𝐀𝐈 Log teaches

Welcome to 𝐀𝐈 Log Teaches

I learned early on that trying to teach the same course twice is impossible. Heraclitus’s line about stepping in the same river twice applies. It is not the same course, and I am not the same teacher. My strategy to manage this problem follows the model laid out by the teachers in the University of Chicago Laboratory School made famous by John Dewey.¹ I treat every class as an experiment to be conducted in collaboration with my students.

I start things off with assignments and reading to get us going, and by the middle of the term, students are making most of the decisions about what and how we learn. I cheer from the sidelines and offer help, often joined by former students who give better advice than I do.

Currently, I teach a course on the history of higher education in the US, which is taken mostly by graduate students in a professional master’s program designed to prepare them for careers as higher education administrators.

My plans for this semester combine three distinct yet overlapping propositions, or if you prefer, hypotheses.

1. Understanding the historical contexts of educational institutions and practices is important to being an effective administrator in higher education.

2. Writing essays is a valuable way to understand history, ideas, and professional practice.

3. The best way to understand the educational value of LLMs and other AI tools is for students and teachers to explore their potential as learning tools together.

Number three fits with the aims of AI Log, and a few readers expressed interest in my teaching practice. So, I’ll be posting reports and updates about my class here, but will not be emailing this material to subscribers.

To use the jargon of the day, or maybe yesterday, I flip my classroom. Most of each class meeting involves student activities based on exploration and reading completed outside of class time. I don’t lecture, though I occasionally ask students to read something I have written before class.

To give you a sense of the course, here is an essay about Ben Franklin that introduces the critical framework the students and I explore during the first few weeks of class. Here is the preliminary syllabus I sent to the students registered a week prior to the first day.

Assuming my students are into the idea, I will post reflections about the course in a blog format (another experiment!) focused on our use of LLMs as a group brainstorming and collaboration tool. I invite you to use the comments to ask questions, especially critical questions about what we get up to this term, and share your own educational experiences and ideas.

1. Dewey is often credited with developing the ideas and methods of the School, but he was always clear that the teachers taught him. Here is how he described their work: “The teachers started with question marks, rather than with fixed rules, and if any answers have been reached, it is the teachers of the school who have supplied them.”