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About Bart Everson

Creative Generalist in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana

The World-Wide Teach-In is underway now, and we're doing our part here at Xavier University of Louisiana. A number of professors already have or soon will MakeClimateAClass.

Thanks to Helena Robinson, Director of Sustainability, for helping to spread the news with this graphic.

There's still time to participate in the teach-in this year. See Bard College for details.

Did we miss anyone? Did you #MakeClimateAClass? Let us know!

Social media ain’t what it used to be. Actually, it never was: the fix was in from the beginning. The giant platforms of today were founded with the explicit purpose of making a profit at our expense. It doesn’t have to be this way. In this workshop, we take a look at a social media platform built on an entirely different model, with an entirely different premise. We'll also take a glance at the implications and opportunities for teaching, scholarship, and higher education in general.

Mastodon and Beyond: Our Federated Future [38:05]

Thanks to those who were able to attend our workshop on "Mastodon and Beyond: Our Federated Future." In case you missed it, or if you just want a refresher, we recorded a video for you. You can find this and a few other curated resources on the CAT+FD wiki.

Note that Mastodon is developing rapidly, so this video will probably be very dated very soon, but we hope it gives you a quick picture of where things stand at the current moment.

This article was originally published on Psychology Teacher Network, the premiere quarterly publication of the American Psychological Association's Center for Education in Psychology. It covers much of the same ground as our workshop of 9 February 2023 — see our wiki for video and resources.

I found out the world was ending about eight weeks before everyone else.

Last September, I started seeing advertisements for an artificial intelligence (AI). No, it wasn't ChatGPT. It was called Jasper. It could write blog posts—so the ads claimed. I did a 5-day free trial in early October.

I had a couple half-finished blog posts lying around. I fed them to Jasper, and the AI finished the job for me. The results seemed plausibly publishable: coherent, grammatically correct, focused, even evincing a wry sense of humor. I scraped together a dozen of my unfinished short stories. Some of these have languished for decades. I fed them to the AI. One after another, they were completed almost instantaneously.

First, I’d been intrigued, then I was impressed, and now I was alarmed. Writing is a special skill, which demonstrates my erudition, to say nothing of my humanity. Now, here’s a machine that can play the same game. I’m still coming to terms with the implications.

Finally, I started wondering about how this might impact teaching and learning. That’s my job, after all. How would this AI handle an authentic college writing assignment?

Since I don't teach classes myself, I asked my immediate supervisor. She shared an assignment from her health psychology class focused on behavioral lifestyle interventions. Students have to pick a book, read it, make connections between their chosen book and a designated journal article, then pick their own journal article from those cited in their chosen book, read that second article, and examine how the book used or abused that information. Finally, the students are required to reflect on whether they will actually implement any of the changes in their own lives.

Did you follow all that? It’s a complex assignment, and my boss considered it “basically cheat-proof.”

I fed this assignment into the AI. The instructions were so lengthy I had to copy and paste them in two parts, but Jasper didn’t blink. The AI generated an essay in mere seconds. The text seemed to demonstrate familiarity with the contents of the book and both journal articles. Remember, the AI had to pick the second article itself. I gave the essay to my boss, and she was astonished. According to her well-defined rubric, this paper was a C-. It was not brilliant. In fact, it was rather thin. But it was passable.

That was early October. I cancelled my free trial before incurring any fees and discussed the whole episode with some colleagues. We agreed the technology was fascinating, but the ramifications for academic integrity commanded our concern. The consensus seemed to be that the services of such an AI would be irresistible for some students. We knew we had to do a workshop on this subject. We knew this was going to blow up.

But we were still taken by surprise on November 30, 2022.

On that date, ChatGPT was unleashed as a free preview. Nearly overnight, it seemed like everyone in academia was talking about artificial intelligence and the end of the world—or at least the end of traditional written assessments.

ChatGPT is an AI product that was developed by OpenAI over the last several years. It’s worth backtracking to understand that OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in San Francisco in 2015, dedicated to developing AI for the benefit of humanity. They’ve since ditched their nonprofit status and received huge infusions of cash from Microsoft. Developing this stuff is very expensive. One of their key technologies is the generative pre-trained transformer, which is what GPT stands for. Basically, they feed a mind-boggling amount of text to this program, then train it to mimic human language.

GPT has gone through several iterations. OpenAI released GPT-2 in 2019 as an “open source” product, meaning the source code is freely available to outside parties and the general public. That commitment was deemed important enough to give OpenAI its name. However, with the shift to for-profit status, GPT-3 is licensed exclusively to Microsoft.

To summarize, in early 2023, everyone’s talking about ChatGPT, the user-friendly interface (similar to Jasper) that allows people to interact with the GPT-3 model, but that’s just the product of the moment. Future developments and competing products are already apace. Discussions about AI, academic integrity, and the future of writing will continue. It may or may not be the end of the world as we know it. Right now, there are still more questions than answers.

Have you explored ChatGPT? Have you talked with your students about it?

Fun footnote: Upon closer examination, my supervisor and I determined that the journal article Jasper chose for the health psychology assignment doesn’t actually exist. It looks plausible, attributed to an author who publishes similar titles in that field, but it appears the AI fabricated that citation. This lack of factual veracity is a well-documented flaw in current versions of GPT.

AI²: Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity [25:23]

Thanks to those who were able to attend our workshop on "AI²: Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity." In case you missed it, or if you just want a refresher, we recorded a video for you. You can find this and a few other curated resources on the CAT+FD wiki.

Note that AI is developing rapidly, so this video will probably be very dated very soon, but we hope it gives you a quick picture of where things stand at the current moment.

Now that the spring 2023 semester is officially rolling, we wanted to remind all faculty that Xavier has invested in a site license for the Camtasia software package.

Not only do you have access to the current version of Camtasia, the site license means you also get access to TechSmith's tech support as well as extensive training materials, which are quite frankly excellent.

  • Educational Resources: tutorials specifically focused on using Camtasia for online teaching
  • TechSmith Academy: not product specific, but full of tips and best practices for video creation
  • Certification Courses: premium learning experiences that develop skills with screencasting and visual communication (You will need to create a TechSmith Account and then follow the link.)

For those just tuning in, Camtasia is a tool for making videos by recording from your screen and camera. A common use for teachers is to record short lectures.

So what are you waiting for? Yes, you can download and install Camtasia now. Here's the link.

Please note: You will need a Camtasia License key to unlock the software beyond the free trial period. To get the key, please contact me, Bart Everson. You can send me an email: bpeverso at you-know-where.

This spring, we invite you to "Make Climate a Class" for just one day, as part of the Worldwide Teach-In on Climate and Justice on or around March 29th, 2023.

Can you do it? Yes, you can! Here's what we mean:

Devote a short portion of your regular class time to a discussion of how your field contributes to the understanding of climate change, or climate solutions, or climate justice. Bring it into the classroom. If even a few Xavier faculty do this, we will engage hundreds of students in a positive focus on the climate crisis.

Here’s what we suggest:

Tell students you are taking a short diversion into climate. Tell them it's as a part of the Worldwide Teach-in. For 15 minutes, introduce an example of how your discipline is thinking about climate change. Then have a 15-minute presentation from an alumnus or colleague who is actually working on climate change. Thirty minutes, DONE.

Climate change touches every field — from artists to entrepreneurs, from philosophers to scientists. Our courses can inspire students to see how they can be leaders in the critical work ahead to stabilize the climate.

Examples:

  • If you teach literature, talk about the emergent genre of climate fiction ("cli-fi") or a specific work of climate fiction. Then engage your students in discussion. 
  • If you are in STEM, assign students a problem related to climate change or climate solutions.
  • If you teach a class related to food systems, discuss the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the food supply.
  • If you are in the social and behavioral sciences, discuss the human dimensions of climate change and climate justice. (For a neuroscience-informed perspective, you might take a look at Ann-Christine Duhaime's new book, Minding the Climate, subject of a recent interview in the New York Times.)

The possibilities are endless.

Students will appreciate the chance to learn how your field relates to an issue that is of major consequence for literally everyone on the planet. They'll appreciate seeing a pathway to solving climate that goes beyond lifestyle choices and political action, as important as those may be.

CAT+FD is here to help. Reach out if you'd like to brainstorm ideas, or if you have a specific question, or just to let us know that you're thinking about it.

Footnote: This post is adapted from the "Letter to faculty who spoke in 2022 teach-in"

Yes yes yes we know this semester is crazy! But we just wanted to ask you to save the date now for something very interesting next semester.

Here's what's up:

As part of the Worldwide Teach-In on Climate and Justice, we invite you to "Make Climate a Class" on just one day in the spring semester.

This means you would devote a short portion of your regular class time to a discussion of how your field contributes to the understanding of climate change, climate solutions, or climate justice.

It doesn't matter if your class has nothing to do with the climate crisis. In fact, that's so much the better. The idea to reach as many students as possible, all around the world.

Tell students you are taking a short diversion into climate as part of the Worldwide Teach-in. Then for 15 minutes, introduce an example of how your discipline is thinking about climate change. Then have a 15-minute presentation from an alumnus or other professional who is actually working on climate change in your field. Thirty minutes, DONE.

We'll be posting more information in December. For now, we're just planting the seed. We urge you to save the date now. Mark it on your calendar on or around March 29th, 2023. If past experience is any indicator, next semester could be even crazier, so any dates not saved may well be lost in the shuffle.

PS: We'll be using this hashtag:
#MakeClimateAClass

[Camtasia Logo]

This just in: Xavier's faculty site license for Camtasia has been extended for a few years, and Camtasia 2022 has now been released!

For those just tuning in, Camtasia is a tool for making videos by recording from your screen and camera. A common use for teachers is to record short lectures.

In addition to the software, we have access to TechSmith's tech support as well as extensive training materials, which are quite frankly excellent.

So what are you waiting for? Yes, you can download and install Camtasia now. Here's the link.

Please note: You will need a Camtasia License key to unlock the software beyond the free trial period. To get the key, please contact me, Bart Everson. You can send me an email: bpeverso at you-know-where.

Hey folks! Hope you're enjoying summer break and this record-breaking heat. Hopefully it will be a little cooler when this event rolls around in the fall. We're posting this in support of our faculty in the Division of Business, aiming to spread the word and get on calendars. Download the flyer in PDF.

The Catholic Business Leader: A New Orleans Symposium
Save the Date - September 29 through October 1, 2022
With Keynote Speaker, Cardinal Peter Turkson
Sponsored by Xavier University of Louisiana and Loyola University of New Orleans

We're all concerned about the climate. That concern can be wearing, to say the least. Many young people now suffer from climate anxiety, and some climate organizers are “burning out.”

After the year we've had, this might sound all too familiar.

We need to encourage young people, activists, and teachers of all ages to nourish themselves. As a community, we need to offer support to each other, to give each other permission to slow down and engage in self-care.

Often we try to do too much in too short a time, rather than pacing ourselves for the lifetime mission to which we are called.

And so, on the second Thursday of May, we invite you to do nothing — for the climate!

What’s that mean? Well, the accentuation is actually on the nothing. In other words, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything for the climate (i.e. give up for a day). Rather, for one day, we should intentionally do nothing for the climate. The climate needs us to do more nothing—as it is our pursuit of growth and more, more, more (whether profit, stuff, or children) that is at the heart of our sustainability crisis.

How you do nothing is up to you, but we suggest taking a day away from the fight, away from emails, from work, from school; from the news, from TV shows, movies, and definitely social media. We suggest keeping your devices off completely if you can, and — if you can take a personal day, a mental health day, a vacation day — take one.

Make it a day for relaxing, chilling, nourishing your soul, and reconnecting to the ineffable spirit of being.

To learn more and sign the “Do Nothing” pledge, see Gaianism.org