Teaching
CategoryResources for Teaching in the Age of ChatGPT & other LLMs
How do large language models (LLMs) affect how we understand our job as teachers, and how does it affect what we should do in order to do that job well? (more…)
Policing Is Not Pedagogy: On the Supposed Threat of ChatGPT (guest post)
“ChatGPT has just woken many of us up to the fact that we need to be better teachers, not better cops.” (more…)
What We Assume Undergraduates Know
As teachers, we have certain basic expectations of our students, and from our own perspectives, some of these expectations may be so basic that we may not think to tell the students about them. (more…)
The Best Worst Feedback You’ve Received from a Teacher
As we saw in the discussion of last week’s post about Harry Frankfurt’s recollections of Max Black, some of you recall hard-ass professors you had as being among your most effective teachers and you think of them with appreciation and fondness—and some of you, not so much. Despite this difference, one thing seems to be certain: many of you have been poked with the..
An Accessible and User-Friendly Argument Mapping App (guest post)
“Argument mapping is about twice as effective at improving student critical thinking as other methods,” writes Jonathan Surovell (Texas State University). However, “there are obstacles preventing philosophy teachers from adopting it.” (more…)
The Hard-Ass Philosophy Professor: an “Inestimably Valuable Educational Experience”
Last week, following Harry Frankfurt’s death, Katrien Schaubroeck (Antwerp) circulated an intellectual autobiography Frankfurt had written for a 2011 volume she co-edited on his work. (more…)
Do the Thing: Philosophy Teaching with Practical Workshops (guest post)
“There is such an enormous and useful energy in bouncing back and forth between the theoretical and the practical.”
Logic Courseware, Surveyed (guest post)
What materials exist for teaching large introductory logic courses, and how do they compare? (more…)
“Am I the unethical one?” A Philosophy Professor & His Cheating Students
“All I did was go to a website that is designed to facilitate cheating and set up a kind of camera to see who visited it.” (more…)
The AI-Immune Assignment Challenge
AutomatED, a guide for professors about AI and related technology run by philosophy PhD Graham Clay (mentioned in the Heap of Links last month), is running a challenge to professors to submit assignments that they believe are immune to effective cheating by use of large language models. (more…)
A Little Logic Each Day (Semantics, too)
“Learn formal logic in lessons of 200 words per day.” (more…)
What Do Experiments in Philosophy Teaching Look Like? (guest post)
“There is room to think creatively about how to improve learning and love of philosophy via innovation in pedagogy.” (more…)
Teaching Philosophy in a World with ChatGPT
“It will be difficult to make an entire class completely ChatGPT cheatproof. But we can at least make it harder for students to use it to cheat.” (I’m reposting this to encourage those teaching philosophy courses to share what they are doing differently this semester so as to teach effectively in a world in which their students have access to ChatGPT. It was origina..
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Social Philosophy Course
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a visiting professor at Morehouse College in the early 1960’s.* While there, he taught a senior seminar in social and political philosophy. What was on the syllabus? (more…)
AI, Teaching, and “Our Willingness to Give Bullshit a Pass”
There has been a fair amount of concern over the threats that ChatGPT and AI in general pose to teaching. But perhaps there’s an upside? (more…)
Oral Exams in Undergrad Courses?
Between the developments in large language models (like GPT-3) and their possible use by students, and being in the thick of end-of-term grading of papers, the idea of making use of oral exams, as suggested in a recent New York Times column, seems tempting. (more…)
Models of Philosophical Thought Experiments
A philosophy professor has launched a project to create 3D-printed models of philosophical thought experiments, along with other open-access materials “designed to teach learners of all ages about the problems of philosophy.” (more…)
Teaching Hume and His Racism
“Whenever someone claims that we should not mention Hume’s racism because he was a product of his time we should commit that argument ‘to the flames: for it contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.'” (more…)
Philosophical Dialogues: Beyond The Usual Suspects
About five years ago I posted about philosophical dialogues, but I recently received a question about them that wasn’t taken up in that post, or by those responding to it. (more…)
Free Business Ethics Course Materials
A team of scholars at Georgetown University have developed a set of open-access resources for teaching and learning business ethics. (more…)
Conversation Starter: Teaching Philosophy in an Age of Large Language Models (guest post)
Over the past few years we have seen some startling progress from Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-3, and some of those paying attention to these developments, such as philosopher John Symons (University of Kansas), believe that they pose an imminent threat to teaching and learning (for those who missed its inclusion in the Heap of Links earlier this summer, yo..
Teacher, Bureaucrat, Cop (guest post)
“We can free ourselves up to pursue a wider range of educational goals when we see that fairness is not an absolute demand for all classroom life, but only one goal among many. And sometimes, we can trade away some degree of fairness in the pursuit of other goals.” (more…)
Intergroup Dialogue in the Philosophy Classroom (guest post)
“Over 70% of our students… reported being more likely than before to listen to someone who held an opposing viewpoint…” (more…)
Encouraging Participation in the Classroom
“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” an advertising slogan for Las Vegas tourism, has been adopted by a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College as a motto for one of his courses, as a way of creating a “safe space” for students who might be worried about their comments in class getting taken out of context, or showing up on social media. (more…)..
Comparatively Lower Grades in Philosophy Courses: Facts, Explanation, Effects, Fixes?
Informal conversations with students and professors suggest that it is harder to get a higher grade in philosophy courses than in courses offered by many other departments. (more…)
Service-Learning in Philosophy Courses
“Moral problems, like global and local food insecurity, aren’t just abstract problems; they are practical problems with practical solutions. It’s important not just to present students with the problems, but also to empower them with real-world actions they can perform to help alleviate these problems.” (more…)
Assigning Public Philosophy Projects to Undergraduates (guest post)
In some of his recent courses, Daniel Munro, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, has tried assigning something different from the traditional essays and exams: creative public philosophy projects. (more…)
In Defense of Benchmarking (guest post)
There’s a reason for instructors to meet with their teaching assistants to grade some sample assignments together, but it’s not what you think. (more…)