Newsletters and GIFTs

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated April 14, 2025.

Part of our strategic plan is to help more students make the most out of their transition college by trying to be more “student ready.” From an academic perspective, part of being student ready means avoiding erroneous assumptions about skills we think students should have when they first set foot on campus.

In the United States, our K-12 school system has become increasingly focused on ensuring that students learn as much subject matter as possible and graduate high school on time. These goals have sometimes been accomplished through increasing structure, leniency on assignment deadlines, test re-takes, and lower grading standards. Overall, GPAs and graduation rates in US high schools have increased while standardized test scores have declined (Bowden et al., 2023).

So we need to meet students where they’re at in terms of their ability to manage their work and their lives. But we can’t let them stay there. We are not preparing our students to go forth into the world to perform a series of small, simple tasks that can be accomplished whenever they get around to them. I’m going to share some ideas for how we might construct lower division and upper division courses differently in ways that help students thrive both while they are here and long after they graduate.

Breaking a Project into Individual Steps

100/200 Level Classes: 

The first time a student completes a particular type of project, they probably need the instructor to break the project into the major tasks that will comprise it. They should probably be required to submit their work on each step and get feedback on their progress. At this level, it is probably best if the instructor sets deadlines for each step.

300/400 Level Classes: 

If you know your students have completed a similar project in the past, consider having them identify and describe each step they will need to take. You might ask them to write out their breakdown of the project for feedback from you or a group of their peers. In addition to dividing the project into steps, students could give themselves deadlines for each step with the final deadline decided by you.

Keeping Track of Tasks and Deadlines

100/200 Level Classes: 

New students are probably coming from an environment where they got a lot of reminders about when things were due and when tests were happening. Students with the most challenges to adjusting to college (e.g., first generation students, some students with disabilities) are particularly likely to benefit from reminders. Consider reminding students not only about when things are due, but when they should be working on things such as papers and studying for tests.

300/400 Level Classes: 

Consider backing off some on in-class/email reminders in whatever way makes sense for your class. Make sure that students know that you will not be reminding them of certain assignments or events. Ask them to put significant dates into their planner or Google Calendar and communicate to you that they have done so. You can encourage them to set electronic reminders for themselves about when they should start working on certain tasks.

Seeking Help

100/200 Level Classes: 

Keep a closer eye on these students. Your threshold of concern for checking in should be relatively lower. First generation and international students may be particularly reluctant to ask for your time, even when you say how much you want to help everyone. You may need to be the one to initiate a conversation. Students need frequent opportunities to complete small stakes assessments so that you can closely monitor their progress. That also means that you need to remember to check on how they are doing on things like electronically graded quizzes, especially early in the class (hem hem, Dr. Williamson).

300/400 Level Classes: 

Consider letting (most) juniors and seniors struggle a bit more before you initiate an attempt to help them. Knowing when to ask for help and overcoming potential embarrassment associated with doing so are important skills. You might give the class some selectively timed advice about how a student could decide whether to seek assistance. Ultimately, there will still be some students for whom you are the one to initiate a check-in.

Setting Meaningful Goals

100/200 Level Classes: 

Before setting goals, students often need some serious reflection on what they might get out of your class that would matter to them. First-year students in particular will probably need some help imagining what their goals could be. Your learning objectives for the class are a very good start. It’s also possible that the most meaningful goal for a given student might be unrelated to the content of your course (e.g., to overcome some social anxiety, to learn something more about themselves, to get off academic probation.) I doubt many students really have a sense of what they might gain from your class on the first day. You might wait to ask students about their goals until you’re a month in. Purdue has a nice page with more details on goal setting and worksheet you could use or adapt. It might also be interesting to ask students at the end of each class the most important thing they took away from the course and what they did that helped them gain that benefit. You could share some of this feedback with future students.

300/400 Level Classes: 

Juniors and seniors might have a little better idea of why certain course-related goals might be meaningful to them, but it’s so easy (for all of us) to just go through the motions. You might encourage students to consider growth and learning as a part of their “vocation.” How could some of the time and energy they devote to the class help them become a bit more of the kind of person they want to be? In addition to asking them what they want to gain from the class, you could also ask what they want to give to the class. What unique perspectives, experiences, abilities do they have that their classmates could benefit from?

Working with Ambiguity

100/200 Level Classes: 

Students new to college benefit from a high level of clarity. This tends to be particularly true for first generation and international students who are less likely to share our assumptions of what should happen when completing a particular assignment. Sharing a descriptive rubric is a nice way to show students what you value most from their work. You can also have students work with examples of whatever they are producing. Assignments should also be designed with a developmentally appropriate level of complexity. If too many students fail to understand an assignment despite your efforts to clarify your instructions, it may be too complicated.

300/400 Level Classes: 

More advanced students need opportunities to climb Bloom’s taxonomy, to apply what they have learned in less familiar contexts and to use their knowledge and skills to create something original. It’s still important to communicate well defined criteria by which you will assess how well students have met your learning objectives. However, those criteria can be broader to allow students the kind of latitude they will be working with after they graduate. To encourage students to take risks, consider how they can demonstrate learning through the process of their assignment rather than the outcome alone. Normalize the trial and error process in your verbal and written instructions and build time for that process into your expectations for the assignment.

Putting It All Together

Prepare students for how your expectations for your upper level class will be different from your expectations for a class at the 100/200 level. Explain the philosophy behind those differences. Re-emphasize those differences at every relevant opportunity. Broadly speaking, students in upper level classes need two things:

• An opportunity to do more things for themselves (i.e. things the instructor or the structure of the class do not do for them.)
• Guidance on how to do those things.

It is nothing less than amazing to see how our students transform during their time with us. We can maximize that transformation if we understand their abilities well enough to give them the support and challenges they need.

Bowden, A. Brooks, Viviana Rodriguez, and Zach Weingarten. (2023). The Unintended Consequences of Academic Leniency. (EdWorkingPaper: 23-836). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/m6sa-m733

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated April 14, 2025.

I’m guessing many of you are getting ready to give or give back the first exam in your classes. I don’t know if you have had my experience, but there have been times when I grade a class of exams and think WHAT HAPPENED?

Even when most students do well, there are often students who really struggle. Learning why students had difficulty learning the material for a test can help them and you with preparing for the next one. Here is a Google Form with ideas for questions you can ask your students after they review their first exam. If you click the USE TEMPLATE button in the top right, a copy will be saved to your Google Drive.

A couple thoughts on using the survey.

• Please feel free to adjust the questions to make them more applicable to your class!
• My goal in creating the survey was to ask about specific behaviors that could be repeated or changed. You might take the same approach when writing your own questions.
• Asking the students to complete the survey in class will significantly increase participation in this activity.
• You could follow the survey with a bit more reflection time in which students think and write about how they could make the changes they need to make in order to improve. If you take that approach, you might actually start by asking students to reflect on why doing well in the class is important to them before asking them how they might do better.
• You can also share the results of the survey with the class and point out student behaviors that are associated with better grades.

This Google Form is set to show the following confirmation message:

Would you like me to follow up with you? We could talk about specific strategies for learning the material in this class. We could arrange a time to review the next unit's material before the next exam. Please send me an email and we can figure out how to get you ready for the next test!

You can also request tutoring through the Learning Commons: https://www.augustana.edu/learning-commons/tutoring

Need help with study strategies, time management, procrastination, or note taking? Academic coaching can be really beneficial! https://www.augustana.edu/learning-commons/coaching

You can edit or delete this message by going to Settings>Presentation>Confirmation Message>Edit. If you like the idea, it would be great to add a link with your email address!

Knowing what to do is only half the battle, and making changes can be hard. However, when students have ideas about how to improve and see that certain approaches are working for their classmates, they are more likely to put in the effort for their next exam.

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated October 24, 2024.

Do you know how effective your advising is? It’s a big part of our job and students often look to us as advisors for navigating their academic careers and preparing for life after Augustana. Learning our advising strengths and areas for growth is important both for improving in our advising roles and in making the case for our effectiveness when we come up for review.

How do you hope that your advisees will grow through working with you?

Before you assess your effectiveness as an advisor, you have to decide what kinds of growth you hope to effect. What are your advising learning objectives? When developing your advising learning outcomes, be mindful of the time you have to devote to advising and the energy most students are willing to devote to the objectives you are considering. Focus on objectives you can actively pursue with some plan or process.

At a minimum, you should pursue objectives like:

• Students will understand the requirements of their major(s) and the core curriculum and select classes to meet those requirements.
• Students will learn resources available to them on campus and the services those offices provide.

You might also view your advising relationship as an opportunity to develop students’ personal and academic habits:

• Students will evaluate their academic habits, distinguish helpful from unhelpful habits, identify more helpful practices where appropriate, and implement those more helpful approaches.
• Students will take increasing levels of responsibility for their education and career plans.

You might decide to focus some of your time with your advisees on a deeper appreciation for the value of various aspects of their college experience:

• Students will understand the philosophy behind the core curriculum and be able to articulate the value of understanding the world through different perspectives and different methods of inquiry.
• Students will understand the college wide learning outcomes, intentionally cultivate those abilities and values, and be able to articulate their strengths and areas for growth.
• Students will pursue co-curricular experiences that are meaningful to them and be able to articulate the value of those experiences for their long-term aspirations.
• Students will understand connections between ideas and approaches from classes across different academic disciplines.

You might consider objectives that reflect the concept of vocation:

• Students will identify their strengths, challenges, and passions and be able to articulate the value of their personal characteristics for their long-term aspirations.
• Students will learn how their strengths and passions can be used to meet the needs of others.

You might consider objectives that focus on themes of diversity, equity, and inclusion:

• Students will appreciate their unique passions, identities, life experiences, and cultural backgrounds and understand how those attributes can help them connect with and contribute to their communities.

Your advising learning objectives should guide the kinds of questions you ask when assessing your advising. It is also important to recognize that students are much more likely to progress in these areas when you show that you respect them and care about them. Assessing the relational component of advising is important too.

When you write questions for an assessment, try to ask the questions in such a way that the answers you get give you concrete ideas about what you are doing well and how you might change. Here is a template of an advising assessment survey. If you click the ‘USE TEMPLATE’ button at the top right of your screen, it will save a copy for you to your Google Drive. Please feel free to edit, add, and delete questions!

When you interpret your results, consider how your advising philosophy might shape what objectives are pursued with which students. You probably try to help all of your students progress in some objectives. Other objectives may be more relevant for some students than others.

As with teaching, improving as an advisor is a life-long process. Well collected feedback from students can be very helpful. The learning objectives and advising questions above are shared with an abundance of humility. I’m sure that many of you will think of ways to add to and improve upon them! In collecting examples of objectives and questions I was reminded of how much we help each other by sharing ideas and resources. I would like to thank Jane Simonsen, Sarah Lashley, Scott Gehler, Mike Scarlett, Joanna Short, Mamata Marme, and the faculty of the Psychology department whose work I drew from in putting together this newsletter. I also drew from NACADA’s page on advising assessment which is very helpful for anyone interested in a deeper dive: https://nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Clearinghouse/Assessment.aspx

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated October 25, 2024.

Last year, one of our faculty exploration groups reviewed research and recommendations on inclusive mentoring of undergraduate researchers. AAC&U considers undergraduate research a high impact practice because it promotes active exploration, requires problem solving, develops transferable skills, and fosters close relationships between students and faculty. However, students from marginalized groups participate in research at lower rates than their peers. It takes informed and intentional efforts from faculty to facilitate research experiences for marginalized students. 

The resources assembled by the FEG are now located on their Moodle page. Some key takeaways are highlighted here:

Reducing Barriers to Participating in Research

• The idea of conducting research can sound unusual and intimidating to many students. It’s helpful to promote and explain research experiences during classes and advising meetings. Relying on students to seek out the experience is likely to exacerbate disparities in participation.
• Many students need to work to support themselves and don’t have “extra” time to participate in research. We can make research participation more feasible by offering paid opportunities or compensating students with course credit to offset their academic workload. (More on funding below.)
• Marginalized students may not have the highest GPAs. They may have had to deal with especially difficult stressors, work obligations, and/or under cultivated academic skills. The selection process for undergraduate researchers should weigh interest and enthusiasm in addition to class performance to recognize the strengths of all students.

Improving the Research Experience

• Students with marginalized identities may be especially likely to question their ability to contribute and whether they belong as part of the team. Make sure to point out specific things each student has done well both privately and in front of the other student researchers.
• Participating in research can play a highly beneficial role in students’ vocational development, but different students have different needs and goals. Spend time getting to know each student individually and advising them on how to make the most out of their research experience.
• Students may not recognize the unique perspectives provided by their identity, cultural background, and life experiences. Encourage them to make connections between their lives and the research questions central to your lab. Try to do this without making too many assumptions about the student.
• Not all students have the same understanding of how quickly things should be done. Some students have extensive and possibly unpredictable demands on their time outside the classroom. To avoid frustration for you and your students, provide clear expectations for deadlines on tasks and how quickly they must respond to emails.
• Students with marginalized identities may be ignored or mistreated by other members of the research team. Check in with each student and devote time and energy to developing relationships with them so that they will feel comfortable telling you if things aren’t going well. Arrange opportunities to observe the team in action to monitor how they interact. Proactively coach all students on how to work constructively together.
• Students may not independently recognize all of the benefits of the research experience. Make time in your meetings to talk about things like graduate school and how students can give compelling descriptions of what they learned doing research in personal statements, cover letters, and interviews. Asking them to write reflections on their experiences can both reinforce their own learning and help you write them letters of recommendation.
• Different students have different background knowledge and organizational skills. It may take more time and emotional energy to nurture the capabilities of some students than others. However, the extra effort required for mentoring some students may have a bigger impact on their lives than the impact for students who accomplish things more easily. It’s also important to recognize the strengths of each individual student.

Funding from Augustana's Student Research Committee

• To pay for student research supplies
  • Student Research Grant
• To pay students for research with a faculty member during the academic year
  • Student-Faculty Academic Partnership
• To pay students for research over the summer
  • Summer Research Fellowship (project that is generated by the student)
  • Student-Faculty Academic Partnership (student helping faculty with their summer research)
• To support a student presentation or attendance at a professional conference
  • Student Presentation at a Professional Conference
  • Student/Faculty Attendance of a Professional Conference

For resources and links expanding on these ideas and more, please do visit the FEG’s Moodle page. There’s lots of great stuff there! Special thanks to Shara Stough, Ann Perreau, Rupa Gordon, Nathan Frank, Mariano Magalhaes, Reuben Heine, Garrett Traylor, Dan Corts, and Allie Barringer for their work on this resource!

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated May 1, 2024.

Our students face so many challenges as they pursue their education here at Augustana. As faculty, we are well prepared to help them understand our course material and develop the skills we are teaching in class. However, many of our students’ challenges are not purely academic. How should we respond when students disclose that their mental health is hindering their performance in our classes?

What we don’t have to do

The concern faculty have about engaging students in conversations about their mental health often comes from a sense that engaging in that conversation means taking on the responsibility of solving the student’s problems. Let’s start by taking some pressure off these conversations by identifying things that faculty don’t have to do.

• Give advice for nonacademic problems – When we see someone in distress, we naturally want to help them feel better. We remember solutions that have worked for us or people we know, and want to share those solutions. Unfortunately, we as faculty rarely know the student or their circumstances well enough to know if our solutions will be helpful. Moreover, many people in distress often need time and emotional support before they are ready to start thinking about how to solve their problems.
• Teach coping skills – Again, it’s usually hard to know what coping skills would be helpful for a specific student with their specific circumstances. Asking too much about a students’ circumstances can put both the student and the faculty member in an uncomfortable situation.
• Break course policies – Being a compassionate person does not necessarily mean giving students the kind of leniency that they want. Having a stated policy for what will happen when students cannot meet a requirement due to a mental health episode is important. Instructors must also provide students with the accommodations to which they are entitled through our Office of Disability Services. However, not all life difficulties will merit changes that might make students’ lives easier. You might end up saying something like:
  • “You’re definitely going through a lot right now. [List the student stressors.] I can understand why it’s been so difficult to keep up with everything. It’s really important to me to be as consistent as I can with everybody in class, so I am going to [follow course policy]. I do also want to help you do as well as you can with the rest of the class. Here’s what you can do to get back on track…”

What faculty can do

As instructors and advisors, we do not need to take on the role of mental health counselors. However, some of the essential practices of good listening are well within the purview of our roles.

• Listen Non-judgmentally – Our minds often jump to solutions for the students’ problems, judgements about their unhelpful behaviors, and justifications for any of our actions that the student might not like. Try to let go of those kinds of thoughts and give your full attention to what the student is saying and how they are saying it. Giving the student some of your time is a gift that many of them will truly appreciate.
• Empathize – Before you can communicate to the student that you have a sense of what they have been going through, it’s important to allow yourself to feel a little bit of what they are feeling. Try looking at their situation the way they perceive it (even if you have a different perspective) and consider how you would feel if you were in their shoes.
• Express Compassion – Allow your concern to come across through your facial expression and tone of voice. Put what the student is telling you into your own words.
  • "It’s been hard to focus on school with so much going on.”
  • “You’ve been feeling pretty lonely recently.”
  • “You’ve really been trying your best, and it’s frustrating that you’re struggling so much.”
  • “You’re feeling lost and you’re not sure if you can make things any better.”
• Develop a Plan – Help the student with what steps they need to take academically and when they need to take them. Send the student an email of the plan so you both have a record you can refer to.
• Refer – Counseling Services can help students with their mental health. Academic Coaching can help students with many of the academic consequences of mental health difficulties such as problems with time management, motivation, procrastination, and test anxiety.
• Let Go – Sometimes you will need to take action after the student leaves your office (e.g., raising a starfish flag, contacting the Dean of Students, setting yourself a reminder to check in with the student). It’s also important to disengage from the thoughts and feelings generated by your conversation to re-focus on the other important parts of your day. Finding ways to let go of your students’ difficulties does not mean that you no longer care about what they are going through. It’s about trying to allocate your emotional energy to all of the parts of life that are important to you.

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated October 4, 2025.

Learning to use generative AI chatbots effectively is important for our students. However, when we ask students to write, our primary goal is often to get them to think. For some assignments, their writing is more important as evidence of their thinking and learning than it is as a way to communicate a message to an audience. If we want them to do that thinking and learning outside the classroom, we need ways to discourage them from outsourcing their thinking to an AI chatbot.

The structure of your class and assignments can encourage honest academic work.

• Explain how the knowledge and skills developed through the assignment will be important to students’ performance in your class and their life going forward.
• Scaffold major assignments so that students submit multiple steps in the process for feedback.
• Allow students some freedom in personalizing their assignments to increase the likelihood that they will find the assignment meaningful and decrease the relevance of generic ideas.
• Ensure that students have a manageable workload from the other components of the course when major deadlines are approaching.
• Assignments that draw heavily on in-class writing or in-class discussions are harder to fake with generative AI.

Unfortunately, some students will use AI dishonestly on even the best designed assignments. The most compelling approach to AI detection that I have learned about is to review the version history of a Google Doc to look for suspicious insertions of text. Here is how you can use that approach:

1. Students need to know you will be examining their version history and that they should do all of their writing in the Google Doc shared with you. For example:
   In order to understand your writing process and ensure that the writing you submit is your own, you must do all of your writing in a single Google Doc. You may not copy and paste any text from outside the document.
2. You and the students must both have editing access to the Google Doc. You could create documents for each student and share them one-by-one. You could also allow students to create their own documents and share them with you. Either way, the sharer needs to grant editing privileges to the recipient.
3. Consider downloading a copy of the document just after the deadline to prevent students from receiving credit for work completed after the deadline when that is not your intention.
4. As you read, keep an eye out for warning signs of AI plagiarism:
   • Odd inaccuracies in factual information
   • Fabricated sources
   • Writing that is bland and superficial but smooth and uses high-level vocabulary
   • Odd violations of the assignment’s instructions
   • Substantial differences in style, grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, complexity of ideas, etc. from the student’s previous writing assignments
   • Running your assignments through an AI chatbot is the best way to familiarize yourself with the kinds of responses artificial intelligence is likely to give.
5. If you suspect plagiarism from AI, you can check the version history of the document by going to “File”, “Version History”, and “See Version History.”
6. Depending on the expected length of the assignment, a document with genuine student writing should have many versions with text gradually added in. At the risk of embarrassing myself, I will share a draft of this newsletter for you to check its version history. Text that is plagiarized from AI is likely to appear all at once because it would have been pasted in. It is also likely to look very polished right when it appears.
7. There is no hard and fast rule for how much text should be associated with any one version. One approach you might take would be to examine differences from one version to another in the documents from the other students in the class to get a sense of what is typical.
8. If you have strong evidence of AI plagiarism, consider meeting with the student before reporting an honor code violation. Tell them you suspect they used AI inappropriately and you would like to understand the process they used to complete the assignment. Voice compassion for any confusion or difficulties the student was dealing with, but trust your best judgment in deciding whether academic dishonesty occurred. Ensure that you have a robust explanation for why certain uses of AI are forbidden for your assignment so that this conversation can be a learning experience for the student.

Students can absolutely get around this detection method by generating what they want from the AI chatbot and gradually typing it in with mistakes they later correct. Like with any measure we take to increase academic honesty, we are trying to reduce AI plagiarism rather than eliminate it.

https://www.eastcentral.edu/free/ai-faculty-resources/using-google-docs-to-detect-ai/

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated May 9, 2024.

Advantages of Practice Testing

Practice testing (also called retrieval practice) is one of the best ways to prepare for an exam. When students repeatedly re-read their notes, they often convince themselves that they know a piece of information when they merely recognize it as familiar. When students test themselves, they realize what they don’t know when they aren’t able to provide a correct response. 

The process of trying to think of an answer to a practice test question can also help students better remember that answer in the future. When we try to retrieve a piece of information from our memory, we think through what we know that might help us remember that information. The process of searching through our memories strengthens connections between the new information and existing knowledge and experiences. Those connections increase the likelihood that the new information will be retained and increase the ease with which it can be accessed during an exam (Roediger & Butler, 2011).

Strategies for Implementing Practice Testing

• Incorporate frequent, low-stakes quizzes; in class or online
• Have students write tests questions based on their notes, bring them to class, and test each other
• Provide study guides that take the form of questions similar to the questions you will include on your exam
• Encourage students to use practice testing while studying (e.g., flashcards, online quiz tools)

Feedback

Research has also shown that students learn more when they are informed whether their answer is correct and, if necessary, what the correct answer is (Roediger & Butler, 2011). Such feedback can also help students avoid rehearsing misconceptions or incorrect answers.

Practice Testing with ChatGPT

With some guidance from you, the instructor, students can use AI chatbots like ChatGPT to practice answering questions and get immediate feedback. Here is a short example of a prompt for students to give ChatGPT based on a study guide from an introductory psychology class.

Please test me on the following questions one by one.

1. Define the term ‘transduction’.
2. Describe the difference between sensation and perception.
3. Explain what sensory adaptation is and how it happens.
4. Define ‘absolute threshold’ and ‘difference threshold’.
5. Explain the difference between ‘selective attention’ and ‘divided attention’.

After I give each answer please tell me if I am correct and explain why. After you give me your explanation, ask me the next question.

This is the transcript from a student’s interaction with that prompt.

Important Notes of Caution

• Tell your students that ChatGPT can get things wrong. This exercise is more like studying with a smart classmate than asking questions of a professor.
• You could have students take a practice test with ChatGPT and then bring particularly suspicious answers to class.
• Chatbots do not know how you present things in class or your personal definitions of terms.
  • For instance, there are different ways to break down the steps of the scientific method. When I asked ChatGPT, “Describe the four steps of the scientific method,” it gave slightly different steps than the ones I present in class.
  • It can’t answer a question like, “What is Dr. Williamson’s preferred definition of psychopathology and why?”
• There are also privacy concerns involved in using AI chatbots. We don’t really know what these companies are doing with the things we type into them.

With those considerations in mind, ChatGPT appears potentially useful as a study tool. If you and students try it, please share your experiences!

Roediger, H. L., & Butler, A. C. (2011). The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(1), 20-27.

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated February 17, 2025.

Have you ever uploaded one of your course readings to ChatGPT? You can do that with the + button.

I tried uploading one of my readings and pasted in the questions I ask students to answer before coming to class.

See the full transcript here.

Predictably, ChatGPT answered all of the questions correctly. If you look at the transcript, you can see that language and formatting would be very unusual for an actual student–even though I asked ChatGPT to “Write the answers like you are a college student.” The language and formatting are strong indications that the answers were generated by AI. However, those indicators were mostly eliminated simply by adding “Write all of the answers in paragraph form with as simple language as possible” to the prompt. See that transcript here.

Before you sink into a pit of despair, it’s worth noting that most students won’t do this most of the time.

• Some won’t cheat because it violates their sense of personal integrity.
• Some will be genuinely interested in the reading.
• Some will be motivated to do well on future assessments and contribute to class discussions.
• Others simply won’t know how (yet).

Unfortunately, not all students have such moral compunctions and many students who are usually honest get tempted when they are short on time. Some solutions to this problem are simple and low tech.

• You can administer reading checks in class.
• You can assign course packs in coordination with the bookstore that include paper copies of readings and worksheets for students to complete by hand.

You can also use ChatGPT to your advantage. Here is a prompt that students could use with the same article to generate an interactive quiz.

I am a college student. Please help me learn the information in the attached article by asking me questions that test my ability to recall, understand, and apply the information in the attached article. Ask your questions one at a time. After I answer the question, tell me if my answer is mostly correct or mostly incorrect. If my answer is mostly correct, elaborate on my answer to help me understand things even better. If my answer is mostly incorrect, do not give me the right answer. Instead ask me another question to help me find the right answer for myself. If I get the answer incorrect a second time, explain the right answer to me. Ask me a total of seven questions.

A transcript of a student trying out this prompt may be found here.

Students can share their conversations with you by creating a link to that conversation or downloading it as a PDF.

A bigger question we need to sort out is, “When is it okay for students to use AI to  extract information from sources?” In our teaching and scholarship, we often skim through sources looking for some particular point. However, we did not become experts in our field without some deep reading and thinking. We probably need to help students learn when an AI-generated summary is sufficient and when careful reading is more important–and possibly even more enjoyable!

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated May 12, 2025.

Over the past year, I’ve been grappling with the question, “What should our students know about AI by the time they graduate?” In order to make that question a bit more manageable, I tried to think about what a student in my field, specifically, might benefit from knowing about AI. Through some research and experimentation, I put together this guide.

Possible Roles of AI in Conceiving, Conducting, and Disseminating Research

If the guide looks valuable to you, I would love your feedback on additions and refinements that could make it better. My hope is that it can be a living resource for those of us who do this kind of research as part of our scholarship and with our students.

Although the actual process and prompts will have less relevance for many of your disciplines, I encourage you to consider the general framework of the guide for the kinds of work students in your majors will go on to do:

• What are the goals of this process?
• How is this process typically performed?
• What could be some advantages of using AI for this process?
• How could someone write prompt(s) for using AI for this process?
• What are some disadvantages of using AI for this process?
• How could someone maximize the advantages of AI while compensating for its limitations?

I’ll also share some thoughts and experiences that have come from assembling the guide and using parts of it with students.

• AI should be treated as a peer on your team, not as an all-knowing expert or as an assistant who will simply do things for you. This message is very important because the advertising for many AI programs promises that those programs will do things so that you don’t have to do them. In reality, it is essential that output from AI is critically evaluated before dissemination.
• I remember a conversation with one of our emeritus faculty in psychology, Ruth Ann Johnson, about teaching in the age of the internet. She said that a great education does not mean knowing the right answers but instead means asking the right questions. That sentiment holds even more truth in the age of AI. Our students need to learn how to ask the right questions. Well-informed questions yield much better output than poorly informed questions. If you ask AI to perform a complex task without telling it how to do it, it will probably leave steps out. Without training and experience, it is not possible to critically evaluate the quality of AI output.
• As they are learning, students will need examples of how to write prompts that help them in the process they are working on. Ask students to reflect on what is happening in the prompt. What can they learn from how the prompt is working about how they can use AI chatbots for other purposes?
• Ultimately, students benefit the most when they are learning how to write their own prompts. Consider an assignment for which students write their own prompts based on what they have learned in class or from the instructions for a project. Maybe something like, “Based on chapter six of your textbook and your notes on our lecture on quantitative measurement, write five prompts you could use with an AI chatbot to review how clearly and thoroughly you have described the measures in your paper.”
• Train students to view the suggested prompts as the start of a conversation. They will often need to explain how initial responses are inaccurate, clarify their request, and or ask for elaboration on certain points. It may even be best to try over again, rephrasing the initial prompt to get a more relevant response. There were many times when my first attempts at the prompts in this document didn’t work. I sometimes found it helpful to reply back with something like. “I was hoping that you would… Please show me how I could rewrite the prompt I gave you so that your reply gives me…”

Our students often want to do things faster and that is what many AI companies promise. However, my impression from this project is that AI is a pretty good way off from being able to do things independently if the process requires accuracy, creativity, and complex thinking. When used appropriately, AI can be very good at getting you unstuck by providing new ideas, new perspectives, and new ways of saying things. While AI cannot perform all of the work of an educated person, it does appear able to help improve the quality of that work.

I’ll end by returning to that initial question, “What do students need to know about AI?” The folks at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have put together competency frameworks for high school and college students and teachers. I hope that we will consider AI competency as we evaluate our general education curriculum and as we are always thinking about what we want students to take away from our majors.

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated February 20, 2024.

One of the greatest concerns about the increased use of artificial intelligence is that students (or lawyers, or doctors, or stockbrokers) will use it to think for them instead of thinking for themselves. However, this technology also offers instructors a tool for helping students hone their critical thinking skills.

What is Critical Thinking?

The most important kinds of critical thinking can vary by discipline, but can include things like (Lloyd & Bahr, 2010):

• Breaking down complex problems or perspectives into smaller parts
• Examining one’s own assumptions, pre-existing beliefs, and biases
• Trying to understand how the experiences and disposition of someone else might shape their perspective
• Discerning the basis or underlying assumptions of an argument or solution
• Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of an argument or solution
• Identifying and avoiding logical fallacies (e.g., ad hominem, false dichotomy)
• Synthesizing multiple pieces of information to form a conclusion or make a decision

Challenges of Teaching Critical Thinking

Discussions, reflections, readings, and papers are excellent ways to teach critical thinking. They also have some limitations.

• Many students are disengaged during class discussions.
• It is difficult to ascertain the quality of conversations during group discussions and think-pair-share activities.
• The feedback students get from their peers regarding the quality of their critical thinking is likely mixed at best.
• Instructors can only provide so much feedback on papers and presentations across the semester.

An AI Option

Discourse with an AI chatbot gives every student a personal interlocutor, potentially increasing their engagement in a critical thinking exercise. Chatbots seem very good at generating ideas and appear to be at least as good at many critical thinking skills as a high average student.

Examining an Argument

This assignment is an example of one way to use an AI chatbot to reinforce some important characteristics of critical thinking. After presenting an argument, students are instructed to ask their chatbot the following questions:

• What are the most important strengths of my argument?
• What are the most important weaknesses of my argument?
• What assumptions might my argument be based on?
• What personal biases might lead me to have this belief?
• Are there reasons I might hold this belief because I want it to be true?

The point of the assignment is not primarily for students to get answers to these questions. Rather, it is to reinforce that these are the kinds of questions they should be asking when evaluating an argument.

Socratic Questioning to Examine One’s Reasoning

This assignment is an example of a way to use an AI chatbot to simulate a socratic conversation a student might engage in with a professor. Its purpose is to help students understand, challenge, and refine their thinking.

Important Notes of Caution

• It is important to emphasize that the reasoning from AI chatbots is limited in perspective, biased, and sometimes inaccurate (just like the humans from which its data were derived). Chatbots can even “hallucinate” and make up information that does not exist. The best mindset for approaching these conversations strikes a balance between skepticism and open-mindedness.
• The follow-up reflections at the end of both assignments are at least as important as the conversations with the AI chatbot. These reflections ask the student (not the AI) to be the final critical thinker. They also promote further analysis of the critical thinking process itself.

AI cannot replace the role of instructors or peers in the process of developing critical thinking skills. It may, however, provide a useful supplement to existing methods of critical thinking instruction.

Many thanks to Deke Gould in philosophy for his help on this project and in putting this newsletter together!

Lloyd, M., & Bahr, N. (2010). Thinking critically about critical thinking in higher education. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 4(2), 9.

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated November 19, 2024.

Team projects and discussion groups offer college students unique opportunities for learning from their peers. They also give students the opportunity to develop collaborative skills that many will use for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, they can also present challenges when students mistreat each other or fail to put in their fair share of work.

The way instructors form student groups can increase the likelihood that good collaboration takes place and minimize the likelihood that problems arise.

Moderate Group Size – Groups with 3-4 members are less likely to have problems with members slacking off than larger groups. An exception may be projects for which there will be 5 or more distinct roles.

Assigning Students to Groups – Although many students may prefer to choose their own groups, that approach can have some undesirable consequences. The group formation process may communicate to some students that they are unwanted. White, domestic students may feel most comfortable with other White, domestic students and avoid international students or students of color. A group of three close friends and one newcomer may leave the newcomer out of conversations and group meetings.

Groups Based on Interests – Another option is to have students sign up for different projects based on their interests. This strategy makes use of students’ intrinsic motivation to learn about certain topics to increase the effort they put forth in their groups. The Moodle Choice activity is one way to allow students to choose a topic and can include limits on how many students can select each option (e.g., to divide a 30-person class into 10 groups with 3 students each).

Student Schedules – When students must meet outside of class, work schedules, music ensembles, sports practices, and other commitments can make such meetings difficult. Instructors can reduce this problem by grouping students based on their availability.

Try to Avoid Minoritizing Students – Student personalities vary widely, but research has shown that White students and male-identifying students often feel most comfortable sharing their ideas and advocating for the decisions they prefer. This dynamic is most likely to cause problems in groups with only one female-identifying student or only one student of color. When possible, it may help to ensure that female or non-binary students have at least one other female group partner and that students of color are joined by at least one other student of color. Of course, class rosters do not always make an ideal combination possible.

This is all a lot to consider, but there are some tools to help professors with the team formation process. CATME (requires a subscription) and Gruepr (free) allow instructors to survey students and automate the team formation process. Such tools are particularly helpful in larger classes.

There is no perfect way to form student groups, but these practices can help you give your students their best chance to learn and grow!

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated November 13, 2024.

Discussions are a staple of many college classes. They can engage students by offering them the opportunity to share their own ideas and experiences. They can allow students to practice and observe critical thinking. They can hone students’ communication skills. They can increase understanding and retention of class content by connecting that content to other knowledge and experiences (Herman & Nilson, 2023).

Discussions have so much potential, but attempts at discussion often lead to prolonged silence, get dominated by a few students, generate only superficial responses, or get sidetracked onto unrelated topics. This newsletter is based in part on a new book by Jennifer Herman and Linda Nilson, Creating Engaging Discussions. They present many considerations for increasing student engagement in class discussions, and I wanted to share a few here that pertain to how discussion questions are asked.

What can students bring to a discussion question?

Before posing a question for discussion, consider what you know about your students.

Student can bring their critical thinking skills, such as:

• Making unstated connections between ideas from different parts of the class
• Generalizing theories to examples not given by the instructor
• Identifying strengths and limitations of different perspectives
• Applying previously learned strategies to solving a new problem

Student can also bring personal characteristics, such as

• Their lived experiences
• Their passions and values

Students will have the most to contribute when questions are a good fit for their intellectual ability, interests, and knowledge of the topic.

Is the question clear and concise?

• If questions have too many parts or premises, students can forget some or all of what was asked.
• Academic terms and styles of speaking can intimidate and confuse students, even when that language is central to the class. Try asking questions in plain language and, if necessary, make the connection between the student’s answer and the relevant terms or theories.
• Presenting a question on a powerpoint slide can help students remember what you asked–or fully take it in when they weren’t paying attention.
• Presenting multiple questions on a slide can give students an option to choose a question they are interested in without taxing their memories.
• When questions are deeper or more complex, students may benefit from the chance to write answers first, either in class or at home.

Does the question have multiple valuable answers?

Students are often reluctant to give answers that might be factually incorrect. They can be similarly reluctant to offer perspectives that they don’t perceive to be shared by the professor or their classmates.

• Consider asking questions that are contested in your field and explicitly state that knowledgeable, thoughtful, caring people disagree about the answers.
• You could model perspective taking by advocating for a view you do not hold.
  • “Here’s a decision that I think is ultimately the wrong one to make, but I’m going to give you what I think are the most compelling reasons to make that decision. I’ll be curious what you think about those reasons and what reasons you can think of for making a different decision.”
• You could also encourage students to consider arguments and points of evidence for views they do not hold.
  • “Please write a number from 0 - 10 rating how strongly you agree with this author’s perspective. If you disagreed with the author and wrote 0, 1, 2, or 3, what do you think was their strongest point? If you agreed with the author and wrote 7, 8, 9, or 10, what do you think was the most important limitation in their argument?”

Many other practices contribute to the fruitfulness of a discussion, but asking the right questions can mean the difference between a room full of silence and a lively conversation.

Thanks to Sarah Lashley in environmental studies for this book recommendation!

Herman, J. H., & Nilson, L. B. (2023). Creating engaging discussions: strategies for “avoiding crickets” in any size classroom and online. Taylor & Francis.

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated April 14, 2025.

A positive classroom environment is very helpful for encouraging student participation and promoting student attendance. Our opportunity to create supportive connections with and between students may also be one of the most helpful things we can do for our students’ mental health. As you are preparing classes for J term and spring semester, consider incorporating more activities aimed at generating fun and supportive interactions.

I am a weirdly passionate collector of icebreaker questions. Feel free to use and modify from the list I have generated so far. Some additional thoughts on using icebreakers:

• Use them periodically, not just on the first day.
• Some students will appreciate it if you offer several questions and allow them to pick which one to answer.
• If you use icebreakers to help students get comfortable with the other members of a group, consider encouraging students to use them to start a conversation (rather than simply answering the questions and waiting in silence). Here is a slide with instructions I give to students in one of my classes.
• Try to tie your ice breaker to a key topic for the course. For example, Dara Wegman-Geedey was part of a team of immunology professors who used a Day 1 icebreaker in which students are randomly assigned to be one of the many cells in the immune system. The students introduce themselves to each other by describing their (the cell’s) unique characteristics. This content-related ice breaker removes some of the anxiety that often comes with divulging personal information but gets students to start talking with one another. If nothing comes to mind for your class, you might ask ChatGPT for some suggestions:
  
  I am a college professor teaching a course on [course title]. Our topic for today is [topic]. Please suggest some icebreaker questions my students can answer to help get them comfortable with talking. These questions should be fun, easy to answer, and draw on the students' personal experiences.

If you’re more creative than me, you might try activities like:

• Having students draw portraits of each other
• Play ‘getting to know the class’ Bingo
• Asking students to contribute songs to a class playlist
• Have groups of students take turns explaining different sections of the syllabus

You can also build community by incorporating frequent activities/discussions/ assignments with pairs or groups.

• Consider giving students guidance on how to interact effectively with their peers. In my statistics class, I ask students to write reflections on their strengths and areas for growth in working in a group. They do this at the beginning of the semester and again halfway through.
• Try to make sure that the activity is structured in such a way that encourages or even requires participation from every member. That could mean structured turn taking. It could mean that everyone submits something. It probably means that questions/tasks are manageable/relatable for students with a diversity of background knowledge and intellectual abilities.
• See this GIFT Newsletter for ideas on assembling groups!

A classroom community in which students are brave enough to share their thoughts, collaborate effectively on projects, and enjoy interacting with one another doesn’t build itself. It takes deliberate effort on the part of the instructor. It also takes class time. However, the time you invest can pay great dividends in how much you and your students enjoy and learn from your course.

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated February 17, 2025.

We are just about one year through our new attendance policy. The policy has given us some clarity on how much class a student must attend to credibly learn enough for a passing grade. We have all started taking attendance and have encouragement to impose significant academic penalties when students miss more than 20% of our classes. I hope we are working toward a culture where all students view attending class as a high priority.

However, missing 20% of a course is still quite a bit. The college attendance policy alone is probably not enough to get students to class as often as would be optimal for their learning.

Research on this topic offers some actionable strategies for getting students to come to class more often.

• Students come to class more when attendance is a percentage of their grade (Chennevile & Jordan, 2008). However, simply having students sign in to class, even without assigning points, also encourages students to show up (Shimoff & Catania, 2001).
• Students also come to class more when professors provide them with data showing how class attendance has been correlated with grades in previous years (Snyder, Forbus, & Cistulli, 2012).
• Emails from professors notifying students that their absence was noticed have been shown to improve attendance (Jacobson, 2005). It is probably best if those emails are encouraging and non-judgmental.
• Extra credit quizzes given on random days have also been shown to improve attendance (Wilder, Flood, & Stromsnes, 2001). Simply giving extra credit for attendance is effective as well (Broker, Milkman, & Raj, 2013).

Other research findings may not provide simple strategies, but do offer valuable insights into how a professor might develop and implement a course with high levels of attendance.

• Students are more likely to come to class when they find the information and activities to be interesting and useful (Fjortoft, 2005).
• Students are more likely to come to class when they feel a sense of belonging in that class (Oldfield, Rodwell, Curry, & Marks, 2017).
• Some students appear to be less motivated to come to class when lecture slides available online seem to be a sufficient substitute for class attendance (Babb & Ross, 2009).

Here are some other ideas that might be helpful as well.

• Include graded activities (quizzes, assignments, projects) as part of class time.
• Classroom assessment techniques that are graded complete/incomplete can be useful for incentivizing attendance, emphasizing the value of in-class participation, and enhancing student learning.
• When students have to miss class, require make-up work that involves substantial learning on their part but is easy for you to grade.
• We can probably help each other out by breaking up large assignments into smaller parts that are due more frequently (even if you won’t grade anything until the entire assignment is completed.) Students sometimes skip class because a big assignment is due for another class and they haven’t planned their time effectively.

You ultimately want to implement attendance strategies that are consistent with your teaching philosophy and fit well with the opportunities and constraints that come with each of your classes. Nothing we do will guarantee full attendance, but a combination of intentional strategies can help us create learning environments where students are more likely to show up and thrive!

• Babb, K. A., & Ross, C. (2009). The timing of online lecture slide availability and its effect on attendance, participation, and exam performance. Computers & Education, 52(4), 868–881.
• Broker, T., Milkman, M. I., & Raj, V. (2013). How do instructors' attendance policies influence student achievement in principles of microeconomics? Available at SSRN 2243082.
• Chenneville, T., & Jordan, C. (2008). The impact of attendance policies on course attendance among college students. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8(3), 29-35.
• Fjortoft, N. (2005). Students' motivations for class attendance. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 69(1-5), 107.
• Jacobson, E. (2005). Increasing attendance using email: Effect on developmental math performance. Journal of Developmental Education, 29(1), 18.
• Shimoff, E., & Catania, A. C. (2001). Effects of recording attendance on grades in introductory psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 28(3), 192-195.
• Snyder, J., Forbus, R., & Cistulli, M. (2012). Attendance policies, student attendance, and instructor verbal aggressiveness. Journal of Education for Business, 87(3), 145–151.
• Wilder, D. A., Flood, W. A., & Stromsnes, W. (2001). The use of random extra credit quizzes to increase student attendance. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 28(2), 117-117.

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated February 28, 2024.

Procrastination, disorganization, and insufficient planning lead students to learn less from our classes. These difficulties are also a great source of stress for students and increase the likelihood that they will fail a class or even leave college altogether (Nilson & Zimmerman, 2013). Many students come to college without good time management skills, and instructors have a role to play in helping them develop those abilities.

This folder includes three documents for the following three activities. You are free to download and modify them as you see fit! You could adapt these exercises for use in class or as assignments to be completed at home.

Committing Your Time in Accordance with Your Values

Students can only manage their time successfully if the demands of their commitments do not exceed the time they have available. This exercise is designed to help students consider how they might allocate their time in proportion to how important things are to them.

Using a Calendar

Once students know how much time they aspire to devote to certain activities, the next step is to decide when that time should happen. This exercise builds off the first exercise to help students put their values into action.

Monitoring Time Management

Developing new habits is hard. Informing students about helpful time management practices is helpful, but many would benefit from some accountability as they try to implement these practices.

• If you ask students to populate the Google Calendar of their Augie account, you can easily check if they have done so by searching for the student’s calendar through your own Augie Google Calendar. Make sure students know that, by default, you can see that they have events scheduled but not the names of the events.
• Occasionally throughout the semester, you can ask students for short reflections on their time management. The questionnaire in the linked folder is one example.
• You can encourage students who report particular difficulty with these skills to seek academic coaching through our Learning Commons.

Should Faculty Be Trying to Teach This?

We are experts in our discipline and we have so much important and interesting material to teach in each of our classes. It’s worth acknowledging that time in or outside class devoted to these skills is time that cannot be devoted to something else. However, faculty have a unique opportunity to promote good time management practices. Many students do not make use of other resources and struggle to learn how to manage their time on their own. If we are committing class time in accordance with our own values, I would argue that the development of time management abilities is consistent with our liberal arts philosophy of helping our students grow as a whole person.

Nilson, L. B., & Zimmerman, B. J. (2013). Creating self-regulated learners: Strategies to strengthen students’ self-awareness and learning skills. Routledge

Written by Austin Williamson and last updated March 4, 2025.

A lot of good things happen when students participate in class.

• They develop a richer understanding of the course material.
• They remember what they are learning because they connect the day’s topic with other concepts/experiences.
• They get practice communicating their ideas.
• They enjoy the opportunity to share their knowledge and perspectives.
• Their minds are broadened by the views and experiences they hear from their peers.
• They feel more connected with and invested in the class.
• We are less likely to question our life choices and dread the next class.*

Unfortunately, I think all of us have had classes where the participation is brief and superficial at best and nonexistent at worst. Some of the reasons for lack of participation are out of our control. The time of day, students coming in with low intrinsic interest in the topic, stressful times in the semester–a lot of factors can reduce participation. There are also things we can work on to increase participation. If you’re willing to be brave, one of the best ways to figure out how things are going is to get feedback from your students. Below is an example survey for assessing specific instructor behaviors that are likely to influence students participation.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1apjG8_q-VifO5ZJQNEuNyROsNIHoKI1Bx7NIDKuqGRI/template/preview 

If you click the ‘USE TEMPLATE’ button at the top right of your screen, it will save a copy for you to your Google Drive. Please add, edit, and delete questions to tailor the survey to your class.

We should have no expectation that every student will think we do everything well. However, when many students perceive the same impediments to participation, that gives us a nice opportunity for understanding how things can go better.

• Some of the implications of your findings may be pretty straightforward. You may just need to wait longer for students to think, do a better job articulating and re-emphasizing the value of discussion, or present a more inviting demeanor.
• If you could use some ideas on how to phrase discussion questions, we have a GIFT Newsletter on that!
• If your students would like more time to get comfortable with you and each other, we have a GIFT Newsletter on that too!
• If students aren’t wild about how you respond to their contributions, try a bit more reflective listening. Be more intentional about thanking students for speaking up and point out specific parts of their response that you find to be valuable.
• If many students are worried about saying the “wrong” thing, you probably need to do more to emphasize the value of considering multiple perspectives. You may need to model this yourself by voicing what you believe to be the strongest points of opposing views.

Not every group of students or every class discussion is going to be amazing. However, if we learn from our students and experiences, participation really can be more robust and better for learning. If you would like a modestly deeper dive, the Wash. U. Center for Teaching and Learning has a page with some more ideas and details about  increasing class participation:

https://ctl.wustl.edu/resources/increasing-student-participation/

*You are a good professor and your self worth is not determined by how much students participate in your class