Tag Archives: higher education

Teaching with AI Book Coming Soon! PRE-ORDER NOW at JHUPbooks

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https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/53869/teaching-ai

I am doing my new AI workshop from coast to coast this fall and there is a new book on the way too: Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning that I am doing with C. Edward Watson. (We also co-wrote Teaching Naked Techniques together.)

With everything being written about AI, this is coming together quickly and it will be out from Johns Hopkins University Press in early 2024. It will be SHORT and PRACTICAL, but also hopefully relatively comprehensive (AI for research, AI at work, AI assignments, cheating, writing a policy etc.)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has is revolutionizing the way we learn, work and think. Its integration into classrooms and workplaces is already underway, impacting and challenging ideas about creativity, authorship, and education. We are hoping to help teachers discover how to harness and manage AI as a powerful teaching tool.  More to come.

From Professor to Cognitive Coach

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The next of my commentaries on education on WYPR

Learning is a bit like fitness. The person who does the work gets the benefit. 

So the best teacher is not necessarily the one who knows the most, in the same way that the best fitness coach is not the one who can DO the most push-ups. Watching someone else do push-ups, even intellectual push-ups, is not nearly as useful as doing push-ups yourself. 

While it is tempting to think that the best gym is the one with all the latest technology and the coach with the largest muscles, like knowledge, exercise equipment is only beneficial if you use it. You need to be motivated to get on and pedal faster. 

So a good fitness coach or teacher starts by asking: why are you here? Understanding what motivates you and what you already know (or fear) about a subject is essential. (If I don’t know you are afraid of water, my swim lessons will be much less effective.) 

A good fitness coach adds value because she understands YOU and can get YOU to do more push-ups. It is a design problem. Classes work the same way. If I can design structures and assignments that you find more motivating and engaging and you do more work, you will learn more. The role of the teacher as “professor” (with a focus on “professing” and conveying content) needs to be reimagined as more of a cognitive coach (with a focus on the process that will both inspire the student to do the work).

[This shift from more content to more process and how we can design better learning environments and schools is the subject of the new book I am working on this year:A New 3Rs: Using Behavioral Science to Prepare Students for a New Learning Economy due from Johns Hopkins University Press in 2020.]

Expanding Comfort with Discomfort

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Here is the text of my latest public commentary on WYPR: https://www.wypr.org/post/bowen-expanding-comfort-discomfort

Some tolerance for ambiguity is essential for learning, change, and growth. When we encounter a new idea, technology or method, it feels strange at first. That is almost the definition of new: something foreign to what we already know. 

Goucher College requires all students to study abroad. And when students ask where they should go to study abroad, the answer is simple. Go to the place that makes you as uncomfortable as you can stand. Learning to be comfortable with your discomfort is a key aspect of learning. All creative people and self-regulated learners have learned to expand their own comfort with discomfort.

If I reject all ideas that are foreign, I will miss opportunities to change. But if I accept all new ideas as better, I will simply substitute one set of assumptions for another. Learning is about creating a space, at least temporarily, for what might be true. 

Learning is also about making distinctions. All the music we hate sounds the same. OR more accurately, the less we know about something, the more it seems to all be the same. As we learn, we distinguish, and things become more complex. Knowledge is also always changing: new discoveries will change what we thought we already knew. 

Our tolerance for ambiguity is useful because it mirrors how knowledge is assessed and accumulated. The answer to most good questions, is “it depends.”