It was my pleasure last week to deliver a mini-workshop at the Independent Schools of New Zealand Annual Conference in Auckland. Intended to be more dialogue than monologue, I’m not sure if it landed quite where I had hoped. It is an exciting time to be thinking about educational governance and my key message was ‘don’t get caught up in the hype’.
Understanding media representations of “Artificial Intelligence”.
Mapping types of AI in 2023
We need to be wary of the hype around the term AI, Artificial Intelligence. I do not believe there is such a thing. Certainly not in the sense the popular press purport it to exist, or has deemed to have sprouted into existence with the advent of ChatGPT. What there is, is a clear exponential increase in the capabilities being demonstrated by computation algorithms. The computational capabilities do not represent intelligence in the sense of sapience or sentience. These capabilities are not informed by the senses derived from an organic nervous system. However, as we perceive these systems to mimic human behaviour, it is important to remember that they are machines.
This does not negate the criticisms of those researchers who argue that there is an existential risk to humanity if A.I. is allowed to continue to grow unchecked in its capabilities. The language in this debate presents a challenge too. We need to acknowledge that intelligence means something different to the neuroscientist and the philosopher, and between the psychologist and the social anthropologist. These semiotic discrepancies become unbreachable when we start to talk about consciousness.
In my view, there are no current Theory of Mind applications… yet. Sophia (Hanson Robotics) is designed to emulate human responses, but it does not display either sapience or sentience.
What we are seeing, in 2023, is the extension of both the ‘memory’, or scope of data inputs, into larger and larger multi-modal language models, which are programmed to see everything as language. The emergence of these polyglot super-savants is remarkable, and we are witnessing the unplanned and (in my view) cavalier mass deployment of these tools.
Ethical spheres for Governing Boards to reflect on in 2023
Ethical and Moral Implications
Educational governing bodies need to stay abreast of the societal impacts of Artificial Intelligence systems as they become more pervasive. This is more important than having a detailed understanding of the underlying technologies or the way each school’s management decides to establish policies. Boards are required to ensure such policies are in place, are realistic, can be monitored, and are reported on.
Policies should already exist around the use of technology in supporting learning and teaching, and these can, and should, be reviewed to ensure they stay current. There are also policy implications for admissions and recruitment, selection processes (both of staff and students) and where A.I. is being used, Boards need to ensure that wherever possible no systemic bias is evident. I believe Boards would benefit from devising their own scenarios and discussing them periodically.
If we can reduce the time it takes to design a course by about 20%, the productivity and quality impacts for organizations that need to build enough courses to strain their budget and resources will gain “huge” benefits.
We should be able to use generative AI to achieve that goal fairly easily without taking ethical risks and without needing to spend massive amounts of time or money.
Beyond the immediate value of ALDA itself, learning the AI techniques we will use—which are more sophisticated than learning to write better ChatGPT prompts but far less involved than trying to build our own ChatGPT—will help the participants learn to accomplish other goals with AI.
In today’s post, I’m going to provide an example of how the AI principles we will learn in the workshop series can be applied to other projects. The example I’ll use is Competency-Based Education (CBE).
Can I please speak to your Chief Competency Officer?
The argument for more practical, career-focused education is clear. We shouldn’t just teach the same dusty old curriculum with knowledge that students can’t put to use. We should prepare them for today’s world. Teach them competencies.
I’m all for it. I’m on board. Count me in. I’m raising my hand.
I just have a few questions:
How many companies are looking at formally defined competencies when evaluating potential employees or conducting performance reviews?
Of those, how many have specifically evaluated catalogs of generic competencies to see how well they fit with the skills their specific job really requires?
Of those, how many regularly check the competencies to make sure they are up-to-date? (For example, how many marketing departments have adopted generative AI prompt engineering competencies in any formal way?)
Of those, how many are actively searching for, identifying, and defining new competency needs as they arise within their own organizations?
The sources I turn to for such information haven’t shown me that these practices are being implemented widely yet. When I read the recent publications on SkillsTech from Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy (led by Sean Gallagher, my go-to expert on these sorts of changes), I see growing interest in skills-oriented thinking in the workplace with still-immature means for acting on that interest. At the moment, the sector seems to be very focused on building a technological factory for packaging, measuring, and communicating formally defined skills.
But how do we know that those little packages are the ones people actually need on the job, given how quickly skills change and how fluid the need to acquire them can be? I’m not skeptical about the worthiness of the goal. I’m asking whether we are solving the hard problems that are in the way of achieving it.
Let’s make this more personal. I was a philosophy major. I often half-joke that my education prepared me well for a career in anything except philosophy. What were the competencies I learned? I can read, write, argue, think logically, and challenge my own assumptions. I can’t get any more specific or fine-grained than that. I know I learned more specific competencies that have helped me with my career(s). But I can’t tell you what they are. Even ones that I may use regularly.
At the same time, very few of the jobs I have held in the last 30 years existed when I was an undergraduate. I have learned many competencies since then. What are they? Well, let’s see…I know I have a list around here somewhere….
Honestly, I have no idea. I can make up phrases for my LinkedIn profile, but I can’t give you anything remotely close to a full and authentic list of competencies I have acquired in my career. Or even ones I have acquired in the last six months. For example, I know I have acquired competencies related to AI and prompt engineering. But I can’t articulate them in useful detail without more thought and maybe some help from somebody who is trained and experienced at pulling that sort of information out of people.
The University of Virginia already has an AI in Marketing course up on Coursera. In the next six months, Google, OpenAI, and Facebook (among others) will come out with new base models that are substantially more powerful. New tools will spring up. Practices will evolve within marketing departments. Rules will be put in place about using such tools with different marketing outlets. And so, competencies will evolve. How will the university be able to refresh that course fast enough to keep up? Where will they get their information on the latest practices? How can they edit their courses quickly enough to stay relevant?
How can we support true Competency-Based Education if we don’t know which competencies specific humans in specific jobs need today, including competencies that didn’t exist yesterday?
One way for AI to help
Let’s see if we can make our absurdly challenging task of keeping an AI-in-marketing CBE course up-to-date by applying a little AI. We’ll only assume access to tools that are coming on the market now—some of which you may already be using—and ALDA.
Every day I read about new AI capabilities for work. Many of them, interestingly, are designed to capture information and insights that would otherwise be lost. A tool to generate summaries and to-do lists from videoconferences. Another to annotate software code and explain what it does, line-by-line. One that summarizes documents, including long and technical documents, for different audiences. Every day, we generate so much information and witness so many valuable demonstrations of important skills that are just…lost. They happen and then they’re gone. If you’re not there when they happen and you don’t have the context, prior knowledge, and help to learn them, you probably won’t learn from them.
With the AI enhancements that are being added to our productivity tools now, we can increasingly capture that information as it flies by. Zoom, Teams, Slack, and many other tools will transcribe, summarize, and analyze the knowledge in action as real people apply it in their real work.
This is where ALDA comes in. Don’t think of ALDA as a finished, polished, carved-in-stone software application. Think of it as a working example of an application design pattern. It’s a template.
Remember, the first step in the ALDA workflow is a series of questions that the chatbot asks the expert. In other words, it’s a learning design interview. A learning designer would normally conduct an interview with a subject-matter expert to elicit competencies. But in this case, we make use of the transcripts generated by those other AI as a direct capture of the knowledge-in-action that those interviews are designed to tease out.
ALDA will incorporate a technique called “Retrieval-Augmented Generation,” or “RAG.” Rather than relying on—or hallucinating—the generative AI’s own internal knowledge, it can access your document store. It can help the learning designer sift through the work artifacts and identify the AI skills the marketing team had to apply when that group planned and executed their most recent social media campaign, for example.
Using RAG and the documents we’ve captured, we develop a new interview pattern that creates a dialog between the human expert, the distilled expert practices in the document store, and the generative AI (which may be connected to the internet and have its own current knowledge). That dialogue will look a little different from the one we will script in the workshop series. But that’s the point. The script is the scaffolding for the learning design process. The generative AI in ALDA helps us execute that process, drawing on up-to-the-minute information about applied knowledge we’ve captured from subject-matter experts while they were doing their jobs.
Behind the scenes, ALDA has been given examples of what its output should look like. Maybe those examples include well-written competencies, knowledge required to apply those competencies, and examples of those competencies being properly applied. Maybe we even wrap your ALDA examples in a technical format like Rich Skill Descriptors. Now ALDA knows what good output looks like.
That’s the recipe. If you can use AI to get up-to-date information about the competencies you’re teaching and to convert that information into a teachable format, you’ve just created a huge shortcut. You can capture real-time workplace applied knowledge, distill it, and generate the first draft of a teachable skill.
The workplace-university CBE pipeline
Remember my questions early in this post? Read them again and ask yourself whether the workflow I just described could change the answers in the future:
How many companies are looking at formally defined competencies when evaluating potential employees or conducting performance reviews?
Of those, how many have specifically evaluated catalogs of generic competencies to see how well they fit with the skills their specific job really requires?
Of those, how many regularly check the competencies to make sure they are up-to-date? (For example, how many marketing departments have adopted relevant AI prompt engineering competencies in any formal way?)
Of those, how many are actively searching for, identifying, and defining new competency needs as they arise?
With the AI-enabled workflow I described in the previous section, organizations can plausibly identify critical, up-to-date competencies as they are being used by their employees. They can share those competencies with universities, which can create and maintain up-to-date courses and certification programs. The partner organizations can work together to ensure that students and employees have opportunities to learn the latest skills as they are being practiced in the field.
Will this new learning design process be automagic? Nope. Will it give us a robot tutor in the sky that can semi-read our minds? Nuh-uh. The human educators will still have plenty of work to do. But they’ll be performing higher-value work better and faster. The software won’t cost a bazillion dollars, you’ll understand how it works, and you can evolve it as the technology gets better and more reliable.
Machines shouldn’t be the only ones learning
I think I’ve discovered a competency that I’ve learned in the last six months. I’ve learned how to apply simple AI application design concepts such as RAG to develop novel and impactful solutions to business problems. (I’m sure my CBE friends could express this more precisely and usefully than I have.)
In the months between now, when my team finishes building the first iteration of ALDA, and when the ALDA workshop participants finish the series, technology will have progressed. The big AI vendors will have released at least one generation of new, more powerful AI foundation models. New players will come on the scene. New tools will emerge. But RAG, prompt engineering, and the other skills the participants develop will still apply. ALDA itself, which will almost certainly use tools and models that haven’t been released yet, will show how the competencies we learn still apply and how they evolve in a rapidly changing world.
I hope you’ll consider enrolling your team in the ALDA workshop series. The cost, including all source code and artifacts, is $25,000 for the team. You can find an application form and prospectus here. Applications will be open until the workshop is filled. I already have a few participating teams lined up and a handful more that I am talking to.
You also find a downloadable two-page prospectus and an online participation application form here. To contact me for more information, please fill out this form:
Hi everyone! It’s September and summer and officially over! 🙁
Summer is one of those sacred times of year for faculty to determine the next steps of their faculty career. From my dear colleague who is focused on his retirement to new faculty members who are focused on their new research agenda, everyone is focused on renewal. Our department faculty members usually travel to work at state parks, volunteer in the community, and participate in professional development activities.
This summer, we traveled on a study abroad experience to Scotland, Ireland, and England. This was an incredible journey with 17 students from our university. I have not traveled outside of the country for a year and the students were filled with excitement from the end of the spring semester.
The trip to Europe was long and uneventful. We traveled with EF Tours and it was definitely an adventure. Many of our rural students have never traveled outside of the country before this adventure and they learned many new skills along their journey. I was proud of their progress.
During the study abroad experience, I also had an opportunity walk a mile by myself in Ireland. Previously, I have ALWAYS traveled in groups – large groups and small groups. However, when most of the attendees wanted to participate in an activity together and I had to travel back to the hotel to pick up an item – I had the opportunity be independent. I walked by myself across the city to the hotel. This prepared me for another big adventure that I had this summer. Summer 2023 was filled with solo adventure travel for this female faculty member.
We also had an opportunity to view the Book of Kells in Ireland. It was a great experience and the library that housed the book of Kells (the Bible) was one of the most beautiful libraries I’ve ever visited.
This was my second time to visit the palace in England. There is always a crowd at Buckingham palace and the students enjoyed snapping pictures with the statues.
Who am I kidding? I enjoyed snapping pictures as well! It was crowded and it was definitely an adventure.
I’ve only heard about it on YouTube from flight attendants, but Primark lived up to its reputation. The clothes were inexpensive, high quality, and were gorgeous! I was very excited to buy professor clothes at Primark!
Overall, we had a great time. The students enjoyed themselves and I did as well. I learned a lot about European culture and I added two additional countries to my list. In fact, I added THREE new countries to my list (more about that later). Another day, another post. 😉
Let me know if you have any questions about traveling with students. They are a trip – literally! I cannot remember the last time that I laughed so hard. Traveling with rural students enables them to be themselves while experience a whole new world.
Since February 2007, International Higher Education Consulting Blog has provided timely news and informational pieces, predominately from a U.S. perspective, that are of interest to both the international education and public diplomacy communities. From time to time, International Higher Education Consulting Blog will post thought provoking pieces to challenge readers and to encourage comment and professional dialogue.
Want to build an AI tool that will seriously impact your digital learning program? Right now? For a price that you may well have in your professional development budget?
I’m launching a project to prove we can build a tool that will change the economics of learning design and curricular materials in months rather than years. Its total cost will be low enough to be paid for by workshop participation fees.
Join me.
The learning design bottleneck
Many of my friends running digital course design teams tell me they cannot keep up with demand. Whether their teams are large or small, centralized or instructor-led, higher education or corporate learning and development (L&D), the problem is the same; several friends at large shops have told me that their development of new courses and redesigns of old ones have all but ground to a halt. They don’t have time or money to fix the problem.
I’ve been asking, “Suppose we could accelerate your time to develop a course by, say, 20%?” Twenty percent is my rough, low-end guess about the gains. We should be able to get at least that much benefit without venturing into the more complex and riskier aspects of AI development. “Would a 20% efficiency gain be significant?” I ask.
Answer: “It would be huge.”
My friends tend to cite a few benefits:
Unblocked bottlenecks: A 20% efficiency gain would be enough for them to start building (or rebuilding) courses at a reasonable speed again.
Lower curricular materials costs: Organizations could replace more licensed courses with ones that they own. No more content license costs. And you can edit it any way you need to.
Better quality: The tool would free up learning designers to build better courses rather than running just to get more courses finished.
More flexibility with vendors: Many departments hire custom course design shops. A 20% gain in efficiency would give them more flexibility in deciding when and how to invest their budgets in this kind of consulting.
The learning design bottleneck is a major business problem for many organizations. Relatively modest productivity gains would make a substantial difference for them. Generative AI seems like a good tool for addressing this problem. How hard and expensive would it be to build a tool that, on average, delivers a 20% gain in productivity?
Not very hard, not very expensive
Every LMS vendor, courseware platform provider, curricular materials vendor, and OPM provider is currently working on tools like this. I have talked to a handful of them. They all tell me it’s not hard—depending on your goals. Vendors have two critical constraints. First, the market is highly suspicious of black-box vendor AI and very sensitive to AI products that make mistakes. EdTech companies can’t approach the work as an experiment. Second, they must design their AI features to fit their existing business goals. Every feature competes with other priorities that their clients are asking for.
The project I am launching—AI Learning Design Assistant (ALDA)—is different. First, it’s design/build. The participants will drive the requirements for the software. Second, as I will spell out below, our software development techniques will be relatively simple and easy to understand. In fact, the value of ALDA is as much in learning patterns to build reliable, practical, AI-driven tools as it is in the product itself. And third, the project is safe.
ALDA is intended to produce a first draft for learning designers. No students need to see content that has not been reviewed by a human expert or interact directly with the AI at all. The process by which ALDA produces its draft will be transparent and easy to understand. The output will be editable and importable into the organization’s learning platform of choice.
Here’s how we’ll do it:
Guided prompt engineering: Your learning designers probably already have interview questions for the basic information they need to design a lesson, module, or course. What are the learning goals? How will you know if students have achieved those goals? What are some common sticking points or misconceptions? Who are your students? You may ask more or less specific and more or less elaborate versions of these questions, but you are getting at the same ideas. ALDA will start by interviewing the user, who is the learning designer or subject-matter expert. The structure of the questions will be roughly the same. While we will build out one set of interview questions for the workshop series, changing the design interview protocol should be relatively straightforward for programmers who are not AI specialists.
Long-term memory: One of the challenges with using a tool like ChatGPT on its own is that it can’t remember what you talked about from one conversation to the next and it might or might not remember specific facts that it was trained on (or remember them correctly). We will be adding a long-term memory function. It can remember earlier answers in earlier design sessions. It can look up specific documents you give it to make sure it gets facts right. This is an increasingly common infrastructure component in AI projects. We will explore different uses of it when we build ALDA. You’ll leave the workshop with the knowledge and example code of how to use the technique yourself.
Prompt enrichment: Generative AI often works much better when it has a few really good, rich examples to work from. We will provide ALDA with some high-quality lessons that have been rigorously tested for learning effectiveness over many years. This should increase the quality of ALDA’s first drafts. Again, you may want your learning designs to be different. Since you will have the ALDA source code, you’ll be able to put in whatever examples you want.
Generative AI export: We may or may not get to building this feature depending on the group’s priorities in the time we have, but the same prompt enrichment technique we’ll use to get better learning output can also be used to translate the content into a format that your learning platform of choice can import directly. Our enrichment examples will be marked up in software code. A programmer without any specific AI knowledge can write a handful of examples translating that code format into the one that your platform needs. You can change it, adjust it, and enrich it if you change platforms or if your platform adds new features.
The consistent response from everyone in EdTech I’ve talked to who is doing this kind of work is that we can achieve ALDA’s performance goals with these techniques. If we were trying to get 80% or 90% accuracy, that would be different. But a 20% efficiency gain with an expert human reviewing the output? That should be very much within reach. The main constraints on the ALDA project are time and money. Those are deliberate. Constraints drive focus.
Let’s build something useful. Now.
The collaboration
Teams that want to participate in the workshop will have to apply. I’m recruiting teams that have immediate needs to build content and are willing to contribute their expertise to making ALDA better. There will be no messing around. Participants will be there to build something. For that reason, I’m quite flexible about who is on your team or how many participate. One person is too few, and eight is probably too many. My main criterion is that the people you bring are important to the ALDA-related project you will be working on.
This is critical because we will be designing ALDA together based on the experience and feedback from you and the other participants. In advance of the first workshop, my colleagues and I will review any learning design protocol documentation you care to share and conduct light interviews. Based on that information, you will have access to the first working iteration of ALDA at the first workshop. For this reason, the workshop series will start in the spring. While ALDA isn’t going to require a flux capacitor to work, it will take some know-how and effort to set up.
The workshop cohort will meet virtually once a month after that. Teams will be expected to have used ALDA and come up with feedback and suggestions. I will maintain a rubric for teams to use based on the goals and priorities for the tool as we develop them together. I will take your input to decide which features will be developed in the next iteration. I want each team to finish the workshop series with the conviction that ALDA can achieve those performance gains for some important subset of their course design needs.
Anyone who has been to one of my Empirical Educator Project (EEP) or Blursday Social events knows that I believe that networking and collaboration are undervalued at most events. At each ALDA workshop, you will have time and opportunities to meet with and work with each other. I’d love to have large universities, small colleges, corporate L&D departments, non-profits, and even groups of students participating. I may accept EdTech vendors if and only if they have more to contribute to the group effort than just money. Ideally, the ALDA project will lead to new collaborations, partnerships, and even friendships.
Teaching AI about teaching and learning
The workshop also helps us learn together about how to teach AI about teaching and learning. AI research is showing us how much better the technology can be when it’s trained on good data. There is so much bad pedagogy on the internet. And the content that is good is not marked up in a way that is friendly to teach AI patterns. What does a good learning objective or competency look like? How do you write hints or assessment feedback that helps students learn but doesn’t give away the answers? How do you create alignment among the components of a learning design?
The examples we will be using to teach the AI have not only been fine-tuned for effectiveness using machine learning over many years; they are also semantically coded to capture some of these nuances. These are details that even many course designers haven’t mastered.
I see a lot of folks rushing to build “robot tutors in the sky 2.0” without a lot of care to make sure the machines see what we see as educators. They put a lot of faith in data science but aren’t capturing the right data because they’re ignoring decades of learning science. The ALDA project will teach us how to teach the machines about pedagogy. We will learn to identify the data structures that will empower the next generation of AI-powered learning apps. And we will do that by becoming better teachers of ALDA using the tools of good teaching: clear goals, good instructions, good examples, and good assessments. Much of it will be in plain English, and the rest will be in a simple software markup language that any computer science undergraduate will know.
Wanna play?
The cost for the workshop series, including all source code and artifacts, is $25,000 for your team. You can find an application form and prospectus here. Applications will be open until the workshop is filled. I already have a few participating teams lined up and a handful more that I am talking to.
You also find a downloadable two-page prospectus and an online participation application form here. To contact me for more information, please fill out this form:
[Update: I’m hearing from a couple of you that your messages to me through the form above are getting caught in the spam filter. Feel free to email me at [email protected] if the form isn’t getting through.]
This is a post for folks who want to learn how recent AI developments may affect them as people interested in EdTech who are not necessarily technologists. The tagline of e-Literate is “Present is Prologue.” I try to extrapolate from today’s developments only as far as the evidence takes me with confidence.
Generative AI is the kind of topic that’s a good fit for e-Literate because the conversations about it are fragmented. The academic and technical literature is boiling over with developments on practically a daily basis but is hard for non-technical folks to sift through and follow. The grand syntheses about the future of…well…everything are often written by incredibly smart people who have to make a lot of guesses at a moment of great uncertainty. The business press has important data wrapped in a lot of WHEEEE!
Generative AI will definitely look exactly like this!
Let’s see if we can run this maze, shall we?
Is bigger better?
OpenAI and ChatGPT set many assumptions and expectations about generative AI, starting with the idea that these models must be huge and expensive. Which, in turn, means that only a few tech giants can afford to play.
Right now there are five widely known giants. (Well, six, really, but we’ll get to the surprise contender in a bit.) OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude are pure plays created by start-ups. OpenAI started the whole generative AI craze by showing the world how much anyone who can write English can accomplish with ChatGPT. Anthropic has made a bet on “ethical AI” with more protections from harmful output and a few differentiating features that are important for certain applications but that I’m not going to go into here.
Then there are the big three SaaS hosting giants. Microsoft has been tied very tightly to OpenAI, of which it owns a 49% stake. Google, which has been a pioneering leader in AI technologies but has been a mess with its platforms and products (as usual), has until recently focused on promoting several of its own models. Amazon, which has been late out of the gate, has its own Titan generative AI model that almost nobody has seen yet. But Amazon seems to be coming out of the gate with a strategy that emphasizes hosting an ecosystem of platforms, including Anthropic and others.
About that ecosystem thing. A while back, an internal paper called “We Have No Moat, and OpenAI Doesn’t Either.” leaked from Google. It made the argument that so much innovation was happening so quickly in open-source generative AI that the war chests and proprietary technologies of these big companies wouldn’t give them an advantage over the rapid innovation of a large open-source community.
I could easily write a whole long post about the nature of that innovation. For now, I’ll focus on a few key points that should be accessible to everyone. First, it turns out that the big companies with oodles of money and computing power—surprise!—decided to rely on strategies that required oodles of money and computing power. They didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how to make their models smaller and more efficient. Open-source teams with far more limited budgets quickly demonstrated that they could make huge gains in algorithmic efficiency. The barrier to entry for building a better LLM—money—is dropping fast.
Complementing this first strategy, some open-source teams worked particularly hard to improve data quality, which requires more hard human work and less brute computing force. It turns out that the old adage holds: garbage in, garbage out. Even smaller systems trained on more carefully curated data are less likely to hallucinate and more likely to give high-quality answers.
And third, it turns out that we don’t need giant all-purpose models all the time. Writing software code is a good example of a specialized generative AI task that can be accomplished well with a much smaller, cheaper model using the techniques described above.
The internal Google memo concluded by arguing that “OpenAI doesn’t matter” while cooperating with open source is vital.
That missive was leaked in May. Guess what’s happened since then?
The swarm
Meta had already announced in February that it was releasing an open-source-ish model called Llama. It was only open-source-ish because its license limited it to research use. That was quickly hacked and abused. The academic teams and smaller startups, which were already innovating like crazy, took advantage of the oodles of money and computing power that Meta was able to put into LLama. Unlike the other giants, Meta doesn’t make money by hosting software. They making from content. Commoditizing the generative AI will lead to much more content being generated. Perhaps seeing an opportunity, when Meta released LLama 2 in July, the only unusual restrictions they placed on the open-source license were to prevent big hosting companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google from making money off Llama without paying Meta. Anyone smaller than that can use the Llama models for a variety of purposes, including commercial applications. Importantly, LLama 2 is available in a variety of sizes, including one small enough to run on a newer personal computer.
To be clear, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, and Google are all continuing to develop their proprietary models. That isn’t going away. But at the same time…
Microsoft, despite their expensive continuing love affair with OpenAI, announced support for Llama 2 and has a license (but not announced products that I can find yet) for Databricks’ open-source Dolly 2.0.
Amazon now supports a growing range of LLMs, including open-source Stability AI and Llama 2.
IBM—’member them?—is back in the AI game, trying to rehabilitate its image after the much-hyped and mostly underwhelming Watson products. The company is trotting out watsonx (with the very now, very wow lower-case “w” at the beginning of the name and “x” at the end) integrated with HuggingFace, which you can think of as being a little bit like the Github for open-source generative AI.
It seems that the Google memo about no moats, which was largely shrugged off publicly way back in May, was taken seriously privately by the major players. All the big companies have been hedging their bets and increasingly investing in making the use of any given LLM easier rather than betting that they can build the One LLM to Rule Them All.
Meanwhile, new specialized and generalized LLMs pop up weekly. For personal use, I bounce between ChatGPT, BingChat, Bard, and Claude, each for different types of tasks (and sometimes a couple at once to compare results). I use DALL-E and Stable Diffusion for image generation. (Midjourney seems great but trying to use it through Discord makes my eyes bleed.) I’ll try the largest Llama 2 model and others when I have easy access to them (which I predict will be soon). I want to put a smaller coding LLM on my laptop, not to have it write programs for me but to have it teach me how to read them.
The most obvious possible end result of this rapid sprawling growth of supported models is that, far from being the singular Big Tech miracle that ChatGPT sold us on with their sudden and bold entrance onto the world stage, generative AI is going to become just one more part of IT stack, albeit a very important one. There will be competition. There will be specialization. The big cloud hosting companies may end up distinguishing themselves not so much by being the first to build Skynet as by their ability to make it easier for technologists to integrate this new and strange toolkit into their development and operations. Meanwhile, a parallel world of alternatives for startups and small or specialized use will spring up.
We have not reached the singularity yet
Meanwhile, that welter of weekly announcements about AI advancements I mentioned before have not included massive breakthroughs in super-intelligent machines. Instead, many of them have been about supporting more models and making them easier to use for real-world development. For example, OpenAI is making a big deal out of how much better ChatGPT Enterprise is at keeping the things you tell it private.
Oh. That would be nice.
I don’t mean to mock the OpenAI folks. This is new tech. Years of effort will need to be invested into making this technology easy and reliable for the uses it’s being put to now. ChatGPT has largely been a very impressive demo as an enterprise application, while ChatGPT Enterprise is exactly what it sounds like; an effort to make ChatgGPT usable in the enterprise.
The folks I talk to who are undertaking ambitious generative AI projects, including ones whose technical expertise I trust a great deal, are telling me they are struggling. The tech is unpredictable. That’s not surprising; generative AI is probabilistic. The same function that enables it to produce novel content also enables it to make up facts. Try QA testing an application like that and avoiding regressions—i.e., bugs you thought you fixed but came back in the next version—using technology like that. Meanwhile, the toolchain around developing, testing, and maintaining generative AI-based software is still very immature.
These problems will be solved. But if the past six months have taught us anything, it’s that our ability to predict the twists and turns ahead is very limited at the moment. Last September, I wrote a piece called “The Miracle, the Grind, and the Wall.” It’s easy to produce miraculous-seeming one-off results with generative AI but often very hard to achieve them reliably at scale. And sometimes we hit walls that prevent us from reaching goals for reasons that we don’t see coming. For example, what happens when you run a data set that has some very subtle problems with it through a probabilistic model with half a trillion computing units, each potentially doing something with the data that is impacted by the problems and passing the modified problematic data onto other parts of the system? How do you trace and fix those “bugs” (if you even call them that).
It’s fun to think about where all of this AI stuff could go. And it’s important to try. But personally, I find the here-and-now to be fun and useful to think about. I can make some reasonable guesses about what might happen in the next 12 months. I can see major changes and improvements AI can contribute to education today that minimize the risk of the grind and the wall. And I can see how to build a curriculum of real-world projects that teaches me and others about the evolving landscape even as we make useful improvements today.
What I’m watching for
Given all that, what am I paying attention to?
Continued frantic scrambling among the big tech players: If you’re not able to read and make sense of the weekly announcements, papers, and new open-source projects, pay attention to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, OpenAI, Anthropic, and HuggingFace. The four traditional giants in particular seem to be thrashing a bit. They’re all tracking the developments that you and I can’t and are trying to keep up. I’m watching these companies with a critical eye. They’re not leading (yet). They’re running for their lives. They’re in a race. But they don’t know what kind of race it is or which direction to go to reach the finish line. Since these are obviously extremely smart people trying very hard to compete, the cracks and changes in their strategies tell us as much as the strategies themselves.
Practical, short-term implementations in EdTech: I’m not tracking grand AI EdTech moonshot announcements closely. It’s not that they’re unimportant. It’s that I can’t tell from a distance whose work is interesting and don’t have time to chase every project down. Some of them will pan out. Most won’t. And a lot of them are way too far out over their skis. I’ll wait to see who actually gets traction. And by “traction,” I don’t mean grant money or press. I mean real-world accomplishments and adoptions.
On the other hand, people who are deploying AI projects now are learning. I don’t worry too much about what they’re building, since a lot of what they do will be either wrong, uninteresting, or both. Clay Shirky once said the purpose of the first version of software isn’t to find out if you got it right; it’s to learn what you got wrong. (I’m paraphrasing since I can’t find the original quote.) I want to see what people are learning. The short-term projects that are interesting to me are the experiments that can teach us something useful.
The tech being used along with LLMs: ChatGPT did us a disservice by convincing us that it could soon become an all-knowing, hyper-intelligent being. It’s hard to become the all-powerful AI if you can’t reliably perform arithmetic, are prone to hallucinations, can’t remember anything from one conversation to the next, and start to space out if a conversation runs too long. We are being given the impression that the models will eventually get good enough that all these problems will go away. Maybe. For the foreseeable future, we’re better off thinking about them as interfaces with other kinds of software that are better at math, remembering, and so on. “AI” isn’t a monolith. One of the reasons I want to watch short-term projects is that I want to see what other pieces are needed to realize particular goals. For example, start listening for the term “vector database.” The larger tech ecosystem will help define the possibility space.
Intellectual property questions: What happens if The New York Times successfully sues OpenAI for copyright infringement? It’s not like OpenAI can just go into ChatGPT and delete all of those articles. If intellectual property law forces changes to AI training, then the existing models will have big problems (though some have been more careful than others). A chorus of AI cheerleaders tell us, “No, that won’t happen. It’s covered by fair use.” That’s plausible. But are we sure? Are we sure it’s covered in Europe as well as the US? How much should one bet on it? Many subtle legal questions will need to be sorted over the coming several years. The outcomes of various cases will also shape the landscape.
Microchip shortages: This is a weird thing for me to find myself thinking about, but these large generative AI applications—especially training them—run on giant, expensive GPUs. One company, NVidia, has far and away the best processors for this work. So much so that there is a major race on to acquire as many NVidia processors as possible due to limited supply and unlimited demand. And unlike software, a challenger company can’t shock the world with a new microprocessor that changes the world overnight. Designing and fabricating new chips at scale takes years. More than two. Nvidia will be the leader for a long time. Therefore, the ability for AI to grow will be, in some respects, constrained by the company’s production capacity. Don’t believe me? Check out their five-year stock price and note the point when generative AI hype really took off.
AI on my laptop: On the other end of the scale, remember that open-source has been shrinking the size of effective LLMs. For example, Apple has already optimized a version of Stable Diffusion for their operating system and released an open-source one-click installer for easier consumer use. The next step one can imagine is for them to optimize their computer chip—either the soon-to-be-released M3 or the M4 after it. (As I said, computer chips take time.) But one can easily imagine image generation, software code generation, and a chatbot that understands and can talk about the documents you have on your hard drive. All running locally and privately. In the meantime, I’ll be running a few experiments with AI on my laptop. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Present is prologue
Particularly at this moment of great uncertainty and rapid change, it pays to keep your eyes on where you’re walking. A lot of institutions I talk to either are engaged in 57 different AI projects, some of which are incredibly ambitious, or are looking longingly for one thing they can try. I’ll have an announcement on the latter possibility very shortly (which will still work for folks in the former situation). Think about these early efforts as CBE for the future work. The thing about the future is that there’s always more of it. Whatever the future of work is today will be the present of work tomorrow. But there will still be a future of work tomorrow. So we need to build a continuous curriculum of project-based learning with our AI efforts. And we need to watch what’s happening now.
Every day is a surprise. Isn’t that refreshing after decades in EdTech?
Richard Feynman the father of Quantum Electrodynamics or “OED” realized the significance of Thompson’s double slit experiment because he felt carefully thinking through its implications would allow one to get complete understanding of the wave particle duality of existence predicted by Quantum Mechanics.
However, one can understand it in terms of the classical properties of wave mechanics and the space-time universe defined by Einstein.
The double slit experiment is made up of a coherent source of photons illuminating a screen after passing through a thin plate with two parallel slits cut in it. Their wave properties cause them to interfere after passing through both slits, creating an interference pattern of bright and dark bands on the screen. However, at the screen, the light is always found to be absorbed as discrete particles, called photons.
When only one slit is open, the pattern on the screen is a diffraction pattern however, when both slits are open, the pattern is similar but with much more detailed. These facts were elucidated by Thomas Young in a paper entitled “Experiments and Calculations Relative to Physical Optics,” published in 1803 wrote “To a very high degree of success, these results could be explained by the method of Huygens–Fresnel principle that is based on the hypothesis that light consists of waves propagated through some medium.
However, discovery of the photoelectric effect made it necessary to go beyond classical physics and take the quantum nature of light into account.
It is a widespread misunderstanding that, when the two slits are open but a detector is added to determine which one a photon has passed through, the interference pattern no longer forms and it yields two simple patterns, one from each slit, without interference.
This is because there are ways to determine which slit it passed through in which the interference pattern will be changed but not be completely wiped out. For instance, by placing an atom at the position of each slit and monitoring whether one of these atoms is influenced by photon passing through it the interference pattern will be changed but not be completely wiped out.
But the most baffling part of this experiment comes when only one photon at a time impacts a barrier with two opened slits because an interference pattern forms which is similar to what it was when multiple photons were impacting the barrier. This is a clear implication the particle called a photon has a wave component, which simultaneously passes through both slits and interferes with itself. (The experiment works with electrons, atoms, and even some molecules too.)”
Many believe the importance of this experiment is that it demonstrates both the duality of the wave and particle properties of photons and the concepts of superposition and quantum interference.
Yet, one can understand this experiment in terms of the classical properties of waves and Relativity because they tell us an electromagnetic wave moves continuously through space-time unless it is prevented from doing so by someone observing or something interacting with it. This would result in its energy being confined in three-dimensional space. The science of wave mechanics also tells us the three-dimensional “walls” of this confinement will result in its energy being reflected back on itself thereby creating a resonant standing wave in three-dimensional space. This would cause its energy to be concentrated at the point in space where a particle would be found. Additionally, wave mechanics also tells us the energy of a resonant system, such as a standing wave which this confinement would create can only take on the discrete or quantized values associated with its fundamental or a harmonic of its fundamental frequency.
Additionally, it also tells us a particle would have an extended volume equal to the wavelength associated with its standing wave.
(Note the boundaries or “walls” of its confinement would be defined by its wave properties. If an electromagnetic wave is prevented from moving through space it will be reflected back on itself. However, that reflected wave still cannot move through space therefore it will be reflected back creating a standing wave. Putting it another way the wave itself defines its boundaries because if it cannot move though space it MUST STAND in place in the form of a standing wave.)
Putting it in the vernacular of Quantum Mechanics when an electromagnetic wave is prevented from moving through space either by being observed or encountering an object its “Collapses” to a form a standing wave that would define the quantized energy Quantum Mechanics associates with a particle.
It shows the reason why the interference pattern remains when one photon at a time is fired at the barrier with both slits open or “the most baffling part of this experiment” is because, as mentioned earlier it is made up of an electromagnetic wave, therefore it occupies an extended volume which is directly related to its wavelength.
This means a portion of its energy could simultaneously pass through both slits, if the diameter of its volume exceeds the separation of the slits and recombine on the other side to generate an interference pattern.
However, if its energy is prevented from moving through space by contacting the screen it will be confined to three-dimensional space causing it to be concentrated in a standing wave that as mentioned earlier would define the energy of the photon that impacted the screen.
Additionally, because the energy of the standing wave which earlier was shown to define the quantum properties of a photon is dependent on its frequency the energy of the particle has when it contacts the screen must have the same energy. Therefore, where it appears on the screen will be determined by where the interference of the wave properties from each slit combine to produce enough energy to support the standing wave associated with its particle properties.
It also explains why the interference pattern disappears, in MOST cases when a detector is added to determine which slit a photon passes through is because the energy required to measure it causes the wavelength of the one being measured to change so that it will not have the same resonant characteristics as one that passed through the other slit. Therefore, the energy passing thought that slit will not be able to interact, in MOST cases with the energy passing through the other one and no interference pattern will form.
However, it also explains why, as was mentioned earlier “there are ways to determine which slit a photon’s energy passed through that will cause a change in the interference pattern but will not completely wipe it out.
The reason for this is if the energy passing through one of the two slits is altered by a relatively small amount compared to what it originally was, classical wave mechanics tells us it will be able to interact to form a slightly different resonant structure with a slightly different interference pattern on the other side than would be the case if no measurement was taken.
However, this also means one should be able to use the science of wave mechanics and the physical properties of space-time to quantify the maximum amount of energy a measuring device can remove from the wave while passing through a slit that will permit the interference pattern although somewhat altered to be re-established on the other side.
For example, if the above interpretation for the double slit experiment is correct one should be able to use the science of wave mechanics to calculate the energy required to cause specific shift in the interference and determine if it matches the energy taken out of the system by the detecting equipment.
This provides an experimental way of determining if the results of the Thompson’s double slit experiment are due to physical properties of space-time or the quantum properties of the wave function because if the pattern disappears above that value and reappears below it would suggest the above explanation is valid. If not, it would suggest the quantum mechanical one is.
Jennifer van Alstyne, Brittany Trinh, and Dr. Ian Li talk about the best personal academic website hosts. You’ll get a demo of Owlstown. Watch our fireside chat about personal academic websites where we answer your questions.
Thinking about a personal academic website? Whether you want a do-it-yourself website or you’re thinking about hiring help, we hope the replay of our live event helps you. Have a photo of you, your bio, and your social media links? You have everything you need to set up a simple website with Owlstown, a free website builder for academics. Once you make your website, enter it in our Best Personal Academic Websites Contest to win one of multiple awards.
This event was recorded live on August 1, 2023 as part of The Best Personal Academic Websites Contest to help you set up your website.
Jennifer: Hi everyone! My name is Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to Setting Up Your Personal Academic Website. My name is Jennifer. I’m talking today with my friends Brittany Trinh who makes websites for scientists, and Dr. Ian Li from Owlstown, which is an academic website
builder for you all to check out. We’re going to have a demo of that today. We’re also going to talk about the most frequently asked questions when it comes to having your own personal website. Just to get us started, my name is Jennifer van Alstyne. I own The Academic Designer LLC where since 2018 I’ve been helping professors have a strong online presence so they can talk about their research and teaching. To really feel comfortable when they show up online. I help people with social media, bio writing, and websites. And I really love my work. But there’s so many people out there who want to D.I.Y. to do-it-yourself for your website. I was excited to put this event together with Brittany and Ian as part of our annual Best Personal Academic Websites Contest. Brittany, would you introduce yourself?
Brittany: Hi, everyone! My name is Brittany Trinh. I am a website strategist and designer for early career researchers. I’m also a third year PhD student in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I’ve been doing this since 2019, and I just really love helping the grad students and early career scientists, even like anybody at any stage, create their website. I think it’s really important for your personal development and your career development. As well, it’s a great place to show off your skills a little bit more about yourself. I also have a podcast called Beyond Your Science, so you can check that out. I’m really excited to chat with you all today.
Jennifer: Ian, please introduce yourself and let us know all about Owlstown too.
Ian: Sure thanks Jennifer hi I’m Ian and I’m the creator of Owlstown. I finished my PhD a long time ago, about 10 years ago now. I remember being in grad school and working on my website. I thought it was a good way to share my work with others. I thought that I could help others make their websites so they can share their work easily. About five years ago, I started working on Owlstown as a hobby. And also a way for it to help other people build their website. Owlstown’s mission has been to make it super easy to make an academic website. I will demo that later and also I’m looking forward to answering questions that people might have about how to share their research online and what things to share about the academic work. Thank you.
Why should academics have a website?
Jennifer: Thank you. You know the biggest question that comes up from academics kind of whatever stage they are in their career is: Is a website right for me? Should I have a website? Why should I have one? Let me know what do you guys think? Why should academics have a website?
Ian: I can answer that first. One reason is we’re in 2023 and people are gonna look for your name on search engines. You want something that you control that will show up on those search engines. If they search for your name, you want it to be a website that you have control over what content shows up. A website is a great way to share what you want to share, like your papers, your posters, an introduction about yourself, and a lot more content about your research.
Jennifer: Brittany what about you? Why should early early career researchers, why should people have a website?
Brittany: I think that early career researchers should have a website because, like Ian said, people will search for you on search engines and things like that. Having a LinkedIn is good. And your CV has a lot of things that you do. But it’s not everything that you do. And there’s a lot more sides to you that you can’t necessarily fit in your LinkedIn or CV because it may not be as relevant or something. But your website is a way to kind of show off that creativity. And it’s also possibly a way to maybe venture into an entrepreneurial side hustle or things like that if that’s something you’re interested in which is like what I did for myself prior to going to grad school and a little bit even right now too. I think that having the website opens you up to like so many more possibilities and opportunities for people to connect with you, with your work, and then maybe learn about services or things like that if that’s something you choose to offer. I think it’s just mostly a space that you can create and make your own and do whatever you want with it. And also right now we’re really in the content creator era I guess. Making a personal brand and just like becoming known for something is also important. Showing people not just what you do, but what you really value, what you’re passionate about. That is something that you can also showcase on your personal website.
Jennifer: I love that. You know I think one thing that you both talked about is having control. Having control over what people find about you when they search online. But also, having control that they’re finding the things that you value and care about, not the things that you know are standard in a CV or that you’re going to find necessarily on your faculty profile. I really feel like having your own space like a personal website having your own space that’s outside of your University, outside of your affiliation, makes such a lasting difference. I even have retired academics reach out to me because now that their faculty profile is just gone completely, they need somewhere to still share the hard work that they’ve done and the ways that they’re helping people. So it’s not like it’s ever too early or too late to create a website for your research, your teaching, the service that you do, and the things you care about. There are so many reasons to have a website, so many different ones that have surprised me whether it’s wanting to share your book, share your research, and connect better with your students. I mean there’s just so many options. I have a poll for you all, for everyone who’s in the audience.
I want to know how long have you wanted a website? Answer this poll. Let me know how long have you wanted a personal academic website. Is it something that’s been on your to-do list for a while? Or, is it something that’s new? Maybe some of you are like, “I don’t know if a website is right for me, that’s why I’m here.” That’s okay too.
All right, let’s see. For some of you, this has been on your to-do list for a long time. You’ve been wanting a personal academic website, and my guess is there’s something that’s been holding you back from making it. Feel free to let me know in the chat. If you’ve recently been inspired to want a website, I’m so glad you’re here. I mean this is the perfect event because we’re gonna help you make sure that you approach this project with a strategy, a plan in mind and think about your long-term goal. I’m excited. A few of you already have a personal website. Let me know how long you’ve had your website for in the chat.
Will my university be angry if I make my own website?
Jennifer: Okay, now one thing I wanted to ask you both before we move on. It’s a fear or anxiety that I’ve heard multiple times from a few people: Will my University get angry at me? Will they get mad if I make my own website? Do they not want me to do this? I have an answer based on my interactions with University Administration and with people who run social media and marketing for universities. But I want to hear from you both. In your experience, have you ever seen anyone get mad at someone for having a personal website?
Brittany: In my personal experience I don’t know about university, but I do know from working in Industry. This wasn’t directly related to my website, but I wanted to do something more in the online space and I asked for permission, which was not the way to go. I should always ask for forgiveness. But I would also say that I don’t know if the university would care. They just seem quite large unless you were very prominent or something. Then maybe they would care. But, I think Jennifer you might probably have the most expertise in this area.
Jennifer: No, that’s fine. I think that’s a perfect example because sometimes if you have an employer or a partnership outside of the University, they do have a strong opinion about it. One of my professor clients, for instance, worked for the military. And the military did not want her specifically to have a website. That’s fine. We found other ways for her to have an online presence. But when it comes to your University, mostly they want their professors to have a stronger online presence because you represent the university and the research that you do is awesome for the University. They want more people to know about it. They want more people to know about the awesome teaching you’re doing and how you’re affecting students. I mean it makes a big difference for them in terms of revenue. I mean I’m not gonna lie, it’s definitely about marketing and money for them, but it’s also about championing the resources that they give you, your lab, your ability to do research on campus, the teaching that you do.
If they give you innovative classes they get really excited about that. I am not going to lie to you, they are looking at your website because they want to see how it helps them. They’re not going to look at your website to see how it makes them mad. Now, one caveat to that is if you have highly confidential information that you’re not allowed to share. That’s something that you might want to check with your University about. One example of that is from a research lab, they had some specific equipment that their University didn’t want them to list as being in their lab just for security reasons. And so there may be some opportunities where you do want to ask permission. But other than that, I agree with Brittany. Go ahead and make your website. And if someone has a problem you know they’ll let you know and you can decide where to go from there. Ian, do you have anything you’d like to add?
Ian: Yeah. From my experience, I had a website in undergrad. And then in grad school, I went to a different school. I also started a website there. I used initially the servers that were provided by the university. And then at some point, I got my own domain name just so that in case I did move, I’d still have control over my own name. I think the university provides the space to share your work so I think they do want you to share your work online. They provide a space to do that. Now, whether it needs to be under the institution’s name or your own domain name, I think that could be up to you. In my case, I was shifting institutions. I wanted to have my own space so I didn’t have to move it. And also, the spaces that I had at my undergrad and my grad school eventually disappeared. It was good that I had my own domain name to kind of hold all that information.
How do I choose the best host for my personal website?
Jennifer: I love that. I feel like space is disappearing is a key reason why some academics reach out to me. I work with academics on really planning strategically their website.
Many professors are thinking about much more extensive websites than the typical person is looking for. But it’s always about, “what do I do? How do I not make the wrong decision when I’m first getting started?” And that’s why I wanted to talk to you both about personal academic website hosts. Because the first question people have when it comes to making their website is where do I even host my website? Ian, I know you’ve created a wonderful option with Owlstown, but there are a few different options that people can choose from. What are the options, Brittany?
Brittany: Yeah. For me, the two that I usually like to champion for people who are starting out would be Google Sites, which is free and it’s available in your Google Drive account. You can start making one there. It’s really good because you can still have some customizability. But everything is pretty like drag-and-drop, so if you know how to use PowerPoint or something like it, you’re good to go. You don’t need to worry about coding or anything. And then the other one I like to recommend is just like the free WordPress.com. That’s what I started out with when I was an undergrad because I wanted to blog. I think it’s good for blogging. And it’s a good introduction to what websites can do. But then of course once you kind of want to level-up then there are even more options. But maybe that’s a little bit further down the line. But yeah, those are the two I would recommend. Of course, Owlstown too. But we’ll see that later.
Jennifer: That’s great! Yes I love Google Sites, especially a beginner option. But I like Owlstown for academics more. Especially if you’re looking for something simple because Owlstown already makes it easy for you to drop things into that are specific for academics. But when it comes to free sites, WordPress.com I totally agree with. That’s my number one pick for academics. It’s what I recommend for all of my clients. Now, some people like using Squarespace. That has great features as well. I don’t typically recommend Wix.com. I know Brittany and I have talked about this before on my podcast, The Social Academic. Wix has issues. Many of my clients come to me with an old Wix website that is just practically impossible for them to update. I don’t recommend it for those reasons. What about you? Anything else that you don’t recommend when it comes to making your own website?
Brittany: Also in my personal experience, Weebly was not the greatest. It works. And I know a lot of people have made websites on Weebly, but I would say that if you haven’t made one yet, maybe not to try. It’s because with Weebly, there’s a lot of functionality that’s usually extra like you have to pay for it. But from other websites, it’s already included which kind of bothers me on principle. So, I don’t recommend [Weebly] for that reason.
Jennifer: Great. Ian, do you have any website hosts that you just don’t recommend?
Ian: I don’t know if I have ones that I don’t recommend. It’ll depend on how much time you have and how much effort you want to put in. I think some people choose to set up their own server and make their own website that way, like I did in undergrad. I guess I didn’t set up my own server, but I made my own website. I had too much time on my hands and in grad school I did set up my own server. Again, I think I maybe had too much time.
But it just depends on how much time you have and how much effort you want to put into it. I think there’s outside of Squarespace, Weebly, WordPress, some people choose to do like GitHub pages. My own personal website I think is GitHub pages. There’s a lot of free options like that. I think that when you’re thinking about when making the website you want to think about how much time you want to put into it, how much money, on top of what you want to share on your website. What I would recommend is focus on what you want to share rather than focusing on what would be the technology that you would use to make the website. Because learning HTML, JavaScript, and CSS can take up a lot of time. I know it. I do websites all the time so I know how much time it takes. You don’t you don’t want to get your PhD in HTML and CSS. You’re working on your PhD in whatever field you’re in and you want to share that and as much as possible spend the time on how you want to present your work and focus on that.
Jennifer: I completely agree with everything you said. Yeah. If you don’t want to learn CSS, JavaScript, or HTML, you don’t want to learn how to code for your website. Don’t try to build it from scratch. It’s not worth your time and honestly it means that you have to go back and make changes and updates using that same method. That can be okay now, but maybe you won’t have that time in the future. When it comes to exactly what Ian was talking about: time, effort, what do you want to focus your energy on? I agree, focusing your energy on what you say, why you’re saying it, and who you’re saying it to is what’s going to make the difference for your personal academic website. And I think that’s why Owlstown is such a good solution. Now I want to caveat and say that if you’re going to have a blog, I really do recommend WordPress and WordPress.com is a great option. That’s because blogging has been done by them for so long they’re going to continue to have very focused blogging Features. But Owlstown, if you want a website and blogging is not guaranteed something you want to do this year.
A demo of Owlstown, a free academic website builder
Jennifer: Let’s talk about Owlstown because this is an academic website builder that is meant to be easy so that you can focus on what you’re seeing and who you’re saying it to. And not on learning how to make your website.
Ian, can you tell us about Owlstown?
Ian: Owlstown compared to the other tools out there is only for academics. The idea is that it has templates that are focused on academics. So you can post your publications, your projects that you work on, courses that you teach, people that you collaborate with, and some blogging features. And also, you can post your CV and other pages that you might want to add on top of your publications and projects. As much as possible, Owlstown tries to get the way of fiddling with the design and the HTML so that you can focus on the content that you’re sharing. I’ve been working on it for about 5 years now. It’s a passion project and I really enjoy working on it. I’m looking forward to sharing it.
Jennifer: That’s great. Will you actually share your screen and give us a little demo of it now? Because if you did bring your bio, headshot, and your social media links with you today, this is so fast to set up. You’ll have time to do it while we’re talking today. Ian, why don’t you show us a demo of Owlstown?
For those of you who are listening, if you have questions drop them in the chat. We’re going to have time for Q&A after our discussion.
Ian sharing his screen: Okay. We’ll make a website. You can find it at Owlstown.com. First, we’re just gonna go through the ‘Create your free website’ [button] here. It’s going to welcome you with a Welcome Page.
Let’s get started. First, when I make this website I’ll put my own information. But you can put in your own information here. As you can see, as I’m filling out the fields here, the website is changing. I’ll set up an image here, but for now I’ll just set up a letter so we can go through this quickly. Here I can just do a short bio. I won’t spend too much time on this. This is something when you’re starting out you can probably just do something quickly. The note here is this is the 1st thing that people will do. This is the first page that people will see, so it might be good to kind of describe what you’re working on and something more about yourself.
Next and here’s one of the things that also when you’re creating a website is that you also have your social links. You might want to share several of your social links here. I have an example of my Twitter account, but you can share your ORCiD [identifier], ResearchGate, your Google Scholar page. If you have Instagram or a YouTube channel you can share it here. You can add those links. And, there’s more options here, for example, if you have Academia.edu, if you have a GitHub page, and so on and so forth.
The next one here is when you start creating an Owlstown website, it randomly picks a theme. Right now the theme it’s using is Flannel. But you can quickly switch, one of the things I mentioned earlier about reducing the friction of fiddling with your website. With Owlstown, changing your theme is just a click away. I click on a theme and it changes immediately. I don’t have to set up any HTML or any CSS. And then I can pick a color. I can also change a font. Again, I’m just clicking through and picking which ones I like. For now, I’ll pick out one of the fonts I like, Lotto. The other thing that you can do is also add your publications. And it’s just another just a click away. I’ve typed in my name, I searched for it, and then among [these entries], I have to figure out which one is mine. This one’s mine right here. I can just click on my name and my publications are automatically included. Okay, and done!
In this case, I have a website with some information about myself, an introduction and some publications. Then, if I want to edit some more things, I can. For example, I can add descriptions from my projects, people that I work with, courses that I teach, and blog posts. Then, if I want to publish this website I can create an account. Then, I can select the domain name that it will be published in.
Jennifer: That was so much easier than any other website creator that I’ve seen. I love how tailored it is for academics. Even when you get to the end and you get to the site editor, it’s giving you options that academics typically need like adding collaborators. That’s wonderful!
Let me ask this question because so many people feel like when they find a website host there’s not really a customer service on the other end. Let’s say you’re creating an Owlstown website. What can people do if they have a question?
Ian: Good question. One of the things that people do is they can contact me through Twitter or email. I try to respond quickly. Usually people email me. Most of the ideas for features for Owlstwon came from suggestions from users. They would email me: “I would like this feature on Owlstown.” If it fits with the goals of Owlstown, I usually try to add it. Also people contact me through Twitter. Just either post mentioning me, or sending a [direct message] D.M. and I answer. I try to answer as quickly as possible, usually there’s a turn back to time of within a day.
Jennifer: I love how personalized that is! So many of my clients, I have them at WordPress.com and they upgrade to the point in which they get good customer service. But it doesn’t always come with that free plan. One of my recent sales calls actually said she loves her small website host because of that personalized experience: when she emails she actually gets a response. That’s the experience you’re gonna get with Ian over at Owlstown for academics. That’s excellent! I’m so glad I asked you about that. Thank you for giving us a demo.
If you want to set up your Owlstown website now you know how. Based on our time, we’re going to keep going and talking about questions. I have another poll for you. Let’s open it up [not seen in replay]. Okay, we’re going to talk about website page ideas. What pages do you want for your personal academic website? Look at this poll and let me know. Check all of the pages that you’re kind of interested in having for your personal website. There’s so many options! And on Owlstown you can do a lot of these pages and add your own. There’s a lot of flexibility to grow your website over time but remember you can start with just one page (I’ve most recommended the About page).
Answer the poll. Let me know what pages you are interested in for your personal academic website. If there’s a page you don’t see here, let us know in the chat. This was the maximum number of options that Zoom let me add. Alright, looks like everyone has responded. Let me share the poll with you all.
Yay! Everyone definitely wants an About page. That’s exciting. Research and Teaching are super popular. Yeah. Many people want to share their Writing and Publications. That’s great! One of the things that I like about Owlstown is that you can add information to your Publications. You can add an abstract. So don’t think that just because it’s just letting you add those things in the list that you can’t make that even more engaging with abstracts. Okay, people are also interested in sharing Speaking Engagements and maybe some News and Media mentions. Definitely Contact. I love it. I love it. This is great.
Where should I start when adding pages to my academic personal website?
Jennifer: Brittany and Ian, where should people start when it comes to what pages should I add to my personal academic website? What would you say is most important? Which should people prioritize?
Ian: I have a particular opinion about this one. My opinion here is that having a description of your projects, so not necessarily your publications, but the projects that you’re working on. I think I’m pushing on this because sometimes people hesitate to have a website because they don’t have a publication yet. When I was in grad school, I didn’t publish until my 5th year. So they took a long time, but the ideas that I was working on started in my 1st year. I think being able to share those ideas and the stuff that I was working on was good. And it led up to getting published at some point.
But I was able to collaborate with people even before I was published because I was sharing my ideas on a website. I would say you have a website. You introduce yourself and then have descriptions of your project, including those project descriptions. You can add posters that you’ve shared, where you’ve shared those projects, and then eventually if it gets published then you can add publications on those project descriptions. But it’s okay to start out with just the description of the projects or ideas and then share that.
Jennifer: Brittany, what about you? Where should people start when it comes to what to prioritize for my personal academic website?
Brittany: I think actually Ian said it perfectly.
And also, if you have anything that’s outside of your research as well that you’re very passionate about, like some type of cause. A lot of people in the research, or at least in the sciences, there’s like science communication, science policy, advocacy, outreach. Any of those things that you do, especially if you’re particularly passionate about it. If you can feature that in some way like on your website. If you already have photos on hand, or just like to write a story about yourself. To Ian’s point, when you write your description about yourself, kind of root it in the why you’re doing this. The why you’re interested in research, or all the things that you’re doing. That’s I think really important in terms of creating that personal connection with somebody in the online space. Then people again can get to know you beyond just whatever they can read like in your CV, or your LinkedIn, or whatever.
Jennifer: I love that so why you’re doing what you’re doing is so important for helping people to connect with what you care about. And with the work that you’re doing now. When it comes to your personal academic website, making sure that why is in your bio and also in your project descriptions is great. Actually, if you only have one sentence for your bio and one sentence for each project description, it should probably be about why you’re doing it.
Now when it comes to helping people find your research on your website, make sure that you’re actually using the words that people are going to Google. If you have a specific phrase that you know that is related to your research, I can’t even think of one. Let’s see, for my recent client, she’s looking specifically at ‘immigration in the United States.’ So, she needs that specific phrase to be on her website so more people can find her research about that specific topic. Make sure you’re being descriptive in how you’re talking about your research as well. Include the why. And, include the words that people will actually use to search for your research topic. That would be my top suggestions for getting up your website.
Do I need a photo of myself on my website?
Jennifer: Let me ask what about a website photo. Do I need a photo of my face on my website? That is a frequent question I get. What would you say?
Brittany: I personally think that you should have at least one photo, if it’s just like a selfie. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Something that again kind of showcases who you are a little bit. And also, I think for a lot of universities, you do also upload a photo for your department anyway. But I think that also helps with the personal connection and such.
Jennifer: I really liked how Owlstown gave you different options so if you’re first getting just getting started you can have like your letter instead of a profile photo. What do you think, Ian, do you need a profile photo on your website?
Ian: Yeah, so Owlstown gives you that option but most people actually just put up their own photos. I think it is helpful to have your photo on there because eventually if they are interested in your work, in your research, you’re going to meet them eventually. The people who visit your website, you’ll meet them eventually at conferences, in talks that you do. When I was in grad school, people mentioned things that were on my website. That was kind of a way to start conversations. It’s probably good for them to associate my face with the content of the website so that when we do see each other at the university or at conferences, they know to associate it with my face.
Jennifer: I completely agree. I think having a photo of yourself is super helpful. If you really are uncomfortable with it, having some kind of avatar, a little cartoon version of yourself, is a great alternative. You could also use a different kind of graphic that is specifically representative of your research. So, a little icon or something I have seen people use. But overall, I just think a photo of your face can make a really big difference. And if you record a short video for your website? That goes such a long way to helping people really recognize you as a human being, as a person, and for remembering your research. Even if you’re like, “Ah, I can’t write a lot for my website, I don’t have a lot of time now. But, I can hop on zoom and record a 1-minute “Hi My Name Is video,” that could make a really big difference too.
Whats my 1st step when making my website?
Jennifer: When it comes to getting started with your personal academic website, where should people start? Ian, Brittany let me know what you think. Brittany, why don’t you go first. Where should people start, what’s their 1st step like physically, where should they start? Everyone here probably either has a website already or they are looking to actually make their website. Owlstown is a great solution. Now we know how to make it. We know how to use that.
But, what about people who are going to use Google Sites or WordPress.com? Where should they start when it comes to their website? Is it their domain name?
Brittany: Yeah, I would say besides the technical things, I think the most important thing we kind of touched on earlier: making sure you’re very clear about your goals for your website. What are you trying to do? How much time you want to put into it? That way you don’t feel like it’s something that you didn’t finish or whatever. Just say, “Okay, I just want to get my website out because of X, Y, Z reasons. And, for this time period, if it’s just like a one-pager website, that’s fine.” That’s better than nothing.
Being able to clarify your reason for creating your website at this point in time will help you feel less mind drama about whether you finish it or not finish it. Then, of course, choose your website builder. Definitely get a domain name. Get it in your name because a lot of the website builders if you use a free plan you are technically a subdomain under like their website name. But a domain name is quite inexpensive, like on Google Domains. I just like Google Domains because it’s simple. A subdomain is like YourName.WordPress.com, which is okay. But personally I really just wanted MyName.com. I have multiple domain names, just in case of other things in the future. You just go on Google Domains and like to buy one for about $12/year. It’s a pretty nice investment and then, it’s pretty simple. It’s just like buying anything else on the internet: you add it to cart and then there are some technical things that you have to figure out, but you basically just follow directions on their F.A.Q. page or Help Guide or something like that.
Jennifer: Ian, can you set up your own domain name on Owlstown?
Ian: Yeah. You can add your own domain name. Owlstown is free for what you mentioned, the subdomain (YourName.OwlsTown.com). But if you want your own custom domain, you have to get a paid plan. On Brittany’s point about where to start: I think having a one-pager is a good way to start. Sometimes people think that they have to have a complete website with multiple pages to feel like they have a website. With just one page I think you already have a website. If you have information about you, you can think of your website as a central place to direct you, or a central place to put your online content. If you have like an introduction about yourself, your contact info, your email for a way to contact you (because people are going to try to contact you about your work), and then maybe if you have links to where your publications are listed on Google Scholar, Academia.edu, or ResearchGate. If you just have links to those, that’s sufficient. Your academic website can act as a hub for people who are interested in your work to get connected to other things that might give more information about your work.
Should I add my middle initial to my domain name?
Jennifer: Asha asked a question. Perfect timing so we can do all of your questions. Drop them in the chat. You’ll also be able to unmute yourself and talk with us.
Asha’s question is: Should we add our middle initial to our domain name? That’s a great question. Ian, what do you think?
Ian: Yeah, I don’t think that’s a problem. I think it’s one way to kind of differentiate yourself if your name is common. For my name, I have two middle names. I was able to get IanLi.com, but I think if I were to try to get IanLi.com now, I wouldn’t be able to get it. I could probably use my middle initials in my domain name. I think that’s probably going to be one way that people are going to be looking for me also. So, Ian A. R. Li is one way to look for me, so if that’s on my domain name then they can find me.
Jennifer: Okay, Brittany what about you? What do you think about adding your middle initial to your domain name?
Brittany: I would say that I was also lucky, like Ian. I have BrittanyTrinh.com.
But I think again there’s a lot of things that play into it. One, do you want your middle initial in there too? Do people know you by your middle initial? I recently found out that I should include my middle initial when I publish academic papers. I didn’t realize that before. It’s just again to differentiate myself. Then the other thing, is it available? Right? You might also come to find out that you can use your name with your middle initial and the URL is still not available. Which is why I think it’s really important to get your domain name as soon as possible. So if there’s nothing else you do today, look up your domain name.
Jennifer: That’s great. One thing I would add to that is that if you have been publishing for a long time and you haven’t used your middle initial, adding it in now is fine. But, you’ll probably want to switch to publishing with your middle initial from now on. Your website is going to be the hub where all of that comes together. But when it comes to how people search and how people look for things, honestly copy/paste. Type in exactly what they see or what they’re looking to expect. If they type in your name without the middle initial and way too many people come up and it’s hard to find you, that’s when you want to add it in. And if you don’t have a middle name, which is true for so many people.
If you don’t have a middle name, that’s okay. A lot of my clients will add like one word or a short phrase that represents their research to the end of their name. That’s an easy way to differentiate yourself. Some people also add their title, like DrYourName.com or YourNamePhD.com to differentiate themselves. There are options. You don’t have to go with your middle initial just because you think that’s what other people are looking for. If you just want to go with your name without the middle initial, because that’s how you feel, that’s how you’re presenting yourself, that’s how you publish, and how you want to share your work with the world, go ahead. Don’t feel like you need to add it unless it becomes problematic for you in the future. But you know, when you build an online presence, things like that happen less and less because people are already able to find your website when they search for your name.
I’m thinking about leaving academia, can I still have a website?
Jennifer: Alright, next question. Would a website still be okay if transitioning away from academia (but not to industry) for a chemist? Is a website still okay if you might be transitioning away from academia? I would say yes. Definitely. What about you two?
Brittany: I think I just wanted to clarify: by ‘not industry,’ do you mean you’re not working in industry, but you’re doing something else? In general I think having a website is fine. I was just curious because I’ve had my website, I started technically, officially started my website while I was working in industry. So, I guess it also depends on what you mean by…Okay, [responding to a text comment], you will not will not be working in industry. Yeah, I feel like there’s nothing to lose with having a website. Except maybe $20, or however much it costs to host a website depending on what you get. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s like your creative space. You can use it for whatever you want. So if you want to use it as a portfolio of sorts for your projects and to get a career in a different field or something, that’s also a really good place to showcase some of that more in depth as well.
Jennifer: I’ve also created a website for someone who was leaving academia, and they were not going back into the workforce. They weren’t at retirement age, but they just weren’t going back. They were taking an extended time away from working and they still wanted a website because their work was still important to them. They still wanted readers for their book. They really wanted to keep in touch with their past students. They still wanted to be part of the community even though they weren’t going to be actively working or receiving employment from a university. And that made a really big difference in their lives and how connected they felt. So if you are feeling like you want a website, no matter what you’re doing after academia, or if you’re staying in academia but switching what you’re doing–say you’re moving into a leadership position. It’s all okay. And the best part is exactly what Brittany said, which is that your website can adapt with you over time. It can be your creative space and it can also be your professional space to showcase what you want when you want. And you can even get rid of those pages if they no longer align with your needs. Ian, what about you?
Ian: Yeah. I have been out of academia for 10 years now and I still have my website up because people still cite the publications I had from grad school. I make the PDFs available on my website so if people are looking for examples if it’s cited and they’re looking for the paper, they can find it on my website.
Jennifer: I just want to note to check your publication contracts or get permission before doing this.
Ian: Also, my dissertations there if they want to see it. I also have some talks, posters, and so it’s great for people who are finding my name on citations that they have a way of still different content related to that work.
Jennifer: I love that. So it’s definitely been something all of us have experienced both in academia and outside of academia. And, our website has been helpful to each of us personally during that time. We definitely think it’ll be helpful for you as well.
How do I know if I should hire help for my website or do-it-myself (D.I.Y.)?
Jennifer: I have a question for you two, how should people know when they should hire help? Like when they don’t want to D.I.Y. [Do-It-Yourself for] their website.
Brittany: Since I am a website designer and I have done this for a couple of clients, I would say usually it’s like a time issue if you are just very busy. The people who have normally hired me, some are more like mid-career professors hire me too which is really funny I think. Everything else is just higher priority than their website. They have to teach their classes, run their research group, write a textbook. They’re running their own business. Everything else is a higher priority, and they just need to delegate. I think that’s just a personal call you need to make: when can you delegate? When can you do it yourself?
The other important thing is making sure that whoever you choose to work with, if you choose to work with somebody, that they also like to show you how it works and stuff. And that they’ve set it up for you in a way that is easy for you to manage, especially if you don’t have a lot of time on your hands to do that later on. Either that, or if you have the funds available to just have someone manage it, I think that’s the important thing. It’s just like how important and how much time can you put into this?
Jennifer: Ian everyone on Owlstown is doing it themselves, is that right?
Ian: Yeah, that’s correct. With Owlstown, it’s all D.I.Y. in that you’re adding the content yourself. If people are asking for help from me, it’s mostly the features of the website rather than the how the content is being added to the website.
Don’t wait, you can publish a 1-page website and grow over time
Jennifer: Yeah, that’s a great point. I really find that when academics come to me, they’re exactly kind of the same as Brittany. They don’t have the time or energy to make their own website. And they know that whatever amount of time it’s gonna take it’s just more than they can afford. Not just in terms of their personal life and their research, but in terms of their attention and what they want to focus on. It makes a big difference if you can be writing your book or working on your dissertation. Focusing on the things that you need to be doing instead of your personal website.
Now, Owlstown makes it really easy. If you have the content, you can just drop it in and have your website published so fast. I just love that as an option. And if you’re like I want a really extensive website, but I don’t have time for it this year, go to Owlstown because maybe it’s gonna meet all of your needs. But, when it comes to hiring help, it’s okay to hire help if you feel like you want support. If you know that having support is going to make your life easier. And it’s okay to go out and reach out to people and ask questions to see if they’re going to be a good fit to work with you. A lot of professors find working with someone locally, a local website developer, works well for them because they already know what they want on their website. But when it comes to your website don’t let the what-should-I-put-on-it hold you back from publishing a one-page website.
We were talking about that earlier but it is so important that you know you don’t need a perfect website. It doesn’t need to be exactly the way you thought of it in your head to hit publish. Launching it now is great. And it also means you can enter our Best Personal Academic Websites Contest. This is our 2nd year running the contest where we’re giving away multiple awards for the best personal academic websites. We are definitely giving an award in the Owlstown category. So if you do decide to build your website with Owlstown, we hope that you’ll submit! But, we also give an award for one-page personal academic websites. So if you can create your website before September 10, 2023, when the deadline closes, we would love for you to submit to our contest. Okay, if you have questions about personal academic websites be sure to drop them in the chat. Or, raise your hand and you can unmute yourself. Brittany, Ian, is there anything we haven’t talked about that you feel like we should definitely talk about?
Share your website with people once it’s live
Brittany: I guess the other part of having a website is once you make it, you gotta share it with people. Put it on your LinkedIn. I know that on Google Scholar, you can also link a website on there, so that might be helpful. You gotta start putting it on things so people can find it beyond just Google Search. On your social media profiles too. Just throw it on there.
Jennifer: Yeah! That’s great. Also in your email signature and on your faculty profile. Those are pretty easy updates for how to share your website. Also in your bio! If you’re presenting at conferences, adding your website to your bio is going to help all those people attending your talk (and the people who can’t attend your talk) find you and your work.
Updating your personal academic website
Jennifer: Oh, we had another question. How often should we be updating our websites? How often should you update a website?
Ian: Yeah. I think if you have new information that you can add to your website. You can add it then. I wouldn’t say it has to be weekly or monthly. As long as you have new information, you can add it in. I think the important thing is that the information on your website is up to date. I’m of the opinion that the worst websites are the ones that are not updated. So if you go in there, you think that they’ve last published 5 years ago but really, they had something published like a year ago. People are looking for information on your website. You want it to be up-to-date now. Whether you need to update it weekly with new information? I don’t think you have to as long as it’s updated with the information that you want them to know.If I’m gonna rank the importance of how the website looks or how updated the website is, I think the how updated the website is is more important. I’ve had too much experience going to an academic website and finding really old information. It just becomes a problem when you’re looking for research or collaborators and things like that.
Jennifer: I like that. Typically with my clients, I tell them that updating your website can be a nice kind of celebration. Every time you were gonna add a line to your C.V. [Curriculum Vitae] or something, add it to your website too. Because it’s actually going to help people when it’s on your website. People will actually be able to learn about it, whereas with your C.V., not a lot of people are going to be reading it on a regular basis. Your website is going to show up when they are Googling your name, so it does make a difference. But on a minimum, I typically recommend it annually. So, if you are so busy and you’re like I know I’m not going to have time to update my website. Even if you’re like, “Yeah, I have publications, but I don’t have time to add them.” Add it into your calendar now to update your website in a year. That reminder will be really helpful to make sure you actually get that done.
Many of my clients have come to me 6-7 years after making their website, and they haven’t updated it since then. So it’s typical. It’s normal. It happens all the time. But, we don’t want that to happen to you. That’s why we’re suggesting updating it more often.
Can I add book review to my personal website?
Jennifer: Next question is: “Can we add book reviews? Even though I’m in theology, I enjoy productive books.”
Yes, definitely. You can add book reviews. You can add any kind of writing that you want. Book reviews may be a good thing to add to a blog, something where you’re regularly updating it, and you can add links to it, you can help share it. People can even subscribe to [your blog] to get more of your book reviews. You could also just publish it as a page and continually update it and add as you have new ones. So definitely add book reviews.
Jennifer: Next question is: “Do we still add when the page was last updated in the footer, or no?” Typically not unless it is relevant to the information that you’re sharing. For example, I have a blog post about the different social media platforms academics typically consider for themselves. At the very bottom of the page, I write that this has been recently updated on this date and that the information is coming mostly from the specific websites of each of the social media platforms. I want to keep that updated because it’s actually important for my readers to know when I’ve updated that. But if it’s not important for your readers to know when you updated a page, it’s probably information that they don’t need. That’s what I would say.
Alright, we are a little bit over time, but if you have any other questions we would love to answer them. Brittany, Ian is there anything I haven’t covered that we should definitely chat about?
Brittany: Just to add on to what we were talking about with updating websites, I also think another good time to update your website is when you decide that whatever’s on your website is not what you want on there anymore because your goals have changed. Or, your intention for your website has changed. When that time comes, you can change out whatever you need to change out.I think earlier we were saying you want to showcase your projects. But I’m also of the opinion that you want to showcase more. Let’s say you’re a science writer and you have a portfolio of sorts. I would want to update or feature the type of science writing that you want to do in the future, that you currently have that you want to do more of, rather than let’s say a blog post that you wrote years ago or something like that. Because that’s something one of my clients had an issue with. She was like, “What do I do with all these blog posts that I’ve written for external contributions?” And I was just like, “Well, is this the type of writing you want to continue to do?” And she was like, “No.” I said, “Well then, this doesn’t necessarily need to be front and center. Instead, let’s focus on the things that you really want to highlight. That’s something to keep in mind when you’re updating your website.
Jennifer: That’s great! That’s so important. Yes, thinking about what your goals are and if your website is going to meet them before you do the updates. You can save yourself time by thinking about what your goals are. That’s great! Anything else we should cover that I haven’t chatted about?
Adding social media links
Ian: I’d like to add to why we might want to add links to our website from social media. I think that helps with discovery of your website. One thing we noted earlier was that people would look for you in search engines. But people will probably encounter your name from Twitter, or they looked at Google Scholar, or other websites. So if they find your name and they have a link to your website, that’s a good way to introduce them to your other work. For example, in Google Scholar you can add a link to your home page. Twitter is the same way. And, Jennifer mentioned this earlier, putting your website on your email signature. So if they forward and see your email, they’re like: “Oh, there’s a link to a homepage I’d like to find out more.”
Jennifer: I love that. Well, thank you all so much for coming to Setting Up Your Personal Academic Website. I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I’ve been talking with Brittany Trinh and Dr. Ian Li, creator of Owlstown. We’ve had a lot of fun talking with you about websites and we wish you so much luck making your own website. We hope that when you do, you’ll enter our Best Personal Academic Websites Contest. I do want to share with you this resource at the bottom of the contest page on my website. If you scroll down, there are going to be many articles, interviews, and resources from the 3 of us to help you set up your personal academic website. We do wish you the best of luck with this project! And, hope to see you again at our next event. Bye!
Bios
Brittany Trinh is a website strategist and designer for STEM leaders. She helps grad students, scientists, and academics create impact-driven websites so they can level up in their careers & get paid for their expertise. She’s currently a chemistry PhD candidate at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ian Li is the creator of Owlstown, the website builder for academics. Owlstown websites are easy to make and maintain, so you can focus on your research. With templates for various research artifacts, Owlstown allows you to present your research in various ways to inspire and inform others.
Update: We’ll be back for another contest in 2025! Jennifer, Brittany, and Ian look forward to your entry next year.
Do you have a personal academic website? Enter to win an award
Thank you for entering to win an award in the Best Personal Academic Websites Contest. The deadline for entries was extended through September 30, 2023.
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne of The Academic Designer LLC. My friends Brittany Trinh and Ian Li of Owlstown and I are teaming up again to bring you this professional development contest for
Faculty
Professors
Scientists
Postdocs
Grad students
Independent researchers
This is the 2nd annual Best Personal Academic Websites Contest. We’re excited to be back in 2023 to celebrate your websites. The entry form is quick to fill out.
Have a personal academic website? Yay! You should be proud of your website. They’re not common. We’re excited your website is in the world.
Watch the replay of our virtual event to help you set up your personal academic website
This event was recorded live on Zoom on August 1, 2023 at 6pm Pacific Time, hosted by Jennifer van Alstyne @HigherEdPR, Brittany Trinh @BrttnyTrnh, and Dr. Ian Li of Owlstown @Owlstown
Hosts
Brittany Trinhis a website strategist and designer for STEM leaders. She helps grad students, scientists, and academics create impact-driven websites so they can level up in their careers & get paid for their expertise. She’s currently a chemistry PhD student at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I hope that this contest will motivate more graduate students to get their websites done ASAP. I’m excited to see more academics share their finished websites on Twitter!”
— Brittany Trinh (@BrttnyTrnh)
Ian Li is the creator of Owlstown, the website builder for academics. Owlstown websites are easy to make and maintain, so you can focus on your research. With templates for various research artifacts, Owlstown allows you to present your research in various ways to inspire and inform others.
“I am excited that the contest will encourage people to share their research by creating an academic website. I hope that the experience of creating an academic website will help people to think about how to present their research. I also hope that people may gain inspiration from each other’s websites.”
— Ian Li (@Owlstown)
Jennifer van Alstyne helps professors feel confident when showing up online. The Academic Designer LLC is a minority woman-owned business helping academics share their research, teaching, and leadership on websites and social media since 2018. The Social Academic blog, podcast, and YouTube channel helps professors manage their online presence to build a strong digital footprint.
“This contest inspired so many people last year to make their own websites. I’m delighted we get to bring it back again this year. It’s never too early or too late to make your personal academic website.”
— Jennifer van Alstyne (@HigherEdPR)
Subscribe so you don’t miss the winners announcement!
Winners will be announced at the end of November here on The Social Academic blog.
7 free resources for creating your own personal academic website
Our goal is to help as many people as possible. Here are free resources from Ian Li of Owlstown, Brittany Trinh Creative, and The Academic Designer LLC to help you make your website. Please share with your friends.
For all of us in academia that are now working on properly developing AI Literacy within ourselves so as to then be able to develop AI Literacy within our students, we must ask ourselves how have we directly developed students to properly use AI in an ethical matter without violating academic integrity. We must ensure that we are taking all the necessary steps to set students up for success in multiple ways: Freshman orientation, school assemblies, posters, class discussions/activities, etc. all to help students understands that there are different ways of using AI and that its use is appropriate at times and not appropriate at other times.
The associated Infographic has been designed to directly help students in understanding how to use AI in a proper manner and specifically in a way that will not violate academic integrity. For a full and detailed explanation of this infographic, please check out the associated video:
AI Literacy is a necessity now. Students are already using AI. We in academia must ensure that they know not only how to use AI, but to use it effectively and ethically. Please use this infographic, please share this infographic with as many students and academics as possible so that we can help as many students as possible.
What are your thoughts? What would you add to help students even more?
Ethical spheres for Governing Boards to reflect on in 2023
