Thus far in this blog's reboot, I have spent a good bit of time asserting that faculty need to change, adapt, and grow. But I have provided few examples and less advice on how we might do that.

In this post, I'd like to provide a place to start.

I'm an English Professor so my practical advice begins there. (Here?)

For many years, I have asked students to submit papers that required research. I spent time expansion how, where, and why to conduct that research.

With the arrival of Large Language Models like ChatGPT, I have begun to recognize I forgot to tell students something important about their research.

Here is what I am now telling them:

Whatever research they do, I can replicate. If I wanted to learn about their topics, I could go to the library and read the articles they have found. I can easily access what other scholars or journalists, or other experts have already said.

What I cannot do is find what they think about the topic.

That is what they bring to their assignments that ChatGPT never can.

And that is what I value most.

The rules of grammar and the skill of writing still matter, of course, but in an age when machines learn and compose, they need to be reminded of the central value of their voice and viewpoint -- even if they are imperfectly, partially formed.

But research should be there to support their thoughts — not replace them.

And my job is to help them better learn to express their own thoughts — not merely parrot the thoughts of others.

The challenge for all of us is that we cannot always be interested and sometimes we have to be more prescriptive so that students learn the skills they need to express themselves.. We get tired and overwhelmed. We can’t be there 100% of the time and we are often asked to care for more students than we should by administrators whose job it is to focus on the numbers.

But our students have to learn that we try.