Tag: Thinking

  • Artificial Intelligence and Critical Thinking in Higher Education: Fostering a Transformative Learning Experience for Students – Faculty Focus

    Artificial Intelligence and Critical Thinking in Higher Education: Fostering a Transformative Learning Experience for Students – Faculty Focus

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  • Artificial Intelligence and Critical Thinking in Higher Education: Fostering a Transformative Learning Experience for Students – Faculty Focus

    Artificial Intelligence and Critical Thinking in Higher Education: Fostering a Transformative Learning Experience for Students – Faculty Focus

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  • 5 Steps to Update Assignments to Foster Critical Thinking and Authentic Learning in an AI Age – Faculty Focus

    5 Steps to Update Assignments to Foster Critical Thinking and Authentic Learning in an AI Age – Faculty Focus

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  • Reimagining the Flipped Classroom: Integrating AI, Microlearning, and Learning Analytics to Elevate Student Engagement and Critical Thinking – Faculty Focus

    Reimagining the Flipped Classroom: Integrating AI, Microlearning, and Learning Analytics to Elevate Student Engagement and Critical Thinking – Faculty Focus

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  • Integrating Systems Thinking to Enhance Liberal Arts Curriculum through Learner-Centered Teaching – Faculty Focus

    Integrating Systems Thinking to Enhance Liberal Arts Curriculum through Learner-Centered Teaching – Faculty Focus

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  • Thinking with affect theory in higher education: what can it help us to do?

    Thinking with affect theory in higher education: what can it help us to do?

    by Karen Gravett

    How does higher education feel, to work or to study in? How do affects circulate through the places, spaces, bodies and the structures and pedagogies of institutions? And why might thinking about feelings and affect be useful for educators? This blog draws on recent research that seeks to explore how affect theory can be helpful to understand and enhance our work in higher education. Attuning to affect, I suggest, has implications for both how we understand power relations in education, as well as for finding ways to foster more creative and meaningful pedagogies. 

    What is affect theory?

    Interest in affect, and ideas from affect theory/studies, are gaining momentum across the evolving field of higher education studies. Within the social sciences, the ‘affective turn’ has been influenced by work from Clough (2007), Massumi (2015), Seigworth and Pedwell (2023), Ahmed (2010), and many others. No longer confined to binary ideas of emotion/reason, body/mind, scholars have begun to think about emotion and affect as interwoven with education in complex ways. What we mean by emotions and affect can be understood differently, but for many scholars, affect specifically refers to sensory experiences (Zembylas, 2021), forces that are felt bodily. Affects circulate and evolve within and in between ordinary encounters, and in mobile ways.

    Affect in the classroom

    Thinking with affect can help us understand the classroom as a space in which learning is not divorced from the body but viscerally experienced and felt. This helps us to see learning and teaching as always situated and informed by the moment in which it occurs and as we experience it. Feelings do not simply happen within individuals and then move outward (Ahmed, 2010). This shift in thought enables us to consider ourselves in relation to others (both human and non-human), to consider how learning and teaching feels, as well as the ‘structures of feeling’ (Williams, 1961) that circulate within institutions. Thinking with affect helps us to think about the micro-incidents of co-presence, its frictions, and the ‘inconvenient’ (Berlant, 2022) work being present requires of us to engage with others. Education requires affective work of us; it requires us to change, evolve, and adapt constantly to others. This work is exposing; discomforting. In engaging with one another, and being affected and receptive to one another, we are made aware of our own interdependence.

    Affective institutions

    Thinking about affect, then, enables us to understand how institutions are permeated by, and also create, ‘affective atmospheres’ (Anderson, 2009), or ‘structures of feeling’ (Williams, 1961). In his work, Williams uses the idea of ‘structures of feeling’ to study the affective quality of life, in order that we might understand ‘the most delicate and least tangible parts of our activity’ (Williams, 1961, 48). Affective atmospheres, including competition, collegiality, anxiety, inclusion and exclusion are created through pedagogies, policies and practices. For example, the affective atmospheres of self-improvement and self-promotion may permeate neoliberal higher education institutions. Cultures of neoliberalism and precarity require academics to adopt certain affective and embodied practices, such as being competitive, self-motivated or resilient. And yet, affect may be able to disrupt these conditions: affective experiences such as humility, collegiality and joy offer opportunities for resistance and can also be found flourishing within institutional cultures and practices.

    Affective craft

    In the classroom, there may also be ways in which teachers are able to reshape affective relations. This might mean that certain relations could be given space to flourish, and other hierarchies of difference might be, at least momentarily, constrained.Different pedagogical approaches contribute to different feelings in classroom spaces and to different connections. For example, Stewart describes the changing affective atmosphere of the classroom when she employs storytelling and uses questioning approaches to enable dialogue: ‘something subtle but powerful had shifted…The room had become a scene we were in together as bodies and actors’ (Stewart, 2020: 31). For Airton, these kind of affirmative pedagogic approaches work as ‘affective craft’ and might include providing open spaces for students to lead and shape the learning encounter. In my research with Simon Lygo-Baker, we examine different ways in which teachers can experiment with affective craft. These include through teaching in spaces beyond the classroom, using art and objects for generating discussion, engaging storying and the sharing of vulnerabilities, as well as through using Play-Doh modelling to disrupt hierarchies and foster collaboration. These are just some ordinary, everyday ideas, and are ideas we also explore further in our new book: Reconceptualising Teaching in Higher Education:  Connected Practice for Changing Times, to be published in 2026 by Routledge.

    We believe that teaching is about presence, connection, an ‘encounter’, and that affect theory can be a helpful way to understand and enhance the connections we make, as well as the institutions in which we work and learn. As Dernikos and colleagues explain: ‘scholars are now theorizing what these affective swells can do. And what is surprising is that this does not call for grand movements, nor for great reforms, but depends on the subversive power of the very small’ (Dernikos et al, 2020: 16).

    Dr Karen Gravett is Associate Professor of Higher Education, and Associate Head (Research) at the University of Surrey, UK, where her research focuses on the theory-practice of higher education. She is a member of the Society for Research in Higher Education Governing Council, a member of the editorial boards for Teaching in Higher Education and Learning, Media and Technology, and Associate Editor for Sociology. She is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is also an Honorary Associate Professor for the Centre for Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University. Karen’s latest books are: Gravett, K (2025) Critical Practice in Higher Education, and Gravett, K (2023) Relational Pedagogies: Connections and Mattering in Higher Education.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • Thinking about the support of Chinese students: a response to HEPI’s recent report

    Thinking about the support of Chinese students: a response to HEPI’s recent report

    In December 2024, HEPI and Uoffer Global published How can UK universities improve their strategies for tackling integration challenges among Chinese students? by Pippa Ebel. In this blog, academics at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester give their thoughts on the report. Beneath that, Pippa Ebel has provided her response.

    • By Dr Paul Vincent Smith, Lecturer in Education; Dr Alex Baratta, Reader in Language & Education; Dr Heather Cockayne, Lecturer in International Education; and Dr Rui He, Lecturer in Education, who are all at the Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester.

    The HEPI and Uoffer Global report How can UK universities improve their strategies for tackling integration challenges among Chinese students?, by Pippa Ebel, provides a series of ideas for supporting Chinese students. This clear and succinct report left us wanting more detail on some of its conclusions. However, we also noted that the report’s focus on integration is one that has been problematised in recent publications. In this response, we suggest some contrasting perspectives on the support of Chinese students for the purposes of further discussion.

    Generalising along national lines

    The framing of the report along the lines of national identity unavoidably makes for a broad-brush approach. We suspect Ebel would agree with us when we suggest that we cannot assume Chinese students will have uniform ambitions and desires. Although the structural conditions under which students are recruited must be taken into account (see ‘Admissions’ below), there is an increasing recognition of students as independent agents, capable of making their own choices, rather than being passive vessels of their national culture.

    Further, there are other student characteristics to bear in mind. For example, we suggest that the distinction between undergraduate and postgraduate student experiences should be reflected in how students are offered support. At the University of Manchester, international students comprise around one-third of the student body; at the taught postgraduate level, it is more than half. Many of these are students from China. When considering educational level alone, then, there are likely to be differences between students who will spend three years in a setting of student diversity, and those who will spend a calendar year in the UK, predominantly among compatriots.  

    What do students really need universities to do?

    The report suggests that ‘Most Chinese students would like more digital support from their institutions’ (p. 41), with the report tending to focus on social media. Yet (p. 27) 60% of Chinese learners are nonetheless described as using Whatsapp and Instagram; they simply have a preference for the continued use of equivalent Chinese platforms.

    We infer from the report the idea that Chinese students are missing out by not using ‘our’ platforms. It is suggested (p. 41) that Chinese students could be involved in marketing decisions on whether to use Western or Chinese platforms for social media messaging. This would have the advantage of directly involving Chinese students. It begs the question, though, of whether time is better spent on choosing the best platform for a given purpose, or on establishing a broad social media presence to maximise coverage.

    Our experience suggests that students find their domestic digital ecosystem enabling in a UK context. It also suggests that there might be some question of validity when it comes to the report findings. Is this a case of higher education researchers asking: ‘Would you like more support?’, and the students understandably answering ‘yes’?

    Admissions to UK universities

    The report has much to say on how Chinese students are admitted to UK universities. The ‘ethnic clustering’ addressed in the report is an index of how the university sector is organised and how universities generate income. Several of UK universities recruit thousands of Chinese students annually. It is well documented that many students will base their choices on university standings, purposefully selecting universities that are in the top 100 of world rankings. In this context, there is a limit to what agents who are charged with ‘promoting under-subscribed courses’ (p. 40) could achieve.

    The use of AI-supported interviews to further test applicants’ spoken English is again thought-provoking, but requires more discussion. This practice seems to be an invitation for universities to spend money on additional admissions arrangements, in order to reduce income by rejecting students who, while they may have otherwise met the formal language criteria for admission, fall foul of new spoken English tests, the requirements of which are in their formative stages.

    Institutional responses to proficiency in English

    The report takes a particular position on the English proficiency of Chinese students. We agree that universities and their staff must be able to invoke standards of language for purposes including admissions and assessment. As teaching staff, though, we find that there are many steps to traverse before we conclude that any particular student behaviour can be attributed to linguistic proficiency.  Have we met the students on their own terms, and found out about them as learners? Before we insist on invoking linguistic standards, are we satisfied that there are no better explanations for (e.g.) classroom silence? The issue of classroom passivity is not one specific to international students, although it seems that the wider issue is being put to one side in favour of a focus on some international students.

    Not least among these matters is that of how China English is manifested in student academic writing. In many cases, the language used in student texts is highly systematic and obeys the rules of a fully-fledged language. There is a need to raise awareness of these features. With regard to spoken language, perceived proficiency is not always about the grasp of the language itself, but can also be associated with the spaces students are working in. Lack of confidence (as noted on p. 16 of the report), mental health, sense of belonging, and divisive university-level language policies may all have an impact.   

    The discussion of IELTS in the report is notable for what it omits. Is it the case that universities are putting IELTS to a purpose it is not fit for; or that universities think of IELTS as a guarantee of proficiency rather than a time-and-space-constrained test result for which universities themselves, along with UKVI, have set the standards for success? We welcome the contribution of the report on this point, and we would be interested to read more on the author’s broader perspective and recommendations on IELTS.   

    Integrating or including?  

    Chinese students remain the largest international group on UK campuses, attracting ongoing attention from higher education policy-makers and practitioners. Nonetheless, where we see a focus on a single group, we need to ask how universities can manage their support without falling into the trap of re-hashing existing deficit narratives. Work on internationalisation in universities has suggested that ‘practice[s] with the most demonstrable impact on students’ include embedding internationalisation holistically across the institution, and encouraging inclusion – as opposed to integration, which is not always well-conceptualised. There is a balance to be struck between the economy of generalising according to background, and providing local, co-constructed spaces for students as independent agents to meet their own needs.

    I have been pleasantly surprised by the degree and depth of feedback received in response to my report published at the end of last year. It is always better to have engagement of any kind than none at all. Two threads of response have been most striking: the first by management teams of universities and education organisations wanting to better understand the report and how to apply it to their own strategies. Secondly, by Chinese students themselves on platforms like Little Red Book, with whom the report has thankfully resonated and prompted further discussion and exchange. Both are incredibly heartening. Yet as expected, responses have not all been glowing, and I am particularly grateful for the response issued by academics at the University of Manchester which critically addresses several points. It reflects in a nuanced way on my arguments and contributes valuable questions.

    I hope to add the following reflections in order to continue the dialogue on the report, as well as acknowledge the time and effort they put into forming a response.

    The value of identifying patterns & trends within a single ethnic group

    As suggested, I recognise that Chinese students do not have ‘uniform ambitions or desires’. My extensive conversations with Chinese students from a range of backgrounds have shown me how personal and individual every university experience is. However, in a report focusing exclusively on one group – partly chosen for the fact it represents the second largest international student group in the UK – a principle aim is to extract trends and patterns which can be useful in promoting better understanding and empathy. My report does not make statements such as ‘the Chinese student experience is X’ or ‘all Chinese students think…’, instead it focuses on which challenges were most consistent among a diverse group of Chinese respondents. It is important, for instance, for universities to understand that probably their entire Chinese student body uses WeChat, and how this cultural phenomenon might shape their digital behaviour on campus.

    A more detailed explanation of divergent social media usage

    My report is in fact entirely in agreement with the respondents in finding that China’s own social media platforms – such as Little Red Book – are enabling when transposed to a UK context, providing key information about the locality (for instance, hospital services and banks).

    The report does not ask whether Chinese students should continue to use their own software, or switch to a local one. Rather, it investigates the habits and preferences of Chinese students in the UK, in order to raise awareness of differences with other local and international students. How universities choose to engage with this information is an open question, but it raises the point that if universities wish to improve communication channels with Chinese students they must first understand which platforms are being used, and how.

    Promoting undersubscribed courses, not institutions

    The respondents rightly observed that the preference of UK institutions among Chinese students is the result of an emphasis on rankings, leading to a preference for the top 100 institutions. However, the respondents misunderstood my assertion that agents should promote ‘less well-known courses’ to mean they should promote a broader range of universities. Since agents often work on behalf of universities, this would clearly not be a realistic suggestion, as they would not be incentivised to promote an institution that was not their client.

    My suggestion was to help agents promote different courses which are less well-known and undersubscribed among international students. Furthermore, it was to encourage universities to maintain closer dialogue with their agents to better communicate their needs (and gaps), as well as to receive useful information from agents who are in daily conversation with prospective students. During a conversation with a senior faculty member from a UK institution with a meaningful agent network in China, the complaint was raised that the more niche or newer courses in science have surprisingly few Chinese students. Whilst this is a single anecdote, it was consistent with prior findings. Chinese students veer towards courses which are actively promoted, or undertaken by fellow students in their network: Business, Engineering, Marketing… This means that more niche, but perhaps highly suitable courses are overlooked. Do prospective students, for instance, know that Bristol has 16 courses related to Economics, or might they presume quite reasonably that there is just one?

    Language challenges, explained

    The respondents thoughtfully add to my point on language challenges of Chinese students by highlighting the differences in the education systems of China and the UK. These are indeed pertinent and have been written about at length (one reason why I chose not to focus on this area). My interviews with students indeed reflected surprise with the academic environment at UK institutions, which promoted a form of debate and discussion they were unused to. This aspect, however, doesn’t contradict the argument of Chinese students being underconfident in expressing themselves in English, but adds another dimension in explaining their underconfidence within a classroom setting.

    The response asks for further clarity on my assessment of IELTS as a suitable language evaluation tool. As stated, I believe that IELTS is too heavily relied on as a tool for understanding a student’s overall language ability and their suitability to enrol in a course. Whilst IELTS provides an indication of level, it is incomplete and as Manchester points out ‘a time-and-space constrained test’. The report suggests that universities consider additional methods of evaluation, for instance online or pre-recorded interviews, in order to gain a more holistic and accurate perspective. In a world where AI is proving increasingly central to our lives, universities might benefit from investment into AI tools which could elevate and enhance their recruitment processes.

    (Hopefully not) a final word

    My report does not assume that students should or must integrate. Rather it questions assumptions around the degree to which Chinese students wish to engage with their institution (particularly socially), and highlights distinct facets of the Chinese experience which may be less well known by institutions and non-Chinese students.

    I do not personally see the term ‘integration’ as problematic. I interpret it to mean engaging with and understanding a local context, not compromising one’s own unique identity and background to fit in. I commend the respondents’ use of the term ‘inclusion’ and agree we should all be aspiring towards a more inclusive environment on campuses. However, I assert that in order to make an environment more inclusive, it is first necessary to raise awareness and understanding of the individuals we are attempting to include. Without this understanding, how do we know what inclusive looks like?

    Awareness of the unique and precise challenges international students face – Chinese or otherwise – is the first step to actually making them feel included. It is not showcasing a range of faces on the front page of a brochure, or hosting Chinese calligraphy workshops on campus. It is creating structural opportunities in which students can give feedback and embedding representative voices of these different groups within the institution at diverse levels, be it the students’ union, alumni office or governing board.

    I welcome any additional points, and again reiterate my thanks for a thoughtful response to my original report.

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  • Should higher education be thinking in terms of evolution or transformation?

    Should higher education be thinking in terms of evolution or transformation?

    The pervasive sense that five years or a decade or 20 years hence the sector will look radically different might be an exciting topic for panel discussions but it’s not clear whether radical transformation is desirable – not least because the form that transformation might take remains far from clear.

    The drivers of change are well-rehearsed: while demand remains strong for higher education participation, as we’ll be exploring at our Secret Life of Students event this week, the traditional student experience is coming under intense pressure as students with diverse backgrounds, needs and aspirations try to wedge their lives into a fairly boilerplate model of higher education study. Most institutions don’t have the money to throw at additional services, or to carry the risks of innovating in how they structure their portfolio. Income from international students could go some way to smoothing out the rough edges but recent events have demonstrated the consequences of building a system on an income stream that’s so variable and subject to a change of direction in the political winds.

    The Westminster government’s current higher education policy agenda is a rag bag of “stuff we can all agree on” like access, quality, and civic engagement, and contextual mood music around industrial strategy, skills, devolution, and regional economic growth. Reading between the lines it seems there is a direction of travel towards a more coordinated regional post-18 offer broadly aligned to regional economic growth agendas, but against a punishing economic backdrop nobody’s very clear what this ought to look like, how deeply or broadly it should touch the general HE offer, or how it should happen.

    The lack of system-wide or even local coordination is a real worry, as individual institutions make decisions for sustainability and even survival that will have long term implications for the functioning of the system as a whole and the opportunities that are available to students. To give one example: colleges report that what they see as predatory behaviour by universities to try to scoop up the students that might more traditionally be seen in college-based higher education provision is placing that provision under significant strain.

    Choices for change

    Dealing with the immediate pressures on costs while also staring down the barrel of a call for reform is objectively a very difficult psychological space for higher education to be in. Everyone I speak to is desperate for more time in their day to reflect, digest, make sense, and plan. Something I often find useful when I find the world confusing (an alarmingly frequent occurrence) is some kind of model or map to help me structure my thoughts, especially when time is limited.

    I like putting one thing next to another thing and seeing what happens, and so for this case I put change actors on one continuum from individual institutions to multiple organisations in collaboration, and scale of change on the other, from evolution to revolution. I then tried to think of all the “change” activities that are either under way or are being mooted and assigned them to quadrants.

    I’ve taken a few things from this exercise.

    One is that I think it hugely unlikely that the sector will coalesce into one of the quadrants or even at the top or bottom of the model. I think we will see activity in all four quadrants depending on the context – and I think that policy should seek to support all four forms of change to give the sector the best chance of making a good fist of it. I have found arriving at this conclusion oddly freeing, as it stops the circular argument of advocating any single activity such as income diversification, or merger, or shared services, as a unified answer to the sector’s challenges. It is possible to argue, as we have at Wonkhe, that the policy environment could be more conducive to supporting radical forms of collaboration, without suggesting that all institutions must now hasten to adopt these forms if these do not serve wider missions and objectives. Likewise, it does not necessarily follow that introducing mechanisms to support collaboration would reduce competitive pressures in some parts of the sector or geographies, and the sector may collectively need to make its peace with that.

    Another is that it’s noticeable that the activity to the left in the “evolution” space is a much more “comfortable” space for higher education, in the sense that it’s possible to see it already in action and the sector knows how to do it, not that all the activities listed are necessarily things that are desirable in every case. There’s a question, then, about whether, IF substantial change is needed, it’s possible for the accumulation of practices in the evolution space to achieve it – or do we just end up with lots of random examples of interesting practice and not much that is fundamentally different. I instinctively think that policy should accept that the grain of sector practice runs in the direction of evolution rather than transformation, and seek to work with the sector on mapping critical paths towards the change that is desired rather than administering exogenous shocks to the system.

    Finally, I’d like to see what new ideas the sector could come up with in the right hand side of the diagram (especially the top right quadrant) – not necessarily to advocate for, but to help open up the conversation and ask meaningful questions of current practice. It’s quite easy to explain why all the ideas in the top right quadrant are unlikely to happen, so another way to come at that question is to ask whether there are other ideas that might be more plausible.

    Tone matters here though – for some that idea of transformation is something like a playground, where it’s fun to speculate about different possibilities and might spark some useful thinking. For others, it could carry a much more serious weight of strategic challenge and need to be approached accordingly as likely to have a material impact on people’s lives and working conditions. The stakes are much higher on this side of the evolution to transformation continuum, particularly where an institution is operating in the bottom right quadrant – the risks of failure are real.

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  • Simulations and AI: Critical Thinking Improvement

    Simulations and AI: Critical Thinking Improvement

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    As an educator teaching undergraduates and graduates, both online and face-to-face, it’s always a challenge to find meaningful ways to engage students. Now that artificial intelligence has come into play, that challenge has become even greater. This has resulted in a need to address ways to create “AI-proof” assignments and content.

    Simulations in different types of courses

    According to Boston College, simulations are designed to engage students “directly with the information or the skills being learned in a simulated authentic challenge.” In my teaching over the past decade plus, I have gone from using simulations in one primary operations management course to using them in almost every course I teach. And I don’t necessarily use them in a stand-alone assignment, although they can be used as such. How I use a simulation is course dependent.

    Face-to-face

    In some face-to-face courses, I will run the simulation in class with everyone participating. Sometimes I will have teams work in a “department,” or have true, open discussions. Sometimes I will run the room, ensuring every single student is paying attention and contributing. Using simulations in this fashion gives flexibility in the classroom. It shows me who truly gets the concepts and who is going through the motions. The dynamic of the class itself can dictate how I run the simulation.

    Online

    In online courses, I typically assign simulation work. This can be one simulation assignment or a progressive unit of simulations. It’s a great way to see students improve as they move through various concepts, ideas, and applications of the topics covered. Creating assignments which are both relative to the simulation and comparative to the work environment make assignments AI-proof. Students must think about what they have actually done in class and relate it to their workplace environment and/or position.

    Why simulations work for all levels

    There are many simulations that can be used and incorporated in both undergraduate and graduate level courses. As much as we don’t think of graduate students relying on AI to complete work, I have seen this happen multiple times. The results aren’t always ideal. Using simulations at the graduate level, and ensuring your assignments reflect both the simulation and real-world comparisons, can help your students use AI to gather thoughts, but not rely on it for the answers.

    Student benefits

    Using simulations will have many benefits for your students. I have gotten feedback from many students over the years regarding their ability to make decisions and see the results that simulations give. My capstone students often want to continue running the simulation, just to see how well they can do with their “business.” I have had students in lower-level management courses ask me how they can get full access to run these when I have them as “in-class only” options. The majority of feedback includes:

    1. Anything is better than lecture!
    2. Being able to see how students’ decisions impact other areas can be very helpful for them. They actually remember it, enforcing more than reading or watching can do.
    3. Students want more simulations throughout their courses, rather than just one or two. They will have the ability to make those decisions and see those impacts. And they feel it will prepare them even more for the workforce.

    As a retention and engagement tool, simulations seem to be one of the best I have found. Are there students that don’t like them? Yes, there always are. Even so, they’re forced to think through solutions and determine a best course of action to get that optimal result. From an instructor’s perspective, there’s nothing better than seeing those wheels turn. Students are guided on how to recover from an issue, and are advised on what may happen if different solutions were attempted. The questions gained are often better than the results.

    Instructor benefits

    For instructors, there are many benefits. As I stated earlier, you can see improvements in student behavior. They ask questions and have a defined interest in the results of their actions. In classes when you have teams, it can become friendly competition. If they are individual assignments, you get more questions, which is something we always want to see. More questions show interest.

    Ease of use

    Although I usually include recorded instructions and tips for simulations in my online courses, I prefer my personal recordings, since I also give examples relevant to student majors and interests. For example, in an entrepreneurial class, I would go through a simulation piece and include how this might affect the new business in the market vs. how it might impact an established business.

    Auto-grading

    When assigning simulations, they are usually auto-graded. This can drastically lighten our workload. I personally have around 150-200 students each term, so being able to streamline the grading function is a huge benefit. However, with this, there are trade-offs. Since I also create simulation-based questions and assignments, there are no textbook answers to refer to. You must know the simulations and be the content expert, so you can effectively guide your students.

    Thoughtful responses

    AI can be a great tool when used productively. But seeing overuse of the tool is what led me to learn more simulations. This adjustment on my end has resulted in students presenting me with more thoughtful, accurate, and relevant responses. Feedback from students has been positive.

    Sims for all industries

    An additional benefit of simulations is that there are basically sims for all industries. Pilot and healthcare sims have existed for a very long time. But even if you only have access to one or two, you have the ability to make it relatable to any field. If you’re like me and teach a variety of classes, you can use one simulation for almost any class.

    Overall success

    I was using simulations before AI became so influential. The extensive and current use of AI has driven me to use more simulations in all of my courses. By adjusting what tools I use, I have been able to encourage more thorough problem solving, active listening and reasoning. Plus, I get strategic and effective questions from my students. The overall results include intense engagement, better critical thinking skills, and content retention.

     

    Written by Therese Gedemer, Adjunct Instructor and Workforce Development Trainer, Marian University, Moraine Park Tech College and Bryant & Stratton College

     

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  • Reading, Writing, and Thinking in the Age of AI – Faculty Focus

    Reading, Writing, and Thinking in the Age of AI – Faculty Focus

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