@ayjay I’m glad you did indeed post this. Your observations here are the substance of mine when discussing AI with professor colleagues: how to make a clear-eyed assessment of human motivation and choices, and how to accompany students in experiencing sustained attention, given that clear-eyed (and formation-minded) assessment. Onward! I feel like a broken record too, but I need the solidarity.
@ablerism I also feel that it’s important to make an accurate assessment of how much influence we have over our students’ lives. Even the most charismatic an d compelling teacher is just one voice among many, and any scheme that assumes that we have have the power to re-shape students’ minds is bound to fail. We need to know our limits and work well within them.
@ayjay I’ll admit to curiosity about the invitation to cultivate of habits of attentive work described at the top, however. I’m not sure it’s beyond assessment—or anyway, that its possible effects aren’t observable in shifting qualities of response. (The prompt-grooming bit is so much stuff.)
@ayjay Yes. I worry that there’s a common self-flattering wish to invite students to a high-minded exercise of considered will — self-flattering in seeing oneself as having what appears to be a generous disposition toward student behavior. But we have to take up a more human and ultimately more compassionate realism. (“Rational utility maximizers” has helped me SO much. Students get it immediately!)
@mbattles I’m not sure it’s beyond assessment either, but, as I said, I don’t know how the assessment might be done or whether Neuman is even interested in that.
@mbattles I can imagine this process coming after a sustained period of witnessed changing attention via stronger guardrails. Like first half of term/latter half divide?