There have been a few articles here recently by college professors who report disengaged students, short attention spans, etc. I think there could be some useful research done more qualitatively into student and professor perceptions and experiences of all this. Relying on outdated brain research seems ridiculous, not least because it ignores all the social and cultural stuff which students are having to deal with, and are engaged in. I fear, at base, that you've got an important point here; university teaching, at least in the UK, was in deep, disconnected-from- student-reality trouble long before Chatgpt came along.
The research you describe is going on all the time in Departments of Education, which tend to get overlooked. Hence my irritation that prompted the screed.
Yes, I'm sure it is, and glad to hear it! I left the field in 2010, having been writing about all that was wrong with higher education assumptions about adult learning for over ten years. I don't interest myself in it now, but this chatgpt thing gets me fulminating about it all again....
A good read. This has my partner’s imprimatur: her data scientist background means she spends a great deal of time bemoaning the way in which the media prematurely grants gospel status to almost any “study” out there, recklessly amplifying low-quality science in pursuit of clickbait oversimplifications. Evidently, many journalists adopt a quasi-postmodern approach to published research, treating all the claims therein as if they were equally valid - despite lacking either the rigour or expertise to judge.
She’s also had personal frustrations with this kind of thing when, on numerous occasions, journalists misrepresented research produced by her team. (We have the gin bills to prove it!) Nor were corrections typically published after they were brought to an editor’s attention. The organisations in question were fairly well respected too (the NYT, BBC, Guardian, Atlantic, New Statesman, Scientific American, etc.).
Though I was aware errors like these weren’t unheard of, I had no idea quite how endemic they were before we met. It’s made me more sceptically critical of such articles ever since.
Picking apart ill gotten proofed ‘opinion’ can be a difficult job when it is intentionally buried in ‘data’ and you do it so wonderfully here. Such a fine scalpel I feel I have watched brain surgery in the unfolding of your own proof and critical thinking.
We cannot allow every single data point offered make us “re-active.” We must be pro-active in finding our way through this transition. Your work is critical in getting us there. 🫡
There have been a few articles here recently by college professors who report disengaged students, short attention spans, etc. I think there could be some useful research done more qualitatively into student and professor perceptions and experiences of all this. Relying on outdated brain research seems ridiculous, not least because it ignores all the social and cultural stuff which students are having to deal with, and are engaged in. I fear, at base, that you've got an important point here; university teaching, at least in the UK, was in deep, disconnected-from- student-reality trouble long before Chatgpt came along.
The research you describe is going on all the time in Departments of Education, which tend to get overlooked. Hence my irritation that prompted the screed.
Yes, I'm sure it is, and glad to hear it! I left the field in 2010, having been writing about all that was wrong with higher education assumptions about adult learning for over ten years. I don't interest myself in it now, but this chatgpt thing gets me fulminating about it all again....
A good read. This has my partner’s imprimatur: her data scientist background means she spends a great deal of time bemoaning the way in which the media prematurely grants gospel status to almost any “study” out there, recklessly amplifying low-quality science in pursuit of clickbait oversimplifications. Evidently, many journalists adopt a quasi-postmodern approach to published research, treating all the claims therein as if they were equally valid - despite lacking either the rigour or expertise to judge.
She’s also had personal frustrations with this kind of thing when, on numerous occasions, journalists misrepresented research produced by her team. (We have the gin bills to prove it!) Nor were corrections typically published after they were brought to an editor’s attention. The organisations in question were fairly well respected too (the NYT, BBC, Guardian, Atlantic, New Statesman, Scientific American, etc.).
Though I was aware errors like these weren’t unheard of, I had no idea quite how endemic they were before we met. It’s made me more sceptically critical of such articles ever since.
She's doing the Lord's work with that gin.
Picking apart ill gotten proofed ‘opinion’ can be a difficult job when it is intentionally buried in ‘data’ and you do it so wonderfully here. Such a fine scalpel I feel I have watched brain surgery in the unfolding of your own proof and critical thinking.
We cannot allow every single data point offered make us “re-active.” We must be pro-active in finding our way through this transition. Your work is critical in getting us there. 🫡
At your service.
For a literacy professor, you can be excruciatingly scientific.
No idea where I got that from.