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MSU's policies about a range of different topics and situations, some of which apply directly to grad students and some do not. The website is that of the university Ombudsperson, whose job it is to help students resolve conflicts within the university.

Job Title: IT Training Program Developer IIIDepartment: ITTeam: TrainingBio: Michael earned his bachelor's degree in economics from St. Mary’s many, many moons ago. With over 14 years of experience in the retail and sales industry, he eventually found his niche as a 10+ year corporate trainer for a financial institution before joining the MSU IT Training Team.

Alison Green from the "Ask a Manager" blog discusses what an informational interview is and isn't and offers tips on how to approach one effectively. She emphasizes that an informational interview is not the same thing as networking and should not just be a flimsy excuse to ask for a job.

What's next to learn? If you're interested in learning more about jobs and careers, try the "Securing Academic Positions" playlist.
 
If you're interested in more resources about the transition from grad school to career, try the "Managing Professional Transitions" playlist or the "Negotiating the Job Offer" playlist.
 
If you want to consider a totally different facet of grad life, try the "Conflict Resolution" playlist or the "Financial Planning for Early Career" playlist.

Job Title: Curriculum Development SpecialistDepartment: IT Team: Instructional Technology and DevelopmentBio: A major part of the work with my current position is to assist faculty in course design and technology integration. I enjoy working with faculty from different disciplines across the campus and exploring a variety of course design contexts. I gained my Ph.D. from the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology program in the College of Education at MSU in 2020. During my doctoral studies, I had the opportunities to teach, design, and research courses of different modalities. Before coming to MSU, I worked in Beijing for several years in a technology company, focusing on user demand analysis and user experience design.

Robots Talking to Robots
5 ways to fix online discussions
We have long touted the discussion board as a way to build community in virtual classrooms: Pose a question in a thread. Two points for a post, one point for a response. These perfunctory interactions are at most an assessment of knowledge, but hardly ever the critical analysis that leads to productive conversation.
And now, with a quick copy and paste to an LLM, students can post and respond with even less effort.

In this post, I’ll give you five ways to implement human authentication to mitigate discussion posts becoming conversations between AI. Then, I'll address some general pedagogical considerations for online discussions.
Only Replies
The instructor initiates the discussion with an opening post. Students can only reply to the previous response, simulating a natural conversation. Each reply should conclude with a question or statement that encourages further dialogue.
Optional: Award points based on the engagement generated by each student's post.
Human Aspect: This approach makes it challenging to simply copy and paste responses. Students must carefully consider how their replies will stimulate ongoing discussion.
In our recent lecture on social stratification, we discussed the concept of social mobility. Consider the factors that influence upward social mobility in contemporary society. What role does higher education play in this process? You may only reply to subsequent replies. Try to end each reply with a question or a statement that others can respond to.
Source Search
The instructor provides a specific topic from class, and students must find a relevant source that meets given criteria.
Optional: Students can include a quote from their source and explain its connection to the topic.
Human Aspect: While AI tools can find sources, they often struggle with relevancy, accurate quotations, and may even hallucinate information.
Find a peer-reviewed article published in the last two years that discusses the impact of climate change on Michigan's freshwater ecosystems. Your post should include the article's title, authors, publication, and a brief summary of the findings. How do these findings relate to our recent field trip to the Red Cedar River?
Multimedia
Students post video or audio files in discussion threads instead of written responses.
Optional: Have students experiment with MSU supported tools like Flip, Mediaspace, or Camtasia.
Human Aspect: This format allows students to present their natural selves, showcasing personality and communication skills that are difficult for AI to replicate.
Create a one minute video response to today’s lecture, or post an audio response to another student’s video.
Learning Reflections
Students reflect on their progression through a concept or discuss aspects of the course they find challenging.
Human Aspect: These personal reflections on the learning process are unique to each student's experience and difficult for AI to authentically generate.
As we conclude our unit on stereochemistry, reflect on your learning journey. Discuss concepts you initially struggled with, moments of clarity, and areas where you still have questions. How has your understanding of molecular structure and its importance in organic reactions evolved?
AI Critique
The instructor posts an example provided by an LLM and asks students to critique the information.
Optional: Students use AI to critique AI-generated content, and then reflect on the patterns they observe.
Human Aspect: This exercise encourages students to analyze how generated text compares to their own work or the course material in general, fostering conversation about AI's capabilities and limitations.

“All news outlets should transition to fully AI-generated content. AI can produce articles faster and more efficiently than human journalists, covering a wider range of events without bias. This change would allow for 24/7 news coverage while significantly reducing operational costs.”
Analyze the above AI-generated statement about AI in journalism. Identify any biases, oversimplifications, or logical flaws. Then, use an AI tool of your choice to generate a critique of this statement. Compare your analysis with the AI-generated critique. What patterns or differences do you notice?

Why are We Using Discussion Posts Anyway?
At MSU, discussion forums on D2L Brightspace allow students to post and reply. This is an asynchronous discussion; an online bulletin board that simulates the same level of conversation as a Reddit post. But without a clear objective to link the activity, discussion posts just end up being public knowledge checks. Which begs the question, why not just have students submit an assignment?
It is an intimate thing to share our work, and students are more likely to turn to AI if their work is reviewed publicly. Consider then, that discussion posts do not build community, but a classroom community can use discussions to achieve collaboration-based objectives. Some examples of collaboration objectives include:

Practice giving and receiving constructive feedback.
Engage in peer-to-peer learning by responding to classmates' ideas.
Develop interpersonal communication skills through discussions.

Don’t ditch the discussion posts, just align them with a goal that will help students develop skills to engage with others. How do you run discussions in your class? Comment below or drop me a line at freyesar@msu.edu.Freyesaur out.

One of this month's Featured Educators is Grace Pregent, Associate Director, The MSU Writing Center. Grace is completing a Ph.D. in English from Loyola University Chicago. According to the College of Arts and Letters (which houses The Writing Center), Grace's dissertation, Interpreting Minorness, investigates minor character systems and peripheral voices across narratives. She has a background in leading study abroad programs and has taught composition, literature, and education courses in the United States and Europe. She holds an M.S. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Dayton and an M.A. in English from the University of Dallas. Her recent work has been published in Evenlyn Waugh Studies and The Hardy Society Review.
 
Grace is not only making an impact in her field but in the MSU community as well! Here's what a fellow Spartan had to say about Grace: "Despite being new to MSU, Grace has already made a big difference at MSU. One of my advisees, a first-semester graduate student, worked under her supervision. Not only did he enjoy his work, but he got so much more than just a job and a paycheck: he was welcomed into a positive, supportive, and encouraging community led by Grace and was mentored on much more than just how to do his job. Grace nudged him to present his work at a conference and gave him the confidence that he could actually do it. The student was experiencing a challenging phase of his life this semester, which could have easily sent him down into negativity land. But as he explained to me, it was Grace's ubiquitous and endless positivity, that became a bright light in his daily life at MSU, contributing to him successfully and confidently completing a difficult first semester."
 

Topic Area: Information Session
Presented By: Erica Shifflet-Chila, Gary Anderson, Gretchen Sheneman
Abstract:
This session will detail a pilot program used by The School of Social Work to begin studying the use of Virtual Reality as a supplement to current methods of child welfare training for both students and currently practicing professionals. Recruiting, orienting, training and retaining a competent workforce in the field of child welfare is serious business. Social workers, and other child welfare professionals, are responsible for investigating reports of child abuse and neglect, assessing the safety and well-being of children, and potentially removing children from their parents temporarily or permanently. Creating and supporting a workforce able to make good decisions requires careful training and that is the challenge. Training professionals typically relies on classroom teaching methods or shadowing veteran workers in the course of their work in the community. Classroom role-playing and case discussions lacks authenticity and shadowing provides limited exposure to family circumstances and minimal responsibility for assessing family strengths and risks. Immersive scenarios delivered through virtual reality technology introduces the powerful learning environment lacking in the traditional training room and provides an intense and realistic experience that can be explored beyond job shadowing. So, MSU School of Social Work invested in a pilot program: licensing virtual reality equipment and an actor-staged immersive home visit for training purposes. The goal for this round-table session is to offer an introduction to this learning tool, and lead discussion on how this technology could be incorporated into other fields.
Session Resources: VR as a Teaching Tool (PowerPoint)