle, it's like that motivation, that grit to like keep trying at something so that you develop your own style so that when the stakes are higher in the game,
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:45
2
What challenges do students face with AI in essay writing?
0:45–0:57
3
Does using AI hinder students' critical thinking skills?
0:57–1:16
4
What is the importance of struggle in the learning process?
1:16–2:02
5
How can educators adapt to the AI-driven landscape?
2:02–6:22
6
How can transparency improve the student-teacher relationship?
6:22–9:42
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Last Show with David Cooper
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