Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
Today on episode number 527 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Beyond Dichotomous Thinking, Strategies to Enhance Teaching and Learning with Alexis Peirce Caudell. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. Alexis Peirce Caudell is lecturer in the informatics department at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her scholarly interests focus on questions about the role of technologies in children’s spatial imaginaries and lived experiences. Alexis is committed to bringing the complex relationship between technology and larger social, political, legal, and economic systems to students’ experiences at Indiana University.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:25]:
She currently teaches a range of courses, including social informatics, an introduction to sociotechnical thinking, computer and information ethics, technological nature, a course that explores the relationships between technology and nature, and she co instructs the informatics capstone course, a year long course sequence that challenges teams of students to design and build a data driven information system. Universal design for learning, UDL, trauma informed pedagogy, and transparency in learning and teaching are all frameworks that Alexis uses to shape her teaching. She was a global classroom fellow in spring 2023 and was named a diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice fellow for Indiana University’s Center For Innovative Teaching and Learning for the 2023 2024 academic year. Alexis earned her PhD in informatics from Indiana University and also holds degrees in instructional technology from the University of Georgia, library and information science from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and geography from the Aberystwyth University. Alexis Peirce Caudell welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:02:52]:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to have this conversation.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:57]:
I am trying to settle myself down over here because I have been so excited about this conversation as well. I feel a bit too giddy. I need to settle myself down because today’s topic is something that I think is so vital, and I don’t find it talked about often enough. So I thank you so much for your generosity in being here today and contributing, and we’re gonna be exploring dichotomous thinking, and let’s begin by thinking about the ways that we might not often think about ways we’re reinforcing dichotomous thinking. I I think about many of us would go to politics here in the United States. Of course, we have a vibrant 2 party system, and by that, I mean, a very we we think about maybe I shouldn’t say we. I think about the ways in which our politics do that, but I know there’s so many other ways that we’re reinforcing this type of thinking, perhaps without really even realizing that. So what’s coming to mind for you the ways in higher education that we’re reinforcing that maybe without being aware?
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:04:02]:
So I’ve been giving some thought about this in terms of higher education, and we do this all the time. Right? Multiple choice quizzes, true false quizzes. Our subjects under departments, right, like, I am in a specific department, others are in different departments or different schools and colleges. You might be an arts major or a STEM major, but you’re not both unless you’re a dual major. And then that’s a different category. You’re either a single major or a dual major. Right? So we do it all the time and the the these sort of categories get baked into our structures, into our institution, in the way we do things, our grading practices. Do you think of yourself as an a student? Are you a b student? Did you I don’t know about you, Bonni, but my university during COVID, we went to a, like, a pass fail option for students so they could, you know, like, it was a satisfactory or I failed a course.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:05:01]:
Right? So it was an either or, I passed or I failed. That was it. Two choices. Right? So that list goes on and on. Probably a classic one is we think of ourselves as faculty and students. Right? When reality, odds are as faculty, we are also students. Students of teaching, students of our research areas, whatever those might be. Right? So, yeah, we we fall into this binary or dichotomous thinking all the time, both in higher education and in our daily lives as well.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:33]:
And what would be some of the contributors to why we tend to do that as human beings?
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:05:39]:
So we do. So as humans, we like to sort and categorize the world. That’s how our brains work. If we didn’t, it would be chaos. Right? We need to attach labels to things. If we’re giving directions, we need to be able to say go left or right. If we don’t have those two words or if those words are meaningless, how do we know where we’re going? Right? And so we we learn, there’s that ways to sort the world even from a very young age. So think about if you’ve ever been around young children, how many times adults are teaching young children how to sort things.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:06:20]:
So, like, you might if you’ve got a young child in your life, be like, yes, that’s the cat. Right? And then you see another cat somewhere else and be like, oh, look. See the cat. Right? And you’re constantly reinforcing that category of cat until that child is like, oh, this is a cat. I know what a cat is. Right? So we we use it to simplify things, to recognize things for our language. Right? It it it can make our decision making easier. Right? I know I like chocolate ice cream, but I dislike vanilla ice cream.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:06:52]:
Right? That’s a great. I know that I can just make the choice one way or the other. So they those categories, those concepts make our lives easier for decision making. Right? And they are important. If we had I always think about this like what would a university look like if there were no departments? What would we look like if there were no majors? Right? What if there were no designated classrooms? Like how would how would people function? Right? So but categories help us navigate that world. Right? They’re essential for us to do so.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:26]:
I so appreciate your examples here, and I’m thinking I when I’ve taught a consumer behavior classes in the past, you talk about some a similar paradigm of heuristics, and that heuristics can be so helpful to us. And I give the example of you go in to buy some soap or you’re gonna buy some shampoo, And if you didn’t have those heuristics, how could you ever get out of a grocery store? They’re just we’re overwhelmed with these micro decisions, and that helps us. And, of course, though, it also hurts us. And when it hurts us and we’re not aware of it limiting us or diminishing what we’re capable of, that’s when we really get into some some dangerous thoughts here. I am I’ve been so curious ever since learning about you and your work, and one area that I’m completely fascinated by goes back to your doctoral work and some of how you’ve started to become interested in the limits of this dichotomous thinking as it relates to technology and nature. Would you share that with us now? Share your entire dissertation with us in maybe, I don’t know, a minute or so. Just kidding.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:08:39]:
Sure. In interpretive dance,
Bonni Stachowiak [00:08:41]:
that would be a little awkward for you to pass.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:08:44]:
So, so yes. So we have, particularly in the u United States, but also Canada, probably in the United Kingdom, sort of the western world, if you will. We have this obsession that nature is separate from technology. We often position the 2 in opposition with 1 another. Right? We go to a national park or a state park to get away from our screens. Right? There’s quite a lot of literature out there that sort of argues that kids are obsessed by looking at their phones and their tablets and then not going out sight. That that technology is getting in their way of engaging with the natural world. I have t shirts that sort of say, like, you know, disconnect to reconnect.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:09:27]:
Right? That idea that was so plugged into technology that were disconnected from nature. And so I spent, a year with a group of middle schoolers doing a sort of ethnographic study and conversation with them really about how they understood both the concept of technology and how they understood the concept of nature and then the relationships between the 2. Right? So they would tell me all sorts of interesting stories and sort of I’d get all this detail about how much some of them loved being outside and some of them hated it. Right? They hated it because it was itchy and scratchy and hot and and distracting. Others loved being outside. So we get these range of things that they consider to be nature and then what those concepts meant to them. So for example, I had some students who or participants, I guess, who would explain to me that for them, technology was a way for them to relax, to zone out. Right? They could play a video game or just mindlessly wander on the Internet, not that that’s ever happened to any of us.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:10:40]:
Right? So it was a way for them to relax. Being outside was not relaxing for them, which is counter to how a lot of how we position nature, if you will. Like, you go out and relax in the summer and take in the trees or the ocean. Right? For them, it was not a relaxing space to be in. It was chaotic and they didn’t understand it and it was uncomfortable. Right? So we had all those conversations and then we looked around, say, their school to discover places where technology and nature came together and maybe the boundaries between the two concepts were not as clear cut. So I will forever remember, one young participant, we were out near their school and we sort of found a muddy patch in their playground, and it had straw on it where they the they had put straw down to reduce the erosion. Right? And this one kid looked down at it, looked at me and said, this is tech nature.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:11:39]:
Like, mush the two terms together. I was like, tell me more. And they’re like, well, it was grass, but they’ve chopped it up, and now they’re using it as a tool to prevent further erosion. And I was like, well, hello. Right? And so we had these conversations about where where technology and nature interact. Right? So I had, one student tell me in a conversation, and they were like, you know, red apples. And I was like, oh, I don’t know where this is going, but tell me more. And they’re like, well, they’re both technology and nature.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:12:18]:
And I was like, oh, I am confused, but keep going. And they were like, well, originally, there was an apple tree, like, just in nature. Like, that would have been nature. And then along came humans and cultivated apples and now there’s now there’s a technology because it’s part of, like, big agriculture. Right? And we have all these computer systems in order to get apples onto the grocery shelf. Right? But they’re like but then you eat it and, like, you throw the core away and then the core will decompose and then it goes back into nature again. And so they traversed this one example of an apple through multiple categories. Right? And so when we pay attention to those edges of what we think belongs in a category, right, then we can start seeing maybe the spectrum, the diversity that is and is not in there, and are there situations when things might not be included but should be included? Can we think about things in different ways? Right? So it’s being able to sort of think across or beyond those boxes that we normally operate on every day.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:13:29]:
Right?
Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:30]:
Now did you ever run across kids who would espouse that you swallow the watermelon seed and then a watermelon grows in your stomach?
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:13:39]:
I I did not none of them brought up watermelon seeds, but we did have a long conversation at what point water trans transformed from being nature to technology. Right? We had a long conversation about when it rains and then they’re like, it goes gets treated and it goes in your pipes, but then it goes in your body. What is that? And we they were like, we really need another category and a name for this other category where these when these things come together. Right? Because dichotomous thinking is not helping us navigate those questions. So
Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:14]:
When when we think about the problem that it is and the opportunity I mean, as you said, it helps us, it hurts us. It’s it’s and here I am describing it in dichotomous space. I can’t help it. But but I would really appreciate hearing your reflections, the extent to which we might be able to interrupt those patterns in our brains when they aren’t being helpful, Or perhaps less than thinking about it as an interruption where I think about it at the systems level or a systemic level. Perhaps it’s a practice or it’s both. I mean, what comes to mind for you in terms of interrupting or learning to practice a different way of thinking in in in terms of not always sorting when it’s not gonna be as helpful?
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:15:01]:
Right. So I think the first step is recognizing that you’re sorting. Right? Like like, oh, I am sorting. Right? So I think one place, particularly in higher education we can start is thinking about our courses and how we structure courses. So are we are we asking students to connect the dots between courses that they take, Or is our course a stand alone one and done, they move on, never to revisit that material again. Right? I teach a capstone course where we ask, my students to bring in all the foundational skills they learned in all their other courses and put them all together into this new experience. Right? I think we can challenge ourselves around some of our policies. Like, we can interrupt that.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:15:50]:
So who are we envisioning in our classrooms as students? Right? I was in a workshop with somebody, and I was advocating the inclusion of something in a syllabus around welcoming children into the classroom if somebody’s childcare fell through. Right? And the person I was having conversation with were like, well, wait. That makes sense if you’re teaching grad students. And I was like, no. I predominantly teach undergraduate students. And their assumption was that the category of undergraduate student, right, is someone that doesn’t have children. And I was like, is it? Right? So can we interrupt our thoughts when we’re putting our syllabi together? Right? Like, who are we envisioning is gonna be in our class? Who’s not gonna be in our class? Those kinds of things. Right? And then how do we there’s like lots of different ways we can introduce concepts and this dichotomous thinking to our students in our classes, and it’s probably gonna look different in different fields.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:16:50]:
Right? Having the conversation, 1st and foremost, right, is a first start. I we have a introductory course that all of our incoming doctoral students take, and they are challenged to model a forest. That is that is their big assignment, model a forest. I I do not teach the course, but I come in and I challenge them and I ask them, you’ve got a model of forest, but what is it? What is a forest? Right? And so we have an entire class period thinking about what is a forest. Is it does it have to have trees in it? Are there examples of forests that do not have trees? The answer is yes. Do where does that forest exist? How do you how many trees does a forest make? Right? So having just raising their awareness of a concept, right, and how they may be thinking about it is one step. In, an ethics course that I teach, it we often talk about the relationship between technologies and health care and the ethical questions that come up there. But one of the ways I’ve learned to start that conversation is by asking students what they think of or what comes to mind when they think of health care.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:18:05]:
Now in the United States, most often, they tell me doctors, nurses, hospitals, medications, MRI scans, CT scans, insurance, those kinds of things. Right? Rarely ever do they tell me about social indicators of health, so where people live, their home, their job stability. Right? All of which we know feed into people’s health. Right? If we limit the conversation around technology and health to just the doctor’s office or the hospital, we are excluding and ignoring all of these other questions that we could be asking around technologies and health when it comes to ethics. Right? So even asking those questions can then shape the questions that you follow-up with. Right? So just having those conversations is a really good way. And I find students, it doesn’t take much to get them thinking about it. Right? You just sort of need to nudge them in the right direction.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:19:08]:
I’ve got magnets that I’ve used with students. It’s like a set of magnets. There’s triangles, rectangles, and then each of the shapes have, like, different colors. And I always challenge students, like, volunteer and they come up and, like, sort these. Somehow, sort these magnets. And almost always, they sort them by shape first. So all the triangles go together, all the circles go together, all the squares go together. And then I’ll call for another volunteer.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:19:34]:
I’m like, now sort them another way and then like, oh, I can sort them by color or I can sort them by color in terms of warm colors and cold colors. Right? And so having sort of small activities just to bring the idea about how we sort things in the world, Super easy to do this. I I have tons of examples that I use in different classes that I could fill on for days about.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:56]:
Oh, I’d love to hear a couple more examples because this is actually leading to the last part of this part of the episode, which is kind of what do we do about it. So we’ve we’ve looked at what is it, why do we do this, how it can be helpful for us, and not always as helpful. So any other ideas that you have for fostering this? I I also did wanna just before you give some more examples, I did wanna just, I think, state what feels like the obvious, but just check it with you. You seem like this is very much something that needs to be practiced. It’s inside of people. I think so often about curiosity where people say, oh, well, students just aren’t you get older and you’re not curious anymore. I’m thinking, I don’t know. I’m 53 years old.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:20:41]:
I feel super curious. It just depends on the context. So I feel I feel any learner that I’ve ever met, they’re super curious, but just maybe not in a particular class that they might be in. I I But I don’t know. So so do people have this inside them and they just need to have an outlet versus maybe some people have it more than others. I don’t know. I guess.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:21:05]:
No. I I I think we all have it. Right? I think, unfortunately, we are very good, particularly in education, of sidelining that curiosity and space for that curiosity, particularly when we are teaching in a very confined timeline or we have to hit specific pieces of content. Right? Or we have to administer specific standardized tests. We we tend to make space for all of those things and not space to nurture curiosity. And while everybody has different opportunities to do that within their classroom in terms of how much flex about flexibility they have, even small amounts can make a difference. Right? Like so I have the opportunity. I I created an entire course called technological nature off of my dissertation.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:21:58]:
Right? The whole thing is about being curious and exploring the relationship between technology and nature. But in my other classes, I don’t maybe have as much flexibility, but I just find those moments where we can pause and have those conversations. This past spring, many of my, computer information ethics students were curious and and interested in how generative AI is gonna shape their educational experience. Right? And so we had multiple conversations about how they were even understanding authentic learning. Like, they were like, AI is gonna get in a way of authentic learning. I’m like, but what do you mean by authentic learning? Right? And it was a moment where we could think about what that concept was and why we might think that AI was a dichotomous right? Like, we were put they were putting them in dichotomous thinking, authentic learning over here, learning with generative AI over here, and the 2 are not compatible. And so we wrestled with they wrestled mostly with even thinking about what does it mean for authentic learning. Right? Like in those kinds of things.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:23:13]:
So even those small moments, there there are moments, I think, in classes where we can nurture you pushing against this dichotomous thinking by having students envision other solutions. So one of the courses I teach is a social informatics course and it looks at how algorithms shape our experiences as human beings in the world. And one of the things we ask students to do is to come up with alternative solutions. Right? Like, so this isn’t working, but we push them to think that this is not just a technical logical solution. Can you come up with a socio technical solution that’s much broader? Right? So maybe the solution is a policy. Maybe it is a institutional change. It doesn’t have to be just a technological change. So finding those moments there, and there are a couple of good resources.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:24:07]:
I don’t know if you know, of the Ministry of Imagination Manifesto. So it came out of Rob Hopkins who has a podcast from from what if to what next podcast. And it’s a free PDF. Anybody can go on and download. I will just warn you, if if anybody goes to print it, it’s really it’s like large format printing. I did not realize that in the first time. I’m like, why why are these pages all weird? But it’s big pieces of paper. So it’s called the Ministry of Imagination Manifesto.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:24:39]:
And if my students are struggling to even break out those boxes of that that dichotomous thinking, right, Like, I’ll share examples of other people who’ve come up with out of the box thinking, if you will, solutions to different questions just to get them started, like to nudge them along those ways. Right? In my technological nature class, we we developed some grad students and I developed something called we’ve now called the transcontextuality game. And so we have all these different sets of cards. One’s an ecosystem set of cards, one’s a design set of cards. We put together some technology cards, and we sort of randomize them into sets, and we challenge students to connect all the cards in a set. And it could be a peregrine falcon, grass, and a satellite, and a truck. Right? And or whatever it is. And they have to find those connections and how how or what those relationships are.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:25:44]:
Right? So just giving them an opportunity to explore those potential connections, right, is a way to do it so that you don’t it doesn’t have to be an entire course. It’s great if you can. But it can be just those moments of where in our disciplines is there disagreement about definitions. Right? If you ever want to peel away the the idea that libraries are quiet places for quiet people, you should attend a library cataloging conference where they have robust conversations about what should or should not be in a category and how it should be cataloged. Right? And so so each and each discipline has those moments, right, where they maybe there isn’t an agreement on what a concept is. And can you bring that into the classroom? Can you give students an opportunity to explore that in some way?
Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:43]:
That last example to me, and I could talk to you for 6 more hours and just be getting started, so I have to discipline myself here. But I can’t resist since you brought up libraries. This, to me, brings up an area I’ve been very curious about, but I I always wanna be cautious how I talk about it because I care about people’s perception. So I the the library is one of the areas that reports to me at my university, and so we will of course of course, we will ask students what their perceptions are, you know, how satisfied are they with the library, and how to meet their needs. And that and that is so vital to the work that we do, and I’m happy to report that our library, on any satisfaction survey I’ve ever seen, it just they excel. I mean, they’re tremendously gifted and and our students love our library. And yet, I feel like it is limiting to own it has nothing to do with them being students. It’s just limiting to ask any group of human beings that doesn’t know the full vibrance that libraries as a more macro entity for what’s even possible in a library.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:56]:
I I love now that I I mean, I still feel like I know just the grain of sand about libraries, but I love to go anytime they’ll talk about, oh, there’s this library in in New York, and if you live there, you could get access to this. But if you paid $10, then they they’ll anyway, I just always go, oh my gosh, they have that in their library? I recently heard about they’ll check you out carpet cleaning machines, because it’s really hard to clean your carpet. It would never have occurred to me. You could check out, and I and there’s some other example that’s not even coming to my mind right now, so I don’t wanna sound patronizing to our students, but I do feel this friction of frustration of if you only ask someone their satisfaction level for their understanding of what’s possible for anything, teaching, in the library, whatever, my gosh, we’re really missing the boat. So I don’t know if you have just really laid a lot on you and, just like, tell us about your dissertation in 60 seconds. I’d love to hear any reactions you have to what I was just struggling with there.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:28:56]:
Well, as a I I don’t know if we talked about this before. So I am a former librarian, although I guess I am still a librarian. I think once a librarian, always a librarian. I cochair our library’s committee on our campus. So we have a faculty committee that gives feedback to our libraries, and I I’m cochair of that group. And so yes. Like, people just do not understand the breadth of things that libraries do in part because the concept of a library is so ingrained in their imagination. Right? So how do we or can we give them opportunities to understand the breadth of things that libraries do? So one thing that I have started doing in a couple of my classes is I I’ve started taking my STEM students to the rare book library on campus.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:29:50]:
Now you might think, what on earth would STEM students get out of historical manuscripts, you know, like, from the 1300? Like, what possibly I and they’re they’re usually a bit confused themselves. They’re like, wait. Why are we going here? But inevitably, there are things in there that we can find that show, like, old calculation tables or how people calculated distances in the oceans or how people recorded and organized information in the past. Right? And students are like, I would never have known this existed because I am a STEM student, and STEM students don’t use the library. Right? So how can we find those moments that disrupt that? Right? Are there places on our campuses we can take our students, depending on how many we have in a class, that would shake up their notion of what is even the classroom. Right? I way back, I’ve had multiple careers, and I taught outdoor education for a while. Right? So for me, being outside is also a classroom. We were in the path of the full eclipse here recently, and so students and I went outside and downloaded, an app where you can see the night sky.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:31:07]:
It’s like an augmented reality on your phone. So you hold your phone up even in daylight, and you can see the stars and constellations. Right? And you can see planets. And you could do that during the eclipse as well. And so you could see all the other things because the stars came out. You could see which stars were which and those kinds of things. Right? Like, can you disrupt what students think of as your course and your content and your material? I think those are ways into challenging this dichotomous thinking. Right? Just how do we shake things up a little bit with whatever freedoms and flexibility we happen to have in our institution or our classes.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:46]:
And what a joy it is to get to know you. And, no, I didn’t know you were a librarian, but, of course, you were, and, of course, you still are. But what I love about each and every example that you’ve just shared with us comes from such a humble, curious place yourself, because you told all these stories, and it’s so apparent how much these children that you got to spend time with as you were doing your research were teaching you and giving you new lenses and perceptions for things that, it sounded to me, as you told the stories, were tell me more about the Apple and how is the Apple technology and not I mean,
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:32:23]:
wow. 100%. And in fact, they they did a end of year celebration of all the things that they did in their school. And so my project and my conversations with them was part of that. And they wrote in their description, we designed miss Alexis’s dissertation. And I was like, actually, you all did. Right? Like, in reality, you actually did design my dissertation, because I wasn’t sure, because I went in with a sort of curious mind of I I don’t know what’s gonna happen with these students and research practice and I don’t know where this is gonna go. So they they did in fact, codesign my dissertation, and and I called that out actually in the work.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:33:05]:
So
Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:07]:
This is a time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. And, Alexis, I am curious if you have heard of the first thing I wanna recommend, but to describe it to listeners, this is the New York Times connections game, and this is available if you subscribe to the New York Times games, but, also, it is available for free. This has become a ritual for me and my family where we will play Wordle, not altogether, but use my daughter likes to play with my husband. I tend to play it alone, but we do Wordle, and then we do the connections game. And for those who haven’t heard of it, it is 4 different so I I think it’s 16 words or phrases, and then you’re trying to match up sets of 4. These 4 things have to do with this this four things, and you’re you’re tapping on you can shuffle the deck if you want, and then you’re tapping in what you predict. You only get 4 chances, I think, and then you lose the game, and they say something like, try again next time. So I wanna recommend the game, and I do have a question for you, Alexis.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:08]:
And then but I also wanna recommend a humorous Instagram video that describes it made me laugh so hard, but I’ll I’ll let you watch the guy. I’ll I’ll put it in the links in the show notes, but the first round is typically an easier one. So he’s making all these jokes about, you know, red, green, yellow, blue colors, Like, I’m doing amazing and then he has the most random things where it’ll be like, singers, but leaving off the first four letters of their name and adding it to an animal and a color and putting it backwards. How did you not get that those things were related? And it’s so funny because I struggle with it. I mean, most days, I cannot get all 4 to save my life. I feel I am so victorious when I can ever do it. So I’m I’m seeing Alexis’s head nod, so I I can tell already without her even sharing, she’s heard of it. Here’s my question for you, Alexis.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:04]:
I would love I’ve been it’s been floating around in my mind for weeks now, and I’m realizing through our conversation, you are the perfect person to ask my question to, and I do believe listeners will be interested. So I would like to design a game like this, in my case, for our faculty about artificial intelligence. But, also, you could imagine in any discipline and student in any class, you you could see the way connections playing a game like that. When you were talk I I was trying to think this even this morning. I was thinking, well, should I ask my friend who knows, you know, JavaScript, how hard this would be to do this in some kind of a programming language, or should I ask chat gpt if it knows how to write I mean or when you were talking about cards, I thought, well, maybe I could do it in an analog way because I tend to overestimate how much I can get done in the summertime and wanna learn all the things and try all the things, and it’s just not feasible for me to do that much. So as you hear about my curiosity about the connections game and that I would love to design for our faculty a connections game to help them learn more about AI and some of what they you know, how they might sort the connections. Would love to hear any reactions that you have to the idea. If you were me, whether you would go toward a a physical card that they would sort there at a table together, try to do it digitally, or any other ideas you have for me.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:36:28]:
So I am a big fan of analog as well, even though I am in a STEM school and in an informatics program. Right? Most of my students set for that means they are plugged into their computer screens all the time. So for me, giving them a chance to be analog is is gives them a break. Right? Like, it is that like, it’s not screen. It is analog. It’s not digital. It’s analog. It also I like using analog because they can physically move things around.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:36:56]:
Right? They can ponder. I the way I do the sort of card connecting game, if you will, or challenge is I put a big giant piece of poster paper underneath on the table and have them move the cards around, and then they can use markers or pencils and draw the connections. Mhmm. But then they can rearrange them and draw new connections. Right? Or they can have things or put things on post it notes. So it allows them a lot of freedom to do things in ways that I haven’t anticipated that they might do. Whereas if you make a digital version, you might constrain Yeah. What they come up with.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:37:35]:
Right? So but it depends on how many people you’re gonna do this with, the context, and all those kinds of things. But I do think analog gives opens up possibilities, whereas a digital version might not. Right? Like, those connections, that game, you are limited to what’s on the screen and what they’ve determined is the connection. Right?
Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:59]:
Yes. And as you’re as you’re sharing, I’m realizing, then it’s not like this was a bad thing, but because so many of our faculty would be would not have maybe even ever tried any AI at all, and I’m really attempting to teach to the tales where some might really know a lot about it and some might know a little. I was thinking of this, conceiving of it as a test for understanding. Do you understand some of the basic types of AIs? I was thinking of it in a very simplistic way. I I was thinking, oh, I could have Claude, and I could have OpenAI, and then and then, oh, these are but now, I’m realizing I might wanna rethink it, because I would be reinforcing dichotomous thinking where there’s a right wrong, and wouldn’t it be marvelous to recognize that there are some, yes, who know very little? There are some, yes, who know a lot, but even the ones I might think know very little probably know more than I realized just like the apples and the is this technology or not such that I could open up my own paradigm for this is not a game that tests for understanding. This is a game that ignites imagination, and that could be really cool.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:39:10]:
Right. And I think analog can help disrupt that or facilitate that, right, in terms of how you structure it and people moving around a table. You can even have if you have them working groups, you can also have them move to different tables. I have, in the past, all of a sudden taken to a couple of cards away from a group and given them 2 new ones. You’re like, okay. Now rethink this. So, yeah, I will be fascinated to hear how that goes.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:38]:
Yeah. Before we get to your recommendations, tell me a little bit about what I might think about in terms of moving to a different table. So how how might you conceive of that? They would go to a new another table for
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:39:50]:
Yes. So you can do a couple of different ways. So you could ask for a volunteer. Right? Move to another table and everybody shifts one person. Right? And when you get to that table, try and understand the connections or ask the group to explain the connections or whatever it is that they’ve worked on. Right? Can you or depending if you do an analog, could you take a card with you from your table to your new table and have them have to work it into whatever they’ve constructed. Right? So you have that sort of movement of ideas, that traversing of concepts literally from one table to another.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:31]:
And can you see
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:40:31]:
it and understand it in a different context or whatever it is you’re attempting to do? So, yeah, having one person I don’t know how many people will be doing this.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:41]:
60, probably. 70.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:40:43]:
It’s doable. Yeah.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:45]:
Oh, I totally think it is.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:40:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you’d said a 100 and if you’d said a 100 and something, I would have been like, oh, well, that might be a bit harder. But I think, yeah, in in groups, you can figure out how many tables and groups you can navigate in your space. Right? And do that sort of round movement. And do it once, do it twice depending on time and what people are getting out of it too.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:08]:
Oh my gosh. Thank you for this extra treat. And I do I anticipate that listeners will have so many ideas they’re thinking of for their classes and how to apply this. Thank you for letting me sort of cheat the system a little bit here with my recommendations and then spontaneously asking you for your advice. I’ve so I still feel giddy. We started with giddiness, and we’re ending. And I can’t wait to hear what you would like to recommend today.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:41:30]:
So I’ve already mentioned one, which was the Ministry of Imagination manifesto document by Rob Hopkins. Along those same lines, if listeners are trying to find other ways to spark imagination, Ruha Benjamin’s new 2024 book, Imagination and Manifesto, is all about how do we reimagine the world in which we wanna live. Right? So if that works in terms of the areas that Ruha is talking about, like like, use that. Right? That’s another great place to start. And then if anybody wants to get into sort of learning more about categorization and concepts, one, I’m more than happy to talk to anybody. But Gregory Murphy has a relatively new book out. I believe it was 2023. It’s an MIT press and it’s called categories we live by, how we classify everyone and everything.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:42:23]:
And it is a pretty good introduction, I think, for anybody even if this is not your area of expertise. Like, it gives you a background of why we sort and classify things and then gives really good examples from around the world in terms of in different context about why it can be problematic and or useful. Right? Like, it can be both, but how can we, like, you’ve got categories on species in the biological world. It’s got a whole section on defining peanut butter and potato chips and almond milk. Right? And then a section on death, the ultimate category. So if anybody is interested in sort of following or learning more about categories, that’s a really good introduction. And he cites most of the pivotal works and sort of concepts and categorization. And then my other one is super random.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:43:09]:
I’m going to that has nothing to do with categories. Although, maybe it does because it’s categorizing bugs in your garden. So I’m going to assume that maybe some of your listeners are in the height of gardening season and growing fruits and vegetables. And if they’re like me, they’re always like, what is eating my carrots or my cabbages or whatever?
Bonni Stachowiak [00:43:32]:
You are blowing my mind right now. The number of time I feel like you’ve been spying on our household and and and spying on me, although I know you listen to the podcast, but bugs are literally eating our garden. Please help us, Alexis, please. Okay. So
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:43:48]:
so there’s a book called The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook, identifying and solving common pest problems on edible plants. It’s by Susan Melvihill Hill. It’s 2021 and what’s nice about it is you can look it up by plant. So if you’re like, what is chewing my carrots? You can look it up and it will narrow down what it is. And then it gives you, like, pictures of things and it gives you ways to do the pest management that are holistic and not just spray it with this pesticide. Right? So it’s really good about giving you options of how how to treat and deal with them. And then I know she’s got a new book out. I don’t have it.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:44:29]:
It’s called the Vegetable Garden Problem Solver Handbook, which is border. But this one in particular, if you’re wondering what little bugs are eating your carrots and your cabbages or your lettuces, I go to this quite frequently when I’m trying to figure that out. So that’s my favorite one.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:44:44]:
What it is for me, not, We do have a raised bed garden in the backyard that right now is entirely populated by the most stupendous blackberry bush. So and my son is fully responsible for having picked the plant and cultivating it. So fun. But, no, for me, when the bugs came for the Meyer lemons, we’re we’re now we gotta we gotta do business together because I can’t I love my lemons and I can’t be enjoying them as much because the bugs have taken over. So I can’t wait to explore this.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:45:14]:
Yeah. So this one yeah. This one I’ve used quite a bit in terms of radishes and brassicas and all those kinds of things. Lots of really close-up pictures too so you can get up close and personal with your birds and what they are in fact.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:45:32]:
What an absolute joy it is to have been connected with you. I I hope this is not the only conversation we ever get to have because this has been such a delight. Thank you for all these ways. I wanna read every book. I did re buy Ruha Benjamin’s book the other day, but I also bought, I Kiss You Not, probably 4 other books. But now you’ve just made me wanna read that one, and, of course, I wanna also, see if our libraries have any of these other 2 books. And if not, you know, support those authors, sound amazing in all these ways to explore. I cannot wait to start exploring with these ideas.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:46:07]:
Thank you so much.
Alexis Peirce Caudell [00:46:08]:
Thank you for having me. It’s been such a pleasure.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:46:13]:
Thanks once again to Alexis Pierce Caudill for joining me for today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. Thanks so much to each one of you for listening. And if you’ve yet to sign up for the weekly updates, head over to teaching in higher ed dot com slash subscribe. You’ll receive all of the recent episodes show notes, and this one’s going to be a good one. And in addition, you’ll receive some other resources that don’t show up in the regular show notes.
Bonni Stachowiak [00:46:55]:
Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.
