The power of clear writing: a student truancy case study
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The power of clear writing: a student truancy case study

Can clear communication get truant students to come back to class? According to the results of a recent experiment, a clearly written letter was 40% more effective than the school district’s usual gobbledegook communication. The truancy experiment To succeed, students generally need to attend classes. Legally, a school district must inform parents of truant students…

How bad is Harvard President Claudine Gay’s alleged plagiarism?

How bad is Harvard President Claudine Gay’s alleged plagiarism?

Harvard’s president Claudine Gay has now changed some passages in work she wrote to address charges of plagiarism. Harvard’s investigation concluded, “the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation. While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two…

Don’t teach writing. Teach the joy of writing.

Don’t teach writing. Teach the joy of writing.

The objective of teaching students to write is not to ensure they create content that can be graded. It is to get them to engage with language and storytelling. This is not a new story. Students learn arithmetic even though there are calculators and spreadsheets. They learn spelling even though there are spelling checkers. And…

Ethan Mollick required his students to use ChatGPT. Their experience is a model for the future.

Ethan Mollick required his students to use ChatGPT. Their experience is a model for the future.

Ethan Mollick, associate professor at Penn’s Wharton School, required his students to use the AI writing tool ChatGPT in his classes last semester. You should definitely check out his description of the experience; it’s full of real-world insights that are far more valuable than the noodlings of naysayers. Start with the intention to learn Unimaginative…

About that Vanderbilt post-shooting email: ChatGPT feigns sympathy poorly, but so do humans
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About that Vanderbilt post-shooting email: ChatGPT feigns sympathy poorly, but so do humans

Associate deans at the Vanderbilt University office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) sent an email to the whole Peabody College community after a man shot eight people at Michigan State University. The deans made the ill-considered choice to use ChatGPT to write the note. But regardless of that choice, such post-shooting sympathy notes are…

How realistic are universities’ plans to deal with ChatGPT?

How realistic are universities’ plans to deal with ChatGPT?

The New York Times published a piece regarding university policies and strategies for students using ChatGPT or similar tools to prepare coursework. For each strategy, I’ll assess how realistic it is and what the consequences might be. Articles like this one, as well as the policies they describe, are shortsighted, because AI text generation is…