Chapter 1: 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?
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Chapter 2: 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.
Chapter 3: 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.
Chapter 4: 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?
Chapter 5: 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, You can kind of recall and you can think in the moment, you can shoot the free throw under pressure. And if we outsource that, what happens to that ability?
That's a great question. Well, now we have a tool that can prevent the struggle. When students are struggling, they can turn to it. How would you recommend students deal with that? If they want to learn how to struggle, would you tell them not to use AI? Would you tell them to use it differently? Would you have these companies develop different tools for students? What would you do?
I don't know that I trust companies to.
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Chapter 6: How can transparency improve the student-teacher relationship?
And I'm like, that is it, right? You're better than a robot. Like keep going. If you just started with this, you'd be like mid, right?
Yeah.
So, okay, so you show them that they can be better than robots, but is there a way to, like, they're going to use the tools anyway. Is there a way to use them and both be better than the robot?
I think so. You know, it's a learning process for all of us. I'm, like, very confident in my expertise in writing. I'm learning with them in terms of what generative AI is doing to our writing and processes. And so I think there's a lot of experimentation, and I think that You know, you have to kind of build a classroom where that trust and transparency can exist.
And so, you know, sometimes like, yeah, like, you know, I want you to use AI here and I want you to reflect on it and show me your prompts and talk to me about your process. But then they buy in when I say like, right, like laptops down, I want you to write by hand. Like, or, you know, I don't want you to use AI for this.
And I think that my students trust me and that I trust them for when I want it, when I don't. We can kind of practice those different kinds of skills.
When I was 18 or 19, though, in university, like I didn't want to be there. Like I didn't have the drive. I didn't want to get something out of it. I just wanted to like finish and start my job and start getting a paycheck, whatever. And now, like if I were there choosing to be there, I would want to be there, want to get something out of it.
How do you how do you tell a kid who's like doesn't care, I guess, because they're not at the age where they found what they want to care about. And it's just easier to cheat.
I completely agree. Like, I wasn't a great student, which is why I think it makes me a good professor now. And I think about, like, if, you know, AI was available when I was 18 years old, like, yeah, it would have probably outsourced my thinking. I probably wouldn't be an English professor today because I wouldn't have developed the depth of knowledge or that, like, grit to keep going at it.
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