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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching.
Ryan:In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles reflect on the lessons that they've learned in our series on AI literacy. Thanks for joining us.
Jared:We're finishing up our series on AI literacy. And as we always do, if you've been a listener of the podcast for long, and maybe if you've been a longtime listener, you'll start doing your own homework and do your own lessons learned, because we always end up doing three lessons learned. We don't share them with each other. At the end of each series, we do these lessons learned to help kind of, I don't know, reflect on what we've learned or some of the questions that we still have, which is good practice for educators and for learners. So we like to model that and do this ourselves.
Jared:And so we could have repeats, or we may be completely off the ball and we could be talking about them or we could, you know, summarize them so well that we don't need to keep going on it. So anyway, three lessons learned about this AI literacy series. Where I would would like to go first?
Rob:Yes. Yes. I would.
Jared:Okay. Because if you don't, I will.
Rob:I think the thing that probably stood out to me in all the interviews that we had
Jared:Yep.
Rob:Was that AI literacy and let me just say, I differentiate, and I give credit to Micah Cooper in a meeting. He said this, you know, there's AI literacy, AI competency, and AI mastery. But what we've been talking about is just AI literacy. Like, what's the bare minimum things that you should realize and know? And also, what should our students know?
Rob:So we've had different conversations around that. So for me, I think the first one is that AI literacy is is literally already in the short period of time, workforce literacy. Workforce literacy. In other words, if you're going to be in the workforce, that's what I heard from all our guests.
Jared:The term you're saying should not be AI literacy?
Rob:No. I'm just saying it's already moved into requirements Okay. To be
Jared:in the workforce. Okay.
Rob:So much like computer usage, you know, computer usage wasn't really a literacy kind of a thing when you and I were first starting off in college. It was
Jared:like office skills.
Rob:Yeah. You get office skills. Typewriting used to be the thing. I remember when I was in high school, that was we all had to learn how to type. Right?
Rob:Oh, yeah. And so being proficient was at least 60 to 70 words per minute. My point is that took time for that to really work itself into the workforce. Like, you were talking a period of ten years, but now we're talking literally
Jared:Yesterday.
Rob:Yesterday. In the last three years, that is the fastest that I've ever seen a technology go from nobody knows what it is to you must have some sort of work
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:Familiarity usage of the tool to be considered for this job, which is literally most jobs now.
Jared:Yeah. And I think it's gone beyond like, some people would probably argue that large language models, generative AI are just a fad. But I don't I think it's gone past that point too where it's like, it's just not going we've talked about this over and over again. It's not going away. We heard some of our guests talk about the bubble bursting on it.
Jared:I think Eric Alvarado talked about that a bit.
Rob:Well, I think the bubble will burst. Like, there's gonna be some sort of like, we get to a peak. Right? Yeah. But where we land, it's going to be Mhmm.
Rob:Far and away above where we started. Landscape. Yeah. So it's not like we're going back down to the basement.
Jared:Right. Yeah.
Rob:You know, if you think of it in terms of an elevator and floors, you know, say, this is taking us all the way to the penthouse. Yep. We started at zero. We're up at 72. And it seems like we just keep adding floors.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:If there is a bubble burst, which genuinely there is kinda like a denouement. Right. And we may be getting to something like that. I mean, because most recently, Mythos came out as of this recording. It's been several weeks Mhmm.
Rob:And, the government shut it down. Mhmm. Or Fable, I should say. Fable five and Mythos five. Yeah.
Rob:Right. The government said, you can't allow people to use this for, you know, national security reasons. Mhmm. So, you know, Anthropic is trying to make their case to the government. Whether or not they can or not, that's a whole another issue.
Rob:But that's gonna that will kinda, like, put a cap, but it's not in terms of what we see all around the world. Mhmm. Even if it does, we're still gonna be up on Floor 72.
Jared:Even that the Internet bubble bursting, the web 2.0 bubble burst of the nineties, that was you know, it didn't change. We didn't regress back to.
Rob:We we did a little bit of, like it it was more cleaning house. So,
Jared:like Yeah. What That's I feel like is gonna happen with this too.
Rob:Yeah. All the bad websites went went away. The
Jared:Go to archive.org. You can still find that.
Rob:Alright. So that was my number one.
Jared:Yeah. Is horse litters. Mine is kind of related. What? Okay.
Jared:Alright. This breaking news. Ryan just told
Rob:us So we just finished our conversation saying that that Fable and Mythos had been cut off. And we just heard that it is now allowed. It's two hours ago, it is it is back. It's back. It is back.
Rob:So wow. I mean, again, this underscores, like, we thought, okay, maybe we're putting the lid on it. No. But now open. Where is it we're going we're gonna go higher.
Jared:Tupperware dish has been reopened. So yeah. These fumes are coming out
Rob:of the fridge.
Jared:So my number one is kind of related to that, and that you were kind of not redefining, but rewording AI literacy. And from the interviews that we had, I don't think we're at a point where AI literacy has a precise definition at this point.
Rob:I would agree.
Jared:I feel like it's still nebulous, uncertain what it is people mean by AI literacy. And I hope it doesn't go down the route of twenty first century skills, which is my least favorite term that we still talk about. And we're a quarter into the twenty first century, that students need to develop twenty first century skills. I think it's too late for that at this point. But, so I don't know if we have, because we talked to different people.
Jared:Talked to Mark Tanner from Amazon. He had a definition for it. The other people we've talked to, and then recently, Chris Cummings, just, interviewed with this week. He had a different definition of it. It was more philosophical.
Jared:So I don't think necessarily when we look at tangible because something that we've been tasked with this summer is developing a rubric for our students. So when they leave the campus, here are the benchmarks that they have an understanding or have a level of AI literacy for them to go out into the workforce.
Rob:Right.
Jared:We're not at a point where we can tangibly measure that yet, don't think, because people are disagreeing on what that actually looks like. And maybe it is instead of talking about it that way, it's more workforce literacy, workforce related.
Rob:I think I think some of the things that we heard from some of our guests are the it looks different. I think Chris said that in our Chris Cummings said that in our interactions with him. And I think I've heard that from others as well. It's like it just looks different depending on where you're at.
Jared:Right.
Rob:Like, where you're working
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And what you're working with. And so I think we're gonna see quite rapidly these different areas define some of these things as to what they expect out of those they employ. But more than that, I think what we heard today, and I and it can you know, I've got a couple more that kinda speak to to that, but I think we do have to be generalized. I think it is forming. Yeah.
Rob:I think we can see some of the big rocks, if you will.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And they're not necessarily technical in nature.
Jared:Right. Absolutely. They're more human focused, which I assume is what your number two is going to be.
Rob:It's along that lines. Okay. Let's hear it. Number two was the idea of judgment isn't is needed or evaluation. Yep.
Rob:So there's just been this in that area of human centeredness, so it goes along with that. So I guess you could but I'm I'm drilling down. It's not just human centered. It's a human evaluating. Right.
Rob:And evaluating from knowledge and experience, not just, oh, that looks good to me. Mhmm. So the idea of, like, with Mark. Right? You can't just have an employee that you give them a prompt and they take that prompt, put it into chat GPT, and and then it spits something out and you they just hand it back to you.
Rob:Like, I could have just done that myself.
Jared:He said this should be an aid, not an answer.
Rob:Right. So I think where we need to focus is making sure that we're developing those things, and that's something that we're looking at in terms of I think we're gonna have to look at it here at Cedarville overall as a school. Yeah. And and in the different schools that we have, different departments, different programs, they're gonna have to look at what does this mean for us, what are the nonnegotiables that students must have? Right?
Rob:Mhmm. And for us, we we kinda live and breathe this stuff. Like, we always start with the end in mind, work backwards from there in terms of of course design. Yep. And so it's really no different as we're just talking about being more specific about what it is that you want students to know, think Right.
Rob:Feel, or do. So I I think we're gonna we're gonna have to spend more time with that. Yeah, more more to be said. There's more that can be around this area of judgment, not only from the person who is using the tool, but those who are evaluating others as well in terms of especially in the teaching and learning game. Mhmm.
Rob:So that gets into assessment and those kinds of things. Right.
Jared:Number two for me is the erosion of trust.
Rob:Oh, yeah.
Jared:It's it's happening. It's been happening in some spheres. But we need to find ways of building it back up. I mean, you have some, like, online education is a relatively newer technology, not really, but at least since the boom of COVID, since the boom after COVID, a lot more, but like, you could, you can see the trust erosion there.
Rob:Yeah.
Jared:Where people just believe that students are going to cheat in an online environment. And I don't think there's there has been trust built up from that yet either. And I see the same thing with us going through OpenAI and ChatGPT on this campus. It's more of the, we have to play the gotcha game. We have to find students cheating, because we know they're cheating.
Jared:The assumption is that they're they're cheating. And I think I I mentioned it in the interview we did with Chris Cummings, but I think it's it might be useful to go back and look at how it was handled with the boom of the internet in higher education. Was there then erosion of trust there with a new technology like that? I'm sure there was with a calculator as well. And if so, how was it built back up?
Jared:Or was it
Rob:Or did it ever get built?
Jared:Or did it get yeah, did it even get built back up? Or is it still, you know, there's been a level of trust that's just constantly diminished ever since new technology is brought into the equation. And I think maybe just a stab at it, but I think there's a chance of a willingness to, embrace the change and find a way forward. And but some people, you know, you and I know that it's just going to be a lot harder for some to do that. And it's just because of difference in opinion and difference in philosophy of education.
Jared:And it's just something we have to navigate. But I definitely see an erosion of trust already forming in this infancy stage of generative AI.
Rob:So if you were to frame that like with AI literacy, how would you how would you, like, package that? Would you say something like, you need to engender trust not with necessarily the tool, but between each other?
Jared:Yeah. I think and that kinda goes into my number three, which I'll save. But I I think there is an opportunity here for us to embrace the change through working together. You've got to be willing to do the hard things, have the hard conversations to really kind of push that idea out.
Rob:So my third one, I think, is most certainly one that's already taking place, and I think it's a good thing. And and it's something that needs to continue, and that is assessment is changing or has changed. Yep. So I think we're gonna figure that out if we're not already. I think oral assessment is is really good and and figuring how to do that in a way that's timely as well as not onerous on the student or the teacher that encourages ownership of the learning experience.
Rob:On top of that, there are I think writing isn't going away. So we've got to figure out how do we do writing in a way that goes back to your number two, which is maintains trust.
Jared:Right.
Rob:And I do wonder if you know, we've already seen some of these tools. We got clarity from Turnitin. We've got stuff that Grammarly is doing. Like, we when we talked to Chris Cummings, he was really talking about some of the excitement he had around those things Mhmm. And some of the tools that they had there at superhuman and Grammarly.
Rob:And I think we're gonna see more writing apps that actually have all that built into it. So if you can think of, like, Word, when you jump on Word, it it starts tracking everything. Yeah. And maybe more than just helping you with your writing, it's also helping you stay on track of with a particular algorithm learning algorithm in learning to write.
Jared:Yeah. Yeah.
Rob:Where it basically takes you through simulations. So simulations, I think, are another excellent way with assessment. Mhmm. And with the bot too, you can preprogram. You can load all that in, and you can tell your students you have to go through this.
Rob:And it's kind of you got a time limit. Right? Just like in debate or something like that, you have a time limit to make your case. And if you don't, you get a chance to go back, figure out what you did wrong
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And do it again. And I think what AI does is it gives us the ability to not just give them the same assessment, but give them an assessment that still covers the objectives for that particular assessment
Jared:Right.
Rob:But turns it so that you're not just giving answers, if you know what I mean.
Jared:Sure.
Rob:Yeah. Like, the answers are things that you that you actually own, you understand, not just I memorized so I could put them on a test. Right. So I see assessment changing. I see that as a real big takeaway from our time and AI Literacy.
Rob:That's what I kept hearing, especially, like, there at the end with Chris.
Jared:Sure. I think along with that, we we talked about AI resilient course design. We talked about how Mhmm. That is more emphasizing the process over the product. So I can see it going that direction as well.
Jared:Yeah. Unnecessarily putting all of your eggs into the final exam at the end of the course. Right. But worrying about more of the process and the growth and the reflection and the learning through that instead where there's more personal assessment throughout to grow the learner in that way. So my third one is kind of along the lines of my second one, you kind of tease it out of me a bit, is collaboration.
Jared:That's something that Doctor. Monique Ross talked about when she was on here with us. Fantastic interview.
Rob:Yes.
Jared:Go listen to that one again. This it's gotta be a collaborative process to shape how it's being used in higher education and education in general, I think in the workforce as well. So I think that's because it goes back to trust, it goes back to relationship, it goes back to servant teaching, it goes back to all these ideas that we hold so close and so dear on this podcast is that, you know, working together to figure out what is going on and how can we carve a path forward. Because in some ways, we here at this university are leaps and bounds above other universities, not like Michigan, for example, but like other schools. Like, we're so far ahead.
Jared:It's like, how can we carve that path? The path isn't even laid down yet. We're in the midst of either treading it or carving it or something just to lay the groundwork for those to come behind us. But we can only do that together and working out all the issues that we have related to its usage, whether in either an assessment or developing content or building courses, however it looks. To quote High School Musical, we're all in this together.
Jared:So we need to find a way of of working together, to do this.
Rob:Yeah. I I don't disagree with you. If if we're not hearing from everyone and we don't have folks engaged and I think that's something we've seen here at Cedarville, and you can attest to this. We've had a wider engagement of faculty and staff in this whole process over the past year than any initiative I can think of. Yeah.
Rob:And seeing things from areas that, like, you'd never heard heard from before. Yeah. Right. People just kind of shining with some of the things that they're doing, saving time, making things easier for themselves and or their constituencies, you know, and it's kinda blown me away. So I see that I I think you're right.
Rob:We've gotta lean into that more. I see us doing that. Our leadership here at Cedarville is is is leading the way. I mean, doctor White leading the way. He's he's encouraging.
Rob:He's he's serious. He's really taking the whole thing seriously. He wants us to take it seriously. And, yeah, I I think we're gonna have that moving forward.
Jared:Yeah. I hope so. That is my hope anyway. So, yeah, another series, wrapped up. Yeah.
Jared:We did it. Yeah. What's next?
Rob:I think what we need to talk about next is go back to basics.
Jared:Okay. Again?
Rob:Again, where we define what it is, but we have a different view now. We have a different technological view than what we had when we did the series. I think we called it back to basics, didn't we?
Jared:We did. That's why I said it again.
Rob:But I would maybe we don't name it that.
Jared:Two point o?
Rob:Yeah. Maybe a two.
Jared:Back to the basics. Back to back to the basics.
Rob:Back to the back. Yeah. Because identifying identifying that which is most important.
Jared:Yep.
Rob:It's going to be more than just on the course level. It's gonna need to be on a program level. And I think there's an algorithm to figuring those things out. So I think we're gonna need to do more of that, help our listeners, k through 12, higher ed Mhmm. Here on campus, other campuses.
Rob:I think those are gonna be the questions. Like, how do we get to that? How do we verify what our students know? How do we verify sources? How do you identify those things?
Rob:I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to going back to something that we did three years ago. Yeah. But doing it in a fresh way, bringing, hopefully, some
Jared:maybe some back? Yeah. Yeah. Let's bring him back.
Rob:I mean, because we all know that he's definitely been working in the AI field and so it'd be it'd be really cool to get his perspectives on on where, you know, gender AI has taken
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:The ideas of of figuring out where you wanna go, like finding objectives or or creating objectives.
Jared:Right. I agree. I'm looking forward to it. Our next episode, we're gonna be, doing a book review as we normally do in between series where we'd be reading doctor Chantal Levesque Bristol's book, Designing Impactful College Courses. Yeah.
Jared:Looking forward to that one for sure.
Rob:We've been we've definitely been waiting on that
Jared:Yes.
Rob:I yeah. Since our last interview with her. Yes. Some of the things that she had to say, we were like, oh, I wanna see that.
Jared:Yeah. Very excited to review that. And so stay tuned next week for that one. Looking forward to it.
Ryan:Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments about our series on AI literacy, feel free to reach out to us at ctlpodcast@cedarville.edu . You can also connect with us on LinkedIn. And finally, don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.