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Digital Humanities and the Public

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I wrote earlier this week about what I see happening in the digital humanities, some history, and the biggest shift I have observed. Today I'm thinking about what is called the "public humanities."

The term public humanities refers to activities, initiatives, and scholarship within the humanities that engage with broader public audiences outside of academia. It encompasses a range of practices aimed at making humanistic knowledge and perspectives accessible, relevant, and meaningful to diverse communities beyond the traditional confines of the university.

I think the goal of public humanities is to bridge the gap between academia and the wider public. This can mean democratizing access to humanistic knowledge. It is an effort to foster a deeper appreciation for the value of the humanities in contemporary society. It reflects a commitment to the idea that the humanities have relevance and significance beyond the walls of the university and can contribute to the enrichment of public life and the promotion of democratic ideals.

How can this be accomplished? It often involves collaboration with community organizations, cultural institutions, and non-profit groups. A meaningful dialogue and partnerships with local communities can help address issues of shared concern and interest. This kind of civic engagement may encourage promoting critical thinking, cultural literacy, historical awareness and may also address social justice issues and advocate for positive social change.

DH programs can include public lectures, workshops, film screenings, exhibitions, and other events that bring together scholars, artists, activists, and members of the public to explore topics of cultural, historical, or philosophical significance.

Digital technologies can help the humanities reach wider audiences through online platforms, digital archives, social media, and interactive multimedia projects.

Public scholarship is something that public humanities scholars often produce. This is work that is accessible to non-specialist audiences, such as books, articles, podcasts, and blog posts. They may also contribute to public debates and discussions on contemporary issues, drawing on insights from the humanities to inform public discourse.

I found this recent article on humanitieswatch.org listing ten forms of public humanities.

1.     public-facing academic work
2.     knowledge derived from practitioners
3.     humanistic knowledge created through collaboration with people that come from various publics
4.     data on the humanities in public
5.     activism informed by humanities research
6.     policymaking related to the humanities
7.     the value of the humanities in the public, and of the public humanities in academia
8.     graduate programs in public humanities
9.     pedagogy for public humanities;
10.  histories, theories, and critiques of the field of public humanities.

The Soft Skills of AI

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Communication is a rising soft skill

AI, especially its subset, generative AI, seems to be changing everything including the workplace. As machines become adept at tasks once considered uniquely human, what does this mean for the workforce, and which worker skills will become more important? For some jobs, AI will simply be complementary to the job, but the prevailing belief is that about half of all jobs will be significantly disrupted by AI.

I have never been a fan of the terms "hard and soft skills" since it seems to make some "soft" skills seem less important. Still, some historically “hard” skills will drop on the hiring credentials.

An article on www.fastcompany.com featured some soft skills that will be important in an AI world.

SOCIAL INTERACTION SKILLSsuch as listening to others in meetings, or collaborating with teammates under pressure, will remain in the human domain. A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that almost all job growth since 1980 has been seen in jobs that are social-skill intensive, while jobs that require minimal social interaction have been in decline.

CREATIVITY especially in using AI. One study found that knowledge workers who used Chat GPT 4.0 completed 12.2% more tasks, 25,.1% faster and with 40% greater quality over those who did not use AI to perform their work. That’s astonishing data, especially the data on the increased quality level. Human workers who leverage AI and who demonstrate a combination of strong creativity and critical thinking skills will fare the best.

CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS I don't think that critical thinking has ever been off the skills list for jobs. It must be applied to evaluate AI responses since (as you may have discovered already) not all responses will be valid, unbiased, factual, or error-free. AI can generate vast amounts of data, analyses, and potential solutions at unprecedented speed, but the veracity and applicability of generative AI’s responses are not guaranteed. A uniquely human skill is to think critically.

CURIOSITY is that innate drive to explore, understand, and seek information about the world around us. AI is not curious unless it is told to be or programmed to seek out information. Workers ask questions, probe into things, challenge assumptions and delve deeper.

Yes, the rise of AI will fundamentally alter the nature of skills deemed crucial in the workplace. While some hard skills and jobs will disappear for workers, some soft skills will remain human-only and therefore will become more important - perhaps "harder" -  than ever.

Google Will 'Help Me Write'

Google recently introduced a new feature to their Workplace suite that they call "Help Me Write." This generative AI will first appear in Gmail and Google Docs. At the moment, it's available to a select audience of invited testers.

Like other generative AI, you will be able to enter a prompt and have a first draft created. for you.,An example Google shared is not having it write a paper for your English class, though it will probably be able to do that. They show the example of having it create a job description for a regional sales representative/

It's another AI tool that might frighten teachers because it seems to help students unfairly but I think this may be a misperception. As with other AI tools, such as the much-discussed chat GPT, I think the best thing educators can do is to introduce this to students and guide them in the ways that it can be best used and best used legitimately.

The evolution of digital literacy in classrooms will never end. Yes, these kinds of AI- assisted-writing tools present boyj opportunities and challenges for educators. But ignoring them or trying to ban them from student use is certainly not the solution. This tool and others like it are an opportunity to improve student writing skills and critical thinking. 

Google Announcements
https://blog.google/technology/ai/ai-developers-google-cloud-workspace/
https://workspace.google.com/blog/product-announcements/generative-ai

demo
       Google Demo

Should Students and Their Parents Be Taking Fake News 101?

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A podcast from Marketplace offered this question: Should kids be taking Fake News 101? My first thought was that they are already getting that class. I based that on my friends who teach in K-12 schools and who have information literacy as part of their curriculum. Validating sources and information has been part of the curriculum for a very long time. It was there when I started teaching almost fifty years ago. Of course, the Internet as a news source is a more recent issue. Has information literacy changed?

The headline says "kids" which suggests K-12 but the "Fake News 101" sounds like an introductory college course. I know that information literacy online and offline was required at a community college I worked at, and validating sources online was part of my social media and communications courses I taught at the undergraduate and graduate level. 

The term "fake news" came into the discussion with President Trump who used it to attack media reports he didn't like and broadly all mainstream media. That isn't something you want to teach. But news that was inaccurate has been around as long as there has been news. I'm sure town criers sometimes called out things that turned out not to be true. 

The term "fake" isn't really the correct term. "Fake" means a thing that is not genuine or a forgery. The news items often being labeled fake in those Trump days were not being singled out because they were not really news. It was news. It generally came from a credible news outlet, such as The New York Times or Washington Post, and in the majority of instances had facts to back it up. 

But, as the podcast points out, from politics to COVID-19, there is a lot of false and inaccurate information on the internet. I would be very reluctant to tell students that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are credible news sources, but we know that many people get their "news" from these places rather than newspapers.

Helen Lee Bouygues was the guest on that podcast and she is the founder and president of the Reboot Foundation, which teaches critical thinking skills to combat fake news. She says we’re just not inclined to second-guess information when it’s flooding our social media feeds.

Some points she makes:

"It’s actually just a natural human reaction to not want to seek challenging views. And then the second point, there have been studies already conducted that if you are pounded by lies about the information, over time you actually do start believing it."

She prefers that rather than just having teachers "give the facts and get to the answer" that teachers and parents of children, especially of younger age, have children challenge what they’re reading on websites."

She is correct that "this is a skill that can be taught, but it’s not something that [is] innate."

Lee Bouygues based is based in France and she says that there is a standard pedagogy to have students writing papers differently. Students are told to "hone in on your own convictions and the way you write a paper is by thinking about opposing views and counter-arguments that will help you better refine your own thinking. So by looking at counter-arguments, you’re actually doing more metacognition also, which is obviously thinking about your own thinking, which is so important for critical thinking."

Certainly, this skill needs to be honed in older students and in entire communities. I taught an undergraduate critical thinking course and was continually surprised at the gaps I saw in my students' ability to do more critical thinking.

Teaching how to question assumptions, reason through logic, separate facts from opinions and emotions, validate sources, and seek out a diversity of thoughts, facts and opinions are life skills that need to be learned and relearned as the world of information changes.