Tag: Events

Picture this: It’s your first day as a graduate student instructor. You’re armed with a stack of syllabi, a mind full of academic theories and the unshakable feeling that you might be in way over your head.

I found myself in this very situation not so long ago, standing at the beginning of my teaching career, ready to dive headfirst into the deep, murky waters of academia.

As I entered the classroom that morning, a wave of anxiety and dread washed over me. The students, mostly fresh-faced undergraduates, stared at me with a mixture of hate and skepticism. Perhaps it was the students’ blank looks or perhaps it was my own insecurity, but the room seemed to be silently screaming, “Can this graduate student actually teach us something valuable?” I, a 23-year-old master’s student, was tasked with determining the academic future of 38 students on academic probation that fall semester. If I failed, they did, too. My hands were sweating.

No pressure, right?

I did my best to appear confident, but that’s all it was—an appearance. Although I had spent hours upon hours in preparation for this role, once it came to my first day, I was still utterly unprepared. Why?

I didn’t have the necessary pedagogical tools and knowledge I needed to succeed as a graduate instructor. Not because I didn’t have the necessary information, resources or support. Rather, because I did not know how to effectively use the knowledge and resources at my disposal.

This experience is not uncommon. Graduate students are often placed in instructor roles they are grossly unprepared for. And we can’t achieve the active and intentional culmination of pedagogical tools and knowledge through simple course-prep activities or repeated teaching experiences. Instead we can achieve it by using an interdisciplinary learning approach when forming an understanding of our own learning and the learning of others.

‘Where Do I Start?’

Upon hearing “interdisciplinary learning,” I don’t doubt that words like “what,” “why” and “how” pop into your head.

What is interdisciplinary learning? We traditionally view it as an approach that involves integrating knowledge and methods from multiple academic disciplines or fields of study to address complex problems, questions or challenges. It goes beyond the boundaries of a single discipline and encourages people to draw upon insights, theories and methodologies from different areas to gain a more comprehensive understanding.

But while interdisciplinary learning is widely applied in higher education, very little scholarship exists about how to apply interdisciplinary learning to graduate student teaching. And it’s crucial to recognize that interdisciplinary learning in graduate student teaching extends beyond merely blending academic disciplines. It involves integrating not just different fields of study but also diverse ways of working with students. This approach acknowledges that each student brings distinct views, learning styles and backgrounds to the table. By embracing this diversity and incorporating varied methods of engagement, collaboration and assessment, educators can create a truly inclusive and dynamic learning environment—one that not only enriches the educational experience but also equips students with the adaptability and critical thinking skills they need to thrive in an increasingly complex world.

Applying interdisciplinary learning to graduate student teaching offers substantial advantages to us as instructors. It can broaden our perspective and enhance our instructional tool kit. By integrating insights and methods from diverse fields, we can gain a more comprehensive understanding of effective teaching strategies. We can better tailor our teaching methods to the specific needs of individual students and thus foster a more engaging and comprehensive learning environment.

For instance, as an instructor of an academic probation class, I integrate concepts from psychology, particularly focusing on different mindsets, with principles of management, such as SMART goals, to support students in improving their academic performance. We discuss how a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset can impact their approach to learning and academic challenges. By understanding the power of mindsets in shaping behavior and outcomes, students learn to cultivate goals that embrace challenges, effort and persistence. They acquire practical skills that empower them to overcome obstacles and achieve academic success.

Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning at Work

It took me two years of teaching to realize that I was doing it incorrectly. It was only when I started researching pedagogy as a second-year Ph.D. student that I started to understand the complex dynamics of teaching and learning and how teaching and learning as a discipline is not isolated from the other disciplines.

To illustrate this point, here are a couple of examples of discipline-specific ideas and how they can be related to teaching and learning.

First example: As an elective, I took a class on college advising. I figured, why not? Once I obtain my doctorate, I’ll likely be doing a combination of research, teaching and advising.

In this course, I learned that advising is a process where a knowledgeable person provides guidance, support and information to help someone make informed decisions. That made me stop and think. Isn’t that what college instructors do? This prompted me to do further research, and I found two concepts, advising as teaching and teaching as advising.

Advising as teaching refers to the idea that academic advising is not just about administrative tasks or providing information but is, in fact, a mentorship process similar to teaching. Teaching as advising involves instructors taking on a role that goes beyond delivering content and includes providing guidance, support and mentorship to students.

In no way do I want to insinuate that all advisers are teachers and all teachers are advisers. But making the connection between these two roles displays the blurred line between teaching and advising and how effective teaching and learning can integrate components of advising.

In my courses I’ve had the privilege of being able to apply the concept of teaching as advising by incorporating personalized mentoring sessions into my classroom structure. Inspired by the principles I learned in my college advising elective, I now allocate time every few weeks for one-on-one meetings with students to discuss their academic progress, goals and challenges. During these sessions, I not only provide guidance on course content but also offer support and mentorship tailored to each student’s needs and learning style.

This interdisciplinary approach not only enhanced my teaching by fostering deeper connections with students but also helped students thrive academically. By recognizing the interconnectedness of teaching and advising, I created a more inclusive and supportive learning environment where students felt valued and empowered to take ownership of their learning journey. As a result, students reported feeling more engaged, motivated and confident in their ability to succeed, demonstrating the transformative impact of interdisciplinary learning on both educators and learners.

Another example: In the field of education, I am expected to network and connect with other scholars and professionals, within my discipline and others. As such, I developed a connection with a scholar who had done research in the field of student affairs. Within this conversation, I learned that student affairs is a field that focuses on the holistic development and well-being of college and university students. I had never thought of the development of my students and how it impacted their learning before this conversation. However, now that I had, I began searching for ways that I could incorporate my newfound awareness and knowledge of student development into how I teach.

Fast-forward to today, when I use a variety of student development theories to shape my teaching and learning strategies as a graduate student instructor. For example, I apply understandings of Chickering and Reisser’s theory of psychosocial development to understand the diverse backgrounds and experiences of my students. By recognizing that students may be at different stages of development in areas such as identity formation and interpersonal relationships, I can tailor my teaching approaches to meet their individual needs. This proactive approach not only fosters a supportive learning environment but also enhances student engagement and success, as students feel understood and valued in their academic journey.

This example demonstrates how incorporating student development theories into teaching strategies can help instructors better understand and support the diverse needs of their students, ultimately enhancing their learning experience.

The ‘How’ Behind Your Teaching

These fragments of information taken from various disciplines represent a synthesis of insights that I have derived from my experiences. I didn’t google “What disciplines relate to graduate student teaching and learning, and how can I use interdisciplinary learning to connect the two?” and get this answer. Instead, it was the product of critical reflection on my own learning experiences to advance my understanding of teaching and learning as a whole. Using interdisciplinary learning, I was able to make connections between seemingly unrelated topics to advance my abilities as a graduate student instructor.

Knowing the how behind your teaching allows you to shape and mold pedagogical understanding and pedagogical practices to best serve yourself and your students. I encourage graduate students in teaching roles to consider their how for interdisciplinary learning and apply their experiences to the way they shape the learning in their classroom.

The next time you find yourself standing in front of a classroom, armed with syllabi and academic theories, remember this: It’s OK to feel like you’re in over your head. Embrace the uncertainty, adapt to the challenges and never underestimate the power of an interdisciplinary approach. After all, teaching is not just about imparting knowledge. It’s about a journey of growth—for yourself as well as your students.

Facing steep financial challenges and unable to secure a strategic partnership, Notre Dame College in Ohio will close at the end of the spring semester, Ideastream Public Media reported.

The announcement, made Thursday, comes after the apparent breakdown of talks about a potential strategic partnership between Notre Dame and Cleveland State University.

Founded in 1922, Notre Dame, a small Catholic college, recently celebrated its centennial. A news release on the closure cited declining enrollment, demographic challenges, rising costs and significant debt.

“Throughout this long process, we evaluated every possible option to continue the mission of Notre Dame College. Our primary focus has been to ensure our students can successfully continue their education, graduate, and—in the tradition of the Sisters of Notre Dame—live a life of personal, professional and global responsibility,” Terri Bradford Eason, chair of the Board of Trustees, said in the news release announcing the closure decision.

While local media reports put current enrollment at about 1,050 full-time students, that number has fallen by more than half since fall 2014, when the college enrolled 2,281 students, according to the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

The college has teach-out plans in place with nine other institutions.

Ridiculing a scholar because of their gender or race is unthinkable nowadays, but does that same protection against discrimination apply to academics who are overweight?

Definitely not, according to Cornell University philosopher Kate Manne, who claims that “intellectual biases against fat people” in academia are “rampant,” with “fatphobia” so endemic that many scholars feel emboldened to belittle, berate and bully—often openly—peers deemed obese.

In Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia, the Australian scholar discusses her own difficulties being “quite fat” in the academy but also recounts grim tales from friends and colleagues who have been targeted on account of their body size.

Manne recounts how one friend was repeatedly told in graduate school that her body shape would make her unemployable because “only thin women are seen as intelligent,” while others were informed that they should “lose weight and look smarter.”

A professor was openly ridiculed by students, who left insulting notes on her desk about her body shape, although one of them later apologized when he learned that she was pregnant.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “we all thought you were just built like that,” she recalled, reflecting, “And what if I had been?”

Another friend in philosophy overheard a colleague state, “If she can’t discipline what she eats, how can she discipline what she thinks?”

Manne calls attention to a controversial tweet by U.S. psychologist Geoffrey Miller that opened with “Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation.”

Such brazenly discriminatory attitudes are so imbued in academia—and philosophy, in particular—that some of the discipline’s most famous teaching examples rely on blatantly fatphobic tropes, Manne told Times Higher Education.

“We use the figure of the fat man in the trolley problem unselfconsciously,” she said, citing the conundrum of whether it is ethically sound to push a large man to his death if it stops a trolley from wiping out five smaller people. “It’s seen as appropriate and unproblematic, even amusing, to push this man in front of a trolley.”

Manne noted that other tropes on choice—such as whether someone selects a piece of fruit or a slice of cake—presume a certain derisive weakness of will on the part of overweight people.

“I won’t say fatphobia is the last acceptable prejudice in the academy … but there is a particular complacency that allows people to demean others in this way,” she added.

Manne has faced harsh criticism online and from reviewers for daring to draw attention to antifatness and for her call to “remake the world to accommodate people of every size.”

“I knew it would be a divisive book,” she reflected. “People really hate fat people, so defending them and their right to compassionate and adequate health care was always going to be seen as radical.”

A new report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce challenges the common public perception that rural America and its working adults are being left behind economically.

The findings, released Thursday, show that although rural America has a strong blue-collar economy and can provide opportunity for people without a bachelor’s degree, it still needs more investment in postsecondary education, training and career counseling.

“Rural Americans often feel deeply connected to their communities, but they are increasingly faced with the hard choice of moving to urban areas or staying in rural areas where they have fewer professional and educational opportunities,” Anthony P. Carnevale, the center’s director, said in a press release. “Rural America needs more strategies and investment to hold onto its good jobs and create more economic opportunity.”

According to the report, working adults in rural areas of the country are almost as likely (50 percent) as peers in urban areas (54 percent) to have a “good job,” or one that pays at least $43,000 for workers ages 25 to 44 or $55,000 for workers ages 45 to 64. 

The findings also show that there are approximately 7.4 million rural residents who currently hold a “good job,” and they make up about 13 percent of the total U.S. workforce.

But the report also showed that work opportunities aren’t equitable for everyone. Although white workers make up the majority of the rural workforce (81 percent), they hold a disproportionate share of the good jobs (86 percent). A similar pattern exists among gender groups; men make up just 52 percent of the rural workforce but hold 63 percent of the good jobs.

To continue stimulating economic growth and establish greater equity in middle-class job opportunities in rural areas, the report recommends:

• Implementation of more comprehensive counseling services in K-12 schools and colleges to help students make informed decisions about their career pathways.
• Establishment of training programs geared toward women and members of underserved racial and ethnic groups.
• Authorization of community colleges to award bachelor’s degrees and consider offering free training programs to help combat rural education deserts.
• Development of high school–to–career pipelines that train workers to fill local jobs that do not require four-year degrees.
• Optimization of emerging sectors of the renewable energy industry to bring new jobs and additional federal funds to rural communities.

Small liberal arts colleges are experiencing unprecedented pressures, including the impending demographic cliff, the devaluing of central tenets of a liberal education and a general rise in anti-intellectualism. The most drastic responses to those pressures have been vast and sweeping budget cuts in anticipation of reduced enrollments, including the elimination of programs and scads of faculty positions. That’s been the case at my own institution, Carthage College in Wisconsin.

As a result of all the belt-tightening, the responsibilities of faculty members at primarily undergraduate institutions have changed in real time to focus more on increasing recruitment, retention and graduation rates. All faculty members have felt those changes, including those of us in tenured positions, who have often had to assume greater administrative and service responsibilities.

Aside from shouldering heavier workloads, faculty members have often been called to cater more to the desires of the consumers—i.e., the students—and adopt student-centered teaching practices. Yet while a focus on the needs of our students is laudable, it is not always efficient, and, as Christina Maslach and Susan E. Jackson noted, the stress of working closely with high-need individuals or groups can be a major contributor to burnout.

Robert T. Blackburn and Janet H. Lawrence argued that self-knowledge should guide one’s approach to teaching, scholarship and service, encouraging faculty members to make choices in the domains that harness their aptitudes and interests, possibly protecting against burnout. Here, I argue for a model of faculty engagement that builds upon their vision, one that empowers faculty members to approach their work in a way that benefits themselves, their students and their institutions: I call it the selfish teacher-scholar model. In fact, I’ve found that, counterintuitively, selfishness can be selfless!

While I’ve gleaned my approach from personal experience as a psychology professor working at a small liberal arts college, there’s no reason this guidance shouldn’t transfer to other educational contexts. Indeed, this approach could encourage faculty members at research institutions, for example, to view their teaching responsibilities in a new, energizing light.

Selfish Teaching

Start by asking yourself, “Are there particular facts or pieces of disciplinary content that our graduates absolutely need to know?” My colleagues in the department of psychological science frequently ask ourselves this question, and we always arrive at the same conclusion: the process of psychological science is more important than the content. Thus, we approach the content as a vehicle for communicating the process of psychology—hypothesis testing, theory development, statistical inferences, research methods and the like.

If your discipline is similar in its focus on process over content, that should empower you to teach the content that best leverages your expertise and interests. Indeed, the American Psychological Association’s 2014 Introductory Psychology Initiative advocated for a course framework that empowered instructors to teach the content they were most comfortable with, as long as they were sampling topics from each of five broad areas within psychology. In other words, we should resist the temptation to teach every chapter of the textbook and instead zoom in on those content areas that best allow us to communicate the processes we want students to understand.

We’ve all experienced the discomfort associated with teaching material that isn’t in our wheelhouse. It can be draining trying to maintain faux enthusiasm for it. But if instead you concentrate on the content you are legitimately enthusiastic about, then that energy will transfer to the students. Sometimes the learning objectives will necessitate teaching content for which you have no passion, but the enthusiasm you have garnered from teaching to your strengths will allow you to muscle through those times.

Besides determining how to teach core curriculum classes, the selfish teacher-scholar also meets departmental learning objectives through offering boutique courses in their area of expertise. In my case, before I was an academic, I was a professional magician. I have found ways to weave my previous profession into my current one. Indeed, one of my research programs explores cognitive psychology through the lens of performance magic. As such, this topic can be a powerful tool for inviting students to consider cognition and mental processes.

To that end, I regularly offer a course on the cognitive science of magic that benefits me as much as it benefits the students. Perhaps surprisingly, the science of magic is a burgeoning research area. Teaching this course selfishly gives me an opportunity to catch up on any research I’ve neglected over the past year. Also, I am highly enthusiastic about the topic area, and that enthusiasm rubs off on the students. Finally, offering this course creates a pipeline of students into my laboratory. After taking the class, students understand the hypotheses being tested and the general approach I use. Of course, those students aren’t just workers, as the work I do with them in the laboratory is inherently collaborative. It benefits me and it benefits them.

Selfish Scholarship

In the modern university, the boundaries between teaching and scholarship should be blurred. Research is a powerful teaching tool. Indeed, it has been identified as a high-impact practice. As with most high-impact practices, supervised research is also labor-intensive for the faculty member.

I’ve sat on or chaired many faculty search committees, and I regularly read teaching philosophy and scholarship statements in which candidates described what I saw as a huge blunder: inviting undergraduate students to generate and test their own hypotheses. Science is hard, and inviting students to generate and test their own hypotheses sends the opposite message: “Science is easy and you can do it in a semester!” Further, it usually wastes everyone’s time.

In order to generate sound hypotheses, one has to know the work that has already been carried out in a research domain. Without an adequate grounding in the prior work, student researchers often land on hypotheses motivated by nothing more than their intuitions.

They then put time into designing underpowered experiments to test these half-baked hypotheses. The hypotheses are not supported by the data, and the project dies. It cannot be presented at conferences or published. It is not science—it’s an exercise in science. An exercise in science is a perfectly fine experience for a student, but the faculty mentor often feels they need to come along for the ride, attempting to acquaint themselves with a research literature that is unfamiliar so they can advise on the project. The faculty member sinks time and energy into a project without legs. Only the student benefits from this work.

An alternative to that dead-end exercise involves inviting students into the fold as co-investigators in your ongoing research program. Note that co-investigators have different responsibilities than research assistants, as they are partners in discovery. They influence the direction of the science and have a hand in nearly every component of the research process.

Such influence is earned over time. When a student joins my lab, I typically invite them to focus on a project for which we are already in the data-collection phase. While learning the ins and outs of data collection, students can be carrying out background reading to get up to speed on the literature and theories that have inspired the current work. They can then have a hand in analyzing the data they have collected and envisioning and designing the next step in the research program.

One concern I frequently hear about this model of faculty-guided research is that students want to have the experience of testing their own hypotheses, so they are unlikely to buy into research that isn’t their own. That hasn’t been my experience. Students quickly take ownership of the projects. In fact, they often forget that the ideas weren’t theirs in the first place.

These collaborations tend to be much more fruitful than the one-off collaborations when students test their own hypotheses. This model has led to scads of student presentations at conferences, and highly motivated students have become authors on my published works. The relationships have been truly symbiotic.

Developing Your Selfless Selfishness

My model has implications primarily for teaching and scholarship, but faculty members should also consider their interests and aptitudes when committing to service work. Time pressures are the greatest of the perceived pressures for faculty members, so they should engage in service work that does not feel like a misuse of their valuable time. That’s perhaps most important for female associate professors, who often see an increase in their service workload that misaligns with their viability for promotion, leading to a deep sense of dissatisfaction.

The fact is that we are pulled in many different directions in academia. We’re supposed to be jacks-of-all-trades, but that expectation is unreasonable. Each of us has different proficiencies, and the amalgamation of those proficiencies is what makes the faculty as a collective tick.

Adopting a more selfish approach to your work can feel foreign and uncomfortable. One way to situate your selfishness is by writing your own personal mission statement and letting that mission statement drive the choices you make in your teaching, scholarship and service. The thought you bring to your mission and its implementation will not be seen as selfish by promotion and tenure committees. Instead, it will be seen as self-aware and focused. You will be perceived to be a virtuous teacher-scholar.

What would postsecondary education look like in a world where true lifelong learning—people engaging in education or training at many points throughout their lives—was the norm?

This week’s episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, features a conversation with Mauro F. Guillén, the William H. Wurster Professor of Multinational Management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Post-Generational Society (Macmillan, 2023).

The book isn’t about higher education; it explores cross-cutting trends—people living longer and healthier lives, and technological changes that shorten the half-life of our knowledge and skills—that promise to blur the “stages” (play, schooling, work and retirement) into which most of us have historically divided our lives.

In the conversation, Guillén discusses the implications of these shifts for institutions and learners and what it would take for colleges and universities to truly operate as providers of lifelong learning for people in a society where one’s chronological age becomes less meaningful and work and learning blend throughout our lives.

Listen to this episode here, and learn more about The Key here.

Dartmouth College and Northwestern and Vanderbilt Universities have become the latest institutions to settle a financial aid antitrust lawsuit that accused 17 institutions of illegally colluding to limit student financial aid packages. Dartmouth will pay $33.75 million, Northwestern $43.5 million, and Vanderbilt $55 million.

The class action case filed in January 2022 alleges that the highly selective universities effectively operated a “cartel” by colluding in the way they calculated financial aid awards. As a result, thousands of students overpaid for their education, plaintiffs argue.

Inside Higher Ed reported last month that Rice and Vanderbilt had agreed to settle their portions of the suit, and that Rice had agreed to pay $33.75 million. At the time Vanderbilt did not respond to requests to confirm that it was settling, and how much it was paying.

The settlements by Dartmouth, Northwestern and Vanderbilt bring to 10 the number of the original 17 plaintiffs that have agreed to settle. Collectively, they have agreed to pay $284 million.

The seven remaining are California Institute of Technology, Cornell, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Universities of Notre Dame and Pennsylvania.

“These 10 settlements shine the spotlight on the seven remaining elite institutions that have yet to do the right thing and rectify the overcharges to their alumni and students who came from working-class and middle-class backgrounds,” Robert D. Gilbert, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The 17 universities had long collaborated on financial aid formulas under a 1994 federal antitrust exemption, which banned them from weighing applicants’ ability to pay in admissions decisions. The carve-out—known as the 568 Presidents Group, after a section in the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994—allowed them to discuss financial aid formulas with immunity from federal antitrust laws.

But the plaintiffs, a group of former students, alleged that the 17 defendants have long considered family finances in certain admissions decisions, partly by giving preferential treatment to the children of affluent donors.

Dartmouth College and Northwestern and Vanderbilt Universities have become the latest institutions to settle a financial aid antitrust lawsuit that accused 17 institutions of illegally colluding for decades to limit student financial aid packages. Dartmouth will pay $33.75 million, Northwestern $43.5 million, and Vanderbilt $55 million.

The class action case filed in January 2022 alleges that the highly selective universities effectively operated a “cartel” by colluding in the way they calculated financial aid awards. As a result, thousands of students overpaid for their education, plaintiffs argue.

Inside Higher Ed reported last month that Rice and Vanderbilt had agreed to settle their portions of the suit, and that Rice had agreed to pay $33.75 million. At the time Vanderbilt did not respond to requests to confirm that it was settling and how much it was paying.

The settlements by Dartmouth, Northwestern and Vanderbilt bring to 10 the number of the original 17 plaintiffs that have agreed to settle. Collectively, they have agreed to pay $284 million.

The seven remaining are the California Institute of Technology; Cornell, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and the Universities of Notre Dame and Pennsylvania.

“These 10 settlements shine the spotlight on the seven remaining elite institutions that have yet to do the right thing and rectify the overcharges to their alumni and students who came from working-class and middle-class backgrounds,” Robert D. Gilbert, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The 17 universities had long collaborated on financial aid formulas under a 1994 federal antitrust exemption, which banned them from weighing applicants’ ability to pay in admissions decisions. The carve-out—known as the 568 Presidents Group, after a section in the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994—allowed them to discuss financial aid formulas with immunity from federal antitrust laws.

But the plaintiffs, a group of former students, alleged that the 17 defendants have long considered family finances in certain admissions decisions, partly by giving preferential treatment to the children of affluent donors.

In a world where generative AI exists, the questions of what and how we should teach are never going to go away.

Though, come to think of it, those questions were—or at least should have been—ever present before the arrival of ChatGPT. The biggest effect of large language models has been to force a reckoning over what happens when a machine incapable of thought, feeling or intention can produce work that seems to pass academic muster.

But it has not changed the nature of teaching. As Nupur Samuel and Anna CohenMiller explored in a recent post at the University of Venus blog, questioning is at the foundation of any pedagogical choice. In my own pedagogical practices, after following the folklore of teaching writing for years, I finally started questioning why I was doing certain things and not coming up with satisfactory answers, and I went on a quest to rebuild a practice that allowed me to satisfactorily answer the questions of why and what.

The specifics are complicated, but I increasingly believe that the roots of our response to generative AI should be to focus on helping students develop knowledge and skills around things that generative AI can’t do. Rather than trying to police generative AI use in order to maintain some semblance of integrity for work that generative AI can do, why not stop doing that stuff and move on to new things?

Or, as the case may be, old things, enduring things.

Perhaps you saw the recent public unveiling of Sora, OpenAI’s model that can create realistic video from text prompting. The online reaction to Sora followed a now-predictable pattern when a new application of generative AI hits the scene, as jaws drop in wonder at a process that didn’t seem possible, followed by a second wave of thought that notices the weird/uncanny glitches that seem to always show up in generative AI outputs. Brian Merchant, writing at his newsletter, has an interesting take on this phenomenon.

As imperfect as the outputs may be, some possible implications seem clear: the technical skills of rendering video will become less and less valuable as generative AI makes it possible to produce outputs through straightforward text prompts. In a world where those skills are no longer necessary, what still has value?

Here’s one thing: taste.

The Sora videos are an astounding spectacle knowing what kind of process is at work, but at the same time, are they, you know … good? Are they interesting as anything other than spectacle?

Once I got over my fetish for correctness, I started to put taste not far from the center of all of my writing courses. Our response to texts is largely irrational in the moment. We simply react. I believe those reactions are telling in terms of the underlying quality and conditions of those texts. This is true even of utilitarian texts like a set of instructions. If I am confused by the instructions, they are quite possibly bad instructions.

Taste is necessary both in terms of our response to a text and when it comes to creating a text meant to appeal to our audiences. Without taste, we cannot determine if our own work is hitting a target. There is a famous video of Ira Glass, host of This American Life, where he talks about how early in his career there was a significant gap between his taste—what he knew to be good and why—and his ability to execute stories that met his own standards in terms of taste.

Closing this gap becomes one’s work. The tools we can employ in the service of closing that gap may change over time, but the thinking (and feeling) we have to do is the same.

If “taste” seems like too narrow a term, or something that primarily applies to creative pursuits, let’s add in a related concept: discernment. It’s not really related—it’s the same—but in the realm of ideas, argument and critical thinking, we consider the ability to discern differences an important skill.

For sure, lots of education requires us to acquire information about things we don’t know, but as we’re doing that, it’s not that difficult to also be mindful of helping students be conscious of and therefore shape their own tastes. I recall a gen ed philosophy class in college which mostly involved some very broad introductions to different philosophical schools of thought.

We were introduced to Objectivism through some excerpts from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I hadn’t really thought much about philosophy, but I had read a lot of novels, and from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I found Atlas Shrugged wanting. My taste sent me a message that allowed to also discern that my system of values was different from Rand’s, while also helping me have a productive academic conversation with this other point of view.

In terms of video production, while the technical barriers for creating video are falling, the taste that is required in order to be a cinematographer will remain. I was fascinated to listen to a recent episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in which he talks to Rodrigo Prieto, a leading cinematographer who last year worked on both Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon. Prieto talked about how his initial attempts at filmmaking as a kid involved stop-motion animation using eight-millimeter film, doing things like scratching the negative to simulate a burst from a laser gun.

He now works almost entirely with digital technology, but what separates him is not his knowledge of technology but his taste, a taste rooted in years of experience considering the impact of certain choices around light, picture quality and the visual frame.

Generative AI, having no capacity for thinking or feeling, has no ability to express taste. Anything that looks like taste is a simulation, an illusion. Taste and discernment are still ours. For that reason, they’re skills that education should lean into.