h1>It’s the Instructor’s Problem!

Grading

One of the best parts about being a Heritages of Change mentor is that you do not have to grade! The mentor’s role is to interact with students, read their work, discuss ideas, share experiences, and be a cheerleader. The instructor is responsible for providing critical feedback, meeting course learning outcomes, and grading the work.

Artificial Intelligence

The rise of artificial intelligence may be of particular concern to mentors. Developed in 2022 by the research laboratory OpenAI, Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (or ChatGPT) is an artificial intelligence chatbot, which is software that mimics human conversation. After you submit a question or prompt, it will develop a response that is based upon “training its AI with an extraordinarily large amount of data, much of which comes from the vast supply of data on the internet,” and it has so far been able to, at someone’s direction, “make jokes, write TV episodes, compose music, and even debug computer code” (Heilweil). And when given parameters, it produces (rather mediocre) writing on the subject requested.

There are already ethical concerns being debated about ChatGPT. The Future of Life Institute (2023) has called for “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4,” citing that these concerns need to be addressed:

• Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth?
• Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones?
• Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us?
• Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?

These are huge questions, ones that have ethical considerations for all of us. Further than these concerns, Cindy Gordon tells us there is evidence of ChatGPT “producing toxic content, surfacing up biases on women, and in particular women of color” learned from the web content it has been fed. While it seems to have certain limits built in (i.e. Hitler is bad), most limits seem easily overridden.

Universities too are grappling with ChatGPT as it is possible for students to complete assignments through the AI. In a 2023 BestColleges survey of undergraduate and graduate students, “half of students (51 percent) agree that using AI tools to complete assignments and exams counts as cheating or plagiarism” while 48 percent believe it is possible to use AI in an ethical and responsible way in coursework and 40 percent believe that the use of AI by students defeats the purpose of education. Faculty and students alike share these concerns. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student Sierra President writes, “With the creation of new AI platforms that assist in gaining and distributing information, the ethical dilemmas of using sites like ChatGPT have become pertinent, making students like me wonder if we should even be using these platforms to begin with.” Is it ethical for a student to use ChatGPT for even a portion of an assignment and represent the work as their own? Are there some circumstances in which it would be ethical and others in which it is not?

It is important to remember that the use or prohibition of AI is up to the instructor, and it is up to the instructor to determine any repercussions for its use.

Students Are People Too

Writing Apprehension

Students sometimes express apprehension about writing, making statements like, “I am bad at writing.” The good news, which we can discuss with students, is that writing is about practice. How do athletes get better at their sport? Practice. How do musicians learn to play so well? Practice. The same is true for skills like writing. No matter the skill level we begin on, the more we write the better we write, and the stronger our brain gets.

View: “Neuroplasticity”

Some Sobering Statistics

In a podcast for Teaching in Higher Ed, Stephen Brookfield comments, “College students of any age should be treated as adults.” While I laud this statement, I would make a slight, but, I think, important revision. College students of any age are adults. They might not have had much practice at it, depending on what age they are, but they are indeed adults. Many of them have or are experiencing the beginnings of adult problems and responsibilities. Consider the following:

• The Center for Law and Social Policy in the “Children, Young Adults Stuck in Poverty: Census Data Show Millions Left Behind, September 2018 reports, “The poverty rate for children remains the highest for all age groups at about one in six children (17.5 percent), with no change from 2016, and significantly contrasting with major progress from 2014 to 2016. For young adults, ages 18-24, the poverty rate also remained flat at 16.1 percent after a steep decrease in the previous two years and remains higher than average poverty rates for all. The profound consequences of poverty, especially for young children, are well documented and include negative outcomes during childhood and in education, employment, and earnings into adulthood.”
• According to the 2021 HOPE Center Survey “Basic Needs Insecurity during the Ongoing Pandemic,” “Among survey respondents at two-year colleges, 38 percent experienced food insecurity in the 30 days prior to the survey, with just over 16 percent experiencing low food security and a little more than 22 percent experiencing very low food security […] At four-year colleges, 29 percent of students reported experiencing food insecurity.” It also reports, “These patterns are consistent with another national survey conducted in November 2020, which found that approximately three in 10 college students missed a meal at least once per week since the start of the pandemic.”
• According to the 2019–20 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study that looks at the “First Look at the Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on Undergraduate Student Enrollment, Housing, and Finances,” “Students who identified as genderqueer, gender nonconforming, or a different identity had difficulty finding safe and stable housing at three times the rates (9 percent) of students who identified as male or female (3 percent each).” Also, “Black students, Hispanic or Latino students, American Indian or Alaska Native students, and students of two or more races had difficulty accessing food or paying for food at higher rates (10 to 14 percent) than either White or Asian students (7 percent).”
• According to the 2022 “College Enrollment and Work Activity of Recent High School and College Graduates” from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 42.4 percent of full-time college students and 81 percent of part-time college students are employed. 44 percent of students at four-year colleges and 55.5 percent of students at two-year schools are employed.
• According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research 2014 “4.8 Million College Students Are Raising Children” report, “Approximately 2.1 million student parents attend 2-year institutions, representing 30 percent of the entire community college student body. An additional 1.1 million student parents attend four-year institutions (public and private not-for-profit), representing 15 percent of the total four-year undergraduate student body.”
• According to the National Center for Learning Disabilities 2017 “The State of Learning Disabilities: Understanding the 1 in 5” report, “Learning and attention issues are more common than many people think, affecting 1 in 5 children.” They also report that “[s]uccess in college and the workplace is heavily influenced by internal resilience factors such as temperament and self-perception. Low self-esteem and stigma help explain why young adults with learning disabilities—who are as smart as their peers—enroll in four-year colleges at half the rate of all young adults. Lack of self-advocacy and self-regulation skills may explain why students with learning disabilities who attend any type of postsecondary school are less likely to graduate than students without disabilities.”
• According to the American College Health Association National College Health Assessment Fall 2022 Executive Summary, 33.9 percent of university students surveyed had been diagnosed with anxiety (60.1 percent of trans/gender non-conforming respondants), 26.3 percent reported being diagnosed with depression (55.4 percent of trans/gender non-conforming respondants), and 30.4 percent had a positive suicide screening (65.2 percent of trans/gender non-conforming respondants).

There are endless statistics I could provide, but these alone illustrate that a majority of students have serious adult concerns: parenthood, poverty level, and employment, among others. For students with disabilities or mental health issues, they are constantly facing the challenge of deciding for themselves for the first time whether to request services. Veterans are returning from the military’s high-responsibility, high-anxiety life, perhaps with some form of disability, to (re)enter the classroom. As a side note, it is also possible for veterans to go from deployment to the classroom within as little as three days. Those students who do not fit any of the above markers are still struggling with learning how to become an adult, how to negotiate new freedoms and identities. I especially like how Ronald Barnett in A Will to Learn looks at the experience of college students as “a project that calls for considerable effort and even anxiety on their parts, and it is a project where success cannot be assured…Just how is it that students keep going?” (2). He echoes my own awe of students who continue to show up in spite of potential and often multiple challenges. Our job is to move them from “showing up” to “investing,” to the point that they become immersed in their learning and embrace a liberal education.

Making Choices

More than adults, students are people – with the concerns, the emotional tangles, and the physical realities that any person may have. I think we can all agree that we struggle to teach when, for example, our child is sick, we have been up all night working, we’re not sure if we’ll have enough money to eat that week (which, unfortunately, is all too common among adjunct faculty, in particular), or we have a physical or mental health issue. The 2013 “Higher Stress: A Survey of Stress and Well-Being Among Staff in Higher Education” (34) by the University and College Union in the United Kingdom concludes that stress is a major cause for concern in higher education settings. Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber note in The Slow Professor that “faculty stress directly affects student learning. We know from experience that when we walk into a classroom breathless, rushed, and preoccupied, the class doesn’t go well; we struggle to make connections with the material and our students” (6). It is just as difficult – arguably, perhaps more so given the type of cognitive activity – for students to “do their job,” to learn, under such circumstances in their own lives. Judy Willis (2006, p. 58) provides the science that the brain cannot learn and process information effectively, especially in terms of remembering, when it is dealing with stress. Despite books such as the humorously-titled Professors Are from Mars®, Students Are from Snickers® (which actually is a useful book on how to break down barriers between instructors and students with humor), we have far more in common than we usually admit.

Thinking of students as people and adults can change how we perceive their requirements of education. Chet Meyers and Thomas Jones  tell us rightly that adults “do not suffer fools gladly” (7-8). When a student does not complete readings or assignments or demonstrates apathy at having to take a course outside their major, there is every possibility they chose not to do so because they simply do not see the worth of the work. Consciously or unconsciously, they may be choosing not to waste their time on it.

Sensitive Topics

Consider some more statistics:

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention find that “almost two-thirds of surveyed adults report at least one ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences, such as emotional, physical, or sexual abuse), and more than one in five reported three or more ACEs,” which various studies associate with having “lasting effects on…graduation rates [and] academic achievement.”
• The 2021 Annual Report of the Center for Collegiate Mental Health concludes that “ Stress and Academic Performance showed increases in 2020-2021” and “Eating Concerns and Family Distress slightly increased.”
• According to Bruce Sharkin, “In a survey conducted by the American College Health Association (as cited in Voelker, 2003), a high percentage of students reported feeling hopeless and depressed to the point where they could barely function” (4-5).
• According to Barredo, et al., in  “Stress and Stressors: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Students, Faculty and Staff at a Historically Black College/University,” “Inequities about the impact of COVID-19 among racial groups have been widely reported in the United States and they show that minorities and people of color are more adversely and disproportionately affected than their White counterparts” (279).
• According to the Victims of Crime “2015 NCVRW Resource Guide” on school and campus crime, “Of youth ages 12 to 18 in 2012, 52.4 per 1,000 students were victimized at school: 28.8 per 1,000 students experienced some form of violent victimization, with 3.4 per 1,000 students experiencing serious violent victimization.” Also, “Twenty-eight percent of students age 12 to 18 in 2011 reported being bullied at school during the school year.” More so, “In a 2011 study that included youth in grades 6 through 12, 64 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) respondents said they felt unsafe in school because of their sexual orientation, and 44 percent felt unsafe because of their gender expression” while “[e]ighty-two percent of LGBTQ youth respondents in 2011 had been verbally harassed at school because of their sexual orientation, 38.3 percent had been physically harassed (e.g., pushed or shoved), and 18.3 percent had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation.” On college campuses, “[i]n 2012, 88,444 crimes were reported.” The data does not get separated out, but, “[o]f the hate and bias crimes reported on school and college campuses in 2012, 52.0 percent were hate crimes based on race, 20.3 percent were hate crimes based on sexual orientation, 16.8 percent were hate crimes based on religion, 10.1 percent were hate crimes based on ethnicity, and 0.8 percent were hate crimes based on disability.”
• The National Sexual Violence Resource Center reports that “[o]ne in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives” and “[o]ne in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18 years old.” Additionally, “[o]ne in 5 women and one in 16 men are sexually assaulted while in college” and “[m]ore than 90 percent of sexual assault victims on college campuses do not report the assault.”
• According to Z Nicolazzo in Trans* in College, “Studies now indicate that 50 percent or more of trans* people will experience intimate partner or sexual violence in their lifetimes (Calton, Cattaneo, & Gebhard, 2015; Marine in press-b) and that trans* college students at the undergraduate and graduate levels face more victimization than cisgender men or women (Cantor et al., 2015; New, 2015)…[A]lmost 60 percent of trans* undergraduates, and a little more than 60 percent of trans* graduate students, felt a report of sexual violence would not be taken seriously by campus administrators.”

These numbers are staggering, even more so when considering what the people sitting in front of us in classrooms have experienced, are experiencing, or will experience. Students may decide to discuss sensitive topics, especially when they are given the freedom to choose a topic related to marginalized heritage. Be prepared for this possibility, and just remember to respect and value their experiences.

In a Student’s Own Words: Example from Chapter 2

Text Attributions

Sections of this part contain material adapted from Why Do I Have to Take This Course? by the same author.