Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has been on every educator’s mind since ChatGPT arrived on scene in November 2022. Many of us are experiencing ‘AI fatigue’ (can we talk about something – anything! – else, please?) and yet we can’t walk away because the ground continues to shift and the stakes feel too high.
Autumm Caines, lead instructional designer at the University of Michigan – Dearborn and an instructor with College Unbound, ruffled feathers with a series of blog posts that urge educators to pump the brakes and first consider the ethical implications of these new technologies.
“It takes people to develop meaningful curricula around technology use, imagine harms and try to avoid them, and that takes time,” writes Autumm in a post entitled In defense of banning ChatGPT. “I’m all for slowing this bus down.”
On March 4, 2024, snəw̓eyəɬ leləm̓ – Langara College co-hosted a conversation between Autumm and critical educational technologist Brenna Clarke Gray (Thompson Rivers University) entitled “Planes, trains, and generative AI: Recentering open education values in new technology adoption.”
If I had to distill the hour-long conversation (which is now available in Langara MediaSpace) down to one takeaway, it would be this: Higher education’s best ‘defenses’ to GenAI are interpersonal connection and good pedagogy.
AI is eroding trust between students and instructors (and even within scholarly communities). Research shows that academic integrity infractions are greatly reduced when students feel a sense of belonging. The same is true of good pedagogy –when students are invested in their learning, they want to do the work.
I encourage you to listen to Autumm and Brenna’s thought-provoking conversation from start to finish. [Spoiler alert: It includes a great analogy between old timey cars in the Henry Ford Museum, located in Autumm’s hometown of Dearborn, MI, and the onward march of technology.]
This event celebrated Open Education Week (March 4-8, 2024), an annual global celebration of the open education movement. Langara is one of the top adopters of open educational resources amongst B.C. colleges and universities.
-Lindsay Tripp,
Librarian, Copyright & Open Education
