Academic Year in Review and next steps

 Apologies for the long silence (March, really?). 

The semester and the academic year is over, so herewith is a reminder/self-reminder about this year, including what to repeat & what not to repeat, as I look forward. 

1. I poured my heart into my teaching this year. I came up with new assignments and added new readings. I tried to reach out to every student every week and definitely did so in the online classes. I figured out how to temper my rage at AI, which does not seem to bother anyone else at Northern Clime, and came up with a solution (hint: better rubrics) that addresses the issue without sending me on a pointless quest to report it to admin. 

I met with students. I was on campus and in my office all day multiple days each week. I went to student presentations and supported them. In other words, I showed up. 

I loved it. I loved the reading and the teaching and the students. No regrets about that part. 

Would I do it again? Not on your tintype. 

Did my students appreciate it, and did I gain new majors for us? Absolutely yes. Did I give them the best experience that I could devise? Yes. 

Did the administration value it? What do you think? As you may have heard about a billion times, teaching at an R1 is not highly valued unless I am "reflecting on my teaching" in a public performance countable for annual review metrics. I am not the boasting type, so what I heard back was "yeah, okay, teaching--well, moving on, what did you publish?"

Don't love something that doesn't love you back. 

2. I didn't publish much because see #1 above. Will I change my priorities next year? You bet. 

3. For the first time since I gave up administration, I had an extremely heavy service load this year, which counts for the width of a gnat's eyebrow in terms of value. 

So now, having Learned My Lesson, I'm looking forward to the summer and the next year with energy and hope. 

1. The big archival project I've been working on for years: moving forward more swiftly to completion.

2. The book project: I hope the same.

Here's wishing everyone a happy and productive summer! 

Two views of AI-assisted teaching (spoiler: I think I'm right and they're wrong)

When I teach online, I use tools that allow students to comment, some of which allow a longer response in a discussion board, and some of which allow line-by-line annotation of the kind you would get in hypothes.is. and assign an auto-grade. Let's call it hypothes.is for short. 

But based on the teaching philosophy I outlined in an earlier post--"I’m paying attention, and I hope that they are as well"--I have told them that I am reading everything they write in my class, and I am doing it, too. I turn off all the intrusive "AI can generate the instructor's responses for you" defaults lest they infect what's left of my brain. 

It is my (possibly touching and naive belief) that if you connect individually with students by responding to them, even if they are online, they will have a better experience and might be less likely to plop everything into ChatGPT or its numerous hellspawn siblings and give me AI instead of their thoughts. 

There are a few concessions to knowing that they might try AI. I've disabled copying and pasting, to "encourage" them to write their own stuff for two reasons. 

• First, if they use AI, they still have to type it out, and given how low-stakes this is, some of them might choose to do the work as the path of least resistance. I had a student inquire about not being able to copy and paste, and I said, "nope, not in this class."
• Some students in previous semesters have copied and pasted from another student's work, a bold move given that I comment and say things on the board like "that's what X said above" and privately "see me." If they don't think I'm reading responses, they might think I won't notice. I notice. 

The other day, I was talking to a colleague ("they" for anonymity) and mentioned that I had just spent a couple of hours responding to students in hypothes.is and writing individual comments. 

Colleague looked at me as if I had grown two heads. "Here's a tip. Don't you know that hypothes.is grades them? You don't have to read all those."

Me: "Yes, but I want to respond to the students."

Colleague: "I never read them! They talk to each other! I look at their questions and once in a while dip into the comments for fun. The grades post themselves."

Me: "I think it's important." 

Colleague just stares at me as if their opinion of my intelligence has just dropped by double digits. Clearly anyone who had any smarts at all, in their view, would stop paying attention to stuff like student comments.

My first thought was "IDGAF what you think."

My second thought was "Your poor students. No wonder they pile on the AI garbage and think no one is reading, because in some cases no one is."

Yes, all this time is time and brainpower I could spend writing. 

But doesn't someone have to pay attention?  

 

 

Mark Twain, AI, and the "Big Thoughts" Lie

It is Mark Twain's birthday--happy birthday, Mark!--and I am reading, or rather listening to, Ron Powers's biography of Twain as I drive and walk each week. I'm now in 1907, when Twain is basically past his authorship phase and well into his very creditable phase of anti-imperialist writings. And since it is 1907, an epic brouhaha is about to ensue with Isabel Lyon, his secretary/companion whose motives & actions have caused considerable debate for Twainiacs over the past many decades. 

But one of the key takeaways from any Twain bio is just how convinced he was of his own smarts as a businessman and just how much money he lost from that belief, from investing hundreds of thousands first in the Paige Compositor (which bankrupted him), to the miracle food Plasmon, to a new Jacquard loom printer for which there was no market. He would say he'd been a fool before, but this new thing would really work and make his fortune--once it was perfected, of course. 

I'm reminded of this because one of the big tech bro billionaires asserted recently that AI would revolutionize learning because we could teach children to focus on all the big picture stuff--big thoughts--and leave all the random junk like facts to AI. Since AI spreads literal fabrications like Johnny Appleseed on a mission, I thought he was kidding, but no. 

I've heard this "teach kids to reason abstractly and the rest will follow" stuff for 30 years, and you know what? Without actual facts or contexts, they can't draw any "big picture" abstractions that are worth anything. No one can. The reasoning that happens without a grounding in facts and contexts is nonsense.

And since nature abhors a vacuum, metaphorically speaking, we have become all too aware of what happens when we stop dealing with facts, and the news media stop reporting them to become either a mouthpiece of Jeff Bezos or worse. If we don't have facts and teach people how to think critically about the inferences we can draw from them, here's what happens: they make up their own, with "big thoughts" that emerge from their worst fears and impulses. (Insert your own example here.)

But the tech bros and ed tech bros aren't buying that AI can't do it all. As Michael Clune says in The Atlantic, trying to warn us about its limits: 

We don’t have good evidence that the introduction of AI early in college helps students acquire the critical- and creative-thinking skills they need to flourish in an ever more automated workplace, and we do have evidence that the use of these tools can erode those skills. 

There's that pesky word again--"evidence." 

And Charlie Warzel puts it even more bluntly: 

We are waiting because a defining feature of generative AI, according to its true believers, is that it is never in its final form. Like ChatGPT before its release, every model in some way is also a “low-key research preview”—a proof of concept for what’s really possible. You think the models are good now? Ha! Just wait. Depending on your views, this is trademark showmanship, a truism of innovation, a hostage situation, or a long con. Where you fall on this rapture-to-bullshit continuum likely tracks with how optimistic you are for the future.  

 So do we believe our own lying eyes about the effects of teaching "big picture" versus facts, or do we believe the tech bros? Or do we just plunge ahead while we wait for the AI rapture?

Twain believed that the Paige Compositor would outclass the Mergenthaler linotype machine once it was perfected--that is, to quote Warzel, "You think the models are good now? Ha! Just wait." 

TL;dr. At this point, AI in the classroom is the Paige Compositor, and we all now know how that turned out for our birthday boy. 

 

Why I am teaching like it’s 1990: no phones, no bikes, no motorcars—not a single luxury

Whether you recognize my subtitle from Gilligan’s Island or from Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise,” you’re still getting the gist of it: teaching old school style. What does it mean this semester? 

First of all, a disclaimer: my students this semester are smart and eager to learn, so these things might not work everywhere if, as happens to us all, you have a lethargic or uninterested class. But here are a few changes that evoke the 1990s Days of Yore:

• They write something short every day, on paper, and I collect it. I comment on and return their writing the next day, with handwritten comments, though it’s sometimes only a word or two. These are low-stakes assignments, but they (1) help with attendance, (2) provide guidance (through questions) on the kinds of things that are significant in the reading, and (3) act as a springboard for discussion.
• They also present their findings in class a lot, either alone or in groups after discussion. I listen and take notes and comment.
• If it’s not written in class, it didn’t happen. I’ve had a few try to AI & upload their way to an assignment after it’s been written in class, but nope—in class or it doesn’t count. There are dropped grades to account for absences, etc. Also, those in-class assignments aren’t posted until after the class. 
• They’re writing their papers in class, as I mentioned in August and September, and there are usually only a few weeks between some kind of activity or campus-based field trip. 
• Said papers (the final drafts) are printed out and returned with handwritten comments. 
• If they’re doing group or individual work before coming back to discuss something with the class, they can use their laptops/phones to look things up. Okay, that’s not a 1990 thing to do—but I am walking around & talking with them, making suggestions, and talking with them about what’s on their screens. If they don’t want me to see it, they shouldn’t be looking at it in a class space while working on class work.
• Remember transparencies? (Remember what?). No, I haven’t gone back to those, but I do print out passages for class-based close readings using the doc camera and mark it up as we talk.
• And, of course, there’s the whiteboard notes for discussion. Armed with markers and energy, I still make notes on it (recording their comments)  rather than standing at a lectern and doing the same thing on a piece of paper. Why? I’m not sure. It’s something about the space of the whiteboard and moving around in the classroom and darting to the back of it and making eye contact with them rather than with a sheet of paper. I get ideas from them as I’m synthesizing their ideas & asking questions. 

The general idea of all this is that I am engaging with them in real time and real life. I’m paying attention, and I hope that they are as well. If it can be done in person, that’s what we’re doing. 

I’ve explained to them that I’m trying to provide a space where we can talk, and where they can write, without being called to everything else in their lives. It’s busy out there, and there’s a lot demanding their attention. 

So there you have it—my pre-web (though not pre-Internet) 1990 class strategies in 2025. So far, it’s been working. 

AI is to Writing as Cheez-Whiz is to Cheese (File under “cranky rantsmanship”)

 

Hear me out. I promise you that this is written by a real person, and possibly a Cassandra.

Exhibit A: A long time ago, I had Feelings about the incessant cheerleading for Twitter that first the media, and then colleagues, were going on and on and on about. (That was in the Before Times, before Twitter became Evil X.) My academic compatriots all but posted signs saying "Twitter will save the world, or academic discourse anyway." Now we are all on Bluesky, which alarms right-wing pundit Megan McArdle, she of the "If you're old and poor, sucks to be you" school of economic growth, because there is no profit in it for her, but for a time it did seem that Twitter could be great, and Bluesky, pace McArdle, might get there yet. 

But the point was, the cheerleading was too much, as it had been for other tech that was supposed to transform teaching. 

Exhibit B: Enter the MOOC. Remember them and the quaint old days they represented? They too were going to transform education in all the best ways--turning us into glorified tutors for the MOOC 'n' Bake classrooms we would all be grading for--not teaching, just grading, because that is why everyone wants to teach. UCLA is already going there: an AI + MOOC combination that will transform the world. 

Now to Exhibit C: AI and writing. I've already complained about the mind-numbing effects of reading AI-generated prose and the lengthy knuckling under that the MLA has done in bowing to our new environment-destroying overlords. 

But now I'm seeing professional writers (no names, of course) embrace it as an idea factory. All they have to do is clean it up a bit to mimic their voice and bingo, there's a Substack or blog post. 

I read a few, and the whole "idea factory" thing? Not so much. If that's what ChatGPT 4.0 or Claude or Grok or any of the other idea factories generate what you  consider ideas, then okay. Whatever helps to monetize the site. You do you. If your idea of writing is tweaking some very anodyne non-content, then go for it.  

But all AI-generated prose, in a perfect world, would have a disclaimer: "AI wrote this, so decide whether you want to spend 3 or 5 or 10 minutes of your only precious brain life in reading it." 

Oh, and is it good for your brain to use AI to write for you? Maybe not.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/202506/how-chatgpt-may-be-impacting-your-brain 

If you want to eat Cheez-Whiz, it definitely has its uses. But don't pretend that it's a true aged cheddar like you'd eat with fresh apples. 

Same goes for AI writing.

 

Random bullets of another semester ends, and spring is here

 

How's everyone doing? The Economist cover says it all, really.

• Teaching.This semester is all done & in the books, except for grading. Based on all of your comments a long time ago (2011! We were all so young!) I'm providing a summary comment along with the rubric and telling them to contact me if they would like more inline detailed comments. 
• I kept a chart this semester of who actually looked at the extensive feedback I gave, since Canvas allows you to see whether the student clicks back in to see the comments. You'll be completely shocked to learn that the rate of looking at the feedback was about 30%, about the same number that ever looked at the Panopto videos, etc. 
• It didn't change whether I gave comments or not, but it did make me a little more understanding about why they still can't tell whether to put quotations or italics in a title, etc., and that I could save my breath--well, my iPad handwritten comments--because they weren't paying attention to it anyway. 
• I have been lurking over at the r/professors subreddit, which is teaching me (once I ignore the bitterness) all about tools: tools to gamify, like Kahoot (not doing that), tools to grade (not doing that, either), tools to catch AI (many of which seem sneaky to me). But there seems to be (again, ignoring bitterness) a sense that students are struggling with basic thinking & reasoning concepts, with reading even short materials, and with speaking up for fear of failure. With an online class, it's hard to detect those things.
• Speaking of which: I have 100% in-person classes in the fall and am the only tenured person in the department to be teaching 100% in person. I didn't ask for this, since I do like to teach online as well, but I'm kind of excited about it, since the experience a couple of years ago with the old-school methods (writing papers in class, working on revising them in class, exams in class, class discussion, etc.) was great. 

• Writing and Research. I've been writing faithfully every day, though it's all notes circling the new project rather than actual paragraphs I could put into the new book project. That time is coming, though.
  
• Conferences. Going to conferences is surreal. Budgets are being slashed, academe is under attack (you're saying "tell me about it!") but in the conversations I overheard, everyone keeps talking as though nothing is happening--"And after this fellowship, I've applied for X," "Are you going to Germany for Y conference?" etc. Loads of themes about environmental justice and the anthropocene and pious hand-wringing over climate change, all while we are burning up the atmosphere flying to these things when we could be doing them over Zoom. I confess to laughing out loud when a colleague brought up flying to a European conference about something something climate change and said "Are you kidding? No academic who goes to an in-person conference gets to preach about climate change without a raised eyebrow from the rest of us" or something to that effect. 
• Service. Still showing up in person for stuff, and often the only civilian (i.e., non admin) there. 
• The rest of it. Trying to walk in the woods, and read real books, and spend time by the water as much as I can.

Edited to add: I'm trying to comment on your blogs, but Wordpress, etc. is hurling so many obstacles that I'm not sure the comments are showing--sorry. 

Still hanging in there

 It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that there are distractions in the country & in academe right now (waves hands in the direction of everything) as we swing between rage & despair & fight on as best we can. 

Anyway, here’s some non-news content: 

Regular life

• After a —let’s just say “weather-filled”—winter, it looks as though spring is going to be here at some point, so hooray! There’s something in the sky right now, some unfamiliar light—could it be the sun? 
• We can’t hibernate for February any more, but it is only 28 days, and this is the last of it. I couldn’t hibernate, anyway: the birds and the squirrels rely on my filling the feeders.
• One of my cats has discovered that he can climb onto the hammock, which is one of those that swings wildly, and he is extremely proud of himself, as indeed he should be.
• I’m listening to Dan Jones’s The Plantagenets and keep thinking “well, it could be worse, like the winter of 1314 worse, so keep moving.” Oddly, this gives me some hope: if they got through it, you can, too. 
• Since vaccines have been available, I’ve had them all—but I am also older than dirt and experienced a lot of diseases before there were any vaccines for diseases except for smallpox, TB,  and (later) Polio. Both kinds of measles, including one with a high fever during which I hallucinated voices; scarlet fever; mumps; chicken pox; shingles (yes, as a child)—you name it, I had it. My point is that seeing these come back is only one of the worst things that this kakistocracy has visited upon us—is plague next?—but it’s also one of the most pointless.

Teaching life

• We’re now, what, 4-5 years post-Covid, but I don’t think the students have recovered. I’ve tried to scale up the assignments a bit but received pushback that it was too much. Bear in mind that what I’m assigning for grad and undergrad students is about 2/3 of what I used to assign 10 years ago, but they seem to be really suffering under the workload, so I accommodate as far as possible. 
• I order books, but it seems that they will not buy the books. Would I rather have them have a chance at reading the materials, or would I rather have them buy the books & lose out if they don’t? I scan & OCR them & post them & hope that this makes reading possible for them.
• Lest I get a swelled head about making a difference with my awesome video lectures and extensive feedback on papers, I’ve checked to see the viewership of both. About 1/3 of the students watch the lectures, and about the same number actually look at the feedback I give. I guess making a difference for those who care is enough, right? 
• On the other hand, some students have reached out to say that they appreciate either the feedback or the lectures, so that’s a win.

Research life

• I’ve been writing most days, although it’s almost all reading & writing, making notes and working through ideas rather than creating finished prose. It’s kind of exciting, since the writing itself seems to generate the ideas—not a new concept, of course, but it seems to be working.
• I’ve also made progress on the collaborative project and can see the light at the end of one of the tunnels, anyway. 
• Conferences are coming up. They’re kind of the “return to work” version of academic life, but apparently virtual conferences can’t slake academics’ relentless thirst for travel and spending money in search of community. The COVID-era virtual experience wasn’t enough, apparently. 

I hope you’re all hanging in there!

Welcome to 2025!

Undine: "Welcome to 2025! New year, new me! This is going to be the year when I get so much writing ---"

Covid enters the chat, with a positive test line so reddish-purple that it looks like a murder scene.

Oh, well, eventually I will feel better. 

In the meantime:

• The fires and the political scene are terrible, but you already knew that.
• Reading actual books instead of doomscrolling through the now-canceled WaPo & NYTimes is better for mental health.
• Columnists like Jennifer Rubin have quit and have now gone to our old friend Substack. While I admire that in principle, it's the whole cable & streaming services thing all over again: you pay for cable, and then you pay extra for Hulu, Apple+, Netflix, etc.
  
• Teaching is going well, and if Covid 1.0 taught us anything, it's that we can hop on Zoom for a class or two if we are not too sick to teach but too sick to risk infecting others.
• Everyone on my social media counts the number of books that they read in a year and then posts it at the end of the year. I've never done this & don't remember seeing this before. Questions: Does everyone keep track like this? Should I start doing this? 

Hope your new year is going well!

 

Waning days of 2024

 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and (nearly) Happy New Year! I mostly wanted to post in order to give you this peaceful picture to ring in the new year.

Academics think of the new year as beginning in the fall (because of classes), but I'm hoping this will be a new start. Herewith some wishes for myself and anyone else who would like them: 

1. For having a better work-life balance.

2. For finding new interests (crafts such as paper-making? more focus on local history?) and new sources of joy.

3. For finding more time for what matters. I've canceled both the New York Times and the Washington Post (sorry, Carolyn Hax) for their relentless cheerleading of guess-who. Anyway, I find more of WaPo's actual news reprinted in my local paper, since their digital format is all silliness and Trump. 

4. For spending less time on teaching, however fascinating I find it.

5. For getting unstuck and unstalled on one writing project and finishing a major part of another project.

6. For being outside more and using my standing desk adapter thingy (not a real standing desk) to stop the fidgets when writing. 

I wish you all joy, happiness, and peace in the new year!

Brave new AI world: UCLA comp lit course to be fully AI (except the grading, of course)

 https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/comparative-literature-zrinka-stahuljak-artificial-intelligence?fbclid=IwY2xjawHCkWJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHevSkyx0i5RjId-pd4g4_W-cs4zgTUOz19XwrxVpLU7LD2jt9E4FEkX7Jw_aem_LRrvJbHS0TFgq9uokRfYFw

So here we are: some kind of highly monetized tech company called Kudu is going to take Professor Zrinka Stahuljak’s comp lit course materials and turn them into a fully AI-driven course—except for the grading, of course, which will be left to Teaching Assistants. 

Benefits to students? Consistency across multiple sections. 

Benefits to Teaching Assistants? They get to work on the students’ writing (autocorrect wants to make this “writhing,” and I kind of get it).

Benefits to the Professor? No additional work except for submitting grades. She doubtless has tenure and is not worried about her job. 

Any downsides? 

1. Well, the TAs are going to be stuck reading writing that is likely to be about 95% AI generated (ChatGPT, Claude, Google Notes or whatever) and maybe 5% from Chegg or Course Hero. And they will get to track it all down to report to Academic Standards.

2.  If you were a student, would you put forth your best effort, knowing that everything was canned and your professor was never going to look at any of it? If your professor was like the Karl Marx God in the clouds in a Monty Python skit, who, once having generated content, just says “Get on with it!”? Look, I teach online often, and one of the hardest but most rewarding parts is talking to students as real person to real person. What if you remove even that layer of connection?

3. Who’s going to answer their questions? AI. 

4. Oh, and the textbook that will generate all the AI? Is it OER? Oh, you sweet summer child; of course it’s not. It’s going to cost the students an additional $25 per semester. 

5. If this is the wave of the future—the MOOC of the future, if you will—what about intellectual property? 

Questions:

1. Is this going to cost the university more than simply having a course in D2L, Canvas, or Blackboard? 

2. Since Kudu is compensating the professors, how does this affect their employment with the university? 

3. Cui bono? Kudu and the University’s bottom line, probably. But what about the students? What about the connections that teaching a humanistic subject is supposed to foster? 

4. Out of state tuition at UCLA is 43K a year. Would you send your kid to be taught by a bot? Call me when Bezos and the other billionaires and millionaires send their students to be taught by nonhuman objects instead of people. 

MLA on AI: I promised I wasn't going to write more about it, but here we are

 Internal monologue of the last 15 minutes: "You have papers to grade . . . don't look at that MLA AI report that you couldn't see the other day because its server crashed . . . papers to grade, remember?  . . . don't do it!" and here we are. It is the Great MOOC Panic of 2015 all over again, and it is pure catnip to people with opinions.

So as you probably already heard, CCCC and the MLA have joined their unholy forces to weigh in on Generative AI. (I kid because I love.)  https://hcommons.org/app/uploads/sites/1003160/2024/10/MLA-CCCC-Joint-Task-Force-WP-3-Building-Culture-for-Gen-AI-Literacy-1.pdf

There are three of these working papers; this one is the latest. I did read through it, although probably to get into the spirit of things I should have fed it into an AI engine and asked for bullet points.

Some positive thoughts:

1. I appreciate the work that went into this, truly. There are thoughtful people on the board, and they have really tried to make guidelines that would be helpful. 

2. It's really useful for distinguishing between AI and Generative AI and other forms as well as what they can and cannot do.

Some questions: 

1. Is it strongly promoting the use of GAI in every course? You betcha. I kind of see it, since they believe the wave of the future is training students to use it effectively, since the whole "help students to write better on their own" ship has apparently sailed.

2. What is our role as educators in all this? 

1. Training students to evaluate GAI for accuracy, which means that we--instructors--get to spend more time getting cozy with GAI and checking up on it as well as evaluating student papers. Two for the salary of one!
   
2. Teaching students 
1. to evaluate GAI output for relevancy, bias, and data security, 
2. to evaluate rhetorical situations where GAI is and isn't appropriate
3. to having them write metacommentaries on their use of GAI in a paper
4. to monitor how GAI helps (!) their development as writers. Yes, reading the GAI output and assessing it as well as assessing their papers: twice the grading fun.
   
3. Toward the goals of #1 and #2, seek out more professional development opportunities about GAI, and "[r]ead current articles and popular nonfiction about AI as well as emerging Critical Artificial Intelligence (CAIL) scholarship" (10). Are you tired yet?

3.  Can you opt out?

Yes. "Respect the choice to opt out" (10). 

   BUT if you opt out and are contingent, could you lose your job? 

Also yes. "Some instructors may face consequences in hiring and evaluation processes when they opt out of teaching AI literacies in their classrooms, particularly when shared governance processes have determined department-wide uses for AI in the curriculum" (10).

4.  But if I'm just one instructor, can I decide it's not appropriate for my course? 

Theoretically, yes; in practice, probably not. The report strongly, and I mean strongly, advocates for program-wide and department-wide if not university-wide adoption of a consistent policy of integrating GAI training as a cohesive whole.

I agree that this should be done in a systematic or coherent fashion, and it's much better to have something consistent. Will there be professional development time and funding devoted to this? 

5. I hear the tinkling of shiny "if you're not on board with the tech, you don't understand it" bells with this one. 

Faculty development meetings should be a space for building instructors’ conceptual knowledge about GAI literacies, helping them develop theory-informed pedagogical practices for integrating GAI into their teaching, and allowing them to experiment with GAI technologies and develop their technological skills.

Such gatherings can simultaneously address instructors’ resistance, fear, and hesitation about using GAI in their teaching while also recognizing that faculty development programs cannot make instructors experts in GAI, which is not an attainable goal given the fast-changing nature of these technologies

 Translation: 

• If you question it, it's because you fear it, which is stupid. You are stupid and not thinking correctly about this. 
• We are telling you that this is the wave of the future, and if you don't get on board with a new technology, you are just plain wrong. 
• If you have questions, you are wrong.
• If you hesitate rather than swallowing this wholesale, you are wrong. 
• You need to be persuaded, not listened to. Your fear and hesitation are not legitimate. They are resistance that needs to be overcome.

But this is not our first rodeo with the whole "look, it's shiny!" argument, is it? With MOOCs? With auto-graded essays? With Twitter? With every future-forward "get rid of the books" library?  

I'm not saying that it's wrong. I'm saying that rushing headlong into every new technology--tech enthusiast here, remember--without allowing for questions and a thoughtful assessment is what we keep doing, and I wonder if we will ever learn from our past experiences.

 

A minor sign of hope after the AI maelstrom

 AI, and the students' use of it to generate papers, consumed far too much of my brain earlier this semester. I'm teaching online, so my usual expedient of having them write in class isn't an option. 

It was wearing me out, between worrying that I was letting them get away with something and thus disadvantaging honest students or that I wasn't living up to the syllabus by checking everything. It was making me discouraged with teaching.

Turnitin wasn't helpful, nor was GPTZero, the supposedly good AI-catcher. The results could be wildly at odds with each other if you tried it twice in a row, unless something was coming up 100% AI generated. 

I called out a few students, per the syllabus. What that means: I had them talk to me. Many said it was Grammarly, which has gone heavily to AI, and said they wouldn't use it again. I am not anti-tech--eighteen years of blogging here should tell you that--but if they are not doing their own work, I can't help them make it better.

Then things started to get better. Aside from modifying the LMS discussion board settings and Perusall (no copy & paste, post your reply first before seeing others' responses--this I learned to restrict after a few students were copying from each other), I think what happened is this:

They realized that I was reading what they wrote. 

Now, I tell them this in the syllabus, but reading any syllabus, especially with all the required institutional boilerplate, is like reading the instructions for setting up a wireless router or, my favorite analogy, Beetlejuice's Guide for the Recently Deceased. 

Was it just adjusting the rubrics that made the difference? Maybe some. I discovered that having good criteria there would take care of the few AI-written posts, which naturally fell down to the C- or D level.

But I like to believe that it was that there was a real person in there, in those discussion boards, commenting and upvoting and mentioning by name the students and the specific things that they did well. They know that there is a person behind the class.

And on their papers, addressing the specifics of what they had written, suggesting other ways to develop the argument, and so on.

And in answering their emails quickly and with a sense of their real concerns. 

What I noticed is that the AI boilerplate--so far, anyway--seems to have died down, and I've mostly stopped looking for it and thinking about it.

This may, of course, just be an artifact of its being five weeks from the end of the semester, or maybe I'm missing something.

But their writing seems to be more authentic, more as it used to be, and not that MEGO AI boilerplate. 

With some of the professional organizations in the field throwing in the towel and writing guidelines not about if we will use AI but how extensively we ought to use it, I count my students' responses as a sign of hope. 

Maybe if we give them authentic feedback, as the MLA-CCCC report suggests, they will respond with authentic writing. 

Random Bullets of Not Much News

 Happy September! Here's the not-much-news so far:

• Classes have started, as usual prompting a mad scramble to get everything done. 
• Also as usual, online classes take about 4x the preparation of in-person classes. 
• And, in the "some things never change" department, I am spending all my time on teaching instead of my own writing or some manuscript reviews. Did I write 2000 words over the course of several hours? Yes. Are those words for recording a 20-minute class lecture that usually I'd be giving extemporaneously? Also yes.
  
• All of a sudden the streets around here are filled with those tiny white Teslas. It looks like an airport rental parking lot. Did Elon send out a bat signal and make everybody buy them? 
• Speaking of Tesla, in my part of the world, some people have pickup trucks for show but a lot more have them because they need a pickup truck for real. The other day I saw someone driving a Tesla truck and it looked . . . out of place? Cute? Ridiculous? I guess spotting Tesla trucks is old news now, but if I can catch one beside those giant harvesting machines that are all over the roads at this time of year, I'll post a picture. 
• In non-Tesla news, apparently NaNoWriMo supports AI in its annual challenge and has a few other problems as well, as Chuck Wendig hilariously reports it:  https://terribleminds.com/ramble/2024/09/02/nanowrimo-shits-the-bed-on-artificial-intelligence/
•  For the second year in a row, the government has managed to make the misery that is FAFSA even more miserable and difficult to navigate. It's going to have another "phased rollout" on the twelfth of never, or December, which are the same thing if you're a student trying to get financial aid. 
• Also in education: After seeing chatter about it online I read--well, skimmed--a long article in the Chronicle about drama in the English Department at Pomona, but the main takeaway was how rich the college was. 

How's the beginning of your semester? 

Random bullets of mid-February

•  Writing inspiration: This may not sound like much of a win, but I finally (finally!) finished the piece I've been moaning about here for lo these many months. I thought for a while I'd be like Mr. Casaubon in Middlemarch, gathering sources for The Key to All Mythologies until I keeled over at my desk, but not so. That's done, but wait--what's that on the horizon in a couple of weeks? A conference paper for which I made all sorts of rash promises? 
• At least having finished one thing means I can finish something else. I'd become--what's the writing word for gun-shy? write-shy?-- and this has restored my confidence.
• Being in an accountability writing group and a sit-and-write group has helped a lot.
  
• Teaching: I am loving teaching my old-school type classes this semester and the students seem to be doing all right with it, too. 
• Maybe it's a post-Covid phenomenon, but it feels as though they have a hard time sitting still and not participating, and since participation is what we want anyway as teachers, I'm leaning into it. And really, how is their difficulty in sitting still any different from ours when we're trapped in a meeting where our betters are discussing obvious points, world without end?
• Do any of you feel as though you have another part-time job just attending all the meetings, presentations, etc. that your colleagues have arranged? 
  
• Have you ever been in a group project where if one person--call him Comrade X--is outvoted in a decision, he will bide his time and come back to it over and over and over again to try to bend everyone else to his will since he is always right? Asking for a friend.
• There needs to be space in the middle of all this for imagination, but that space is in short supply right now.
  

Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic: facts and logic? Who needs 'em?

 Just when I thought it was safe to re-subscribe to The Atlantic,  our friend Caitlin Flanagan is at it again, opining that colleges aren't teaching students to think, or driving a car, or something (the metaphors get confused). 

Let's examine the logic, shall we?

1. "A teacher should never do your thinking for you."

Straw man fallacy. Who the heck ever said that they did or would?

2. "When you’re visiting a college, walk through the corridors of some of the humanities departments. Look at the posters advertising upcoming events and speakers, read the course listings, or just stand silent in front of the semiotic overload of the instructors’ office doors, where wild declarations of what they think and what they plan to make you think will be valorously displayed.

Does this look like a department that is going to teach you how to think?"

Soooo much to unpack here.

• "semiotic overload of instructors' office doors": if you mean some weak sauce attempt at humor that struck me funny in The New Yorker, guilty as charged. Otherwise, here's a thought: Flanagan hasn't been on a campus in years, let alone walking down the halls of a humanities department. This is some Fox News/Hannity-inspired fever dream.
• "wild declarations of what they think": Unless I've posted office hours as "Step right inside, folks, and hear the crazy feminist declaim on M WF 10-11," I don't think this is true, to put it mildly.
• "valorously displayed": Does 3M make a valorous brand of Scotch tape specially to hold wild declarations on office doors? Otherwise, no. 
• Logic leap: faulty evidence. From a few pathetic faculty posters, you're inferring how those therein "teach you to think," which you've already declared is impossible?

3. "The truth of the matter is that no one can teach you how to think; but what they can do is teach you how to think for yourself."

You don't say.  Is it also possible that water is wet and that human beings breathe air?

Mind. Blown.

4. "To the extent that I have learned how to think for myself, it’s because my father taught me. Usually by asking me a single question."

It's a nice anecdote, but there's more than a trace of the ubi sunt lament usually found in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere: why are there no professors like my dad?

This is an example of begging the question: that is, to assume prior agreement on a point that's very much not in evidence. ARE there no professors like her dad? 

Also, the ubi sunt part: 

When I was at beautiful Ivy or Oxbridge back in the olden days, I had an extremely famous professor (this time: Frank Kermode) who inspired me with the timeless truths of the humanities curriculum. 

Alas, there were few such professors then, and there are none today. That pesky GI bill opened education to the masses, and now students want grades instead of reading literature for timeless truths. Literature has been sullied by the grade-grubbing paws of these students. Where is the pure love of literature of yesteryear?  

5. And finally: "Many college professors don’t want to do that today. "

This has the former guy's fingerprints all over it: "many people think that drinking unicorn saliva will cure COVID"; "many fine people on both sides." 

Where is the evidence? 

I know I've made fun of The Atlantic before, but honestly: Atlantic, do better. 

Random bullets of teaching in the new semester: Zoom, teaching, AI

 

- It's my umpteenth year of teaching in person and my umpteenth year of teaching online as well. Does it take far longer than I ever imagined to prep courses that I have taught before? Yes. Is it exhausting? Yes. Do I still love it? Also yes.  

- I love the energy of teaching in a classroom and seeing the students' expressions.

- Teaching via Zoom on occasion: I still like it, and the students are old hands at it by this point.  But I had to stifle a laugh at the image that came to mind when they all logged on and then immediately turned off their cameras: it was like Sean from The Good Place sealing himself inside a cocoon whenever he heard something he didn't like. All those little black squares = all those little cocoons. (Image via DeviantArt.)

- That doesn't mean that I'm opposed to the Zoom cocoon. Indeed, during Zoom presentations when we're asked to turn off our cameras, I can listen a lot better, especially if I can move around. I don't know what it's called, but I can either (1) look intently at the speaker in person or on Zoom but not hear a word that they say or (2) look down, take notes, walk around, or whatever and be fully engaged with the topic. 

- Apropos of the last point: I think the MLA should place a walking meditation labyrinth in all of its larger meeting rooms, maybe in back of the chairs. Those who can watch a speaker and sit still and listen can sit in the chairs, and the rest of us can walk the labyrinth and listen in our own way. Activity is the key to engagement for some of us, as it is in the classroom, and conferences would be so much better if we could move (and also if the room temperatures were set at something less than blood heat).

- We are going old school in my classes this semester: writing drafts by hand and revising drafts in class. I have a lot of reasons for this: (1) replicating the experience of giving an uninterrupted space for students to write; (2) being able to comment on their drafts before they revise them; (3) giving them time out of their busy schedules to focus; (4) being there if they have questions. 

- The whole AI thing is about a distant number 40 on that list. Yes, I suppose they could have AI write their papers, but the vapid nonsense that AI usually spews out--like a mission statement on steroids--would be a waste of their time. 

- It would also be a waste of mine, and spending any time at all on wading through that slush and figuring out whether it was plagiarized or not would be maddening. Sometimes students write slush--don't we all? and haven't we all?--but if it's honest slush, it has promise. If it's AI slush--well, why should I bother to read what no one was bothered to write? 

- About reading what no one bothered to write: I grant you that the Washington Post and New York Times seem to have dispensed with their copy-editors--you know, those people who catch things like geographical errors and subject-verb agreement--but I'm not paid to read them, and if they have news (hint: read the digital images of the print edition rather than the fluffy stuff that they put on the front pages of their app), I don't mind as much. 

- Speaking of reading the news, I picked up and reread Rosemary's Baby the other day and laughed when I realized that I would rather read about the literal Satan incarnated than the former guy.

Writing the ghosts away

Writing about "The Beckoning Fair One" must have cursed me, because I have written literally nothing on my own work since. What are the obstacles? 

• All the writing advice is about carving out time and space for yourself. Let's take time: the advice is "Just say no" to extra work, committee, admin work, and so on. Figuring I've done my bit, as the Brits used to say during WWII, I've turned down things until I felt a little guilty. But Spouse pointed out, logically and also comfortingly, that I've already done a lot of all that and ought to let someone else have a chance to shine. 
• Teaching and grading? Yes, that takes time, but not unmanageably so. I have time to work if I would actually get at it. 
• Next, space: What about Virginia Woolf's famous room of one's own? I have a space to write that I really like: warm, good technology, comfortable desk chair, good reading chair, lots of books, and all that. 
• How about resources? I have the materials I need--books, .pdfs, and a handy if too-tempting library.
• What about the project? Was it imposed on me? Nope, I volunteered. I did half of it months ago, and it's on a subject I really like.
• What about daily writing? I've done the usual suspects: read some writing inspiration, tried the old 750words.com, time tracking, word counting, accountability partners, etc. Nothing helped.
  
• Tried writing in different settings, writing with pen & ink, with typewriter, in my campus office rather than at home, everything.  Nothing helped. 

What did I write? Nothing. Could not do it, and the deadline hasn't gone away. 

So typing these words is an attempt to break the logjam, or banish the barriers, or to hail the goddess of writing, or to summon the collective spirit of blogitivity, to get moving on this thing.

Random bullets of October, no surprises here

• Well, there was September, and now October’s almost gone. I guess teaching takes up a lot of time—who knew?
• Despite upsetting world events, in terms of weather, it’s been a lovely fall so far.
• Despite all the “pandemic’s over—hooray” messages from the administration & the US government, students are getting sick from COVID as well as the usual ailments that in-person classes are heir to. I’ve finally caught something—not apparently COVID. It’s inevitable with in-person classes unless everyone keeps masking as we did in Fall 2021, and guess what—not happening. 
• If some public health person did a study on when students and teachers get sick, I’m guessing they’d find that mid-October is prime time for that.
• Here’s the playwright Arthur Miller’s writing house: https://www.arthurmiller.org/studio/ . It’s 14 x 22 feet long, which is quite roomy. You can see the evolution of the place from the photographs: fireplace to wood stove, Royal manual typewriter to electric typewriter to computer, etc. It also has a Soviet-era desk chair, steel with padded green leatherette, that is just like mine, so clearly our levels of genius are running in sync. 
• Goals moving ahead: write more, catch up with blog reading, and generally do better.

Back in the saddle again, school edition

Gene Autrey’s voice is singing this song is in my head as I write this, so here’s to riding the range once more with reminders I’ve forgotten over the past year. 

1. Teaching

Is it good to be back? Pretty much. 

Did I spend too much time preparing syllabi? Yes.

Too much time writing up a lecture? Yes. 

What is it with power dynamics in the classroom, by the way? If I go in with puppy-like enthusiasm for the subject and with lots of additional information, they respond coolly—“whatever”—as though they know it already, which they definitely do not.  

But if I tone down the friendliness and am more distant and authoritative, they warm up. It’s a power dynamic in classrooms that I forget about when I’ve been away from teaching for a while. Friendliness is fine, and so is the decentered classroom, but the whole “make sure you give away your authority so that they trust you” trend of a few years back always seemed false: you are the authority in the classroom, and to pretend otherwise seems disingenuous, not to say dishonest. The students sense this and respond accordingly. 

It’s a way of showing mutual respect, I think.

2. Writing

I’m excited to get back to writing: I turned in a conference proposal today for research related to my next book. And I haven’t even bought the all-important new notebooks yet, which is sure to create more writing inspiration. 

3. Meetings

Since I’m not doing admin, all I have to do is (1) show up and (2) contribute if there’s something to say. It’s not necessary or desirable for people to hear every thought that’s in my head, nor is it necessary to smile all the time. Show up, be respectful, and be done. 

Here’s hoping you have a good beginning of the semester!

Random Bullets of MLA 2023

Figure 1. Marriott Marquis in San Francisco.

 Happy New Year! It's time for the (somewhat) annual MLA roundup.

The last MLA I attended in person was in Chicago (2019). I attended & presented at MLA 2022 virtually and attended but didn't present at 2021. I like virtual conferences, and as my Visa bill tells me this month, they're also a lot less expensive. (No reimbursements from Northern Clime.)

But on to 2023 San Francisco!

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• It's probably not news to anyone that the travel to San Francisco presented "challenges," as we now call problems. Southwest had just barely recovered from its scheduling meltdown when an "atmospheric river" unleashed a "bomb cyclone" of rain on the Bay area, right at and before--you guessed it--the exact time when MLA was scheduled to start. I lucked out by getting there just before everything hit, but the rain and wind were epic at times. 
• Because of travel and illness issues, I heard that some sessions scheduled to have, say, 5 people had only 2 show up. That can't be helped (except through virtual sessions), since even the mighty MLA can't control the weather.
  
• The MLA had the good sense to choose a main conference hotel--the Marriott Marquis--right across the street from the 4th St. Trader Joe's. How great is that? Instead of a soggy $15 breakfast sandwich, you could get food that you actually wanted to eat. The rooms had real mini-fridges so that you could stock up on salads or Diet Coke or other familiar treats. And the hotel actually honored the deal where if you were a (free) Bonvoy member, they waived the $14.95 internet fee.
  
• Speaking of technology, A+ for that! When I went up to the projector with my big bag o'dongles (HDMI, VGA, etc.--thanks, Apple!) ready to get set up, I discovered that the HDMI cable and connection were already at the podium, so there weren't any awkward cords. Audience members politely reminded people to lean into the microphone. And there was even a tech person coming by to make sure that we were all set up, that the screen actually showed what we had on our computers, etc.
• The conference venues (the hotel and the Moscone Center West) were good as well. The Moscone Center is cavernous, with ceilings about twice the height that you'd think is necessary, but that's just what you want in COVID times--social distancing. 
• I heard from other attendees that some of the hotel sessions were overcrowded but didn't see it at the conference center. Of course I got lost going from one to the other, even though they are literally like one block apart, but that's due to my terrible sense of direction and the lashing rain that made the street signs hard to see.
  
• The MLA sensibly mandated masks, and everyone I saw wore masks except when actually presenting papers. 
• The Big Meeting went smoothly and focused on issues of actual, practical use to the profession. I groaned inwardly when we were broken into small groups for discussion a few hours into the meeting, considering it cosmic payback for doing this in teaching, but the discussion was actually interesting.  

This doesn't address the many interesting sessions, but I'd be here all day doing that. 

Happy 2023!

Other MLA Conference Posts:

•  2022 Washington (virtual)
  
• 2019 Chicago
  
• 2018 New York
• 2015 Vancouver
• 2014 Chicago
• 2013 Boston
• 2012 Seattle
• 2011 Los Angeles
• 2006 Philadelphia
• Conference tips no one ever tells you
• Random conference thoughts