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This week, I listened back to the conversation with Alexis Redding about mental health in college and appreciated her practical, evidence-based suggestions for us. I share about Mike Caulfield's plot.fyi and his continued learning out loud with that endeavor. Finally, I wonder about something you wish someone had told you your first year of teaching. |
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Episode 641
Mental Health in College, with Alexis Redding
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This past week, developmental psychologist; Lecturer and Faculty Co-Chair of Higher Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Alexis Redding guided us in examining student mental health as a systemic issue that faculty can help to address. She offered practical ways to support student mental health surrounding how we craft our syllabi and the ways we establish deadlines in our classes.
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Mike Caulfield's Post About AI
Agents are portable but judgments are not
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One of my great joys in my PKM process is getting to follow others who are learning out loud. One such person is Mike Caulfield. He's been regularly blogging and creating videos about his process of creating plot.fyi, a database that helps you find other movies you might like, well beyond just a genre or ratings similarity.
Mike recently wrote a post about a new AI model and his continually-evolving prompts to get his database metadata working the way he wants it to... I realized as I read that I've been subscribing to a belief that he hasn't found to be the case: that it's easy to switch between AI tools, as long as you've got your local files and folders properly set up. Mike writes:
There’s been a lot of talk about how as the agent becomes the folder, the LLM becomes a commodity. You can easily switch between Claude and ChatGPT and whatever else. But you really can’t.
The majority of things you do in an enterprise require fairly stable decision patterns. You need to hone your classifications tie them to routing, pound on them to make sure they classify incoming elements correctly and route things where they need to be.
The agents are portable, but the judgment patterns are not! That means, like it or not, you will get locked into a model. And that has implications for the landgrab that we’re seeing now.
Even if you're not inclined to go deep in prompting the way that Mike has, I suggest visiting his 'film discovery for film lovers' site, Type in a movie you enjoyed and see the results it offers you.
plot.fyi
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Looking Up an Old Favorite
I used plot.fyi to search for the movie Parenthood
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I was thinking about the movie Parenthood the other day (wondering if it holds up, after all these years). Here are the results I received using Mike's plot.fyi:
Let me know if you try it out and discover any good movie suggestions.
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About Changing Our Minds
What's a word or phrase you've retired from your teaching vocabulary?
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Last week, I asked for examples of words that you've retired from your teaching vocabulary. |
Gary Meacher
I’ve retired the use of “Rigor” in academic circles. I’ve come to land on the word being overloaded and so divergent in meaning to the point of it being meaningless. Its a shortcut for a rite of passage, like things need to be challenging for challenge sake. Some teachers too often pull from their own experience like “it was hard for me, I did it, it should be hard for you”. Rigorous doesn't mean better. What even is rigor? And if we define that, what is this “lack of rigor” that we are fighting against?
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This week, I'm wondering:
What do you wish someone had told you in your first year of teaching?
Hit reply to let me know. I'll choose a few to include in the next Field Journal. Let me know in your reply if you prefer to remain anonymous, as otherwise, I'll assume it is ok to include your name.
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A Quote
About embarrassment and growth
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I wrote about saving this Doug Engelbart quote on LinkedIn (in preparation for an interview with Gardner Campbell; first one with him in over a decade):
The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the amount of embarrassment he can tolerate. |
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THIS WEEK ON TEACHING IN HIGHER ED
Dan Guberman joins me to talk about how our grading systems impact student motivation.
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Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast
Listen with us each week.
The Teaching in Higher Ed podcast brings together over 25,000 followers to conversations about the art and science of facilitating learning.
Get your ears on for the conversation. Listen through to the recommendations.
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Bonni Stachowiak
Committed to human flourishing through learning + teaching
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