Discussing Generative AI in the Classroom (Rhiannon Easterbrook)
CN: suicide
Since the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, educators have become increasingly concerned about its potential pitfalls as well as espousing its benefits.[1] Research into AI in education pre-dates ChatGPT, but with the constant evolution of AI tools, research publications have drastically increased, with China one of the biggest leaders in research into AI in education. [2] However, many academics are particularly worried about the potential of ChatGPT and similar tools to facilitate cheating in assessments.
In the introductory module on Roman Literature, there are only five seminars, leaving students with little time to practise literary analysis. I therefore thought it important to continue with that process. However, I decided to open up a discussion around the use of AI in learning while simultaneously fulfilling the more typical learning goals of my seminar. I decided to do this by using the AI app Historical Figures, which allows the user to “chat” with figures from history. I asked that week’s author, Seneca the Younger, several questions related to his life and work. Some points were general statements about the set text and, while on the face of it they seemed reasonable, they were not especially nuanced or developed and revealed a very shallow reference – I can’t say “understanding” for AI – to Stoicism. Students readily agreed with the information presented to them, so I asked them to assess whether there might be some qualifications or counterarguments. With some prompting, they were able to develop a critique of these statements having been challenged to find evidence for and against the AI’s points. This provided a chance to consider the importance of accessing the primary sources directly.
The scope and purpose of generative AI really came into focus once we discussed its portrayal of Seneca’s suicide. The AI had him say that it was a “cowardly act” that he regrets. Again, all students said that his arguments seemed reasonable; I pointed out that this contradicts everything we know about his and Stoics’ views on suicide. We then considered why an entertainment AI app might be programmed not to propagate a positive view on suicide.
Before I started this, the students had extremely varied levels of knowledge of, and engagement with, generative AI. Questions about whether ChatGPT could be used as a source in assignments prompted discussions about which primary and secondary sources we use and why. In general, they seemed to take away the idea that the information provided by AI is not necessarily correct and, while it can produce coherent text, these specific tools are not a substitute for scholarly research. I’m not sure that Historical Figures was the best app to use, since Chat GPT is more prominent and can be used to generate essays. I also don’t know if I would include this exact task again, since the theoretical implications that we should have discussed extended far beyond what we had time for. I also suspect there were pre-existing misconceptions that I need to work on first, particularly regarding the literariness of the sources we discussed, and the role of students in developing their own critical thinking. However, I do think it was valuable to broach the topic.
[1] Mushtaq Bilal has produced a a large number of Twitter threads promoting AI’s uses to researchers, some of which advice is applicable to undergraduates. https://twitter.com/MushtaqBilalPhD
[2] Helen Crompton & Diane Burke, ‘Artificial intelligence in higher education: the state of the field’, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education 20.1, 2023
A Thinking Exercise in Future Archaeology (Dies van der Linde)
As part of the group seminars I led in the Spring term for the course ‘Introduction to Roman Archaeology’, we visited the Museum of London. As archaeologists are always concerned with, and dependent on, preservation conditions of different kinds of material, the materials on display in the museum and preserved in the low-oxygen peat bogs of the Thames-area in London are somewhat extraordinary (e.g. leather shoes; wooden ladders). It is general practice among archaeology instructors to teach students which kind of materials are preserved, or not preserved, in which kinds of soil and climate conditions. The key role of material preservation and its shaping the availability of evidence – what survives, what not – can, however, also be projected onto the present and the future.
Thinking and hypothesizing about what survives of today’s material objects and textual data for future archaeologists (and what not) may simply be considered a fun exercise for archaeology students. But I believe there is more to it than just that. First, the thought experiment requires students to connect archaeological thinking (what survives – what not) to their own private world (one could for instance ask students to bring an object to class): what kinds of objects do I actually use? What are they made of? What, if anything, could they tell future archaeologists about me in case they survive? Second, it puts students in engagement with wider social issues of today and their potential ramifications: for instance, long-term storage of digital data or widespread deposition of plastic objects. What kind of digital data will last? Who owns these data and where are they stored? What kind of information will an archaeologist find, should one be able to access the data on my mobile phone? What kind of objects are made of plastic? Where would a future archaeologist find these objects? If only plastic bottles survive, what kind of information would be gained from them?
The thought exercise deliberately pushes archaeological thinking out of the traditional boundaries of the discipline, out of the usual contexts and materials discussed. It is the projection of an archaeological mindset onto unusual evidence and contexts which may have the desirable effect of easier memorization of the kinds of questions archaeologists have to deal with. Additionally, it triggers students to (critically) reflect on today’s society, customs and uses of material objects and the implications of these customs and uses. It, therefore, breaks down traditional barriers between different disciplines, teaches archaeological thinking not only for itself but also to elicit critical reflection and challenges the (still common) idea that archaeology is only about the past.
Response:
This sounds like a fascinating thought experiment. It made me think about the preservation of texts
in philosophy. Why is it that we have only these texts rather than others preserved from antiquity? I
think perhaps that the answer is as much political as material in the philosophical case, although
asking the question in the way you describe would be an interesting way to get students to think
critically about texts as objects rather than just as neutral vehicles of information. (Sam Matthews, Philosophy/PIR)
Response: I find this subject particularly interesting and your post is enlightening. I often wonder about the dangerous materials we leave, including, but not limited to, nuclear waste. We always imagine that we can warn future generations not to open secure containers by having symbols and text that we recognise but that assumes no end to our civilization. The symbols and words we use might not be recognised by a future civilization. Students could suggest what type of warning could be left that would have most chance of being interpreted in the correct way. (Adele Ward, English)
Response: This is such an interesting thought experiment. With the study of archaeology focusing on the distant past, sometimes the context of everyday use can be lost. This idea of thinking how things are preserved (and what is preserved) reminds students that these artifacts were everyday items preserved and found later on. This process also shatters the idea that a preserved item was intentionally preserved. Many objects in a museum were discarded by the people who used them, and was preserved in a trash heap. This is a parallel to our own modern use of landfills. (Tori Bovalino, English)
Archaeological evidence for teaching of ancient Greek Tragedy (Anon.)
In my role as seminar leader for Greek Literature, I delivered a seminar on Greek tragedy where we looked at Euripides’ Medea, which many of the students were studying for the first time. The tragedy - even though universally known for treating the issues of migration, betrayal within marriage, motherhood, vengeance and sorcery – can be challenging to teach, partly due to extended use of fantasy towards the end of the play in combination with complicated identity issues Medea is facing throughout the action.
For explaining aspects of staging in class, I found it utterly helpful to showcase a famous Krater from antiquity (400 BC) that depicts the final scene of the tragedy, Medea escaping her punishment for committing multiple murders (including her two sons’) via riding a dragon chariot. I asked the students to identify and discuss various parts of the vase: Medea’s barbaric dress and hat, the flying chariot drawn by two dragons, the dead bodies of her sons and the devastated Jason. The activity aimed to challenge the students into considering how Medea was perceived in art in antiquity and how the play was potentially conceived for the stage.
Some of the outcomes were that students were able to realise how fantasy was implemented in Greek tragedy, even in plays such as this where the emphasis is on the psychological turmoil following an abrupt breakup and abandonment. Furthermore, they were surprised to see the character’s elaborate costume and were able to trace the differences to Greek costumes they had previously seen; this lead them to realise how pivotal the use of the foreign element by the playwright is. Finally, they were asked to trace these visual observations in textual correspondences and point out precise line references in the play where the visual elements were based on. Felten 2008: 60 has argued that ‘‘visual literacy involves the ability to understand, produce, and use culturally significant images, objects, and visible actions. These skills can be learned in ways analogous to textual literacy’’. I strongly believe that the understanding of Greek tragedy is greatly enhanced by the use of pictorial evidence (see Taplin’s 2007 Pots & Plays, a major contribution for establishing the connection between Greek tragic texts and pots) and would highly recommend it for teachers of Greek theatre in general.
Felten, P. (2008) ‘Visual Literacy’, in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 40.6: 60-64.
Taplin, O. (2007) Pots & Plays: Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-painting of the Fourth Century B.C. (Los Angeles: the J. Paul Getty Museum).
Response: The use of material culture in this context is a brilliant idea. Costume and other visual aspects can work so well as key to understanding and reading between the lines - and most of all for the bigger picture. Cross-reading visual and textual material is an ideal approach and widens one's perspective on people events etc and it is great to equip students with this skill early on! (Dilara Scholz, History)
Response: As a former archaeology undergraduate who read Medea many years ago, this sounds amazing! The link between ancient depictions of Medea, how Medea could be staged in present times, as well as the play itself is clear. Your session sounds like it would have been very engaging. (Courtney Hagen Ford, Sociology/Management)
Response:
This is an excellent idea. Visual and material evidence can really help students have a better grasp of the literature. Moreover, it provides the students with different methodological approaches to examine the text. (James Bertie Norman, Classics)
Simple Games as Exercises for Homeric Literary Concepts (James Bertie Norman)
I began the autumn term by teaching students Homeric poetry in the Greek Literature module. It is widely acknowledged that Homeric epics are oral poems which were sung to many different cultures throughout the course of its oral transmission. Most scholars, today, accept this argument of oral composition but suggest that later poets made additions to the text. These later additions supposedly account for some of the inconsistent and contradictory descriptions in Homeric epic. This is a difficult topic to explain to the students because we are conditioned into studying texts that are authored by one person, and we assume that every description is unified in creating meaning. In addition, we also talk about the cultural context and influences of a piece of literature. It is not possible for us to analyse the Homeric text in entirely the same way because we cannot say with any degree of certainty that the Homeric poems had specific cultural influences. I decided to ease my students into Homeric poetry by getting them to play a game of Chinese Whispers. Much like the game, Homeric epic is presented to different rhapsodes and is subject to alterations. I gave them different historical periods as names. I put them in a line and gave the student at the back of the line the name “Early Bronze Age,” the middle student “Dark Age,” and the final student “Neo-geometric period” to make them see how easy it is for the material to change over such a long period of transmission. This exercise was an attempt to bring Illeris’ Assimilative Learning into practice: my aim was to show how a topic, unknown to students, can be explained by getting them to play a game well known to them. The student response of this exercise was encouraging. When I asked the students why I got them to play this game, they said that it was to show how the poem is capable of changing over time. This demonstrated that the students had engaged with the exercise and understood the material. This exercise, I feel, improves the students’ learning experience of Homeric composition.
Response: This game sounds like an excellent learning tool, and made me want to try it within my own teaching. I love the concept of encouraging students to engage with the collaborative storytelling by actually participating in developing the Homeric poetry through their own contributions (as hasty and short-lived as it is in this setting!) I would perhaps suggest changing the terminology to the admittedly more USAmerican English 'Telephone' or simply 'Whispers' because of the sinophobic overtones https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.5749/vergstudglobasia.1.1.0066.pdf - (Nemo Martin - Modern Lit/Lang&Cultures)
Response: Gamification of your topic was a great idea, not only because you made the students get "hands on" and experience the phenomenon you were trying to explain, but also because you used a game dynamics that was very familiar to them already. This helps breaking the distance between the learner and the material by making instantly more relatable and helps students to build metaphors and make learning more approachable. An interesting extension would be to re-enact the conditions of the way we think Homeric poetry was exposed and consumed, to make students even more familiar with the concept of oral tradition, which is not prevalent in Western cultures. Some surviving examples of oral tradition from other cultures could also provide more context. I agree with Nemo's comment above about terminology, as it could alienate students from East Asian background. (Claudia Antolini - physics)
Bringing the museum to the classroom (Franziska Wolf)
When I started my position as Teaching Fellow in German at Royal Holloway, I was able to teach mostly on modules that have been designed by my predecessors. As a consequence, some of the material on my second-year German language course seemed a little outdated, especially when covering contemporary discourse in German culture and society. One of these topics was the theme of Heimat, which can be loosely translated with 'homeland', and which has a crucial importance for ideas around German national identity. Often understood positively as a feeling of belonging, I wanted to challenge this naive idea of Heimat and critically reflect on the underlying issues that the notion of Heimat entails especially for those who are constructed as Others and who are refused from establishing a German Heimat, for instance due to migration experiences or ethnicity.
Before the start of term, I was travelling to Hamburg. It was a rare coincidence that a local museum had just opened an exhibition on the topic of Heimat. I wanted to use the exhibition for my teaching, but how? I couldn't bring the students to Hamburg, of course. I had doubts as to whether my students would gain anything from being exposed to a contemporary exhibition they hadn't seen themselves and that they most likely wouldn't be able to see. What would be the use of incorporating museum-based material in a language class if we cannot actually engage with the objects? In an article from 2013, Kathryn Sederberg approaches this questions and argues that [1] 'intellectually and aesthetically engaging learning experiences' for language teaching are made possible through a museum-based approach.
Sederberg sees three main benefits of integrating museum-based approached into language teaching, one of them being the following [2]: '[M]useum-based learning promotes connections across contexts and disciplines; it is by nature contextual, combining personal, socio-cultural and physical spheres.' As museums are interdisciplinary, so is German Studies as a university programme, and so is the topic of Heimat that touches upon political, sociological, cultural, and philological problems. Sederberg's article encouraged me to use the photographs I had taken of the exhibition, the museum's website, as well as educational material published on the exhibition Youtube channel, to approach the theme of the class. As the exhibition also included books on the topic, I was able to read extracts from them together with the students - both fiction and non-fiction. This approach helped me to combine personal approaches to the topic of homeland and belonging with theoretical reflections on the issues involved, and I was able to facilitate language learning while also fostering critical thinking and exposing the students to ideas formerly unfamiliar to them.
[1] Kathryn Sederberg, 'Bringing the Museum into the Classroom and the Classroom into the Museum: An Approach for Content-based Instruction', AATG, 46:2 (2013), 251-62 (251).
[2] Sederberg (252).
Response: I had a similar experience with wanting to bring the use of historical objects into my seminars to encourage object-based learning. I had the luxury of being able to use medieval coins to allow students to physically examine historic material (perhaps for the first time), and I also used lots of images of objects and documents throughout the course. I especially like your multi-media approach, however, which I think would really help students to think broadly about the subject. Richard Asquith (History)
Response: This is very interesting. I have very similar challenges with my lectures on composition technology. We study various pieces of rare equipment that are just too small, delicate, and expensive for students to study first-hand, but it is still vitally important to bring them into the lecture, very much as you discuss. I ended up taking a similar approach by using photography, diagrams, and video demonstrations instead of the real things. I really enjoyed reading your post and how you worked with the challenges to bring this into your seminars. Tom Baynes (Music).
Should we use slides (William Coles)
PowerPoint slides have become a hugely important aspect of seminar rooms, numerous benefits to both teachers and students. These visual aids offer a dynamic and engaging way to convey information and make complicated concepts easier to understand. Yet many educators in higher education institutions still seem to avoid using them, despite their advantages.
PowerPoint slides serve as a visual roadmap, guiding students through the lecture’s main elements. They allow educators to organise their thoughts and structure their content in a coherent way. An effective display can break down complex ideas into digestible segments, ensuring clarity.
Moreover, PowerPoint slides offer a multi-sensory experience, combining visual a element alongside the voice of the lecturer. This combination mixes different learning styles, catering to students who learn better through visual aids or by listening. In addition, the use of images also adds interest and variety to the seminar, keeping the students engaged.
A further advantage of PowerPoint slides is their ability to reinforce key points. By displaying important facts, arguments, or quotes on the screen, educators can emphasize critical points and help their students remember essential information. Additionally, slides can be used to illustrate arguments, making hard-to-grasp concepts more relatable and easier to ingest.
PowerPoint slides also promote consistency and add a hint professionalism to one’s teaching style. By employing a consistent layout, font, and even colour scheme, lecturers can create a cohesive visual identity that contributes to their overall professionalism as an educator and researcher. This attention to detail enhances the credibility of the educator and fosters a positive impression among students, or as Aristotle would say, enhances their ethos.
In summary, PowerPoint slides play a pivotal role in seminars by facilitating better organisation, improving understanding, engaging students, reinforcing key arguments, and enhancing one’s professionalism. When used effectively, these visual aids have the power to elevate lectures, making them a more enjoyable