 So let's begin. Let me welcome you welcome everybody to the Future Transform. I'm delighted to see you here today We've got a great topic this week with a pair of really really important guests I'm looking forward to our conversation But we've been talking about artificial intelligence actually for years on the forum you go back and take a look at our archives After all, where about the future now for the past year ever since chat GPT took off We've been doing more and more sessions on it and we approached chat GPT and other generative AI for multiple directions And for multiple points of view today, I'd like to focus on Generative AI and writing and the best way to do that is by looking at some cutting-edge research by a couple of professors Who recently did a very very important survey of the faculty who primarily teach writing? We've got professor Daniel Ernst and professor Troy Hicks and in fact Let me just bring them up on stage one by one so that we can start our conversation So to begin with professor Ernst Good afternoon, sir. Hey Brian. Thanks for having me. Oh a pleasure. Where have we found you today? I'm back in beautiful Denton, Texas. It's about 55 degrees. Oh, nice. Nice That's this is what it's it's very very pleasant indeed a little bit nippy to be out Yes Well professor Ernst, we have a tradition on the form when we asked people to introduce themselves We do if we're talking about what we're going to be working on for the next year So I'm curious over 2024. What are the big ideas the big topics the big projects that are going to be occupying you as you progress forward well as we'll talk about today my colleague Troy and I are Working on putting together our thoughts in a formal paper of some kind, you know We had our our article in the conversation come out, but we're going to be working on a more formal paper And as for me, you know, I I'm thinking about I think I'm thinking I'm going to be putting together a book proposal this spring About AI and education and so that'll be my project for this year is is trying to Trying to write my thoughts down on on AI and education kind of a big picture sort of yeah Take so yeah, well excellent. Excellent. And are you also teaching? Yes, and I'll be teaching two courses this spring So I think I'll have some time to actually work on the on the proposal Very very good. Very good. Well, good luck with all of that Especially the book let us know and when it comes out down the road Let's put this in for you to come and return to the forum to talk about it. I'd love to come back. Yeah Oh, that would be great. That would be great Well, first of all welcome professor Ernst and let me get your colleague your co-conspirator And we bring up professor Troy Hicks Greetings, sir. Hello And where have you found you? Right there in the middle of the Michigan as I've been sharing in the chat In the Michigan, yes That's right. That's right. And I have to say Troy This is one of the challenges one of the burdens I bear on the forum is this legend that you have to have the beard in order to be on the forum and You know yours you you're very very dapper and yours But you you heard how I how we introduced professor Ernst. What are you working on for the next year? What are the big projects and ideas for you? Yeah, so I'm pleased to be working with Daniel as we continue to write up our paper We're gonna present at the four C's conference in Spokane later this spring Also, hope to be working on a book in fact that would sign the contract another colleague of mine Dr. Kristen Turner from Drew University. We're focusing our AI book more on the secondary Grades like 4th through 12th grade English language arts instruction I'll be working on that and planning a few different workshops and seminars and activities for K-12 colleagues through Central Michigan University and Other programs so doing some hands-on minds on work with teachers as we all try to figure out these tools. Oh Fantastic, I would I would love to to bring you back to the forum to talk about that When you when you can I mean it takes time to write a book And I know you both are busy, but I would love to host you to describe it In fact, if depending on the timing we could bring you both back as a double-headed for both of your books Thank you Well friends, if you're new to the Future Transform, I'm gonna ask our guests a couple of questions But I'd like you to start thinking about your questions what you'd like to ask both of these fine professors and Put if you'd like start practicing your questions out in the chat In fact, we've already got a bunch of different ideas that are starting to bubble up there And don't forget the Q&A box and of course also the ability to join us on stage One more thing before I begin on the bottom left of the screen. You should see a kind of tan colored box It's this conversation article and that's a very very elegant overview of their research So if you haven't seen it yet, just click on that and then take a look at it So I guess my first question for the two of you Daniel and Troy is a major concern in your survey that faculty showed was about cheating or academic integrity And I'm curious if you could break that down a bit. What were faculty most concerned about? when it comes to in using AI to To create material in a way that might run a thwart of academic integrity Yeah, so I think our survey showed that you know AI is multifaceted right you can use it for a lot of different parts of the writing process But I think the greatest concern Among the population we sampled was using it essentially to replace all of the sort of thought Altogether that goes into writing So kind of just beginning to end having it generate an essay and then students turning it in without thinking About it too much Which I think is a legitimate concern, you know The the headline of the article, you know Says that that you know, there's more to the concern than cheating Which is true, but I think the primary concern is that you know without having to You know write from Zero, you know do the entire writing process. You're basically sort of sidestepping the sort of critical thinking Part of writing and so again, I think that's a legitimate concern Troy if you want to add to that Yep, I was trying to respond to a message in the chat there I'll grab a list of some resources I gathered for the National Council of Teachers of English Conference of some other colleagues here 2023 I'll throw that link in. Yeah, I think it was less a concern about outright Students are going to go copy and paste from someplace. Obviously, you know, that's been around a while There are essay mills or people that you can pay to write your own original papers That is not new And unfortunately, that is still going to go on in this age of AI Yes, that theme that we we came up with and trying to understand what our colleagues concerns were and it ranges from that Yes, there is the outright copying worry To the what kinds of disciplinary ways of thinking creative ways of thinking are they going to miss out on if they just jump Right in and use the AI Rather than try to Actually go through a process But I think for those of us that have been in writing instruction for a long time really echoes many of the same things Principles we know about best practices We have to model and mentor our students through the writing process and show them These disciplinary ways of thinking and these different genres and how these genres work So in some ways and I joke with my own doctoral students about this No finding is a finding, right? The concerns are echoing a lot of what we've heard for many many years and yet at the same time AI I think cuts at the emotional heart of teaching and perhaps a little bit more about that like it Yes, you know a bit of what teachers are expected to do in the ways they Prompt students to work and provide them with feedback. Mm-hmm Those that's and did that emotional response show up in your survey Oh, I would say so there were some pretty visceral responses some Some people that I think just wanted to get a few things off their chest and the empty box To type in an open-ended response on the survey gave them opportunity to do so I can't remember exactly what was said, but there were some thoughts about AI Writing tools being the end of academia and whatnot that you can likely imagine But then yeah, I think the the other part of it is just the Heartwork of teaching like we put a lot of ourselves We teach who we are and when we suddenly feel like Students are circumventing the writing process and maybe circumventing the kind of instruction that we're trying to offer to them And the work that we're trying to give them That hits right here right it feels like we're not only being cheated in the academic honesty sense But that part of who we are and what we do is being undermined In the types of relationships we built with these I could see that But two quick meta notes by the way first if you're seeing a big furry tail whip back and forth in front of my face It's one of the cats who has decided to show off. Yeah, she always wants to appear on screen This is this is ash our foreign friend, but also in the chat Sarah Sanger-Gorio our good friend in New Jersey asks if it would be okay to for me to post a Lightly edited transcript of this chat to my blog. I'd be happy to do that Please in the chat. Let me know if you have any issues or requests with that These are good responses Thank you both. Yeah, I'm sure I think that matches a lot of what we're what we're seeing up there in the world Your survey also took a look at If you will some of the more positive uses some of the ways that instructors Writing instructors were hoping to use generative AI as part of classroom teaching And I'm wondering if you could say a bit about what the results showed What are some of the pedagogies that the writing instructors revealed? Yeah, I think the biggest one was in the invention stage of writing. So just trying to Using using AI as a tool to come up with interesting things to write about You know, I think I think part of I think if you talk to any writing instructor One of the hardest things to do is to get students not to just write the very first thing that comes to their mind, right? but to actually sort of You know think before they write and I think These AI tools can help do that, right? I mean and again the the concern is if there's a fine line between Between that and the concern which is they're just gonna completely use the AI to think for them But I think what what teachers can do where we can sort of help And instead ourself is to help help them sort of negotiate with the AI and use the AI less as a replacement for their thinking and more as a partner In tandem to help sort of synthesize something original and insightful and so, you know, I think personally I wrote about this in a In essay I wrote for the Dallas Morning News, but I think you know, I I'm a my field is rhetoric and composition So I read about the history of rhetoric a lot and I teach classes on it and and one of the major Written genres from ancient classical Greece was the dialogue, right? I mean if you read the Socratic dialogues the platonic dialogues the way they sort of advanced knowledge or the way they sort of synthesize and move their their sort of Observations forward is through a manufactured dialogue between two people to keep the conversation going I think we're gonna see sort of a renaissance with that kind of genre in the form of dialogues between students and AIs and You know the way we assess it is like, you know, where can you take this dialogue? where can you lead the AI to to help sort of You know come up with something original or insightful or new right and again, you have to strike that balance between You know pushing the AI forward and not and not letting it completely Do the thinking for you, and I think that's where teachers can sort of help facilitate that I Love that Daniel. It makes me think too of some of the early modern dialogues, you know Galileo published a couple of essays in dialogue form, which are just just wild But this does lead to another part of your research, which is that okay if we have students engaging with generative AI as a You know co-writer writer buddy revisionist system brainstorming help. There's a great UNESCO list of I think 13 different roles that AI can play with a student if that's the case then to what extent do we need to hire? Writing faculty and so that was that last concern was actually something that that you addressed in your research as well Can you speak to that a bit? Yeah, you know I'll kick it here to Troy in a second because we were actually talking about this beforehand, but I think You know as much as the AI role is still sort of fuzzy but coming into focus, right? I think the new human roles are still sort of fuzzy and coming into focus And so whether I think there is a legitimate concern that teachers are just going to be relegated to moderators or proctors You know kind of monitoring students interacting with AI's and I don't want to see that I think I would think that I think that would be a bad sort of Future for education, but I think that there are less Bad alternatives out there, and I think there are ways that you know what we teach might shift a little bit You know we might be teaching more metacognition more metacognitive skills more critical reading skills more editing skills, you know, so It's a trade-off right as much as like the load of the workload of writing may be reduced or changed in terms of writing a first draft Now there's going to be more emphasis on editing right if you if you generate some a draft first draft with the help of AI You still need to sort of go through and and edit it and make it say what what it needs to say So I think we can sort of see trade-offs where you know Maybe one part of the load the workload cognitive load is reduced in one area But it's reemerges in another and that's where we can you know refocus some of our teaching which we already do You know, we don't already teach metacognition I just think it that might be more sort of valued or rewarded in a world where we can sort of instantaneously generate content I think that's That reminds me of what I've heard from other disciplines for example in in foreign language the idea that AI may help with repetitious testing and drilling and vocabulary basic grammar freeing up the instructor to do more Intellectually complicated and challenging tasks Yeah, and that's you know, that is that sounds really good in theory I acknowledge that there's all kinds of ways in practice that that could not turn out as good as it sounds in theory but I do think that that's kind of one sort of positive way, I guess to sort of envision a Future with AI. What's the what's the old joke in theory? There's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice Yes, let me stop interrogating our four excellent guests and let me give over the floor to you and again If you're new to the form remember, there are a couple of ways that you can put questions forth So on the bottom of the screen is that white strip and there are a couple buttons there a few buttons And one of them is a question mark and that's your Q&A box So you can type in your cube your question your comment your request and the time is right I'll flash it on the screen like I'm about to do right now because Troy you're talking about metacognition We have a question for excellent friends Sarah Sanguario like this I'm thinking about student metacognition and building it more overtly into assignment frameworks thoughts Yeah, I can offer a little bit about that in fact I'm gonna pull up a link to a document this document's received a little bit of critique in the composition world So I won't go into all that but it's called the framework for success and post-secondary writing and it talks about the habits of mind that Writers should possess and that we can lower overtly teach. So here I'll put this in the chat the framework and I think that when we when we use that and also I put in the chat this link to the professional knowledge for the teaching and writing What are the things that we expect students to be able to do? Well, you could go into that framework and I'm gonna pull it open in a tab here and just pull up an example So one of them is about Curiosity the desire to know more about the world when you look at the specific objectives You know use inquiry as a process seek relative authoritative information conduct research communicate findings And it's been shared in the chat here. How can we use these tools to engage students in those processes? So rather than just going into chat GPT or Bing and saying You know, give me an outline on climate change You know and how that would turn into my essay What are the what are the key considerations around climate change? How would someone from politically conservative perspective look at climate change? Someone's from a politically liberal perspective with a climate change one exercise that I've tried with people And I think we use the Bing version because we do have access to that now at CMU. We took a politically loaded Ideologically charged Perspective on climate change put it in there and then asked please identify keywords and phrases in this and and what political Perspectives they might have So again opening up curiosity using the AI as a tool to foster Those habits of minds and going back and look what is it? What are the meta? Metacognitive attributes we would want writers to have how can we have them use AI tools in the Those ways Similarly if they're gonna be planning and they're expected to plan and organize use the AI tool I need to organize a draft on this this and this help me prioritize the importance of these three topics Or these three perspectives or something like that. So I think that could be interesting and then they compare and contrast What did you get when you type that in Daniel and I can tell you what I got when I typed it in? Let's look at what the different output shared Yeah, I think that comparison is the most important thing because One thing that I've done with my students already is so once one assignment I had them they had to choose a topic that they knew something about write 500 words on it Then I had to prompt the a large language model to write 500 words on that same topic And then they had to write 500 words comparing the two and I had a really interesting What one of my students he worked as he works as a property assessor So he wrote 500 words on how how you go about like the procedure in assessing property And then he had AI, you know write it and then he compared the two and it was really interesting You know he he identified differences in the rhetoric in the writing But he also it also made him think about like, you know from a technical writing perspective I don't know if people out there are In the technical writing world it made him sort of confront like how he sort of sequenced You know what goes into assessing a property and then how The AI sequenced it as well and some of the differences there and how Audiences might sort of interpret them differently. So I've already started doing stuff like that where you know I had I taught another class. It was a professional writing class, but it was for visual arts majors. And so Now when I had them use AI image generators and I said, all right you know take one of the one of the pieces of art that you have made and then prompt an AI image generator to Make this the same thing or as close to what your original piece is as you can and then write a thousand word essay comparing and contrasting the two and again, it was very very interesting and You know some of it forced the students to sort of analyze the thing I think more closely because it was their own art versus an AI Image generator that was attempting to sort of do exactly what they did And so I think that that it made it almost made them rise to the challenge a little bit more because it was like them versus the machine so I think I think a lot of creative ways to sort of embed the AI response to our writing prompts in our in our Assignments themselves as a way to sort of preemptively maybe ward off plagiarism But also to sort of raise the stakes a little bit because I think I think you can kind of create this kind of competition between the student and the machine that that ends up sort of motivating them to maybe you know not all students obviously, but maybe motivate some of them to to try a little harder perhaps That's fascinating. I think that kind of competitive drive Well Daniel Troy, thank you both for the really terrific answer as usual Sarah asks great questions And again friends if you're new to the forum, that's an example of one of those Q&A box questions And we have a whole bunch of them lined up. So let me just grab a couple more of these This is one comes back to the end of your research here. This is from Leigh Ann MacArthur We know the anxiety producing things. I'm curious what you are most excited about in this era of AI What do you think the educators use survey are most excited about and jump in first on that Daniel? Yeah, go for it Okay, I think one of the things that came out And this this came out after the survey and in the focus group conversations and many of the workshops and webinars I've been fortunate to be part of this fall is that There are a whole lot more tools than just chat GPT. I think everyone hears AI they liken it to chat GPT One of the tools that I found really interesting is perplexity and you start by asking it a question It generates a response that adds in hyperlinks to footnotes Where it's getting its information, which I know Bing is doing a little bit more robustly now not just trying to sell you Hotel nights and flights to places, but you know actually giving you real information to different things And then you can have this conversation and about source evaluation and lateral reading And what does this source say about this topic and what does that source say about that topic? And so seeing the variety of AI tools that are out there and then also that that large Category of tools I guess for lack of better term to be copy editing tools like copy AI writer Jasper all of those tools The fact that we can really explore audience and genre and tone and think about what it means If I ask the AI to generate something as a blog post as compared to YouTube script as compared to a social media headline And then comparing and contrasting what does that look like so we had one of the professors In the focus group was a marketing professor and was talking about how they were trying to integrate Those AI tools into their instruction and having students see What they could do when comparing and contrasting across the tools so I think there are Opportunities out there especially if we expand our horizon beyond just jet GPT Really really good point really good point jet GPT seems to loom largest from all the data I've seen But we are we have a boom time of so so many different tools Thank you for the great question and and for the for the really good answer in fact speaking of which Here's a related note when a campus licenses one This is a comment from Lisa Rourke this semester all first year writing classes at Brand ISU will pilot Lex an AI writing assistant during the research essay unit I feel like you go well or hardly wrong and welcome advice. I Agree, I think it could go either way You know, I think that like I think that that's smart I guess You know, I think I think the future I think the future of research is definitely going to include these tools I mean, you know, if you think about if you kind of take a step back AI is really just kind of bringing the internet to you instead of you having to go out into the internet, right? So in terms of research It's not different in in kind it's different in degree and yes, you're still gonna have to use the same sort of Critical evaluation tools that you use when you assess, you know information you get from a journal or from a website All that's gonna apply. It's just gonna be I think it's gonna matter more in the language itself in you know The last question was about what are you excited about with this and you know If anyone out there is like me, which I assume a lot of you are if you're in education or especially in writing education You know, I'm really interested in language and in words And I think now more than ever because of large language models The value of language is becoming more and more apparent, right? I mean, you know, it has like the grammar or the word choice of a prompt that you entered I like to like to point out that You know on Google for a long time What we taught our students was don't don't type a direct question into the search bar, right? That'll confuse the search engine just type in your keywords. Now. We're going the other direction now It's like if you change one or two words in your prompt it can result in a totally different Generate it generated content So I think if you're someone who's interested in language and the nuances and the complexity of language now is probably the most exciting time In a long time because I think things like grammar and rhetoric and critical reading And thinking these things are only going to become more and more important as this research is is refined So I think if with the right mindset, this could be actually an important time for people like us People who are interested in like in language I agree. That's a wonderful wonderful way of putting it I mean where word choice matters so much like Mark Twain's famous line Was it the proper words a difference between lightning and lightning bug? Yes Yeah, we have a series of questions now that are kind of Maybe technical or very very focused And I want to get these in and by the way again friends if you're new to the forum I can see a lot of you are figuring out the Q&A box Just look for that question mark, but if you want to join us on stage again just press the raise hand button and You can see that our guests are nice and we'd be glad that we'd be just delighted to have you And this is this is a question that I've heard a few people asking In different ways. This is from Thomas. He asks how do you use AI tools develop one's inner voice of a writer? If if it's dependent for creative ideations or develop editorial sense. I Really appreciate that question I think it hints at something that's going on in the chat right now too about when how and why we ask students to use These tools are like the likes go horribly wrong One of the things the tool I'm thinking of right now is word tune But I'm sure others do similar types of things where you can highlight a word or a phrase or a sentence And then ask it for suggestions to expand or contract or be more formal or be more creative And it will come up with six eight ten examples and to me that's that moment of the voice is okay What sounds like me? What doesn't sound like me? What seems plausible that this would have come out my mouth or my fingertips or putting pen to paper What does not sound plausible at all? and Where are the places where the AI generated the text actually gives me momentum and helps me move forward Where does it stifle me? Are there moments where I could copy and paste and acknowledge that I've used the AI And it made good sense and it saved me time or are there times where it's just a hindrance and it's not helping me at all So I think that helping students Work through the AI tools and ask those questions and foreground their own voice and that process has really important There's a not yet word tune. So there is another You know conversation going on about like the use of Grammarly And we've had this conversation went forever like when how and why do we accept the grammar suggestion? And when do we ignore it because actually we did want a one word sentence for that paragraph Or you know for that particular sentence. We wanted to articulate something One word was enough and that's not a grammatical I meant to do that as a writer So I think that those are the types of conversations again going back to the um The idea of you know student agency and voice helping them understand When how and why use the AI No, thank you. Thank you Uh quick shout shall be I know you have to run but thank you very much for uh for that assistance and Troy, thank you for that for that solid answer. Let's let's press on this a little further Because we have a few more questions that are that kind of Again, I don't I don't think technical is the right word, but you'll you'll see what I mean in a minute This is one from Maureen Matten. Uh, who has a question about accessibility Um regarding students who require accommodations to participate such as captions alt text, etc Has anyone published something regarding the positive use of AI especially for diverse learners? I'm not sure about I'm not sure about publishing right now But a lot of the major tech companies are You know the the the big thing right now is is which is what's called a large multimodal models, right? So I mean the the large language model is kind of the what they call a foundational model. It's kind of the basis for these other types of Generative AI like image generators video generators music generators And and so all that's being built on top But now these multimodal models are interesting because they can do things like text to speech Or they can go from speech to speech so you can translate People's language to another language. You can translate text to spoken text Which I think is is going to uh kind of revolutionize accessibility. I mean we have things like screen readers And so forth right now, but this uh these large multimodal models are going to be much more dexterous and much more You know granular and their ability to uh To help with uh accessibility and in terms of you know again, you know using that capturing that technology for Accessibility and pedagogy. I think that's going to become Easier, which I think is good for teachers because a lot of times teachers There's a lot of unpaid labor. I think that goes into teachers working to make their materials more accessible Which is is important, but you know, I think that a lot of times that's just kind of expected on top And I think hopefully uh, I will sort of streamline a lot of that and make uh make accessibility much more easier for everybody and then everybody benefits Thank you That's that's a really really solid answer. Um, we have uh A couple of one one more question to ask to follow up on this line again. This is uh, I'm thinking this is technical This is from uh, jill quant jill. I hope I didn't Garble your last name. Please let me know Siting ai using the guidelines provided by mla is impractical The students are using a as a tool and not simply copying pasting large chunks. How do you recommend we teach students to cite ai? So If i'm understanding that question right What jill was saying is that Students are using the ai but not necessarily like They're using it as a thinking partner, but they're not necessarily Copying and pasting huge chunks into the paper because again, there's this whole continuum of how people are using ai I think in that case, uh, I've seen a lot of instructors adopting language for syllabi and assignments that say You may use ai as a thinking partner as a tool, you know Research tool or something like that and to say just please acknowledge what you've done And one of the things that perplexity did early and I know chat gpt does now And I think other tools are starting to do more Is that you can create as I did and put in the chat a few minutes ago an external hyperlink So the instructors could say hey I I encourage you to use ai as a thinking partner to get started to ask some questions to maybe frame an outline for your paper Provide me with the direct link to your chat gpt output Boom, so there you could go you don't have to get all formal on the mla versus apa versus You know what gets cited where and when and how There are other tools though and the one I know that's doing it directly and I'm sure others are as well But one I know for sure is quillbot And you can as you're having quillbot generate ai text It will actually come up with a little pop-up that says do you want to add a citation for this And even going through an exercise where you're modeling your writing process and you are Then asking quillbot to do some ai generation for you and they're going oh, hey look It's asking me if I want to cite this What do you all think should I cite this did it give me enough information? Like going through that think aloud as a model with your students during a lesson I think could be really helpful And um to then to then show Yes here, there are actual formal ways to cite this and then How and when and why do you cite that that opens up another round of conversations in a genre and purpose And those conversations are ones that writing instructors are perfectly positioned to hold. Yeah Well speaking of thank you. Thank you for that answer and again, that's that's a great question all these questions today are superb Now, let me uh, let me change the format a little bit and let me introduce a video question This is from our good friend Peter Shea, and let me bring him up on stage Hello, Peter. Hi. Can you guys hear me perfectly? Great. Great. You know, I love the answer about the application of ai To diverse learners. I think that's one of the great under-recognized values here um I just wanted to follow up with the question. Do you see At my college, we've used ai to generate metaphors that You make use of our immigrant students cultural knowledge um You see ai as a tool that that can Is uniquely useful For helping bridge the gap between cultural knowledge for second language students learning to how to write um In terms of helping them More quickly acclimate to the cultural knowledge they need to to master our kind of academic discourse I wonder can I ask you a quick follow-up on that? Like are you are you considering like the students could ask the ai like oh, I heard this Idiom or this phrase that someone you like using the ai in that way or like taking something from their own language And then trying to look for an approximation in english or I would say both It's like a missing link That's been a big issue because we've had so much energy put into second language learning by Passionately committed educators, but it's an exhausting task. It's really herculean This seems to be one area where a well-designed ai assistant can really Bridge the gap Yeah, I think it's useful. I mean I am not an expert by any stretch in teaching english as a second language Or embracing I am not multilingual myself. I am Hopefully american monolingual person. So um, I don't have all the the experience myself to know that What I would say is from conversations. I've had with teachers who are teaching Multilingual learners or and who are multilingual themselves. It seems to me that that would be a perfectly reasonable And asking ai to do that type of work and then again just like you would ask a So don't just trust google translate like you've got to go look at it more carefully Maybe share with the native speaker confirm that this is accurate It again could open up some great conversations One other thing you made me think of I I have a colleague who does She has like a she I can't remember what she describes it as it's like an open door policy Like as you are new to america, you're going to hear things see things at wonder things No question is taboo Whether you think it's taboo. That's okay. You're not going to offend me I will try to answer it as best I can and I could see using the ai as a way to oh, I heard this phrase Or I'm wondering about this and maybe that could be a way Although I know chat gpt will limit you on the types of questions you can ask it So that could be another possibility to me just one interesting. I don't know the aspect of this is For faculty members who like are born outside the united states. One of my colleagues is using ai to put it to to imitate his voice And then take his written lectures and put them, you know in a clearer american standard accent than a zone in the classroom As a way of overcoming again a cultural barrier from the instructor side So I think there I think there are lots of wonderful applications for these kind of tools in terms of the language issues that we traditionally address Yeah, I think I think these things are uniquely helpful, especially in writing in a foreign language I still think if you know in terms of bridging the cultural gap I still think in person human, you know conversation is the best way to like, you know Ai could help you learn to write better. I think in another language You know who knows down the road if it could help you speak better And I still think if you want to you know bridge a cultural gap, you need to immerse yourself in that culture would be my response Well, there's Oh, thank you for the great question peter and Again friend, that's an example of a video question and peter's proof You don't have to have a beer to be up here on the farm But also I I do wonder daniel troi. Have you played with using? Chachi bt or barred or being or clawed etc to create a simulation environment with multiple characters to Create a kind of simulated immersion I personally have not I think that's a really interesting question I mean I've had some students as we've played around with it a little bit like Simulate a dialogue like imagine you're in a dialogue with somebody ask this ask that Or imagine a dialogue between two characters where one character wants this someone character wants that but I Not extensively Yeah, me neither. It's fun. It's fun if you want I can send you some some links to some of my counsel that it's it's it's pretty Ethan mollick A warden professor has been doing some fun stuff with that a couple others Um, but friends, I'm conscious of time and I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to ask their question Uh, daniel true. I mentioned before that a series of those questions were kind of tactical or technical Very very focused. Here are a couple that are a little broader. I think you'll see what I mean This is one from our great friend carl. Hackerayman coming to us from new england They ask how can writing instruction help students who use ai in writing for various future careers? He gives the examples public safety health care marketing business processes, but I can think of others yeah, I think um uh, I think This is the way I like to put it is I think like ai will sort of raise the floor of writing I think the you know the top writers Uh, professional writers are always going to be more or less writing their own Pros, you know, they might be using ai in some capacity, but I think ultimately they're going to still be writers but I do think for Professions where writing is an aspect of what you do but not the primary thing I do think that that is going to sort of raise the the floor the quality of writing because if anyone if Anyone in this crowd has played around with Uh, these tools, you'll know that like they are actually kind of best at the kind of boilerplate uh workplace Genres that that that a lot of people in a lot of different industries you know, right like memos and and and emails and I've used it to generate rubrics and uh, you know help with assignment sheets and various administrative Genres that I've had to write in now So I think that I think it's going to raise the floor and and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing I think there's a lot of writing that we wish we could sort of just outsource to someone else That I don't think we're really I don't think that's going to negatively cognitively impact us if we off You know outsource some of that type of writing You know, I can be wrong, but um But yeah, I do think that it'll it'll streamline some some Jobs and and and careers that again use use writing to some extent, but the writing is not Sort of super important. I would say In october I led a workshop at the education conference on technology and education And I I asked people what they were already doing with ai And that was the most popular use was writing that people weren't excited about You know memos Documentation for things people weren't interested in Sometimes things that that they were interested in but were hard Job application letters or rfps So that's that's that's already going on. I think They use If I may really quickly like one of the conversations that people will say like well Here's why I don't want to use ai Because I want students to understand all these things and then I think you know There are books and this is one that's popular at our university. Perhaps others like that they say I say sentence templates and models where You know, we use these models or formulas to begin right not quite like a five paragraph essay, but we use You know a pretty straightforward sentence template like You know in order to test the hypothesis such and such we assess such and such our calculations suggest such and such or My explanation accounts for such and such but does not explain such and such You know, so there are these templates and I think that's one of the things that the ai can do for us Is it can help get that template stuff out so we can then actually spend our time doing the creative work that we want Knowing that we've already met the expectation for these different genres Well, thank you. Thank you Um, thank you both for the good answers. Uh, carl. That's a that's a really really important question I think this is one of the big drivers that I've been seeing among academics is not the sense of The technology is interesting or exciting or scary But that it's already in the world and as we've heard our students to enter that world as workers, etc Then we need to prepare them for that Here's a related question. Uh, again, this is a kind of broader perspective. This is from walter, uh, and he asks Um a question about demographics Do you see an age-based component to this discussion about riding independence in general a generative ai? If students depend on these tools for elementary school, what happens when they get to college? I think those are two different questions. They're they're related, but they're both very good Yeah, I'll I'll put that back up. So yeah, do you want to take it from the survey? I can talk a little bit about the Oh piece with some of my colleagues. Yeah, well, yeah So our survey our survey was of instructors and we we actually were interested in this question about Is there a difference in in anxiety among people of different ages? Um, so I don't know if that's that might be a slightly different question, but interestingly there was no difference There was no, you know, I I hypothesize, you know Greater anxiety among older Respondents than younger, but that wasn't the case at all um as for I do think there is a difference in uh, the role that ai will play in lower grades of education versus higher grades Um, but I already think there's a difference in the way we teach writing to elementary schools versus college students Um, I think that so I I think that difference is already there. I think it it it'll persist with ai. It'll just Be somewhat different, you know, I think I think in in college higher education college level writing instruction, for instance, there's going to be a lot more emphasis on On you know writing back to the challenging the ai And that sort of thing whereas I think in lower grades The ai will be kind of used to sort of help just learn new things you can do with with language. So Um, that's kind of oversimplified, but that's that's sort of what I see. I don't know what the choice is Yeah, I I think as with many things with teaching writing, you know We we don't expect that a kindergartner is going to be able to write a fully formed literary analysis like a 12th grade ap student would um and at the same time We're asking them both to add details and examples to their writing, you know So what are the kinds of details and examples? What are the types of um content expectations and things that we would ask at different times and stages? And so again when why and how do we want students to use those ai tools? You know, I talk to teachers all the time that like there are moments where we have lids down moments in our classrooms The lids down folks pull out a notebook. I want you to jot some ideas here Then we're going to go back to the computer and start to type them up and do some internet searching and things like that I think it's a matter of um coming up with your own Balance in your teaching like when am I going to ask students to use these? When am I not when I'm going to tell them explicitly? They should when I'm going to tell them explicitly. They should not Those are those are conversations that you can have With your colleagues and with your students There's so many great comments. I'm trying to keep up with the chat Brian But there's so many great comments and questions that are rolling in here at the end And I hope this kind of addressed some of these things about the adaptations I think drafts multiple drafts multiple rounds of feedback tracking changes asking students to record screen recordings When they go back and say hey, here's where I put my own ideas in here some ai generated ideas Here's where I got feedback from someone now granted you can't Watch a hundred and fifty five minute screencasts every weekend for every essay that that would be Over and above what we're already asking writing instructors to do But I think at least once a semester having students do some kind of a metacognition where they're documenting their work through a screencast And then maybe commenting back on top of their screencast with you know, some Video annotation tools that can be really helpful Hmm Thank you, and I appreciate the your your noting of academic labor on this Very good question We have two questions from ala ala more There's a quick question and then a deeper question. The quick question is she wants to know if you could share your survey instrument And I don't know if you've already done that in the in the chat But is is there a way to find that? online easily or Is that something which you haven't shared yet? We haven't published it yet I can send if ala wants to drop your email. I can send you a spreadsheet of all of our findings But that's going to be published, you know the more on the results than the only included in the conversation piece That'll be published in the future Oh, good. Good. I appreciate that daniel and both of you. I appreciate then the you giving the forum An early look at your your results as they emerge and as your research develops ala. Thank you for that Her her bigger question is one that as a futurist. I absolutely love And this is one from the chats. I'll just read this out loud What do the speakers think about the claim that quote hybrid human and ai writing will become the new normal? unquote So hybrid human and ai writing will become the new normal I think it already has and uh, I see Put the note in there. I lie. I believe is the correct pronunciation. So I lie. I think we've already seen that obviously Autocomplete spell chat grammar voice to text we're we're human hybrid in our writing As it goes I think the The question might be how often and to what extent we're going to see the hybridity happen and Again, I think that's the moment. I don't know that I'm quite ready to go back to the chisel and tablets This was just alluded to in the chat But I think there are moments where we ask students. Yeah, you know just close the computer for a moment And let's have a conversation. Let's pull out a pen and paper some note cards and sticky notes But then there are other moments where it's like, hey, we You've you already know how to compose an email With the basics go ahead and use the ai type in your keywords get the text of it the main part of it generated Go ahead. It's perfunctory. Let's just move forward You don't even need to cite this and different people in different professions and different times of the day And the work day and of the work year are going to be that in different ways But yes, I think there's going to be more and more hybridity as we continue to go on and There are just so many so many things that it just opens up those conversations about Why we're doing what we're doing as writers at any given moment that I think fascinates so many of us on the conversation today and why we love teaching writing Yeah, and I would just I would just say real quickly I think the main the operative word there is hybrid and what is being what's hybrid about it It's it's that ai generates via probability distributions. It's quite literally math And humans don't human brains don't work like that. And so I think what we're seeing is like Probability versus sort of possibility are going to be that's what's being hybridized, right? The ai is always going to generate the most probable text But we have a greater Capacity I would say to imagine like more, you know things that are less probable but still possible So I think that's what's really going to be hybrid is this interjection of sort of probabilistic reasoning into our More possible stick reasoning faculties, I guess Probabilistic to possibleistic. Yes, that's it. That's a terrific arc Daniel Troy and everybody with great regret. I have to wrap things up We we've just blasted through an hour at top speed and I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to resume their lives You two have been fantastic guests I'm just astonished at how much you you've revealed to us And I'm just so glad at everything that has come up in in our discussion Let me ask a very practical question. How can we keep up with the two of you? What's what's the best way to find out? You know your next work your your follow-up articles and and your book projects and so on Um, I I have a website just danielcerns.com Uh, I'm trying I'm trying to be updated more, but that's probably the best place to keep track of me Um, and I'm at Texas woman's university in Denton, Texas So anyone in the dfd dfw area, you know, you can shoot me an email or find me at twu. So Nice. Nice. Thank you. Thank you. How about you try? I am hicks tro pretty much everywhere. So I just dropped a link to my blog in the chat I'm not so good at keeping up with it. Uh, so uh, brian, you're my role model when it comes to blogging I've got to get better. Um, but All the other socials you pretty much look up hicks tro. That's you'll find me Well, thank you. And uh, and thank you both for being so sociable. Um, I hope you uh, you both stay warm and comfortable Um, especially as uh, as respective winters hit and I'm really looking forward to where you take this research Into your classes and sort of books and to more articles. Thank you for spending such a kind hour with us Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Oh pleasure But don't go away friends. Let me point out to where we're going next If you'd like to keep talking about these issues chisel or not Um, speaking of the socials, you can find me and the forum all over all these socials Just use the hashtag ftte. You can see me there on twitter Messed on threads blue sky and of course my blog If you'd like to look into our previous sessions on writing and or automation ai Just go to our forum archive tiny url.com slash ftf archive If you'd like to look into our upcoming sessions some of which are about ai But other topics as well just go to forum that future of education that us and you can find those And let me once again. Thank you all for a terrific conversation. I'm looking forward to Putting up a transcript of this probably in a few different posts Um, I'm really grateful to you for sharing all your time your thoughts with us And I really hope that everybody stays well. This is by the way the first form of the year 2024 Which used to be a very futuristic looking Year and now is simply the year we live in This is the way the future works, but I'm really glad to spend the future working and thinking with all of you Take care. Happy 2024 everyone See you next time online Bye-bye