How to Create Belonging to Drive Student Success
Jeff Selingo and I broke from our usual summer hiatus recording Future U. to join our season-long sponsor, Course Hero, at its annual summit to record a special bonus episode of Future U. The topic? Student belonging and diversity of faculty members.
The former is one of Jeff’s favorite topics: how to promote a true sense of belonging for all students on college campuses to boost student success and tackle the lack of engagement that persists among many college students.
On the latter, research has found that students of color who have educators of the same race or ethnicity are more likely to look to those teachers as role models and to then report greater effort in school on their behalf, among other outcomes. Yet the racial diversity of faculty has lagged the changing nature of the student population. As Jeff noted, “about three-quarters of post-secondary faculty members in the US are white compared with about half of undergraduates.”
To help us unpack both topics, we welcomed two faculty members to the podcast—Crystal White from the University of Memphis and Stephanie Speicher from Weber State University. From the get-go, the conversation was lively, as Crystal regaled us with the story of where her passion for teaching started. We then dug deep into a variety of topics—touching on the need for leadership, connection, relevance, and a culture of care in higher education. We concluded by opening the conversation up to the questions of the conference attendees.
Following the conversation, I moderated a panel on artificial intelligence at the Course Hero Summit that drew roughly 450 attendees on Zoom. Faculty members Anne Arendt from Utah Valley University and Renee Cummings from the University of Virginia joined me and Hannah Kapoor, a recent graduate from Princeton University, to delve into some of the big questions around the use of AI in higher education.
Here are four takeaways I had from the conversation:
First, here are two great resources on AI teaching tools that were shared:
Resources on ChatGPT/AI and Education by Dr. Heather M. Brown
Second, as Hannah pointed out, higher education should be a sandbox for AI: If we don't allow students to explore AI and learn how to utilize it, then they'll be hamstrung when they graduate and their employers are looking for skills with AI.
Third, when the conversation inevitably moved to focus on ethics and cheating, Renee pointed out that cheating tends not to be much of an issue for her students at the master’s level.
An attendee asked, “Where does cheating begin and learning end?”
And Anne pushed attendees to push students to ask themselves, “What is their intention for being in the class in the first place?”
Finally, Hannah stunned us all when she told us that when she was applying for a job, she received a question asking if her responses were from her or from a generative AI tool. Clearly colleges aren’t the only ones worried about honesty and plagiarism!
What if...
Schools could guarantee success for your child? For each child?
Learn More About Mastery-Based Learning Here
From Reopen to Reinvent
Book reviews of my most recent book, From Reopen to Reinvent, are still pouring in! Even though the book is now one-year old, according to Dwight Jones, who has served as superintendent of the Clark County School District in Las Vegas and Denver Public Schools, as well as the Colorado commissioner of education, the book makes for great summer reading for superintendents.
You can read his article, “Summer Reading for Superintendents: 3 Ways to Reimagine K–12 Education That Might Actually Work,” here. And check out the book here.
Dyslexia and AI
On the topic of reinventing K–12 schools, I joined Josh Clark, head of the Landmark School and chair of the International Dyslexia Association, to talk about AI, how it intersects with education, and what schools should be doing about it. Much of the conversation also focused on some of the major themes from From Reopen to Reinvent, but I loved Josh’s question about how I might rethink some of what I wrote in the book given the emergence of ChatGPT six months after the book was released.
Back in February, we released a Future U. episode that spoke in part to the importance of the staff on college campuses. In it, I spoke about some of the people who made Yale such a special place for me—people who weren't faculty members or my fellow students. One of them was Regina Starolis, who not only served as the executive assistant for Rick Levin during his presidency and while I was a student, but also for six presidents as far back as Kingman Brewster.
Regina passed away suddenly at age 80 in June.
I'll never forget her warm vivacious personality; her penchant for setting people up; her deep knowledge of Yale and its inner workings; and her ability to just get things done. I miss her, as do so many in the Yale community. Make sure you tell the people in your life how much you appreciate them.
As always, thank you for reading, writing, and listening.
Would you be interested in writing me a guest post about the future of A.I. in Education? It might be able to send some traffic to your Newsletter. DM me on LinkedIn if interested.