First hiccup
So first interview didn’t go as planned as confusion between myself and the participant on whether it was in person or online! Fortunately, this didn’t cause too much delay as we were due to meet the following week so able to shift things back a week!
Following the tutorial on ethics, I decided to rethink whether to survey the wider school staff, which feels too extensive for this piece of research and I also feel like I may be putting my ‘head above the parapet’ on this topic I feel if I extend out to the school. Not sure why I feel like this, and it’s not really like me to shy away from rationale conversations, I guess because I’m new to the School and feeling my way with the ‘way things are done around here’…
I will undertake the 4 tutor interviews and then consider whether to run an online session with students on the PGCert to explore the topic from a student point of view. I have discussed with four members of the course who are willing to give their time but I’m going to make a call on it after I’ve done the comparative marking exercise.
Blog Tutorial – online session
Useful session thinking more widely around blog topics – in particular how we work or can create focus – in particular for me was interesting on how to get started, how to get focused, a discussion I frequently have with students and it’s good to reflect on how I am doing this myself.
Today I have brought myself down to the co-working space of which I am a member, it’s Sunday morning, totally quiet, no-one is here and I’ve given myself three focused hours to:
- update the blog
- prepare for next week’s research sessions with tutors
- read two articles on AI and teaching practice
There are a lot of A’s in Samantha
We also did some activities around Mnemonics, again it’s a technique I’m familiar with to support students and my own children in their exam revision but it was new to think about it as a keyword tool or a way of triggering ideas for blog posts…
S – social justice
A – artificial intelligence
M – marking
A – articulate
N – nuance
T – tutors
H – hold-up
A – academic
We discussed using these as starting point words from which to develop keywords or indeed to start blog posts – I’m going to extend them out to see where each one can be developed and then see where I can identify where to explore more.
We discussed how this might help us identify where gaps exist – I could have done with fewer A’s and an E for ethics – Samentha/Semantha!
In thinking about this gap it made me reconsider if exploring the ethical considerations could be more explicity addressed in the next interviews…. whilst I’ve always known that it was a core issue I don’t feel that I specifically explored it enough in my first interview.
KEY REFLECTION – what it has made me consider is whether to add some specific questions into my comparative research exercise around the issues of ethics – exploring how much tutors know about the problematic ethical issues of using AI or ChatGPT – most cite the issue of referencing and incorrect information however there are deeper issues around how AI has been developed, of particular interest is the paper by Myke Healy, Approaches to Generative Artificial Intelligence, A Social Justice Perspective where he explores the concept of digital colonialism.
I’m also experimenting with listening to Binaural Beats on Spotify to see if this helps with focus and concentration!
Update: I’ve moved from Binaural beats which seemed to just make me sleepy to a Focus Mix which is working brilliantly!