If you’d like to really nerd out about digital journalism, here’s some more information, but the quick version is that engaged time is a more holistic measure of audience engagement than whether someone clicks on a link.
It probably won’t come as a surprise that readers spent the most time on newsletter issues that deal with ChatGPT: Beth’s January issue on whether ChatGPT will change the way you teach took the top spot, followed by her September exploration of an exercise one writing instructor used to encourage his students’ skepticism of the technology and one from February on an approach for helping students use AI in research papers.
Indeed, five of the 10 newsletter issues readers spent the most time on were about generative AI. (The other two were highlights from an expert webinar and a look at involving students in AI research and policy.)
About a year ago, I wondered if Beth and I would shift from being pandemic teaching reporters to being ChatGPT teaching reporters. It hasn’t been as drastic as I’d feared: Sure, we’ve written a lot about AI, but we’ve still covered a lot of other ground, including in this newsletter.
What else were readers most interested in? Rounding out the top 10 were issues about improving attendance, ungrading, burnout, adjusting to change, and burnout, again.
If I were to sum it up — and that’s pretty much the assignment I’ve given myself here — I’d say our data underscore that college teaching is still in the midst of figuring out how to handle ChatGPT and that this work is often done by tired instructors working to re-engage students in an educational system whose shortcomings predate AI.
We’ll be sending one more newsletter your way in 2023 and — spoiler alert — it’s about ChatGPT.
Closing time
Recently, I asked for examples of creative ways readers end their semesters. Here’s one that felt broadly applicable:
Mary Roth, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Lafayette College, explained that after a few stage-setting activities on the first day of class, she has students write her a short note about what they hope to learn during the semester.
“On the last day of class, I ask students to read what they wrote on the first day and to write a note to me about whether they learned the things they had hoped to learn, and, if they didn’t learn something, to tell me what might they do in the future to meet that learning objective.
“I’ve done the activity for a few years and have found that it provides students with a reflection activity at the end of the course that helps them think about all the elements of the course as well as future goals they have for themselves that are related to course content. I also love reading their final notes, and I often get new insights from their notes about both the course content and the students’ experience in the class.”
The classroom matters
Much of the heated and politicized discussion of campus speech overlooks the place where the most important discussions are happening: the classroom. That’s the position that the journalist and historian David M. Perry lays out in this thoughtful essay for CNN, which ran last week.
Perry’s piece stands out for its specificity. He describes talking about what is going on in Gaza with his students when it intersected with their work in the course, covering topics like the Crusades and the blood libel, and when it was so important they had to shift a class period’s plans to discuss it anyway.
This description, of an instructor with disciplinary expertise helping students put world events in context, will surely resonate with many professors. But I think Perry is right that in the public imagination, college speech is all about protests and pronouncements, and not about learning.
As a reminder, we’re interested in your plans to discuss the war in Gaza in your courses next semester. Please get in touch with Beth at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com if you have insights and ideas to share.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com
As always, nonsubscribers who register for a free Chronicle account can read two articles a month. Your readership supports our journalism.
— Beckie
Learn more about our Teaching newsletter, including how to contact us, at the Teaching newsletter archive page.
