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AI Commons Bulletin 2/19/2025

🧠 AI Tools Soon to Decide How Much They Need to “Think”
Expect the answers from AI tools to generally improve over the next few months, as more of them incorporate “reasoning” into their process. These are models that can discern when a prompt is more complex and would require a multi-step reasoning process. OpenAI is starting this with ChatGPT soon.

Learn More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtwK3hBAjDY

📗 Five Generations of Intelligent Textbooks
Sosnovsky & Brusilovsky compile the literature on intelligent textbooks and organize five generations:
Engineered: AI-powered adaptive reading.
Integrated: Linked with external smart content.
Extracted: AI analyzes and structures knowledge.
Datamined: Tracks student engagement for insights.
Generated: AI creates content, questions, & chatbots
Learn More: Sosnovsky, S., Brusilovsky, P. & Lan, A. Intelligent Textbooks. Int J Artif Intell Educ (2025).

🚫 Guidance for Uses of AI Banned by EU’s AI Act
The EU regulates AI much more than the US does. When it adopted the AI Act, it banned “unacceptable risk” uses, but didn’t provide much explanation. A new report lays out examples, including manipulative, deceptive, and exploitative practices.

Learn More: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/112367

⏳ Waiting 5-10 Minutes for an AI to Answer?! What?!
Deep Research is a newer function of Google’s AI, Gemini. You can ask it an extended question and it will break it down into parts, research each part (including multiple web searches), and write up a report you can download. It’s available both on the web and on Android. Additional $ required.

Learn More: https://youtu.be/IBKRyI5m_Rk

Bulletin items compiled by MJ Jackson and Sarah Freye with production assistance from Lisa Batchelder. Get the AI-Commons Bulletin on our Microsoft Teams channel, at aicommons.commons.msu.edu, or by email (send an email to aicommons@msu.edu with the word “subscribe”).

Hi all - Thanks again for another stimulating conversation this morning! I've attached the chat long from our Zoom meeting for anyone interested in accessing any of the resources that got shared over the course of the discussion. I went ahead and highlighted titles (where possible) for easy searching!
- G

aiEDU (the AI Education Project), a non-profit that creates equitable learning experiences that build foundational AI literacy, presents three AI Activities...
1. Will Robots Take My Job?
2. Quick, Draw!
3. Charge Your Phone... or Else

You can learn more, and find adaptable tools and activities for educators, parents, and students at https://www.aiedu.org/

Multiple stories and sentiments were generously shared by 4/4 Beyond Buzzwords: Ungrading workshop participants (thank you for your vulnerability and candor) about the varied ways in which students react to, and make assumption / inferences about their instructors, after the employment of ungrading and ungrading-inspired practices.

This article (linked below) "Academe Has a Lot to Learn About How Inclusive Teaching Affects Instructors" By Chavella Pittman and Thomas J. Tobin in The Chronicle of Higher Education on FEBRUARY 7, 2022 will likely be of interest to you. Starting out by recognizing / acknowledging the power held by some identities (core, chosen, and given) but not by others, complicates the idea that all educators have the same "power and authority" to give up/share to increase learners' sense of ownership and agency in the classroom. ""What if you have neither the institutional authority (a full-time or tenure-track job) nor the dominant-culture identity (by virtue of your race, gender, and/or ability) that usually go hand in hand with being treated as a respected, powerful presence in the college classroom?... In urging faculty members to adopt inclusive teaching practices, we need to start asking if they actually can — and at what cost, " say Pittman and Tobin.

Take-aways shared in this piece include:
1. Understand that your classroom choices may unintentionally affect or undercut a colleague
2. Discuss in your department the issue of bias in students' rating of teaching
3. Respect the variability among your colleagues, as well as among your students
4. Find trained help

"Share your stories, experiences, and thought processes as you negotiate your instructor role in the classroom..." iteach.msu.edu is one space where we can continue to help "normalize the conversation about instructor identity and status as a necessary element in the adoption of inclusive design and teaching practices".

https://www.chronicle.com/article/academe-has-a-lot-to-learn-about-how-inclusive-teaching-affects-instructors

My background in Scandinavian languages and literature keeps rearing its head in various ways after many years. Specifically,when it comes to folklore, magical tales, and perilous journeys toward maturation. In a way, I have become a pedagogical Ashland, of sorts, since coming to MSU in 2015. My journey, an ongoing quest if you will, has been in trying to find that one magical key, which will unlock the enchanted door to greater student interest and involvement in their general education course requirements.

Those of us who teach these courses know that, too often, many students view gen. ed. requirements as hoops to jump through. Something they must satisfy to graduate. Subjects that, they feel, have little to do with the real world, their intended majors, or envisioned careers. Scheduling and convenience more than genuine interest seem to be the determining factor for many students when they choose to enroll in such courses. Put the head down, muddle through, and get it done with as little effort as possible.

But there might be another way.

In my own ongoing quest to motivate and engage the students in my various IAH courses more effectively, I have come back to Bloom's Taxonomy again and again since first learning about it in the 2016-2017 Walter and Pauline Adams Academy cohort. More specifically, it is Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, revised by various scholars for use with 21st century students who exist in an increasingly digital world, that has been especially useful when it comes to designing assessments for my students.

For those who are interested, there are all kinds of sources online -- journal article pdfs, infographics, Youtube explainer videos, etc. -- that will be informative and helpful for anyone who might be interested in learning more. Just search for 'Bloom's Digital Taxonomy' on Google. It's that easy.

For my specific IAH courses, I organize my students into permanent student learning teams early each semester and ask them to create three collaborative projects (including a team reflection). These are due at the end of Week Five, Week 10, and Week 14. Right now, the projects include:

1) A TV Newscast/Talkshow Article Review Video in which teams are ask to locate, report on, review, and evaluate two recent journal articles pertinent to material read or viewed during the first few weeks of the course.

2) A Readers' Guide Digital Flipbook (using Flipsnack) that reviews and evaluates the usefulness of two books, two more recent journal articles, and two blogs or websites on gender and sexuality OR race and ethnicity within the context of specific course materials read or viewed during roughly the middle third of the course.

3) An Academic Poster (due at the end of Week 14) in which student teams revisit course materials and themes related to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and identity. In addition, students are asked to examine issues of power, marginalization, disparity, equity, etc. in those same sources and look at how these same issues affect our own societies/cultures of origin in the real world. Finally, student teams (in course as diverse as Film Noir of the 1940s and 50s, Horror Cinema, and the upcoming Contemporary Scandinavian and Nordic Authors) are asked to propose realistic, concrete solutions to the social problems facing us.


Anecdotally, student feedback has been largely very favorable so far. Based on remarks in their team reflections this semester (Fall 2021), students report that they enjoy these collaborative, creative projects and feel like they have considerable leeway to shape what their teams develop. Moreover, they also feel that they are learning quite a bit about the material presented as well as valuable 21st century employability skills in the process. Where their all important assignment grades are concerned, student learning teams in my courses are meeting or exceeding expectations with the work they have produced for the first two of three team projects this semester according to the grading rubrics currently in use.

Beginning in Spring 2022, I plan to give my student teams even more agency in choosing how they are assessed and will provide two possible options for each of the three collaborative projects. Right not, these will probably include:

Project #1 (Recent Journal Article Review and Evaluation)-- Powtoon Animated TV Newscast OR Infographic

Project #2 -- (Review and Evaluation of Digital Sources on Gender and Sexuality OR Race and Ethnicty in our specific course materials) a Digital Flipbook OR Podcast

Project #3 -- (Power, Marginality, Disparity, Equity in Course Materials and Real World of 21st Century Problem-Solving) an Interactive E-Poster OR Digital Scrapbook.

Through collaborative projects like these, I am attempting to motivate and engage the students in my IAH courses more effectively, help them to think more actively and critically about the material presented as well as the various social issues that continue to plague our world, and provide them with ample opportunity to cultivate essential skills that will enable their full participation in the globalized world and economy of the 21st century. Bloom's (Revised) Digital Taxonomy, among other resources, continues to facilitate my evolving thought about how best to reach late Gen Y and Gen Z students within a general education context.

If anyone would like to talk more about all of this, offer constructive feedback, or anything else, just drop me a line. I am always looking for those magic beans that will increase student motivation and engagement, and eager to learn more along the way. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy has certainly been one of my three magical helpers in the quest to to do that.

Takk skal dere ha!

20+ years ago when I began teaching as a graduate assistant, I was was spoiled when it came to student motivation and engagement.

At UW-Madison, I taught several freshman writing and discussion sections that were part of two huge undergraduate Scandinavian literature courses (several hundred students each) with a newly instituted writing component. Many, though not all, of the students were what we call, in second language pedagogy, heritage learners from primarily Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish backgrounds along with a few whose ancestors came from Iceland or Finland, which meant that their motivation and performance was reasonably good to high. In short, most were interested, engaged, and did the work to a reasonable standard.

The same was true a few years later at The University of Minnesota. where I was responsible for planning, developing, and teaching numerous sections of Beginning Norwegian 1001 and 1002 five days a week. Again, mostly heritage learners, so my job was easier than it might otherwise have been.

Here at MSU, I teach numerous IAH courses, once F2F, now asynchronous online. A few seem excited and engage well, but many, or even most, do not. It is a hoop they need to jump through, and many choose a particular course based not on their interest but on how well it fits their schedule.

Given that particular mindset, student motivation and engagement can be thin on the ground sometimes! So, these are two related points, along with how they relate to student success, that I come back to again and again in my reading and related thought behind what I do and how I do it.

Today, I came across a concise webpage on 'The Role of Motivation in Learning' from The Education Hub in New Zealand. Here is the link for people who might like to take a look:
https://theeducationhub.org.nz/motivation/

This article was shared in an academic group I'm a part of on a social networking site... it's framing is within the Canadian Higher Education setting, but the message about student mental health is relevant for all.

Here are a couple of thoughts from the article worth sharing if you can't take the time to read the entire piece:
"To fully understand the present crisis, one has to appreciate a fundamental and often overlooked fact: higher education is not what it used to be. Not only do we have a more diverse student body with equally diverse psychiatric needs, we also have an academic culture that has changed profoundly in the past six decades, making the university experience more stressful than it once was. The classic liberal conception of postsecondary institutions as places where young people take a kind of sabbatical from life—read the great books, engage in endless debates, and learn to see themselves as citizens—has given way to a new model, more narrowly vocational in focus."

"By prioritizing high achievers, Henderson argues, universities are selecting not only for diligent candidates but also for those who view scholastic success as central to their identities. For such students, a bad grade can be destabilizing. When that grade appears on an exam worth 80 percent of a final course mark, or when it comes from a harried teaching assistant who doesn’t offer in-depth feedback, students can feel like they are losing a game whose rules were never explained. Imagine being told all your life that you are ahead of the pack and that you must stay there, both to secure a stable future and to get a return on the investments that family members or granting agencies have made on your behalf. Then, imagine falling behind, for reasons you don’t understand, at the precise moment when staying on top feels more critical than ever before. Furthermore, imagine that you are contending with profound loneliness, past trauma, and financial insecurity, all while working a part-time job with the usual mix of erratic hours."

"Such stressors can lead to sleep disruption, irregular eating, and substance abuse—all of which correlate with mental illness—or they can trigger preexisting psychiatric conditions. They can deplete reserves of neurochemicals, like dopamine and serotonin, needed to sustain a sense of well-being, or they can flood the brain and body with cortisol, the stress hormone, which, in excess, can push people into near-constant states of anxiety, making it difficult to conceptualize daily challenges in a proportionate or healthy way. They can also lead to identity confusion and an acute sense of shame."

Inside the Mental Health Crisis Facing College and University Students by Simon Lewsen : https://thewalrus.ca/inside-the-mental-health-crisis-facing-college-and-university-students/?fbclid=IwAR12PokSFpCrBo1NmtpNYoGEohKf3csYHQc9X8LwFAdNPTtBF_zIRbEqwhs

I presented an overview of library discovery systems at the University Committee on the Library yesterday, and thought I'd share it here also.

For more information about learning to use the various tools provided by the library, see these links as well:

https://lib.msu.edu/askus
https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/twominutetips/research Happy searching!