{"id":739,"date":"2025-06-04T10:54:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T10:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/?p=739"},"modified":"2025-06-04T10:54:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T10:54:20","slug":"thinking-thinking-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/uncategorized\/thinking-thinking-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking thinking thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve seen several thoughtful posts of late about why students might be turning to generative AI to do the work educators want them to do themselves. Time is number one \u2013 whether it\u2019s being over-committed in the number of credit hours they\u2019re taking, involved in an overabundance of co-curricular activities, working long hours, or care-taking their kin, students have long been pressed to find space enough for academic work. Students don\u2019t always see the connection between writing and thinking. \u00a0They may not see that they\u2019re outsourcing processes that they need for their own development.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
photo by Tira Miroshnichenko from pexels.com<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amid all of this we have to talk about what we\u2019re doing to teach students how to navigate this moment. Simply saying \u201cdon\u2019t use generative AI\u201d doesn\u2019t cut it. (And I say this as someone who doesn\u2019t want students using generative AI.) It is not immediately or clearly apparent to students why<\/em> we\u2019re so against it. A corollary: in my experience, some students (for a whole host of non-nefarious reasons) struggle with the concept of plagiarism until we\u2019ve really worked on it in class. Similarly, \u00a0I think we have to use class time to make it transparent to students that generative AI takes skills away from them, rather than simply providing more.<\/p>\n

This means we need to talk about how human beings learn. (Josh Eyler\u2019s book<\/a> is great if you\u2019re looking for a place to start on this.) \u00a0It means we guide students to discovering that thinking is a process that requires time and application and often a good bit of crappy writing on the way to something good. John Warner\u2019s More Than Words<\/em><\/a> has some marvelous early chapters on this that I would hand directly to students and have them process. Students are also minimally exposed to how generative AI models actually work \u2013 we need more conversations about LLMs<\/a> and their structure. And ethics are learned: we need to talk about energy use, water use, labor issues, disability issues, and how marketing speak has come to dominate popular conversations about the subject.<\/a> We need to map out the consequences of all of this.<\/p>\n

I know that for so many of us, our quarters and semesters are packed to the gills. It is hard to imagine where to devote a class period or two to these issues. But if we don\u2019t teach them \u2013 rather than simply forbidding generative AI \u2013 we\u2019re going to continue to find ourselves stymied for time when assignments come in that are not up the standards we want. We\u2019re going to find ourselves struggling to engage students in the thinking work that we so deeply value. We\u2019re going to wonder why students don\u2019t see that the moment is fraught no matter where they stand on generative AI. We have to be deliberate, transparent educators who gain deep satisfaction from the fact that we\u2019re teaching students process, not just product. And that\u2019s going to mean rethinking how and why we devote time to everything in our courses.<\/p>\n

It’s a hard climb. I don\u2019t blame anyone who feels exhausted by the prospect. But we\u2019re already spending time trying to plug the dam. How much better to alter our approaches to our courses now so that we can encourage our students to holistically consider the pros and cons of generative AI?\u00a0 And then, whether students use it or not, we\u2019ll know that they are grappling with some of the hard thinking that is at the heart of what our hopes for their learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve seen several thoughtful posts of late about why students might be turning to generative AI to do the work educators want them to do themselves. Time is number one \u2013 whether it\u2019s being over-committed in the number of credit hours they\u2019re taking, involved in an overabundance of co-curricular activities, working long hours, or care-taking their kin, students have long been pressed to find space enough for academic work. Students don\u2019t always see the connection between writing and thinking. \u00a0They…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}