In a podcast with Daisy Christodoulou on using AI to give students feedback on their essays, she found that using automation to grade essays and provide feedback saps students of motivation -- they want to know that someone they esteem (their prof) is reading their paper. If a computer is doing it, then why bother? Similarly, years ago while researching the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, I read about a conference where participants were asked what they want from their doctor. The vast majority of respondents indicated they want "to be heard." I think that what's we all want from our various relationships and personas: to be heard. By a person, not a computer.
Yes indeed. This point is not considered nearly enough. This isn't to say that the old way is automatically better (lots of profs already didn't have the time and effort to really engage with their students' essays) but the introduction of computers to automate the process pushes it to the point of absurdity.
My biggest hope is that the automation of these important activities will help us to see the ways that we've already been sliding down a slippery slope and give us the courage to rethink and renew the way we think about education.
This is a really important point. If we could somehow measure intrinsic motivation, we might be able to just ditch every other measure of learning. If students attain and maintain it, they'll almost certainly going be fine no matter who they are or what they choose to do. No amount of machine driven gamification can replace our more foundational need for connection with other humans. Not facsimiles of humans, actual ones. I think George from VoiceThread makes the point well here - https://voicethread.com/myvoice/thread/30077722/170121557/151193286/
Thanks Steve, this is thoughtful. I definitely think that focusing on intrinsic motivation is a good guiding principle (although we always need to be wary of Goodhart's Law). You might enjoy this piece I wrote a while back reflecting on Dan Pink's book Drive and thinking about how to incorporate some of his ideas into my practices. https://joshbrake.substack.com/p/leverage-intrinsic-motivation-to
Oh those are both great reads, thanks for sending them. I'm hopeful that the available science about the question of fostering motivation, makes its way into policy. There seems to be a lot that gets thrown overboard or lost on the way between the classroom and policymaking outcomes!
You probably already know more about this than I do but I'm a big fan of the UDL guidelines, including the process and outcome of the latest 3.0 Version. Those guidelines have always supported the cultivation, perhaps more accurately preservation(because humans are born motivated to learn) of learner agency and purpose.
We've recently published a Position Paper at Oxford University Press on this theme - the Human Connection: Motivation and Social Learning. In the paper, we recognise the ways that technology has helped many learners - including enhancing their motivation to learn. But we also need to remember (as you say) that human interaction has the biggest impact on our motivation to learn. In my area of language learning, the motivation to learn a skill for human interaction is clearly even more affected by this. Here's a link to the paper (sorry, it'll ask for your email address first): OUP The Human Connection: motivation and social learning
Hi Josh, I really enjoy your articles, precisely because of their humanity. I hope you don't mind offering a slightly different perspective on the problem.
Personally, I wish I had some more 'human' teachers. I do not recall a lot of them during my school career, only a small handful. As a result, I graduated and even got a PhD but still I didn't learn much in school.
I have learned a lot from books, tv, later the internet. Also from the first jobs that I got. I would have enjoyed AI as a great learning tool, to bounce my ideas and half-baked texts and lines of code off while I was teaching myself to program computers.
I think a lot of teachers are human, but they let their knowledge and the prescriptions of the curriculum come between them and the kids. Yes, they need a person, but most teachers are not educated to become persons in the classroom. They are taught knowledge and some pedagogy, also called PCK, pedagogical content knowledge, but with the emphasis on knowledge, not on pedagogy.
You lament the fact that most kids are not intrinsically motivated. Research suggests otherwise. I would dare to say that ALL kids are motivated. We need to tap into that motivation, and then see how we can steer that in the right direction, and let kids pick up the necessary knowledge and skills along the way.
Often, schools are organised the other way around. We offer kids knowledge that we think is necessary, without regard for their personal questions. It is only logical that in such a system most kids seem uninterested or unmotivated. But in my opinion, that doesn't do justice to the vast, great, enormous potential of all kids. We need to tap into that potential, and that is why kids need persons as teachers.
You can't teach someone anything against their will, that is just not possible. You can help a kid pass a test, but what the kid has learned then is not the subject matter, but probably something like how to cope with a system that doesn't care for their personal ideas and motivation. Some kids will become really good at it, pass all the tests, but in what way have they grown as a person?
The real threat in education is not the advent of AI, but the lack of understanding in teacher education and the educational systems what it really means to be a person, and what it means to see students as persons too and help them to become better ones.
Thanks Hartger, I appreciate this. I think you are exactly right. In many ways, I see the core issue that you've outlined here as a distinction between schooling and education. As we have sought to scale education, we've naturally given into solutions which can be scalable. AI in many ways is exposing the consequences of those choices.
I couldn't agree more that we need to reshape the goals of the classroom. We need to find ways to help teachers to bring their humanity to their students and to cultivate the humans in their care. It's not that knowledge isn't important, but just that it can't be the north star.
I appreciate the friendly amendment about intrinsic motivation and agree that all students have internal motivations. Unfortunately, like you said, we all too often fail to consider the full humanity and internal motivations of our students in the way that we teach. Even when we do, we don't adequately prioritize it.
We need to reinvigorate our understanding of education as a human endeavor designed to see our students in their humanity and help them to grow.
Thanks for reading and for the thoughtful comment!
We need teachers who are less tired and have the energy to be the inspiring examples and motivating mentors they should be. We took an actual problem for teachers (cognitive load) and figured out how to use AI to lower the exhaustion. Then the teachers can do what they do best. :)
In a podcast with Daisy Christodoulou on using AI to give students feedback on their essays, she found that using automation to grade essays and provide feedback saps students of motivation -- they want to know that someone they esteem (their prof) is reading their paper. If a computer is doing it, then why bother? Similarly, years ago while researching the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, I read about a conference where participants were asked what they want from their doctor. The vast majority of respondents indicated they want "to be heard." I think that what's we all want from our various relationships and personas: to be heard. By a person, not a computer.
Yes indeed. This point is not considered nearly enough. This isn't to say that the old way is automatically better (lots of profs already didn't have the time and effort to really engage with their students' essays) but the introduction of computers to automate the process pushes it to the point of absurdity.
My biggest hope is that the automation of these important activities will help us to see the ways that we've already been sliding down a slippery slope and give us the courage to rethink and renew the way we think about education.
This is a really important point. If we could somehow measure intrinsic motivation, we might be able to just ditch every other measure of learning. If students attain and maintain it, they'll almost certainly going be fine no matter who they are or what they choose to do. No amount of machine driven gamification can replace our more foundational need for connection with other humans. Not facsimiles of humans, actual ones. I think George from VoiceThread makes the point well here - https://voicethread.com/myvoice/thread/30077722/170121557/151193286/
Thanks Steve, this is thoughtful. I definitely think that focusing on intrinsic motivation is a good guiding principle (although we always need to be wary of Goodhart's Law). You might enjoy this piece I wrote a while back reflecting on Dan Pink's book Drive and thinking about how to incorporate some of his ideas into my practices. https://joshbrake.substack.com/p/leverage-intrinsic-motivation-to
The focus on intrinsic motivation is one reason that I am so enthusiastic about alternative grading techniques like specifications grading. https://joshbrake.substack.com/p/alternative-grading-cultivates-intrinsically
Thanks for the link to the video too. VoiceThread looks like a cool platform!
Oh those are both great reads, thanks for sending them. I'm hopeful that the available science about the question of fostering motivation, makes its way into policy. There seems to be a lot that gets thrown overboard or lost on the way between the classroom and policymaking outcomes!
You probably already know more about this than I do but I'm a big fan of the UDL guidelines, including the process and outcome of the latest 3.0 Version. Those guidelines have always supported the cultivation, perhaps more accurately preservation(because humans are born motivated to learn) of learner agency and purpose.
Thanks again for sharing those posts!
We've recently published a Position Paper at Oxford University Press on this theme - the Human Connection: Motivation and Social Learning. In the paper, we recognise the ways that technology has helped many learners - including enhancing their motivation to learn. But we also need to remember (as you say) that human interaction has the biggest impact on our motivation to learn. In my area of language learning, the motivation to learn a skill for human interaction is clearly even more affected by this. Here's a link to the paper (sorry, it'll ask for your email address first): OUP The Human Connection: motivation and social learning
ah, the link didn't come through - here's the url to paste into your browser:
https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/expert/?itm_source=oup-elt-site&itm_medium=central-promo&itm_campaign=ww-tl-SDPD-pd-expert&cc=gb&selLanguage=en&mode=hub
Thanks Ben, I'll check it out!
Hi Josh, I really enjoy your articles, precisely because of their humanity. I hope you don't mind offering a slightly different perspective on the problem.
Personally, I wish I had some more 'human' teachers. I do not recall a lot of them during my school career, only a small handful. As a result, I graduated and even got a PhD but still I didn't learn much in school.
I have learned a lot from books, tv, later the internet. Also from the first jobs that I got. I would have enjoyed AI as a great learning tool, to bounce my ideas and half-baked texts and lines of code off while I was teaching myself to program computers.
I think a lot of teachers are human, but they let their knowledge and the prescriptions of the curriculum come between them and the kids. Yes, they need a person, but most teachers are not educated to become persons in the classroom. They are taught knowledge and some pedagogy, also called PCK, pedagogical content knowledge, but with the emphasis on knowledge, not on pedagogy.
You lament the fact that most kids are not intrinsically motivated. Research suggests otherwise. I would dare to say that ALL kids are motivated. We need to tap into that motivation, and then see how we can steer that in the right direction, and let kids pick up the necessary knowledge and skills along the way.
Often, schools are organised the other way around. We offer kids knowledge that we think is necessary, without regard for their personal questions. It is only logical that in such a system most kids seem uninterested or unmotivated. But in my opinion, that doesn't do justice to the vast, great, enormous potential of all kids. We need to tap into that potential, and that is why kids need persons as teachers.
You can't teach someone anything against their will, that is just not possible. You can help a kid pass a test, but what the kid has learned then is not the subject matter, but probably something like how to cope with a system that doesn't care for their personal ideas and motivation. Some kids will become really good at it, pass all the tests, but in what way have they grown as a person?
The real threat in education is not the advent of AI, but the lack of understanding in teacher education and the educational systems what it really means to be a person, and what it means to see students as persons too and help them to become better ones.
I thoroughly enjoyed the latest edition of this podcast https://free-range-humans.simplecast.com that also discusses this problem.
Thanks Hartger, I appreciate this. I think you are exactly right. In many ways, I see the core issue that you've outlined here as a distinction between schooling and education. As we have sought to scale education, we've naturally given into solutions which can be scalable. AI in many ways is exposing the consequences of those choices.
I couldn't agree more that we need to reshape the goals of the classroom. We need to find ways to help teachers to bring their humanity to their students and to cultivate the humans in their care. It's not that knowledge isn't important, but just that it can't be the north star.
I appreciate the friendly amendment about intrinsic motivation and agree that all students have internal motivations. Unfortunately, like you said, we all too often fail to consider the full humanity and internal motivations of our students in the way that we teach. Even when we do, we don't adequately prioritize it.
We need to reinvigorate our understanding of education as a human endeavor designed to see our students in their humanity and help them to grow.
Thanks for reading and for the thoughtful comment!
Thanks Josh, also appreciate your response! Keep up the good work!
We need teachers who are less tired and have the energy to be the inspiring examples and motivating mentors they should be. We took an actual problem for teachers (cognitive load) and figured out how to use AI to lower the exhaustion. Then the teachers can do what they do best. :)