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  • The Homework Tax

    The Homework Tax

    The second in a three-part series about courseware. Part 1 is here.

    Montoya Thomas recalls sleepless nights in college, crushing energy drinks from the local Smoothie King as she tried to complete coursework for history and biology weeks ahead of schedule.

    The 27-year-old, who graduated in May from Houston’s Lone Star College-University Park after more than seven years of study, was trying to beat the clock: a 14-day free trial of McGraw Hill Connect, a courseware product. When that didn’t work, she withdrew from one course and failed out of the other, unable to afford the more than $100 cost apiece.

    Thomas was making only about $200 every other week from part-time work-study — much of which was immediately funneled to essentials like food, phone bills, and bus cards. So she had to find other options, hunting for courses with low-cost or free materials, or those where professors opened up all assignments on Day 1.

    Experiences like these “made me feel embarrassed … like I wasn’t doing enough,” she said. “It was stressful.”

    In the past decade, as the print-textbook market has become less profitable, publishers like Pearson, Cengage, and McGraw Hill have increasingly shifted to digital offerings like courseware. That market has ballooned, with those three companies’ flagship courseware tools collectively reaching millions of users annually. Costs vary depending on the subject and publisher arrangement, but in STEM subjects, especially, the price of a courseware product can exceed $200.

    For proponents of courseware, it’s just another material cost, and one that’s worth the price tag for the additional practice and immediate feedback the tools provide. But critics argue that there are essential, ethical differences between these tools and other course materials.

    Their argument is multifold: For one, they say, products like these — which often deliver key elements of a course that an instructor would typically be responsible for, like homework, assessments, and grading — should not be the student’s burden. At least one student advocate said colleges, rather, should cover or subsidize the cost, as they do with software like learning-management systems, if they’re allowing faculty free rein to adopt the products.

    “Courseware has become more central to the operation of the class” and is less a supplement in the way the textbook has historically been, said Richard Hershman, the vice president for government relations at the National Association of College Stores. “That’s where some of the debate occurs around, ‘Why am I paying more for this?’”

    And the fact that students’ access to these products expires — sometimes after just a semester — rubs salt in the wound, and risks further disadvantaging students.

    The rise of courseware, skeptics argue, flies in the face of efforts by both student-advocates and legislators to make college more affordable. “Students are seeing less and less opportunity to support themselves and get a meaningful return on investment,” said Sheneese Thompson, an assistant professor of English at Bowie State University, in Maryland. That is “troubling to me.”

    Total student spending on course materials in general has been in decline, dropping 44 percent between the 2011-12 and 2021-22 academic years, according to data from the research service Student Monitor. One key contributor is the number of professors who’ve replaced textbooks with low-cost or open educational resources. Another, researchers say, is the growth in student options: Buying a used textbook. Renting a textbook. Buying a digital version of a textbook.

    Sam Green for The Chronicle

    Over that same period, publishers have rolled out courseware products that require subscriptions or access codes. Remaining profitable in the higher-education market, after all, does remain integral to their bottom lines. At Pearson, the U.S. higher-education sector generated about a quarter of the company’s more than $4.7 billion in revenue in the 2022 fiscal year (the most recent earnings figures available at the time of publication). At Cengage, in the 2023 fiscal year, higher education accounted for 40 percent of the company’s $1.5 billion in revenue. McGraw Hill reported that nearly one-third of its total “billings” for the 2023 fiscal year — commonly defined as invoices sent to customers — came from the sector.

    These products are notably different from traditional textbooks in ways that extend beyond just the scope of services. Notably: Courseware must be purchased new, can’t be shared or resold, and is often essential to passing a class.

    Once a student purchases and activates their courseware, it’s available to them for a limited period of time. (One of the most common lengths publishers reported is 180 days.) Publishers’ terms-of-service and terms-of-use agreements reviewed by The Chronicle make explicit that the products are for individual use. That restriction is hard to circumvent; the products are often integrated directly into campus learning-management systems and linked to each student’s gradebook.

    In certain cases, it may be feasible to forgo courseware and still perform well in a course. Some instructors have used it for extra credit or pre-lecture assignments that count for 5 to 10 percent of the grade. But often, students face a stark calculation: Buy the courseware or sacrifice their grade — even fail outright.

    A psychology instructor’s syllabus that The Chronicle found online, for example, noted that 26 percent of a student’s final grade is homework completed in Cengage MindTap. In an online intro-to-accounting course at Rio Salado College, 48 percent of the grade is Pearson MyLab assignments and assessments. Older case studies from McGraw Hill Connect have cited percentages as high as 94.5 percent.

    Matthew Regele, an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at Xavier University, in Ohio, used to work for a major publisher before the pandemic, and spent 15 months observing how it operated its business and developed products, before publishing a peer-reviewed research paper on his findings. (Regele did not identify the publisher in his paper or to The Chronicle.) A key tenet of maintaining profitability was “to get every student paying every semester,” Regele said in an interview. “And digital does that — especially if we hook it to the grade. … I heard that up to at least vice-president level people.”

    Officials at McGraw Hill argued that their products can’t be shared or resold for good reasons. Courseware like Connect is a “dynamic” learning tool that adapts based on what an individual student needs, said Kent Peterson, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for the company’s higher-education business unit. “This isn’t something that was created just because we want to foil used books.”

    As for the limited use? Unlike a textbook, “If I give you a digital product and say, ‘You can have that forever,’ I have to support that forever and ever” with continued investments and updates, even though the user paid for it just once, said David Duke, chief product officer for McGraw Hill’s higher-education business. “It’s basically impossible.”

    Regardless of publishers’ reasoning, for Thompson, at Bowie State, the subscription-based approach to student course materials is an existential threat to the “student economy.” In that economy, students can rent and return used books for a fraction of the original price. They can swap and share books with each other. They can buy and then resell books.

    “It used to be very feasible for students to say, ‘I’ll make the upfront investment [on a textbook], knowing that I can get at least 60, 75 percent of that investment back,’” she said. “You can’t do that with courseware.”

    Questions about digital equity also arise, given that not all students will meet the tech requirements to use courseware as effectively as their peers. Disparate access to digital tools like laptops and Wi-Fi, which made headlines during the pandemic, remains a notable barrier for many students. In a June report from Tyton Partners, an advisory firm focused on the education sector, 79 percent of more than 1,500 student respondents said they’d experienced unstable internet connections. Nearly 40 percent said they’d had an experience of not having a device (computer or laptop) that they needed for class.

    All three major publishers’ courseware products require a stable internet connection. Representatives for Pearson and McGraw Hill also confirmed that their courseware can’t fully run on a mobile device. A spokesperson for Cengage wrote in an email that users “can access MindTap from a mobile device using their browser” but did not clarify whether all features are accessible that way.

    Publishers said courseware prices depend on numerous factors, including whether additional product features are needed, like lab activities or Excel software. They also underscored that options exist at the student, course, and institutional levels to lower the cost to students.

    At the student level, for example, if a learner ends up having more than one course that requires Cengage courseware, they could purchase an unlimited subscription for a flat rate of $125 a semester, a spokesperson wrote in an email.

    Pui Yan Fong for The Chronicle

    Further Reading

    At the instructor level, officials at McGraw Hill said they work with faculty to understand their goals and objectives, and if courseware doesn’t seem like the right fit, they’ll recommend purchasing just the eBook — a lower-cost solution that can amount to as little as $30.

    At the institutional level, Pearson pointed to “inclusive access” arrangements, in which a college works with a publisher to offer courseware products to students at lower rates. Texas A&M University at Commerce, for example, has an inclusive-access arrangement with Pearson that, as of summer 2023, gave participating students in the math department a discount on MyLab of roughly 38 percent, bringing the cost down to $52.49 from $85.27. (Under such arrangements, the cost is automatically added to an enrolled student’s bill unless they opt out — an approach some textbook-affordability advocates like the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition have criticized.)

    Many of these alternative arrangements, though, still don’t sit well with advocates like Janelle Wertzberger. “Be wary of solutions presented by the same people who caused the problem,” said Wertzberger, assistant dean and director of scholarly communications at Gettysburg College, in Pennsylvania, during a March webinar on textbook affordability.

    Students who spoke with The Chronicle said the high costs of courseware had a real impact on their finances and aspirations.

    For Montoya Thomas, high course-material costs were key to her decision not to pursue a career she was excited about: physical therapy.

    Thomas, who got her associate degree in communications this year, initially became interested in physical therapy in middle school, when her foster sister broke her leg playing volleyball. During her sister’s recovery, Thomas would walk alongside her, offering encouragement as she adjusted to getting around without crutches. Maybe I should do something like this, Thomas thought.

    But it became quickly apparent that the STEM courses and labs she’d need to take, many of which required courseware products, weren’t financially tenable, she said. “So I had to let that go.”

    John Runningen had moments when he questioned his place in higher education altogether. The first-generation student, whose parents weren’t able to contribute toward his education, attended college locally, at Minnesota State Community and Technical College at Fergus Falls, to shave costs. On at least one occasion, he took a synchronous course instead of an asynchronous one — even though asynchronous offerings worked better with his full-time work schedule — because the latter required a $115 courseware product he couldn’t afford.

    “When I fill out the FAFSA, and I get all these Pell Grants … and I’m still not able to afford college, it’s almost a slap in the face,” remembered Runningen, who recently graduated and completed his term as president of the nonprofit student advocacy organization LeadMN. “So when I’m coming across the additional costs and I’m sitting there contemplating whether I’m going to cover groceries this week or pay off my textbook, you really sit there, and you’re like, ‘Is this really for me? Is this something I should be doing to myself?’”

    Where students go to purchase courseware can determine how much they pay — at least to an extent.

    Often they’re sent to the campus bookstore. Sometimes it’s a matter of legal obligation. A faculty member at a public university in the mid-South, for example, said that while there’s no formal policy, leaders at her institution have “reiterated that we are not permitted to advertise other sources of books” outside of the bookstore because of an agreement with Barnes & Noble. The Chronicle came across similar language in a contract between Barnes & Noble and an institution in the Northeast, the State University of New York’s Onondaga Community College, which stated that the college “shall not accept advertising … or authorize solicitation on campus by any seller of college textbooks and/or course supplies other than the Contractor.”

    The campus bookstore can also be an attractive option to students because it allows them, in some cases, to purchase course materials on credit as they wait for their college to disburse any residual financial aid.

    That doesn’t mean that it’s always the best deal, though. While Hershman, at the National Association of College Stores, says many campus bookstores “do everything in their power” to lower the cost to students — more than a thousand offer marketplace price-comparison shopping, for example — markups are sometimes inevitable. This is especially true if a publisher doesn’t offer the bookstore wholesale prices.

    In such cases, bookstores “either have to sell at a loss” or charge a bit more in order to cover operational costs like labor, bank-swipe fees, and shipping costs, “which sucks,” he said. In reporting, The Chronicle came across instances of bookstore courseware markups as high as 25 percent above the retail cost; Hershman said the more common margin for digital-course materials is between zero and 15 percent.

    Peterson, at McGraw Hill, told The Chronicle his company doesn’t automatically offer wholesale deals to bookstores, though it often works with them, alongside an institution, when forming inclusive-access arrangements. Third-party distributors are “a very important player in providing access to materials to students, but they make their own decisions regarding the markup they want to apply,” he said.

    (A spokesperson for Pearson replied via email, “While we cannot share the specific terms of our arrangements with retail channel partners, they do earn a margin on sales through their physical or virtual storefronts as is typical for any retailer.” Cengage did not respond.)

    While the cost of courseware in particular is not regulated, textbook and course-material costs more broadly are on legislators’ radars. Since 2013, Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and his co-sponsors have continued to introduce the Affordable College Textbook Act in Congress — legislation that, among other things, would “close a loophole” in the Higher Education Opportunity Act that’s allowed some publishers to sell courseware products as a single bundle only, versus also offering separately priced components.

    Textbook-affordability advocates like Sydney Greenway, former president of Pirgim Campus Action at Wayne State University, are also pushing for more “course marking”: A practice where, during the course-registration period, universities disclose information about required course materials, such as the ISBN and retail price, and whether a course is using exclusively free or affordable materials. She identified at least seven states, including Texas and Louisiana, that have passed bills requiring some form of course marking.

    Even beyond that, Greenway believes that institutions or departments should have a line item in the budget for courseware — similar to how they pay for tools like the campus learning-management system.

    “If there was one site or something that the university itself subscribed to so that students wouldn’t have to bear the cost … I think that’s a really great solution,” she said.

    Most faculty members aren’t blind to these issues. Nearly two-thirds of faculty respondents to a 2022 Bay View Analytics survey said they agreed that “the cost of the course materials is a serious problem for my students.”

    So where’s the disconnect? For some, the price of materials, including courseware, is out of their control. About 26 percent of faculty respondents to a 2022 Faculty Watch survey said they didn’t choose their own course materials. Some are not aware of the price: In that same survey, 36 percent said they either didn’t know the cost of their course materials or knew the cost of only some of them.

    Faculty and students may also have differing definitions for “affordable.” A fall 2022 working-group survey of more than 3,000 students across nearly a dozen liberal-arts institutions, for example, asked students what amount they thought was reasonable to spend on course materials for a class. Fifty dollars was the most common response.

    Lauryn De George, a senior instructor in the University of Central Florida’s College of Business, said students in her management course pay about $100 for Cengage MindTap through UCF’s inclusive-access model. While cost is always a consideration, she said, when it comes to choosing a quality course supplement, the reality is that “lowest price doesn’t always mean best.” De George added that none of her students have expressed reservations about the price.

    One adjunct instructor in the College of Business and Economics at California State University at Los Angeles, meanwhile, has tried to strike a balance between adopting material that helps her as the instructor without burdening her lower-income students.

    She uses McGraw Hill Connect for a small portion of her project-management course because it allows her to easily pull from a bank of open-ended questions and case studies — a necessary “time saver” as she balances adjunct teaching with another full-time job. She’d tried open educational resources previously, she said, but the quality wasn’t up to her standards.

    The $150 courseware cost has been a problem, though; about a quarter of the 25 to 30 students in her class come to her at the beginning of each semester with concerns.

    The solution she’s settled on is not forcing those students to purchase Connect. Instead, she uses the product only for group work. That way, students can work on the assignments together in class — huddled around a laptop, or over Zoom — with just one classmate who has a Connect account formally submitting the assignment on behalf of the group. She then manually enters the other students’ grades into her gradebook.

    She acknowledged that this setup runs afoul of the publisher’s terms of service. (The Chronicle granted her request for anonymity to hear a candid description of how she deals with the cost problem.) But ultimately, she said, “I don’t want it to be a barrier for students who are really proactively telling me, ‘I cannot afford this.’” Asked whether her approach ruffled the feathers of students who did pay for the courseware, she said it hasn’t. “I think they are all quite sympathetic to each other,” she wrote in an email.

    Others have had success with non-courseware options — even in larger courses. Eric de Araujo, a lead instructional designer at Purdue University who also teaches an introductory philosophy course online with about 100 students, requires two textbooks that together cost about $80 new, and a fraction of that if students opt to rent or buy used. (He’s receptive to open educational resources but hasn’t found any that are a good fit for the way he’s designed his course.) De Araujo then uses a university-created tool, which is free to students, to post and grade assignments.

    For him, it’s largely a matter of principle. “I feel like … there is an understanding when you go to college that you’re going to be asked to purchase textbooks. But people don’t come assuming that they’re also going to have to buy a subscription to software,” he said. So the latter has never sat well with him. “I don’t like that kind of feeling.”

    Some faculty members have found other reasons apart from cost to steer clear of courseware. One of the most prevalent: Data privacy concerns.

    On Thursday, Part 3: “The Textbooks That Read You”

    Taylor Swaak

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  • The University of California Is Reversing Course on Its ‘Data Science’ Admissions Standard

    The University of California Is Reversing Course on Its ‘Data Science’ Admissions Standard

    A University of California academic-governance panel has voted to undo a controversial admissions standard that professors fear is not preparing students for college-level math, just as it is on the cusp of being written into statewide policy for high schools.

    On Friday, a systemwide faculty committee that oversees admission policies voted to stop high-school data-science courses from counting toward the UC’s math requirement, according to an email obtained by The Chronicle. Since this policy was adopted in 2020, faculty members across California have expressed concern that the UC system is rubber-stamping courses that bill themselves as “data science” but that do not impart the algebra needed to major in data science or other science, engineering, math, and technology majors, as The Chronicle reported last week.

    The governance panel — called the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (Boars) — seems to have delivered a major setback to these popular courses. “Introduction to Data Science” is taught at some 165 high schools across California, claims to have been taken by 42,200 students to date, and was developed at the University of California at Los Angeles by Robert L. Gould, a statistics instructor.

    Another course, “Explorations in Data Science,” is taught at more than 105 schools in the state and has been taken by more than 160,000 students, according to Jo Boaler, a Stanford professor of mathematics education who helped develop the course at Youcubed, a Stanford research center. Gould and Boaler have said that their classes teach the useful skill of crunching real-world data, and engage students who might otherwise drop out of math and won’t need calculus in their careers.

    But on Friday, Boars, which consists of representatives from each UC campus, voted unanimously to drop data science from its math admissions standards, two people who were present told The Chronicle.

    “Those courses, especially ‘Introduction to Data Science’ and Youcubed, should not have been approved as an advanced math course or a replacement for algebra II,” said one attendee, who requested anonymity to discuss the confidential deliberations. They said that none of the members tried to defend the policy.

    The UC director of undergraduate admissions confirmed the vote in an internal email obtained by The Chronicle. She also wrote that Boars will establish an advisory group this fall “to address definitions of ‘advanced math.’”

    The vote throws into question California’s math framework, which gives guidance to the state’s K-12 schools about how to teach math. After being in the works for three contentious years, the third and latest version was released on June 26. It currently encourages high schools to consider offering data science — and cites the UC’s data-science policy as evidence that the UC system will “value a range of mathematics courses as pathways to college.”

    The California Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the framework on Wednesday morning. In a public comment submitted late last week, Barbara Knowlton, the Boars chair, indicated that her group was having “significant discussion” about whether the currently approved data-science courses would continue to count.

    As of Tuesday afternoon, the Boars vote to ditch the policy had not been announced. On Monday night, Knowlton told members that she did not think that the group had the authority to implement the vote. “I do not think we have the power to do this,” she wrote in an email obtained by The Chronicle.

    Neither Knowlton nor a spokesperson for the UC president’s office returned requests for comment by publication time.

    A spokeswoman for California’s Board of Education said it was aware of the panel’s vote. “Given the decision, the Board would consider amendments to the framework during deliberations on Wednesday to ensure framework language is correctly aligned with the UC system,” the spokeswoman, Janet Weeks, said by email.

    Traditionally, the UC system requires applicants to take at least three years of high-school math, including algebra II. Its current troubles began in 2020, when it expanded its definition of acceptable advanced-math courses.

    In May of that year, an advisory group of mathematicians and statisticians, convened by the UC administration, recommended allowing data science and other courses to count toward the math requirement. One of the advisers was Gould, the UCLA statistician who’d led the development of “Introduction to Data Science.” That October, the Boars members unanimously adopted the proposal.

    At the time, Gould called the decision “a great relief.” “There are enough old guards out there in the UC math system that a serious challenge to revising the policy was a real possibility,” he wrote to colleagues on October 3, 2020, in an email obtained by a private citizen through a public-records request. “In fact, in our ad-hoc committee, some of the mathematicians expressed concerns that some colleague[s] would not be happy with the change.”

    He also raised the question of whether Boars could revise the policy or whether the UC Academic Senate needed to vote to make it official (which, to date, it has not). “I believe that the plan is to move ahead as if BOARS has the right, and see if it is challenged, since the attempts at researching this were ambiguous,” Gould wrote.

    Reached for comment on Tuesday, Gould said by email that Boars “has always had that right as far as I know.” He said that his message from 2020 was “expressing my ignorance of what happens once the ad-hoc committee makes its recommendation.”

    He also said that it was not a conflict of interest for him to serve on a committee that recommended green-lighting courses like his. “It worries me when decisions are made about statistics courses without input from statisticians, just as it would worry me if a decision were made about a geometry course and only statisticians were on the committee,” he wrote. “So it seems appropriate to me that a faculty member who writes statistics and data science curriculum would be asked to weigh in with his experiences.” He said that he has been paid for the courses through grants proposed by him and awarded to UCLA, as well as by an external funding agency for work related to the grants.

    When it unveiled the policy, Boars said that data-science classes must still “build upon” concepts from algebra II and be designed for juniors and seniors. But “Introduction to Data Science” and “Explorations in Data Science,” which are both UC-approved, teach only concepts from algebra II that overlap with statistics, and “Introduction to Data Science” can be taken in the first half of high school, according to critics who call the curricula more akin to “data literacy.” Skipping or delaying algebra II, they say, threatens the likelihood that college freshmen, including those from underrepresented backgrounds, will enter calculus-ready, as quantitative majors across the UC system require. (Ryan King, a UC spokesperson, previously told The Chronicle that “many” applicants are still taking algebra II in addition to courses like data science.)

    Hundreds of professors in California have signed an open letter that protests promoting data science as an alternative to algebra II. And over the past year, Boars and UC leadership have been fielding concerns from representatives on behalf of the Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Irvine campuses; Riverside’s math department; Santa Barbara’s computer science, mechanical engineering, and physics departments; and a group of Black UC faculty in STEM fields. California State University’s Academic Senate also sent in resolutions passed earlier this year. It called “Introduction to Data Science” “inadequate preparation for college and career readiness” and also said that it would no longer automatically accept UC-approved advanced-math courses, as it had traditionally done.

    As recently as May, the UC system was promoting the Youcubed data-science course to high-school administrators.

    Gould, who has defended his course as “considerably more complex and ‘advanced’ than algebra II,” said that he was disappointed to learn of the Boars vote.

    “I fear that a pathway to college for the many who fail Algebra II or who know that they are not interested in STEM might have been shut,” he wrote.

    A spokesman for Boaler, who helped create “Explorations in Data Science,” did not return a request for comment by publication time.

    Stephanie M. Lee

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  • Students and Faculty Fear Tenure and DEI Bills Could ‘Destroy’ Texas Colleges

    Students and Faculty Fear Tenure and DEI Bills Could ‘Destroy’ Texas Colleges

    As a law student at the University of Texas at Austin, Sam Jefferson worked in the school’s diversity office. Jefferson said he learned firsthand just how essential the offices are to the success of students from underrepresented groups.

    Now it’s on the brink of being eliminated by a Texas bill that would bar public colleges from having diversity offices or officers.

    “You’re talking about legislation that’s going to take away one of the only places that students can feel seen, heard, and acknowledged and helped,” said Jefferson, who just graduated.

    Monday marks the end of a Texas legislative session in which higher ed played a starring role. Lawmakers made substantial investments in public higher ed, boosting funding for community colleges and creating an endowment to support emerging research universities. Yet many lawmakers also disparaged colleges’ diversity programs and tenure policies, leading to marathon hearings in which students, faculty, and alumni protested vehemently.

    Over the weekend, Texas lawmakers passed final versions of Senate Bill 17, which would prohibit diversity offices starting in 2024, and SB 18, which would make changes in tenure. Both are sponsored by Sen. Charles Creighton, a Republican. The bills now await the signature of Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican.

    A spokeswoman for the University of Texas Board of Regents didn’t respond to a request for comment. Texas colleges, like other institutions across the country, have generally declined to comment on pending legislation.

    Proponents of banning DEI efforts say requiring students, faculty, and staff to sign diversity statements or participate in DEI programming produces a “chilling effect” on campus. “Many of these programs have been weaponized to compel speech instead of protecting free speech,” Creighton said in April. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    Tenure elimination has been a key point of emphasis for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, who said the institution allows professors to “live inside a bubble” in a statement last month. “Over the past year, it has become abundantly clear that some tenured faculty at Texas universities feel immune to oversight from the legislature and their respective board of regents,” Patrick said.

    The bills have undergone changes since being introduced in March. Senate Bill 18 originally proposed banning tenure entirely, and the Texas Senate endorsed that idea, but the drastic shift didn’t have traction in the House. Revisions in Senate Bill 17 carved out more exceptions that allow public colleges to describe efforts to serve diverse students if required by federal agencies or institutional accreditors.

    Still, many students and faculty in Texas say that the legislation remains harmful — and that even the deliberations about banning tenure and DEI this spring were damaging to their campuses.

    If Senate Bill 17 becomes law, diversity administrators will be out of a job in six months. Last week, one diversity officer announced her departure. Carol Sumner, vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Texas Tech University, will take a similar job at Northern Illinois University.

    “It’s not just that these things will have an impact on student life,” Jefferson, the law graduate, said. “It’s that they already have.”

    ‘Our Larger Campus Family’

    Banning DEI offices would affect not only students of color, but also veterans, LGBTQ+ students, and disabled students, four Texas students told The Chronicle.

    “DEI isn’t just about enrollment,” said Jordan Nellums, a graduate student at UT-Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. “It’s about OK, how can we make sure that this student group feels comfortable enough on this campus — that way they can become part of our larger campus family.”

    Kat Williams, another UT-Austin grad student, said she waited for over 14 hours to speak against the diversity-office ban in April. “I didn’t really have 14 hours to waste that day, but it happened anyway,” Williams said.

    Williams said she doesn’t believe diversity programs and policies make students feel uncomfortable speaking their minds in the classroom, as critics allege.

    “At least in my experience as an instructor, that’s not the case whatsoever,” Williams said. “If somebody has an unpopular opinion, they still get voiced quite frequently.”

    Alexander De Jesus-Colon, a senior at the University of Texas at Dallas, said he went to the campus’s Galerstein Gender Center as early as last year to discuss the situation on campus. He was told that the center was already preparing to shut down if the Texas Legislature voted to ban such offices.

    Since then, he has become involved in organizing against the legislation with the group Texas Students for DEI. He said legislators have refused to hear student voices.

    “Nobody wants to listen to us,” De Jesus-Colon said. “These legislators, they’re busy passing bills that they’re not even fully aware of the consequences of what they’re doing.”

    At least 34 bills have been introduced in 20 states that would curb colleges’ DEI efforts, according to The Chronicle’s DEI Legislation Tracker.

    For Jefferson, the legislation in Texas is reminiscent of strategies wielded by Florida legislators. This month, Florida became the first state in the country to bar public colleges from spending money on diversity efforts.

    “The whole Texas-Florida competition to see who can battle ‘wokeness’ is hilarious,” Jefferson said. “It’s not about the schools — it’s about these political forums.”

    Step Toward Eliminating Tenure

    While some on campuses say the tenure bill could have dealt a worse blow to higher ed, others remain worried.

    The final version, which would take effect in September if it becomes law, defines tenure in state law as “the entitlement of a faculty member of an institution of higher education to continue in the faculty member’s academic position unless dismissed by the institution for good.”

    The legislation also articulates reasons that tenured professors could be fired, such as “professional incompetence” and “violating university policies,” which some faculty members see as vague. What’s more, they see requiring performance evaluations every six years as a stepping stone to eliminating tenure entirely.

    The uncertainty around faculty-job protections is making life difficult for people like Daniel M. Brinks.

    The chair of the government department at UT-Austin, Brinks has had eight different job candidates turn down offers and cite the state’s political environment as a factor, he said.

    Brinks also said that junior faculty members are particularly worried about the future of tenure, while other professors have canceled upcoming courses because of the likelihood that they could come under scrutiny.

    “That bill alone could essentially destroy the notion of a national-level research university,” Brinks said of the tenure bill.

    Even though the legislation doesn’t ban tenure outright, Brinks said, many faculty members still fear that another bill is “right around the corner.”

    “It signals both a general willingness to interfere with the internal governance of public universities and maybe even, more importantly, hostility to the things that we do and the way that we do them,” Brinks said.

    Students are noticing those impacts, too. De Jesus-Colon said several professors have shared with him that they are preparing to face consequences for teaching topics that some Republican lawmakers don’t like.

    Williams, who teaches a course on rhetoric that covers concepts including Indigenous liberation, the Black prophetic tradition, queer pride, and fatphobia, worries that her class material could become a target.

    The bill banning diversity efforts states that it doesn’t apply to course instruction or research. But in recent months, public-college leaders have often played it safe in political climates that appear hostile toward courses about race and gender — directing professors to, for instance, “proceed cautiously” if teaching about reproductive health.

    Until she receives an order or instruction from a supervisor, chair, or dean, Williams said, she doesn’t plan to stop teaching the course because her students enjoy learning the material. The few that don’t, Williams noted, “still say what’s on their mind.”

    Should she be directed to stop or change her mode of instruction, Williams said, she isn’t sure how she would respond.

    “What would I even teach at that point?” Williams said. “If they can’t learn that at a public institution, where are they supposed to go?”

    Eva Surovell

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  • How ChatGPT Could Help or Hurt Students With Disabilities

    How ChatGPT Could Help or Hurt Students With Disabilities

    User-friendly artificial-intelligence tools like ChatGPT are new enough that professors aren’t yet sure how they will shape teaching and learning. That uncertainty holds doubly true for how the technology could affect students with disabilities.

    On the one hand, these tools can function like personal assistants: Ask ChatGPT to create a study schedule, simplify a complex idea, or suggest topics for a research paper, and it can do that. That could be a boon for students who have trouble managing their time, processing information, or ordering their thoughts.

    On the other hand, fears about cheating could lead professors to make changes in testing and assessment that could hurt students unable to do well on, say, an oral exam or in-class test. And instead of using it as a simple study aid, students who lack confidence in their ability to learn might allow the products of these AI tools to replace their own voices or ideas.

    Such scenarios can, of course, apply to a wide range of students. You don’t need to have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder to struggle with ordered thinking. Nor are students with severe anxiety the only ones to stress out over an oral exam. But teaching experts worry that in the rush to figure out, or rein in, these tools, instructors may neglect to consider the ways in which they affect students with disabilities in particular.

    “People are really focused, for good reasons, on academic integrity and academic honesty, and trying to redefine what that means with these new tools,” says Casey Boyle, director of the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, who chairs a working group on digital-content accessibility. But people are just now starting to talk about the opportunities and challenges around AI and disability.

    Students with disabilities or students who require accommodations are already working uphill. When we overreact, what we’re doing is increasing the slope of those hills.

    Students with disabilities have long faced challenges in the classroom, starting with the difficulty of securing accommodations that can help them learn better, such as receiving note-taking assistance or extra time to take tests, or being allowed to type instead of writing by hand. Boyle says he has heard of instructors moving from take-home writing assignments to timed writing exercises in class to keep students from using ChatGPT. Students who struggle with cognitive loads, or dyslexia, or are unable to focus are not going to perform well under those conditions.

    “Students with disabilities or students who require accommodations are already working uphill,” Boyle says. “When we overreact, what we’re doing is increasing the slope of those hills.”

    Welcome Assistance

    While professors are understandably concerned that students may use AI tools inappropriately, some teaching experts caution against banning their use entirely because there are ways in which AI tools could assist students with disabilities.

    • Students with mobility challenges may find it easier to use generative AI tools — such as ChatGPT or Elicit — to help them conduct research if that means they can avoid a trip to the library.
    • Students who have trouble navigating conversations — such as those along the autism spectrum — could use these tools for “social scripting.” In that scenario, they might ask ChatGPT to give them three ways to start a conversation with classmates about a group project.
    • Students who have trouble organizing their thoughts might benefit from asking a generative AI tool to suggest an opening paragraph for an essay they’re working on — not to plagiarize, but to help them get over “the terror of the blank page,” says Karen Costa, a faculty-development facilitator who, among other things, focuses on teaching, learning, and living with ADHD. “AI can help build momentum.”
    • ChatGPT is good at productive repetition. That is a practice most teachers use anyway to reinforce learning. But AI can take that to the next level by allowing students who have trouble processing information to repeatedly generate examples, definitions, questions, and scenarios of concepts they are learning.

    “I really want you as a student to do that critical thinking and not give me content produced by an AI,” says Manjeet Rege, a professor and chair of the department of software engineering and data science at the University of St. Thomas. But because students may spend three hours in a lecture session, he says, “at the end of it, if you would like to take aspects of that, put it into a generative AI model and then look at analogies and help you understand that better, yes, absolutely, that is something that I encourage.”

    Teaching experts point out that instructors can use AI tools themselves to support students with disabilities. One way to do that might be to run your syllabus through ChatGPT to improve its accessibility, says Thomas Allen, an associate professor of computer science and data science at Centre College, in Kentucky.

    Allen, who has ADHD, is particularly aware of the ways that an overly complex syllabus can stymie students. A 20-page document, for example, with lots of graphics could trip up students with a range of disabilities, such as people with low vision or those who have dyslexia, autism, or ADHD. “That’s using AI to solve a problem that we created,” he says, “by not having an accessible classroom to start with.”

    Disability-rights advocates have long encouraged instructors to use an approach called universal design for learning, or UDL. In a nutshell, this method enables students to engage with material in many ways. A common example is putting captioning on videos. Another is to provide text explanations of graphics. These strategies can benefit all learners, advocates note, creating more-inclusive classrooms.

    “Professors who have designed their courses with UDL at the heart of their pedagogy are going to be better prepared and more adaptive, not only to AI but any other weird and challenging things,” says Costa.

    Teaching experts caution that these tools have to be used with care. In simplifying a syllabus, or lecture notes, ChatGPT could change the meaning of words or add things that were not said, Allen notes. And it will reflect biases in the human-generated ideas and language on which it was trained. “You can’t trust the output as it is,” says Allen.

    Risks and Challenges

    A more-subtle challenge, teaching experts say, is that because students with disabilities can lack confidence as learners, they may be more likely than others to replace their own words and ideas with AI output, rather than use it as an assistant.

    It’s not all on you to figure this out and have all the answers. Partner with your students and explore this together.

    Students have, for example, put first drafts of papers through ChatGPT to get feedback on the clarity of their language, the coherence of their arguments, and other measures of good writing. If the AI tools significantly change their words — and not necessarily in a way that an instructor would think is an improvement — a student who doesn’t have faith in their own work and sees the tool as an expert might defer to it. “The outputs I’ve been seeing are overly rational and overly linear and overly correct in a very unproductive way,” says Boyle.

    One way to mitigate that risk is to teach all students about the strengths and limitations of AI. That includes showing students how to write thoughtful and specific prompts to get the most useful feedback; discussing the ways that generative AI tools can produce confident-sounding, yet false or flat, writing; and reminding students that ChatGPT is a word predictor without actual intelligence, so it should not be treated as a replacement for a teacher, counselor, or tutor.

    “If you keep deferring to the technology, you won’t grow and develop because you’re leaning on this technology,” says S. Mason Garrison, an assistant professor of quantitative psychology at Wake Forest University. “This is a problem for anyone, but it could disproportionately impact folks who are genuinely worried their work isn’t good enough.”

    Disability-rights advocates point to two other challenges that could affect students with disabilities more than others.

    One is that if you use AI to help generate ideas or smooth out writing, your work may be more likely to get flagged by an AI detector. That’s a problem for a range of students, including those for whom English is not their first language. But a neurodivergent student might face particular issues in response, says Allen.

    “Sometimes we have difficulty looking people in the eye, and we fidget. It’s part of our social challenges,” he says. “If you get called in and some instructor or the dean says your writing has been flagged, tell me why you cheated. You’re fidgeting. You’re looking at your shoes. That may be interpreted as guilt. And maybe the student used it to take on the persona of a character and had a conversation but used that to inform their thinking. That’s a different use case from typing in the prompt, using what it spits out.”

    The other challenge is that many students don’t seek accommodations until they need them. And how many students have ever had to sit through an oral exam or write an essay by hand?

    “In all likelihood, the first time that happens to a student, they’re not going to be able to get the accommodation in time because they never thought they needed it,” says Garrison. “There’s probably going to be a lot of surprises like that. And for professors, it might not even occur to them that that’s something you put in your syllabus.”

    One central piece of advice teaching experts have is this: Include students, and particularly students with disabilities, when designing policies on AI use. It’s going to become more important as generative AI evolves and becomes embedded in other technologies.

    “It’s not all on you to figure this out and have all the answers,” says Costa. “Partner with your students and explore this together.”

    Beth McMurtrie

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  • A Florida Professor Lost His Job After Complaints About His Lessons on Racial Justice

    A Florida Professor Lost His Job After Complaints About His Lessons on Racial Justice

    A professor of English at Palm Beach Atlantic University, a private Christian institution in Florida, had his contract terminated this week after a parent complained to the university president about a racial-justice unit in his course.

    The termination of Samuel Joeckel’s position, which he’d held since 2002, touches on issues of academic freedom that have become more fraught as tensions increasingly surround the teaching of race. It also illustrates differing views of what it means to hew to Christian values in higher education.

    Joeckel first learned of the concerns about his teaching on February 15, when a dean and the provost met him outside his classroom to say that his contract wouldn’t be renewed until administrators reviewed materials from his composition class. (Palm Beach Atlantic does not offer tenure; veteran faculty members can enter into two- and- three-year letters of agreement that roll over automatically “upon on-going exemplary service,” according to a university FAQ.) A parent had complained that Joeckel was “indoctrinating students,” the dean said.

    Last week, Joeckel learned that his contract would not be renewed and, in fact, was being terminated early. His last day as a Palm Beach Atlantic employee was Wednesday, and he’ll be returning to campus Saturday with his wife and son to clean out his office. He’s also pursuing legal action against the university, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Joeckel said he has taught the racial-justice unit for the past 12 years, and while he said it’s often generated “really healthy discussion” in the classroom, no university administrator had voiced concern about it before. “As far as what it was this semester that really turned some student off, that that student then felt compelled to tell their mom or dad, and then their mom or dad felt compelled to call the university president, I don’t know,” Joeckel told The Chronicle.

    Joeckel’s termination comes amid a flurry of legislative action in Florida that seeks to limit, at the state’s public institutions, the study of race, gender, and the causes of inequality. And while Palm Beach Atlantic’s status as a private university would exempt it from such legislation, Joeckel says his termination is a product of the political environment.

    I believe asking students to engage the issue of racial justice is rooted in the Christian faith. The gospel calls for Christians to speak truth to power.”

    “Political forces don’t know the difference between public and private,” he said, noting that the dean of the school of liberal arts and sciences had used the word “indoctrinating” on February 15, when Joeckel asked about the nature of the complaint regarding the racial-justice unit. The dean ended that same encounter, Joeckel said, by saying he had to go prepare for the arrival of Gov. Ron DeSantis; the governor appeared at a campus event that evening.

    Two days later, Joeckel said, he was called to a meeting with the dean, at which a human-resources representative from the university was also present. During that meeting, he said, the dean reviewed Joeckel’s syllabus and asked questions about his pedagogy. “They felt that there were some pedagogical weaknesses in the fact that, ‘In a writing course, why are you spending so much time talking about racial justice?’” Joeckel said. But he devotes an equal amount of time to each of the units in the course, and critiques of his pedagogy amounted to “smokescreen tactics” that “obfuscate the obvious,” he said.

    “The issue was clearly that I was teaching a unit on racial justice,” Joeckel said. “I’ve been doing this for 21 years. I know my pedagogy, and obviously I know that the focus of a Composition 2 class is on writing and specifically the production of a research essay. My Comp 2 class is oriented around just that, and it always has been.”

    ‘Provocative and Relevant’

    The racial-justice unit is one of four in Joeckel’s class; the others focus on comedy and humor, gothic and horror, and gender equality. Across two class sessions in late January and early February, according to his syllabus, Joeckel gave a lecture on racial justice, covering such topics as the shifts in popular opinion of Martin Luther King Jr. over time, how usage of the term “racism” had evolved as a tool in political strategy, and racial disparities in in-school suspensions, interactions with police, and incarceration, according to materials he shared with The Chronicle.

    Students also discussed the introduction to The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, a 2019 book by Jemar Tisby, a professor of history at Simmons College of Kentucky. In the last of the three class sessions in the unit, students wrote an in-class essay in which they were asked to cite the lecture or the Tisby reading. (Each of the four units followed a similar format.)

    The topic of Composition 2 classes at Palm Beach Atlantic are at the professor’s discretion, Joeckel said. At the end of the semester, were he still teaching the course, students would be asked to write a research essay on one of the four units. He deliberately paired two more “intense” topics — racial justice and gender equality — with two “lighter” topics — comedy and humor and gothic and horror — for that reason. “I was just trying to have a balanced approach in terms of topics and themes so that students, regardless of their personalities and intellectual predispositions, could find something in those four units that they can say, ‘I want to write a research essay on that topic,’” Joeckel said.

    To Joeckel, including the racial-justice unit provides a “really interesting and provocative and relevant topic” for students, but is also in keeping with Palm Beach Atlantic’s Christian values. The institution, which enrolls about 3,700 graduate and undergraduate students, was created by the pastor of First Baptist Church in West Palm Beach in 1968 to counter the youth unrest then roiling the nation’s campuses. The goal, one of the founders said, was “to produce college graduates who would improve the moral climate in America,” according to a video recounting the institution’s history.

    “I believe asking students to engage the issue of racial justice is rooted in the Christian faith,” he said. “The gospel calls for Christians to speak truth to power. The gospel calls for Christians to be attentive to the oppressed, the disadvantaged, ‘the least of these.’ As I saw it, for the past 12 years, my racial-justice unit was rooted in the principles that Palm Beach Atlantic University supposedly adheres to.”

    A representative of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, of which Palm Beach Atlantic is a member, said she was familiar with the case but, citing “an ongoing investigation and an HR issue,” declined to comment on its specifics. “The CCCU supports our member institutions and their individual missions as they carry out the Lord’s work on their campuses,” Amanda Staggenborg, the council’s chief communications officer, said in an email to The Chronicle. “The CCCU does not make decisions dictating curricula or how it is taught at our campuses. Knowing that all truth is God’s truth, we trust that our students will graduate with a better understanding of themselves and the world around them having been exposed to and challenged by a broad spectrum of academic theories.”

    Teaching Freely

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression came to Joeckel’s defense in a February letter sent to Palm Beach Atlantic’s president, Debra A. Schwinn, after Joeckel’s contract renewal was delayed, saying that his treatment violated the university’s own policy, in which it “expresses a firm belief in the rights of a teacher to teach, investigate, and publish freely,” and that the university was bound by its accreditor to uphold those rights.

    Courts have previously held that institutions cannot decline to renew a faculty member’s contract as a form of retaliation, and Graham Piro, a senior program officer at FIRE, told The Chronicle on Friday that, based on media reports, it appeared Palm Beach Atlantic may have done just that as retribution for Joeckel’s decision to teach about racial justice. “If that’s true, then that’s a huge problem,” Piro said.

    Piro said the Joeckel case is directly linked to DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE” Act, which, among other things, bars training or instruction that “compels” a belief that members of one race are morally superior to another, or that makes an individual “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.” A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld an injunction against the act, which has been characterized as still having had a chilling effect, including the removal of potentially controversial books from libraries in elementary and secondary schools. “Palm Beach Atlantic must meet its commitments that it makes to its faculty, even in the midst of intense public pressure to abandon those principles,” Piro said.

    Meanwhile, Joeckel’s lawyer, Gabe Roberts, of the Jacksonville-based Scott Law Team, said Palm Beach Atlantic’s wrongdoing was evident. “It’s clear in this situation they terminated his contract early and that race, or in this case, teaching about race was a motivating factor in the decision to terminate the contract,” Roberts said. “If race is a motivating factor in an employment decision, that’s illegal in this country.”

    Megan Zahneis

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  • As Colleges Focus on Quality in Online Learning, Advocates Ask: What About In-Person Courses?

    As Colleges Focus on Quality in Online Learning, Advocates Ask: What About In-Person Courses?

    As colleges’ online catalogs grow, so too has the push to develop standards of quality for those courses. But are in-person classes getting the same attention?

    If you ask many online-education advocates, the answer is “no.” And the solution, many say, is for colleges to adopt standards and policies that set consistent expectations for quality across all courses, whether they’re remote or in a classroom.

    While decades of research and the pandemic-spurred expansion of online learning have helped demystify it, and build confidence in its efficacy, these advocates say the misconception lingers that remote education is inherently lower in quality than instruction in the classroom. And that stigma, they say, puts a magnifying glass to online ed, while largely leaving in-person classes to business as usual.

    “To think through all of our college experiences, we have all been in large lecture classes” with minimal to no contact with a professor, said Julie Uranis, senior vice president for online and strategic initiatives at the University Professional and Continuing Education Association. In other words, an in-person class doesn’t necessarily guarantee more student engagement and instructor support. “But for some reason, that bar is higher for online.“

    Some college administrators can attest to this. When accreditors ask institutions to prove that all of their courses are equally rigorous, colleges’ interpretation of that instruction has often been to “show that online courses are up to the standard of” in-person courses, “not the other way around,” wrote Beth Ingram, executive vice president and provost of Northern Illinois University, in an email.

    The discrepancy seems to be borne out in the data, too. A reported 38 percent of in-person courses have no quality-assurance standards to meet, according to a survey of more than 300 chief online officers by Quality Matters, an organization that helps ensure quality in online education. That compares with 17 percent of online synchronous courses and 5 percent of online asynchronous courses.

    To be sure, online and in-person aren’t wholly interchangeable — there are nuances to account for. Distance education, for example, is governed by federal regulations that require courses to include “regular and substantive” interactions; that necessitates course design that intentionally creates opportunities for students to engage with one another and their professor. Online incorporates more technology, too, which means additional checks for security measures, proper integration — are the links and embeds all working? — and accessibility features.

    Caveats aside, though, online-education advocates like Bethany Simunich, vice president for innovation and research at Quality Matters, say higher ed needs to stop “othering” and setting different bars for different modes of learning. Especially as the lines between them blur together. (A lot of in-person courses, for example, are now “web enhanced,” with faculty members using the campus learning-management system. And many colleges now offer hybrid courses with both in-person and online components.)

    The focus instead, Simunich said, should be on a big-picture question: Is this a high-quality learning experience for students?

    Numerous institutions are working to keep that question front and center. Oregon State University crafted a universal quality framework. North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University adopted a common syllabus template. Montgomery College, in Maryland, requires learning-management-system training for all new faculty members teaching credit-bearing courses. Harford Community College, also in Maryland, has revamped its faculty-observation forms.

    “Online and face-to-face are very different things. But it doesn’t mean systems have to be separate,” said Jeff Ball, director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Harford. “We’re learning that we need to talk about them together in very conscious ways.”

    Setting a Standard

    It’s not uncommon for faculty members to teach an array of courses: some online, some in-person, some a hybrid blend. Oregon State University is no exception.

    That’s why it made sense to develop an “umbrella” quality-teaching framework that outlines standards the institution expects from any of its courses, said Karen Watté, director of course-development and training at Oregon State’s Ecampus. It would, in her words, “elevate teaching across the board.”

    That framework, completed in 2021, includes expectations like:

    • Providing materials in formats that are accessible by all learners, including curricular materials designed with recommended fonts and colors.
    • Fostering community outside of the classroom.
    • Measuring, documenting, and using achievement data to inform instruction.

    Around that same time, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University adopted another tool: A universal template for course syllabi to create a cohesive student experience across classes, said Tonya Amankwatia, assistant vice provost for distance education and extended learning.

    This newer template has introduced standards that weren’t previously required in faculty syllabi. For example, it includes a communications policy stating that faculty “must notify students of the approximate time and method they can expect to receive an answer to all communications,” with the expected window being 48 hours, apart from holidays. The syllabus template also links to a “common policies” document that directs students to resources such as minimum technology requirements.

    What was particularly exciting, Amankwatia said, was that the template wasn’t the result of a top-down mandate. Faculty members teaching both online and in-person courses had, in fact, led the charge. “It was one big visible move that no senior administrator had to say” or ask for, she said.

    Prioritizing Professional Development

    The success of any course, experts say, also comes down to investing in professional development.

    For Montgomery College, in Rockville, Md., that has meant doubling down on its “Digital Fundamentals for Teaching and Learning” training, which teaches faculty members how to take advantage of the campus’s learning-management system. (All credit-bearing classes at Montgomery are required to have a course page in the LMS).

    The training, which takes about 20 hours to complete, starts with foundational skills — how to post files and upload a syllabus — and builds from there: How to create and manage discussion boards. How to embed videos, and caption them to support accessibility. How to set up an online gradebook for students to track their performance.

    The college first rolled out this training in the early days of the pandemic to ease the pivot to fully remote learning. About 70 percent of full- and part-time faculty members teaching credit-bearing courses completed it in 2020. It was so useful that the college has since required each new faculty member who teaches for credit to take the training, whether they’re teaching online, in-person, or both, said Michael Mills, vice president of the Office of E-Learning, Innovation, and Teaching Excellence.

    Montgomery also offers a voluntary quality-assurance microcredential — a series of three badges a faculty member can earn outside of work hours that, among other things, indicates knowledge of “inclusive quality course design and delivery.”

    Mills acknowledged that the college doesn’t offer a pay incentive to complete that microcredential. “The incentive is a better course design,” he said. “For some faculty, that’s important to them.” He noted that it may help part-time faculty secure additional teaching opportunities at other institutions.

    Revisiting Observations

    Setting standards is one thing. Evaluating courses based on those standards is another; policies can be tricky to put in place and enforce broadly. (It’s an area where online education still struggles, too.)

    That also goes for faculty evaluations. That process is often codified in collective-bargaining agreements, and grants faculty members a high degree of autonomy in teaching.

    At Harford Community College, in Bel Air, Md., “observing” a faculty member’s course is one part of the larger annual evaluation process. And a goal for that piece, at least, is consistency where it makes sense.

    The college’s refreshed faculty-observation forms for both online and in-person teaching — the online one is still in draft mode — are similarly formatted. Both have done away with numeric values and rating scales. Both set parameters around what the observer is seeing, and when they’re seeing it (for in-person, it’s a single class. For online, it’s access to an agreed-upon portion of the course for an agreed-upon time frame). Both check to see if the instructor has fostered “an engaging learning environment.”

    But there are differences. In the online-course observation form, for example, the reviewer is asked to check to see that links and “technical aspects of the course are in working order,” and whether navigation is “user friendly.” In the in-person observation, the reviewer is asked about the pace: Was the instructor teaching at a speed that allowed students to process the content?

    “It’s like a Venn diagram,” said Elizabeth Mosser Knight, associate dean for academic operations at Harford. “There’s the overlap, but then there’s the nuance, because they’re unique in some ways.”

    It’s these types of conversations that get online advocates like Simunich excited about the potential for progress.

    “As these conversations are all starting to merge and come to a head, institutions are going to have to make a choice,” she said, “about whether they’re going to publicly address and talk about quality.”

    Taylor Swaak

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  • 9 Humanities Majors Are On the Chopping Block at Marymount U.

    9 Humanities Majors Are On the Chopping Block at Marymount U.

    Marymount University, in Virginia, plans to make a sharp turn away from the humanities, eliminating nine liberal-arts majors for undergraduate students. The move highlights tough decisions that many colleges are making in a challenging financial environment, as well as a broader debate about the kind of education colleges should offer.

    The plan, backed by Marymount President Irma Becerra, would sunset majors in English, math, economics, philosophy, and the arts, among others. The cuts would affect one-sixth of all undergraduate majors offered at Marymount. Becerra submitted her plan on Wednesday to the university’s Board of Trustees, which will make a final decision on February 24, according to emails shared with The Chronicle.

    Many faculty members say the president’s decision raises concerns about whether the university is still committed to the liberal arts at all. They also question whether senior administrators are respecting shared governance and listening to the perspectives of faculty, students, and alumni, many of whom expressed doubts about the plan.

    The university’s Academic Policy, Budget, and Planning Committee — whose membership includes two faculty members from each of its three colleges, the dean of each college, and other administrators — first proposed eliminating the nine majors.

    Becerra rejected recommendations from the Faculty Council to keep seven of the majors and modify six of them. The ideas outlined by the committee “more closely align with the strategic goals of the institution,” Becerra wrote in a letter to the Faculty Council’s president.

    “True to our mission, all university programs will continue to be grounded in the liberal arts and focused on the education of the whole person,” Becerra wrote, “but MU cannot financially sustain offering majors with consistently low enrollment, low graduation rates, and lack of potential for growth.”

    Marymount’s Student Government Association and the American Historical Association sent letters to Becerra, urging her to reverse course and preserve the majors. Some alumni started an online petition.

    “Cutting portions of the School of Humanities as well as math and art programs would be detrimental to the diversity of our student body,” wrote Ashly Trejo Mejia, Marymount’s student-government president, in her letter. “We fear that removing programs will alter the foundation and identity Marymount University was built on.”

    Even though the cuts aren’t official until the board signs off, students in the affected majors received an email on Thursday from Stephanie Ellis Foster, the university’s vice provost, informing them that their programs were being phased out.

    “What this means is that we will not accept new students in these programs but we are committed to continue to offer classes until all current students graduate,” Foster wrote in the email to affected students and shared with The Chronicle. “We have made arrangements to provide the required courses for your major [eliminated majors] without disruption.”

    Mejia wrote in her letter to Becerra that alumni and current students are concerned that the president’s decision will weaken the perception of their degrees.

    “Current and future alumni want to be proud of their alma mater and they fear that with this action their success will be hindered by a weakened perception of their MU education from a program that no longer exists,” Mejia wrote.

    Ariane Economos, an associate professor of philosophy who serves as director of the School of Humanities and the liberal-arts core curriculum, said that Marymount faculty largely support keeping the programs. The Faculty Council voted 88-49, with seven abstentions, to modify the curriculum changes in order to keep seven of the majors, according to meeting minutes.

    “I wish our administration would respect the role of faculty governance in determining the curriculum,” Economos said.

    Economos said the recommendations from the committee are based on the number of students enrolled in each major, which she said doesn’t provide a complete picture of the value of those programs.

    Economos created a “data-informed” report that described some of the other factors that she thought Marymount leaders should consider — including programs that are available at the university’s peer institutions; programs at R2 universities, which Marymount aspires to be; credit hours generated by programs; effects on student recruitment and retention; the impact on Marymount’s reputation; and the contributions of the majors to the university’s overall mission.

    “If they want to change the mission, then say that and say what that change is,” Economos said. “But getting rid of theology and religious studies at a Catholic university, that doesn’t fit with the mission.”

    Economos calculated, based on average enrollment in the nine majors over the past five years and the results of a survey by the School of Humanities asking whether students would leave the university without those majors, that Marymount could lose as much as $2.74 million in tuition, room, and board revenue.

    In an emailed statement, Marymount spokesperson Nicholas Munson wrote that Marymount’s mission is “unchanged,” but that the institution would be making changes “to better position the university for long-term growth and success.” He said these specific changes were “not financially driven” but would allow the university “to redeploy resources” toward majors with growing student interest.

    “We believe investing in programs that appeal to students and prepare them for highly sought-after professions is not only our mission but our responsibility,” Munson said.

    Julian Roberts-Grmela

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  • Students Say Mental-Health Breaks From Class Help Them Succeed. Here’s How Colleges Are Responding.

    Students Say Mental-Health Breaks From Class Help Them Succeed. Here’s How Colleges Are Responding.

    Eric Enriquez is a determined student. But some days, his mental-health challenges make it difficult for him to participate in class.

    “There are some days for me, personally, where I’ve struggled with mental health and it’s hard to get out of bed,” said the junior psychological-sciences major at the University of California at Irvine. “My anxiety is so bad.”

    When he’s feeling overwhelmed, he appreciates instructors who are flexible with attendance and assignments, or who provide remote-learning options.

    Enriquez is one of many students who believe that colleges should scale up such accommodations for academic-related distress.

    Across higher ed, there’s a growing recognition of the connection between students’ well-being and their success in the classroom. “Mental health affects how students perform academically, and the stress of academics, and certainly disappointments academically, affect students’ mental health,” said Sarah Lipson, an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.

    Some colleges and faculty members are creating or considering new policies to support students when they need a day to tend to their mental health. But providing the kinds of academic accommodations that many students are calling for –– such as reforms to extension and attendance guidelines –– requires instructors to shoulder new responsibilities and change old habits and standards that some of them value.

    Campus officials and professors are debating how to balance academic rigor with increased flexibility for students, as well as who should be responsible for determining when students should get a break.

    You can’t really choose a day to have a mental-health crisis.

    The issue is urgent: Seventy-two percent of student-affairs officials reported that mental-health concerns on campus worsened over the last year, according to a recent survey by Naspa: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. A new Center for Collegiate Mental Health report found that levels of trauma and social anxiety have increased among students over the last decade, and that academic distress has increased compared to pre-pandemic.

    Lipson said she’s happy to see that colleges and professors are thinking about ways to make academics more accommodating to those experiencing mental-health challenges, but landing on the right solution is complicated. She recommended that colleges form their plans with student feedback.

    “There’s going to be different solutions for different institutions,” Lipson said.

    ‘I Was Worrying the Entire Day’

    Last summer, Northeastern University started a new program, in response to student advocacy, that gives students two excused absences per semester for any reason. But some students say the program doesn’t go far enough.

    The idea for the program, called Wellness Days, came from the campus chapter of Active Minds, a mental-health awareness group. “The importance of a wellness day is if you’re having a mental-health crisis, you should probably be taking the time to come back from that,” said Jack Ognibene, a junior and psychology major who’s vice president of the group. “It’s a similar thing to if you are sick.”

    Ed Gavaghan, a spokesperson for Northeastern, wrote in an email that student feedback in a recent university survey was “overwhelmingly positive.”

    While Ognibene is pleased that Northeastern officials have embraced the program, he said that Active Minds had to make compromises on its design. The group conducted its own student survey about wellness days, and one common issue students brought up was a lack of accompanying accommodations, according to Ognibene.

    “There isn’t much of a difference between taking a wellness day and skipping class,” Ognibene said. “All your assignments are still due on the same day, so you don’t really have the time to rest. You also have to play catch-up because you’re missing class, and professors aren’t really providing students with the notes from class that day.”

    Rachel Umansky-Castro, a sophomore criminal-justice and journalism major and an editor at the student newspaper, The Huntington News, wrote an op-ed about her experience with the Wellness Days program, which made her anxiety worse.

    “Thinking about all the assignments I would miss started getting me really nervous,” Umansky-Castro said in an interview. “I was worrying the entire day.”

    Ognibene and Umansky-Castro said some instructors at Northeastern provide accommodations for students taking a wellness day, but others don’t.

    Umansky-Castro said she’d prefer if Northeastern dedicated days for the whole student body to take wellness days together — similar to the Care Day program that Northeastern had in place before the opt-in system.

    But Ognibene said Active Minds pushed hard for students to be able to choose their days off.

    “You can’t really choose a day to have a mental-health crisis,” Ognibene said.

    He said Active Minds would ask university officials to consider requiring professors to offer deadline extensions and to send copies of class notes when students take a wellness day, so all students have access to the same accommodations, regardless of their instructor.

    Traditional grading … focuses on sorting and ranking students. This type of approach tends to both produce enormous amounts of stress and anxiety for students.

    Weighing Accommodations

    At Rice University, students have advocated for a rule that would require faculty members to spell out a mental-health-accommodation policy in their course syllabi. The change would provide clarity and ensure that students in the same class received the same flexibility, said Alison Qiu, a computer-science major and student-government leader at Rice.

    Faculty, however, worry that the measure would force them to make decisions they don’t feel qualified to make.

    Last fall, Qiu helped author a student-government resolution recommending a mandatory-accommodation policy, as well as two other additions to the syllabi: a mental-health statement and a list of campus resources. Those two measures were endorsed by Rice’s Faculty Senate, but the accommodation policy was omitted.

    An editorial in The Rice Thresher, Rice’s student newspaper, criticized the Faculty Senate’s decision and argued that explicit policies would “reduce the stigma around students asking for accommodations.”

    Qiu said she believes including policies in the syllabus would hold instructors accountable. Lipson agrees.

    “There’s also a lot of evidence that if a policy isn’t made explicit to students –– like how to request an extension or what the protocols are for accommodations –– there’s systematically certain students who do not feel comfortable asking those questions,” Lipson said.

    Alexandra Kieffer, an associate professor of musicology and speaker of Rice’s Faculty Senate, said faculty care about their students’ mental health. But they’re concerned, Kieffer said, that requiring mental-health-accommodation policies in syllabi would put instructors in a position where they’d need to make their own assessments about students’ mental health.

    “That would have required the instructor of a course to essentially make a determination in a particular case as to whether or not the student met some kind of criteria for the mental-health accommodation, as opposed to some kind of other blanket attendance policy or extension policy,” Kieffer said in an interview.

    Kieffer wrote in a follow-up email that if students experience mental-health challenges, the Faculty Senate encourages them to seek resources at Rice’s counseling center and to request formal academic accommodations through the disability-resource center.

    Qiu said she’ll continue to advocate for accommodation policies. “My goal is to continue to communicate with the Faculty Senate about either passing the third requirement or modifying it in a way that makes the most sense for both faculty and students,” Qiu said.

    Lipson said that although most instructors aren’t trained mental-health professionals, they have a responsibility to understand campus protocols and resources and how they can best support students.

    The University of California at Irvine hired someone last year to help faculty do just that.

    ‘Flexibility With Guardrails’

    Called a pedagogical wellness specialist, the UC-Irvine position involves training instructors to incorporate wellness into their classroom policies and procedures. Theresa Duong, who was hired for the role, said her responsibilities include creating workshops, consulting with professors, and doing research.

    “My job involves supporting faculty wellness through pedagogy, but also supporting students’ wellness through the practice of pedagogy,” Duong said. “So that means training the faculty to think about wellness in their courses and to integrate well-being strategies into their course design.”

    Duong said she encourages instructors to apply a mind-set she calls “flexibility with guardrails.” Duong created a digital guide that includes advice on rethinking high-stakes exams, assessing workloads, clarifying deadlines, and providing assignment choices, among other things.

    During her workshops, Duong has instructors brainstorm how their class could be a barrier or facilitator to their students’ wellness and then create an action plan.

    Angela Jenks, an associate professor of teaching in anthropology at UC-Irvine and the vice associate dean of faculty development and diversity in the School of Social Sciences, works with Duong to help professors revamp their courses. In her own classes, Jenks said she has created “menus” that allow students to choose assignments, with a reduced emphasis on traditional-grading practices.

    “By traditional grading, I think about an approach to grading that really focuses on sorting and ranking students,” Jenks said. “This type of approach tends to both produce enormous amounts of stress and anxiety for students.”

    Instead of high-stakes assignments that receive letter grades, Jenks focuses on feedback, self-reflection, and opportunities to resubmit. “In my everyday job,” Jenks said, “nobody grades me.”

    Julian Roberts-Grmela

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  • How Heterodox Academy Hopes to Change the Campus Conversation

    How Heterodox Academy Hopes to Change the Campus Conversation

    Heterodox Academy is starting a new program that will provide support for a network of groups on college campuses to further the organization’s mission of promoting “open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.” The first 23 campuses in the program, called Campus Communities, will receive funding over the next three years to host events and bring in speakers with the goal of affecting “campus culture and policy.”

    What exactly that means, and what influence those groups will have, remains to be seen, but the program is an attempt by Heterodox to exert its influence at a more grass-roots level. Founded in 2015, Heterodox — which now has more than 5,000 members, including professors, educators, administrators, and students — began as a response to what its founders saw as a growing tendency on campuses to quash dissent and shy away from controversial topics. In the years since, the conversation about how to navigate potentially offensive topics — and how to balance the concerns of students with a commitment to academic freedom — has, if anything, only become more combustible.

    One of Heterodox’s co-founders, Jonathan Haidt, detailed what he believes is the sorry state of American higher education at a much-talked-about Stanford conference on academic freedom last November. Haidt told those assembled that presidents have in recent years endeavored to “convert the university over from a truth-seeking institution to a social justice institution.” He pointed to how readily some administrators have acceded to student demands to have, say, a professor fired or a course cancelled. Haidt, who is chairman of Heterodox’s board of directors, also referred to the organization’s new program: “We’ll be working a lot more on campuses and helping our members to create groups that will directly influence policy.”

    If you’re a college administrator, that might be cause for worry. Do you really want another organization complaining about your policies and actions? But John Tomasi, who became the first president of Heterodox last year after a quarter-century as a political philosopher at Brown University, sees the mission of Campus Communities as more collaborative than confrontational. “We’re not critics who are from the outside. We’re insiders who love our universities and are trying to make them better,” he told me. “Our mission is to improve the culture of teaching and research, and I think to improve that culture, you really need to be working on the campuses where that culture exists.”

    Michael Regnier, who took over as Heterodox’s executive director in August, hopes Campus Communities will provide a better model for dealing with the inevitable conflicts that arise at any college. “We can show what disagreement in constructive ways can look like, and then hopefully that can be the new normal,” Regnier says. “I think so many people in academia are tired of shout-downs and other kinds of efforts to stop expression instead of engaging with it.”

    The Johns Hopkins University is among the campuses that will host a Campus Communities group in this initial phase. One of the leaders of that group, Dylan Selterman, an associate professor of psychology, notes that Johns Hopkins did poorly on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s free speech rating (its current rating is yellow, which means it has a policy that “too easily encourages administrative abuse.”) Selterman, who describes himself politically as “very left of center,” says he’s concerned about the anxieties some students have about expressing themselves. “The goal is diversity of thought,” he says. “I hope that it will be received as ‘Oh, this is a place that is receptive to my needs and concerns and includes me in the conversation.’” Selterman wants to hear from students and faculty members to see what their concerns are, to determine if there are common threads, and then to “translate those into things that are actionable.”

    The mission, as Regnier sees it, is to nudge higher education in a direction that’s more tolerant of opposing views, less quick to condemn others, and more willing to embrace difficult conversations: “I think it opens up an opportunity to do some course correction, because the faculty, the students, and sometimes the leadership all agree that the status quo of walking on eggshells is not really serving the university’s purpose.”

    Tom Bartlett

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  • A Florida University Is Quickly Assembling a List of Courses on Diversity. Why? DeSantis Asked.

    A Florida University Is Quickly Assembling a List of Courses on Diversity. Why? DeSantis Asked.

    At least one Florida university has been asked to report its “expenditure of state resources” on programs and courses related to critical race theory and to diversity, equity, and inclusion, at the behest of Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, according to an email obtained by The Chronicle. The move is likely to heighten fears among advocates of academic freedom in the state who worry that DeSantis is bent on curtailing professors’ speech in the classroom.

    On December 29, Karen S. Cousins, the associate vice president of strategy and implementation in the provost’s office at the University of North Florida, emailed UNF deans with the subject line: “URGENT / New requirement from the Governor.” That same day, Cousins wrote, Moez Limayem, UNF’s president, had received an email from Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the State University System of Florida. Rodrigues’s email included a memo from DeSantis’s executive office along with an “activity survey form.”

    Cousins seemed to quote from the memo, writing that it is “a request for information ‘regarding the expenditure of state resources on programs and initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory within our state colleges and universities.’

    The request pertains to all programs and initiatives, including ‘academic instruction.’”

    Cousins requested that the deans communicate with their associate deans and department chairs to identify the courses within their colleges that “contain DEI and/or CRT components.” She instructed them to include the course name and number, the number of credit hours, and the instructor of record and that person’s rank, along with other information. (She noted that the instructor’s name would not be included on the survey form.)

    “We’re truly sorry to share this with you during Winter Break,” Cousins wrote. “However, as you know, UNF’s timely compliance is not optional.” UNF’s deadline to provide this information to the chancellor is January 10, she wrote.

    Neither Cousins nor spokespersons at the University of North Florida responded to Tuesday evening emails from The Chronicle.

    DeSantis’s memo comes at a politically tense time in Florida higher ed, as many professors view the governor as a hostile figure who is invested in restricting their ability to teach freely. Like other Republican politicians, DeSantis has railed against critical race theory, which he has called “crap,” and against supposed leftist indoctrination in education. He championed the “Stop WOKE Act,” which aims to restrict how certain topics related to race can be taught. He branded the legislation in the news release as the strongest of its kind in the nation and said, “We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other.” (A federal judge in November blocked the public college system from enforcing the law.)

    A Tuesday evening email to a DeSantis spokesperson was not returned. Beginning his second term as governor, DeSantis in his inaugural address Tuesday pledged to “ensure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideology.”

    Emma Pettit

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  • Teaching Experts Are Worried About ChatGPT, but Not for the Reasons You Think

    Teaching Experts Are Worried About ChatGPT, but Not for the Reasons You Think

    Is the college essay dead? Are hordes of students going to use artificial intelligence to cheat on their writing assignments? Has machine learning reached the point where auto-generated text looks like what a typical first-year student might produce?

    And what does it mean for professors if the answer to those questions is “yes”?

    These and other questions have flooded news sites and social media since the nonprofit OpenAI released a tool called ChatGPT, which promises to revolutionize how we write. Enter a prompt and in seconds it will produce an essay, a poem, or other text that ranges in quality, users say, from mediocre to pretty good. It can do so because it has been trained on endless amounts of digital text pulled from the internet.

    Scholars of teaching, writing, and digital literacy say there’s no doubt that tools like ChatGPT will, in some shape or form, become part of everyday writing, the way calculators and computers have become integral to math and science. It is critical, they say, to begin conversations with students and colleagues about how to shape and harness these AI tools as an aide, rather than a substitute, for learning.

    Academia really has to look at itself in the mirror and decide what it’s going to be.

    In doing so, they say, academics must also recognize that this initial public reaction says as much about our darkest fears for higher education as it does about the threats and promises of a new technology. In this vision, college is a transactional experience where getting work done has become more important than challenging ourselves to learn. Assignments and assessments are so formulaic that nobody could tell if a computer completed them. And faculty members are too overworked to engage and motivate their students.

    “Academia really has to look at itself in the mirror and decide what it’s going to be,” said Josh Eyler, director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi, who has criticized the “moral panic” he has seen in response to ChatGPT. “Is it going to be more concerned with compliance and policing behaviors and trying to get out in front of cheating, without any evidence to support whether or not that’s actually going to happen? Or does it want to think about trust in students as its first reaction and building that trust into its response and its pedagogy?”

    There is some truth underlying that nightmare vision of higher ed, of course. Budget constraints that lead to large-enrollment classes and a reliance on part-time instructors can fuel teaching that feels rote. Such problems aren’t readily solved. But others can be mitigated. Students might cheat because the value of the work of education is not apparent to them. Or their courses or curriculum don’t make any sense. Those, said Eyler, “are totally in our power to correct.”

    So how does a writing instructor, or a professor in a writing-intensive course, reduce the likelihood that students will use these AI tools? Faculty members have already come up with several ideas. Flip your teaching so that seminal pieces of work are done in class. Focus more on multimedia assignments or oral presentations. Double down on feedback and revision. Ask students to write about topics of genuine interest to them, in which their voices come through and their opinions are valued.

    If you can create an atmosphere where students are invested in learning, they are not going to reach for a workaround.

    All of those strategies may work, but underlying them, teaching experts said, is a need to talk to students about why they write. For most professors, writing represents a form of thinking. But for some students, writing is simply a product, an assemblage of words repeated back to the teacher. It’s tempting to blame them, but that’s how many students were taught to write in high school.

    Generations of students “have been trained to write simulations like an algorithm in school,” only to arrive at college to be told that writing is more than that, said John Warner, a blogger and author of two books on writing. “It feels like a bait and switch to students.”

    The challenge of creating authentic assessments — evaluations that measure true learning — has been longstanding, he noted, recalling his days as an undergraduate cramming for exams in large classes. “I forget everything I learned within hours.”

    But the vast majority of students don’t come to college wanting to bluff their way to a degree, Warner said. “If you can create an atmosphere where students are invested in learning, they are not going to reach for a workaround. They are not going to plagiarize. They are not going to copy, they are not going to dodge the work. But the work has to be worth doing on some level, beyond getting the grade.”

    At Purdue University, Melinda Zook, a history professor who runs Cornerstone, an undergraduate program that focuses on understanding and interpreting transformative texts, has advised her colleagues to “keep doing what you’re doing.” That’s because the courses are small and built around frequent feedback and discussion focused on the value and purpose of the liberal arts. ChatGPT is much less of a threat to that kind of project-based learning, she said, than to traditional humanities courses. “The fact is the professoriate cannot teach the way we used to,” she said in an email. “Today’s students have to take ownership over every step of the learning experience. No more traditional 5 paragraph essays, no more ‘read the book and write about it.’”

    Some faculty members have tried to meet the potential challenges of AI tools by incorporating them into their discussions and assignments.

    Anna Mills teaches English at the College of Marin, a community college in California that draws a lot of first-generation and lower-income students, as well as those for whom English is a second language.

    The fact is the professoriate cannot teach the way we used to. Today’s students have to take ownership over every step of the learning experience.

    In June, she began experimenting with GPT-3, an earlier version of the program on which ChatGPT was built, to test the software and read up on where it’s headed. Mills, for one, does not think using a text-producing chatbot is going to pose the same ethical quandary to students as plagiarism or contract cheating, in which you pay someone else to do the work. “They think, ‘this is a new technology. These are tools available to me. So why not use them?’ And they’re going to be doing that in a hybrid way. Some of it’s theirs and some of it’s the generators.”

    But students are also puzzled and sometimes unsettled about how this technology does what it does. That’s one reason digital literacy has to include AI language tools, she said. Mills has shown her students how Elicit, an AI research assistant, can be an effective search tool. And she assigns readings on how AI can amplify biases, such as racism and anti-Muslim rhetoric.

    She is concerned, too, that responses to ChatGPT and other AI might be inequitable. Students who are less fluent in English may be more likely to be accused of using such tools, for example, if they turn in fluid prose. Similarly, if instructors switch to oral presentations, writing in class only, or writing by hand, that could be a challenge for students with learning disabilities.

    Mills has started putting together resource lists and begun conversations with others in higher education. The Modern Language Association and the Conference on College Composition and Communication, for example, are putting together a joint task force in hopes of providing professional guidance for instructors and departments.

    “We need to become part of a societal process of thinking about, how do we want to roll this out? How should such a powerful tool be constructed?” she said. For example, “Should we just trust the tech companies to figure out how to prevent harm? Or should there be more involvement from government and from academia?”

    In August at the University of Mississippi, faculty members from the department of writing and rhetoric started holding workshops for colleagues across campus on AI’s potential impact. They are also discussing how tools such as Elicit and Fermat can help students brainstorm, design research questions, and explore different points of view.

    Preservice teacher candidates in Dave Cormier’s course at the University of Windsor will be spending the spring term looking at how AI tools will affect the future classroom. Cormier, a learning specialist for digital strategy and special projects in the Office of Open Learning, is going to ask them to consider a range of possibilities. Some might choose to incorporate such tools, others might want to dampen access to the internet in their classrooms.

    Like others, Cormier said digital literacy has to include an understanding of how AI works. One way to do that might be to ask students to run a writing prompt through a program several times over, and look for patterns in those responses. Those patterns could then lead to a discussion of where and how the tool gathers and processes data. “Getting to the next part of the story is the literacy that I’m constantly trying to bring across with my students,” he said.

    Of course, any strategy to deal with AI takes place against a backdrop of scarcity. Warner, for example, noted that first-year writing programs are often staffed by graduate students and adjunct faculty members, and that large class sizes make more intensive writing assignments a challenge.

    Alternative assignments and assessments take an investment of time, too, that some faculty members feel like they can’t spare. “There are not a lot of incentives in the structure of higher education to spend time on those things,” said Warner. In a large course, “you get locked into having to do prompts that can be assessed quickly along a limited set of criteria. Otherwise you can’t work through the stuff you have to grade.”

    Whether AI chatbots become a faculty nightmare or just another teaching tool may ultimately come down to this: Not the state of the technology, but whether professors are allowed the time to create meaningful work for their students.

    Beth McMurtrie

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