Susan Smith

What does AI mean for me and my teaching practice?

The advent of AI tools that are freely available has led to the proliferation of articles, webinars, and commentary on its capabilities and dangers. In the near future ChatGPT will be built into the Microsoft Office suite that many Universities subscribe to as part of institutional licences. Such tools have clear implications for education and educators need to understand how they will affect their disciplines and practices and those of the employment market that students will graduate into. This blog suggests some steps for educators who are seeking to familiarise themselves with current AI tools. It is also important to remember that this is a rapidly evolving area and new tools and updates are frequently being released.

Try out some AI tools

It is important to understand how tools respond and what prompts can be provided. This will very much depend on your discipline but everyone should try out the Bing search, ChatGPT, along with some image creators including Dall-E and Midjourney. Increasingly the latest versions require users to create accounts and many are now charged services e.g. ChatGPT4.

Talk to your students

How are students using AI tools in their every day work and studies? Some academics have reported that students are often using multiple AI tools to refine and edit their work. It is helpful to open out a dialogue with them on what they do and why.

It is important that students appreciate the ethical implications of AI, for example workers in Kenya were subjected to disturbing content when undertaking ‘monitoring’ duties. They should understand that AI will reproduce inherent bias in the training dataset and amplify those arguments and be able to critique such positions. This is where critical thinking is crucial.

Remember that some students may not be able to access certain tools from their home countries and may not be comfortable inputting their details into such sites. In addition not all students will be adept at using AI tools so some discussion and demonstration may be required if you intend to use them in class.

Reflect on how you can incorporate AI into your practice

How can you work to include AI in your teaching practice? For example, you might ask students for prompts to generate an essay outline on a teaching topic and then set the task of expanding and critiquing the output using annotated notes.

AI tools, appropriately prompted, can rapidly help generate MCQs on a topic for formative assessment along with suggested lesson plans, and marking rubrics. The key is to refine the prompts that you use so that they are clear and specific.

Think about how these tools might influence your assessment tasks

It has been widely documented that AI tools can produce reasonable answers to generic essay type questions where significant materials already exist in the training data. At degree level we need to consider how students expand their skills to demonstrate higher order thinking through what is often termed ‘authentic assessment’. This could mean that students have a greater ability to tailor their choice of topic e.g. in accounting by selecting two listed companies to compare and contrast accounting practices.

Rethink misconduct

Most universities are in the process of adapting their misconduct policies as they seek to address the influence of AI tools in assessment. As the tools will be incorporated into mainstream software does it make sense to view their use as a form of misconduct or is it more realistic to focus on how students incorporate their use into the writing process, combining AI sourced elements with their own ideas and critical appraisal?

One thing is for sure. AI tools will continue to improve and academics need to be up to date with these developments to ensure that students develop their AI literacy and have the skills to thrive in an AI enabled workplace.

Along with my UCL colleague Dr Martin Compton I have collated a range of topical articles and resources on a Padlet to help educators follow the AI story so far.

All aboard the fear carousel? How will AI change education

Academic social media and the press are ablaze with daily updates related to the capabilities of AI technology and how it will fundamentally change the University experience. There are predictions of the end of the essay as a mode of assessment and calls for a wholesale return to in-person invigilated exams. I’ve been trying to make sense of what is happening and am sharing my current thoughts in a fast-moving environment.

Recent headlines have highlighted the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) to produce essays from various prompts fuelling headlines questioning the cornerstones of assessment practice across the academic and professional world[1]. There is no doubt that Open AI’s ChatGPT and other similar tools bring powerful new capabilities to a mass audience. As each response is unique their use is also largely undetected by existing plagiarism software that is widely used by higher education institutions e.g. Turnitin[2] making such tools challenging to identify and leaving existing University misconduct policies struggling to adapt.

Should we be worried?

Over time assessment practices have been shifting away from traditional essays and unseen exams to embrace a greater variety of assessment types. This has been in response to two major considerations, increasing technological capabilities offering an increased range of potential assessment forms, and the need to develop employability skills (employers don’t ask for essays).

This transition accelerated during the pandemic as Universities were largely forced to move away from unseen exams and embrace a more diverse range of digital assessments (Hancock et al., 2022). Whilst the pandemic resulted in a continuation of improved undergraduate degree outcomes, changes to assessment practices were credited with narrowing awarding gaps as some groups of students responded more positively to assessment outside of the stress of an unseen exam[3] (UUK, 2021). Academic integrity continues to be a key preoccupation for the sector, and research findings indicate that no single measure, including proctoring, is effective in isolation (Henderson et al., 2022).

Much depends on how the sector views the role of AI in assessment. Here, I see two divergent approaches that could be taken: the preventative approach and the pragmatic approach.

The preventative approach

If the sector views the use of AI in assessment as misconduct resulting from the submission of work that is not the student’s own it will seek to prohibit the use of such technology in the way it has sought to prohibit the use of ‘essay mills’ (services where students contact others to write their assignments, also known as contract cheating). We know that students knowingly engage in misconduct for a variety of reasons, with studies indicating that fear of failure, time pressures, and financial pressure are often considerations (Henderson, 2022; Brimble, 2016). Of course, reduced barriers to cheating through the prevalence of AI tools and potentially low detection could stimulate increased usage.

Overall the preventative approach appears to be a zero-sum game with the sector likely to be chasing technological advances and developing ever more complex policies for students to follow and staff to execute. Prior studies of exam cheating show that institutions need to have a clear and definitive approach to communicating misconduct policies to students for them to act as an effective deterrent (Henderson et al., 2022).

An alternative would be the return to high-stakes final assessments taken in person under timed conditions. Whilst this form of assessment has its place, I cannot help but think that this would be a retrograde step which is why I am suggesting a pragmatic approach.

The pragmatic approach

Rather than work against the inevitable spread of AI tools there is an opportunity to work with such tools so that we understand their limitations. For example, we already know that AI has the capacity to reproduce bias in a way that students would not be expected to and students should be attuned to these shortcomings. How do we educate students on how to use AI in a responsible manner? One approach in a classroom setting could be to ask students to instruct a tool to respond to a topic and then critique its response.

These developments offer an opportunity to review our pedagogies afresh, challenging norms that have persisted over time. AI is here to stay and will only increase its capabilities. It is incumbent on us as educators to teach students how to harness its strengths and also to recognise its shortcomings to prepare them for the contemporary workplace.

If you want to join the debate join me and Dr. Martin Compton (UCL) on 16 February in the Accounting Cafe for what we expect to be a lively event.

References

Brimble, M. (2016). Why students cheat: An exploration of the motivators of student academic dishonesty in higher education. Handbook of academic integrity, 365.

Hancock, p., Birt, J., De Lange, P., Fowler, C., Kavanagh, M., Mitrione, L., Rankin, M., Slaughter, G., & Williams, A. (2022) Integrity of assessments in challenging times, Accounting Education, DOI: 10.1080/09639284.2022.2137818

Henderson, M., Chung, J., Awdry, R., Mundy, M., Bryant, M., Ashford, C., & Ryan, K. (2022) Factors associated with online examination cheating, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2022.2144802

Universities UK (UUK). (2021). Lessons from the pandemic: making the most of technologies in teaching. Universities UK. https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-research/publications/lessons-pandemic-making-most

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/31/ai-assisted-plagiarism-chatgpt-bot-says-it-has-an-answer-for-that

[2] https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/7/23498694/ai-artificial-intelligence-chat-gpt-openai

[3] https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/a712215d-94e8-4e98-8614-baee4d5aa3dc/insight-brief-14.pdf

Scholarship support

My recent article with David Walker explored perceptions of support for those on teaching-focused career pathways. A survey instrument helped elicit a cross-section of experiences from different institutions and disciplinary areas across UK Higher Education.

We find that challenges remain to advancement, including institutional consistency in applying its own criteria, and understanding of scholarship by those comprising promotion committees (most of whom have progressed through traditional research pathways). In addition, we note that challenges exist concerning the time allocated to scholarship for those with heavy teaching loads and recognise that this differs across the sector and within some institutions.

What does this mean if you’re seeking career advancement?

if you’re looking to move institutions, be clear on any differences in criteria and expectations
seek internal support via mentoring from colleagues that are more advanced in their careers
engage with external recognition schemes e.g. Senior Fellowship of Advance HE is often an indicator of evidence at the Senior Lecturer level
engage with external interest groups or communities to share your work and build a network of potential collaborators and mentors

You can read our paper here: Susan Smith & David Walker (2022) Scholarship and teaching-focused roles: An exploratory study of academics’ experiences and perceptions of support, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, DOI: 10.1080/14703297.2022.2132981

Social media and your scholarly identity

This week I participated in the weekly #LTHEchat on Twitter that focused on academic use of social media and the extent to which it can form supporting evidence in promotion applications. Like everything the answer is it depends. Including the number of your followers doesn’t illustrate your impact or how you engage with them. However, demonstrating your contribution to a community, for example by leading a #LTHEchat or extracting an article’s altmetric data helps to establish your influence beyond your institution and potentially also internationally. Participants also outlined how they had used social media to support Advance HE fellowship applications using the statistics from twitter analytics (https://analytics.twitter.com).

My own Twitter feed is curated around higher education and it serves to both educate me and expand my network beyond my institution. I have benefitted from being able to have conversations with others I have never met and participate in communities of practice including the weekly #LTHEchat. David Walker and I were invited to host a Tweetchat a while back and it was a fast and furious hour where we both learned so much from the answers to the questions we posed.

If you would like to find out more about the Tweetchat I mentioned follow the link.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Many Universities have created education and scholarship career pathways or included ‘scholarship’ as part of the progression requirements for those on teaching-focused contracts. However, this new recognition of a full academic career has brought significant uncertainty for many who have migrated from ‘teaching-only’ pathways.

Whilst the debate has largely been settled in the literature, misunderstandings persist in practice with many uncertain about how to commence scholarship work or how to evidence it. Typically, scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) is believed to support enhanced educational practices. David Walker and I found that at the higher levels of the career pathway the term pedagogic research starts to become more prevalent.

I’ve tried to list some of the main questions people ask below:

What then does SoTL require? SoTL definitions typically draw on work that educators are undertaking as part of their practice however, it goes beyond simply scholarly teaching. A helpful model proposed by Kern et al. (2015) can help to explain the differences. SoTL is public facing and the product of a rigorous investigation.

But I don’t have sufficient workload allocation. Workload allocations for those on non-traditional academic contracts vary significantly from those with no scholarship time to those with the same amount as those on research contracts. In addition, they can vary across an institution, making it difficult to compare promotion applications.

My tip would be to think about what you’re doing anyway and how that can be extended into a SoTL project. For example, you might be innovating in the classroom, so why not seek ethical approval to collect data, you might be writing teaching cases for use in class, so why not develop a teaching note and seek to publish it in a case collection.

Monitor your impact. Being able to articulate the impact of your work is important, not just in promotions but for external recognition e.g. Advance HE Senior Fellowship. What changed as a result of your work? Did it lead to something else? How did you measure the changes you made? As you progress in your career the impact will likely move from departmental to School to institutional to sectoral. For example, our journal article led to an invited seminar and hosting a #LTHEchat.

Focus. Your work should build on your teaching philosophy and methods and will often coalesce around 2-3 dominant themes. This helps build expertise and focus by helping you to target specific conferences and outlets for your work. Remember your work doesn’t have to be peer-reviewed journal articles. For example, the National Teaching Repository offers a great outlet for publishing teaching resources and can provide statistics to support measuring impact.

Some useful resources:

Kern, B., Mettetal, G., Dixson, M., & Morgan, R. K. (2015). The role of SoTL in the academy: Upon the 25th anniversary of Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1-14

Smith, S. & Walker, D. (2021) #LTHEchat 216 Breaking boundaries: career progression and education focussed roles.

Smith, S. & Walker, D. (2021) Scholarship and academic capitals: the boundaried nature of education-focused career tracks, Teaching in Higher Education.

Your teaching philosophy?

Photo by Admiral General M. u2b50u2b50u2b50u2b50u2b50 GodShepherd 33277089* on Pexels.com

Promotion applications typically ask you to outline your teaching philosophy as part of your teaching portfolio. While this sounds daunting it is asking about your approach to teaching and what drives you as an educator. By clearly outlining your teaching philosophy, you can then link your teaching methods to it making your case coherent. You will also need to evidence how your approach impacts student learning with clear measures. Spending time on your teaching philosophy is important as this helps to define who you are as an educator.

I’d recommend spending some time thinking about this part of your portfolio and how your body of work reflects your philosophy. It is important that your portfolio is coherent so ensure that you start working on articulating your philosophy early and allow sufficient time to seek feedback, reflect and edit it prior to submission. All too often this part is not well constructed leaving promotion panels unsure about the candidate’s approach to teaching.

For example, your philosophy could be to create an inclusive learning experience if you have a diverse student cohort. This could be demonstrated by your teaching methods, such as team-based learning techniques. You may also have adopted universal design for learning (UDL) in designing your curricula.

There are some excellent examples to be found online that can give you an idea of the type of approach others have taken however your teaching approach has to be unique to you, your discipline, and your experiences.

Selected resources can be found here:

https://taylorinstitute.ucalgary.ca/resources/sample-teaching-philosophy-statements

Beatty, J. E., Leigh, J., & Lund Dean, K. (2020). The more things change, the more they stay the same: Teaching philosophy statements and the state of student learning. Journal of Management Education, 44(5), 533-542.

https://cei.umn.edu/teaching-resources/writing-your-teaching-philosophy

Preparing for promotion – assembling the ingredients of your application

Having coached many colleagues on education-focused tracks through the preparation process for promotion I’ve distilled the ingredients of a successful application below.

Check the criteria – this will vary from institution to institution but this is what your application is being measured against.
Assess whether you are ready to apply – draw on your annual appraisals, have discussions with your Head of Department. Benchmark yourself to the criteria.
You may need to prepare a teaching portfolio – take time to ensure this represents your body of work and demonstrates coherence. Often you will need to do the following: outline the rationale for your approach to teaching; demonstrate teaching methods that link to your rationale; summarise your teaching achievements; summarise your scholarship achievements.
Think about evidence for each of your assertions; external and internal, qualitative and quantitative evidence is important. Self-report is often weak evidence.
Some promotion processes require a statement of how you meet the criteria as well. You need to be clear, and concise and make it irrefutable that you meet the criteria for the role.