We’re at that time of the semester when students are turning in the first round of essays and exams. I was reminded of this at an event on Wednesday where a couple of folks had to leave early, apologizing, “I have to get back to grading!” I thought of my beloved miniature dachshund Ernie, who spent many hours with me while I graded. 

I adopted Ernie from Furry Friends Rescue in 2009, when I was a second-year assistant professor and he was a six-month old puppy. From his earliest days, he enjoyed sitting in my lap as I graded, huffing with annoyance whenever I adjusted my legs. He used to intently observe the movement of my pen and nibbled it whenever it came close to his mouth—perhaps trying to intervene in students’ favor if he saw I was offering a critique instead of praise.
I recall many nights when, under pressure to finally return students’ midterms, I’d stay up extra late for a marathon grading session. Ernie would head upstairs with my husband at our regular bedtime. At whatever ungodly hour I reached the end of the pile, I would see Ernie waiting for me at the top of the stairs, drowsy but determined to make sure I eventually climbed into bed.

Throughout his life, Ernie would remind me to take a break from grading by bursting into the room either squeaking his favorite stuffed squirrel (“Come on, let’s play!”) or gently pressing his wet nose to my leg (“All right, time for a walk!”). As he got older and lazier, he would cuddle next to me on the couch as I worked—dozing on and off and stretching luxuriously, secure in his status as an adored freeloader.

When Ernie died of congestive heart failure in January 2021, I was beyond devastated. He had accompanied me through so many stages of my career, from pre-tenure days through tenure and promotion to associate, another promotion to full, my time as a department chair, and transition to administrator. In fact, I’m lucky he couldn’t read or write because after hearing nearly twelve year’s worth of campus drama and gossip, he was well-positioned to write a tell-all book, or at the very least, receive a steady flow of treats in exchange for his continued silence.

I often reflect on and write about the importance of community in our day-to-day work. Yet, as many of us know, our support system includes not only our human mentors, colleagues, and friends, but also our sweet animal companions who witness our successes and challenges without any judgment, only pure love and a hope, in their heart of hearts, for something special to eat or an extra tummy rub. 

Let’s all take their cue and, whether you’re a pet owner or not, remember to take that break, enjoy fresh air on an afternoon walk, and snuggle on the couch as needed. May you find small ways to recharge and relax as the semester gets into full swing.

Magdalena L. Barrera
Vice Provost for Faculty Success

This week marked yet another strange development with respect to ChatGPT:  Now paired with Microsoft’s search engine Bing, OpenAI’s product has shared in a number of public presentations a series of “hallucinations” or errors, incorrectly insisting that the new Avatar movie is already available and that Billie Eilish, not Rihanna, headlined last weekend’s Super Bowl halftime show (Weise, 15 February 2023). Still more strange was an exchange between New York Times reporter Kevin Roose and ChatGPT, wherein the AI announced that “its name was Sydney, that it was in love with Kevin and that it might want to engineer a deadly virus” (Roose, 16 February 2023). It’s the sort of development we might see in a Hollywood blockbuster, but what does it mean for our work as educators? Does this moment herald a paradigm shift in how we teach and learn--already potentially exhausting for many of us to consider these days--or does it represent something more sinister? 

Regardless of where each of us stands on the role of generative AI in higher education instruction, this moment presents us with an occasion to reflect on our fundamentals:  What is most important for our students to learn? How can we best gauge their understanding of or ability to apply those insights in the world? And, most important of all: How do we nurture and maintain the relationships that constitute the heart of teaching and learning? 

It’s the relationships that have always mattered the most:  The relationship between the instructor and their students, the relationship between the student and their discipline of study, the relationships between the students themselves, the relationships between colleagues…  While tools like ChatGPT can generate written work, they cannot generate or reproduce those relationships.  

If you determine, as the instructor of a course, that it is essential for students’ success to produce their own original work without assistance (e.g., generative AI, calculators or other technologies), then you should communicate that expectation to them in ways that show its importance--to them, to you, and to your shared area of study. While this would include a syllabus statement, it needs to be more:  It needs to be a conversation about what learning means in your course, your field, and your students’ lives, and it needs to be accompanied by assignments that can only be meaningfully completed by the very real people you know to be enrolled in your course. 

But this could also be a moment where you and your students explore the potential benefits and limitations of generative AI for your discipline and for the lives we live in and beyond the classroom. Whatever meaning stems from our use of these tools will emerge in the conversations we have about them--in the ways they shape our relationships with each other. Discuss what you take these tools to mean for our shared pursuit of meaning, and be sure to open up alternative assignments for students who cannot or will not engage with them (for accessibility, privacy, or other reasons).  

As faculty, we support each other in understanding the challenges to and opportunities within our work; find community in upcoming generative AI/ChatGPT events and resources developed by SJSU colleagues, in conversations around authentic assessment (watch this space for summer programming!), and in events that support how we can engage our students with technological tools in ways that keep what matters most at the heart, including our upcoming Adobe Digital Literacy Day. 

eCampus is conducting a survey on students' preferences for the modality in which courses are taught, i.e., in-person, online, and hybrid.  This survey will help us understand student preferences and the determinants of these preferences.  Please share the following link with your students and encourage them to complete the survey because it will provide valuable information for planning courses in future semesters.  If you have questions or concerns about the survey, please contact Sulekha Anand at sulekha.anand@sjsu.edu or Jennifer Redd at jennifer.redd@sjsu.edu.

Survey Link: https://sjsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_damZaV1nIYtZ2lM 

     Gradescope for In-Person Teaching

Tuesday, 2/21 | 10am PT / 1pm ET

     Gradescope for Online and Hybrid Teaching

Tuesday, 2/14 | 11am PT / 2pm ET

Thursday, 2/23 | 10am PT / 1pm ET

     Gradescope for Computer Science

Monday, 2/13 | 10am PT / 1pm ET

     Gradescope for Multiple Choice (Bubble Sheets)

Wednesday, 2/15 | 12pm PT / 3pm ET

     Gradescope for Large Courses & Sections

Wednesday, 2/22 | 10am PT / 1pm ET

Register and reserve your spot: https://info.gradescope.com/workshop-series 

Instructors are welcome to invite their TAs and grading staff. A recording of the session will be shared with all registrants. So please register even if you can't make it to the live session!

Dr. Miranda Worthen, Professor, Public Health and Recreation
Dr. Soma de Bourbon, Assistant Professor, Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Community Paramedicine is an innovative approach to providing complex care to communities. Community Paramedics in the San Francisco Fire Department collaborate with other agencies to help folks who rely heavily on emergency services, experience overdoses or behavioral health crises, and need more holistic care than traditional emergency services can provide. Since 2020, these programs have responded to calls that were previously directed to the police. 

Drs. Worthen and de Bourbon received a Stage 1 Planning Grant from the National Science Foundation as part of their Civic Innovation Challenge to support a civic-partnered participatory action research study. The study aims to better understand the challenges of these new alternatives to policing and develop an intervention to mitigate moral injury and enhance equity in community paramedicine practice. Drs. Worthen and de Bourbon are currently competing for a Stage 2 grant to implement and evaluate this pilot intervention.

Congrats to Drs. Worthen and de Bourbon on their successful collaboration!

February

17: Camtasia I Workshop, 2:30 - 3:30 pm

20: Quick Bites // ChatGPT: Help or Hype? 5 - 6 pm

20: LEAD Meeting for Chairs & Directors, 12 -2 pm

21: Ally Accessibility Workshop, 10 - 10:30 am

21: Town Hall // ChatGPT: It’s the end of teaching as we know it, 12 - 1:30 pm

22: Poll Everywhere Presenter Training, 9 - 9:45 am

22: Adobe Audition for Podcasting, 10:30 -11:30 am

22: Collect and Manage your Data with Google Forms and Google Sheets, 2 - 2:30 pm

22: Remote Teaching Series: Google Hangouts Meet 20 Minute Workshop, 3 - 4 pm

23: Adobe Premiere Rush - Live, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

24: eCampus Office Hours: Adobe Apps: Audition, Rush and After Effects, 12 - 1 pm

27: Annual Evaluations: Department-level evaluations due to candidates

28: Polling with Zoom and Poll Everywhere, 10 - 11 am

28: Canvas IV: Creating Community with Discussions, Groups, Chat, Collaborations, & Conferences, 1 - 2 pm

28: Learning Something New Through LinkedIn Learning, 2:30 - 3:30 pm

March

1: SJSU Adobe Digital Literacy Day, 9 am - 2 pm

3: Adobe Premiere Rush - Live, 10 - 11 am

6: Adobe Audition for Podcasting, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

7: eCampus Office Hours: Polling, 2 - 3 pm

8: Integrate Google Assignments within Canvas, 2 - 2:30 pm

9: Polling with Zoom and Poll Everywhere, 2:30 - 3:30 pm

10: Cumulative Evaluations: Candidate packets due in eFaculty

10: Post-Tenure Review: Candidate packets due in eFaculty

13: Canvas I: Getting Started with Canvas for Beginners, 1 - 2 pm

13: Range Elevation: Final decisions due to candidates

13: Mini Review: Department-level evaluations due to candidates

16: Somos SJSU/HSI Info Session, 3:30 - 5:00pm

20: LEAD meeting for Chairs and Directors, 12 - 2 pm

27-31: Spring Recess

31: Campus closed

April

10: Cumulative Evaluations: Department-level evaluations due to candidates

25: Post-Tenure Review: Department-level evaluations due to PTR Faculty

26: SJSU Annual Artist and Author Celebration (flier below)

At the Intersections of Time Efficient Teaching and Good Pedagogy: “[T]here is still much to be done to address academic labor exploitation and the excessive pressure to produce. Having said that, there are techniques that can help us teach more effectively while also providing a rich learning environment for our students.”

A Question of Values: “[W]hy what we value matters when it comes to the goals we set, the plans we make and the career journeys we take.”

Retirement Planning for Professors: 14 recommendations to help faculty members leave on their own terms.