AI's Impact on Learning with Marc Watkins

Worried about your students asking ChatGPT to write their essays for them? That's so 2023. Generative AI technology is changing fast, and now these tools have the potential to disrupt many different aspects of learning, from reading to notetaking to feedback. 

To help us explore those changes, this episode features a conversation with Marc Watkins, lecturer in writing and rhetoric and academic innovation fellow at the University of Mississippi. Marc's blog, Rhetorica, is a must read, and his workshops on teaching and AI for UM faculty have been incredibly helpful.

Marc has a new series on his blog called “Beyond ChatGPT” that explores the many ways that generative AI is affecting learning—far beyond the now-typical use of having ChatGPT write an essay on behalf of a student—and we talked about those changes to the learning landscape. 

Episode Resources

Rhetorica, Marc Watkins’ blog, https://marcwatkins.substack.com/

Marc Watkins’ website, https://marcwatkins.org/ 

ChatGPT 4o demo reels, https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/

Scarlett Johansson and OpenAI, https://www.npr.org/2024/05/20/1252495087/openai-pulls-ai-voice-that-was-compared-to-scarlett-johansson-in-the-movie-her 

Explainpaper, https://www.explainpaper.com/

Student Notetaking for Recall and Understanding, https://derekbruff.org/?p=2848 

Why Use Sketchnotes in the Classroom?, https://derekbruff.org/?p=2902 

Mike Sharples’ May 2022 essay on AI in teaching and learning, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2022/05/17/new-ai-tools-that-can-write-student-essays-require-educators-to-rethink-teaching-and-assessment/ 

AnswersAi, “School on Easy Mode,” https://answersai.com/ 

DevinAI, “The First AI Software Engineer,” https://www.cognition.ai/blog/introducing-devin 

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