A weblog devoted to the underlying craft of research
The university provides a structure for learning. Within it, learning situations arise, all of which are ambiguously related to structure. Indeed, the names we have for situations, like class or task or exam, are also names for the structures in which the situations arise. After all, a situation is a space of freedom within a Continue reading Structures and Situations
No one has yet determined what the body can do. (Spinoza) While it has always been thus, today more than ever, higher education consists of helping students find out what their bodies can do. We can, perhaps, limit this learning to their ability to do things with words, or, somewhat more generally, symbols. I stress Continue reading Composure
One reason to subject students to exam conditions is that it offers them an opportunity to experience what they are capable of. Obviously, the conditions must be reasonable and the prompt must be relevant to the course. But this is easy to ensure by giving students, say, three hours to compose a thousand words of Continue reading Confidence
Literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes. (Barthes) We are faced with the problem of error. (Quine) The editor of the Philosophers Magazine, Daniel Kodsi, recently defended AI-supported writing as not essentially Continue reading Why Scholars and Students…
If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students. (John Henry Newman, 1852) In the coming years, I expect, the purpose of higher education will be a recurring topic of discussion among academics. What are students supposed to learn at university? How are they to be Continue reading Higher Learning, Basic Skills
[I generally don t like this kind of stunt. But I was able to generate this essay in under 10 minutes using Microsoft Copilot. While it reused some of the language from my prompts, all the paragraphs (and the title of the post) were generated out of whole cloth by the AI. I had a brief Continue reading Why English Majors Should Take On-Site, Invigilated Written Exams
On Saturday, I wrote about one objection to my Prompts and Conditions post that came up during my faculty development course on Teaching Writing in the Age of AI. This post is about another one, which begins with something I say at the end of that post: Surely, we can say what a math student Continue reading Calculators, Screwdrivers, and Other Tools
I m running a faculty development course this month called Teaching Writing in the Age of Generative AI and it has led to some interesting discussions. I asked the participants to read and reflect on my post, Prompts and Conditions, which I wrote a couple of years ago, when the challenge that AI might pose for Continue reading On Ruining the Weekend
When I talk about academic writing with students at the Danish Design School, I begin by showing them a short clip of Thomas Leslie, Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois, talking about Pier Luigi Nervi s approach to designing structures. Before I unpack it, I encourage you to take five minutes to watch it Continue reading The Human Scale
The journal Human-Machine Communication recently published a paper by David Gunkel called Prompted by me. Generated by ChatGPT, which he promoted on X under the slogan Death of the Author. I had a look and quickly made up my mind not to read it. After a little more thought, I realized that my personal decision Continue reading Why I Refuse to Read the Paper David Gunkel Co-Authored with ChatGPT