YES! Thank you!

Help! You know that image (drawing? photo?) of students sitting in a classroom with machines on their heads and information being pumped from another machine? I see it everywhere, but now that I'm trying to find it, I'm coming up short. Anyone know where to look?

A packed house of people at our Resisting AI with Care and Courage panel

A view from a balcony overlooking the hills outside Tucscon

L-R, Kevin Gannon, Josh Eyler, Cate Denial, and Liz Norell

What an energizing experience, yesterday, to be on a panel about resisting AI with care and courage with @thetattooedprof.bsky.social @josheyler.bsky.social and @liznorell.bsky.social at #AACUCLASS2026. Thank you to everyone who packed the room - and the hallway - to be there!

As if things weren't bad enough in this state, we have to deal with this travesty too!

In some ways, it served as a response to or an extension of that episode.

Thank you so much for attending and for the kind word!

cc: @cjdenial.bsky.social

Just saw an exceptional presentation on resisting AI in higher education--thanks to @thetattooedprof.bsky.social, @josheyler.bsky.social, @liznorell.bsky.social, and Catherine Denial for giving me new tools with which to circle back to my institution

I'm currently working on an essay about the conservative backlash to alternative grading. It's as predictable as it is easy to refute.

This article was written by someone who works at the Manhattan Institute--a conservative "think-tank." It was no surprise to me, then, to see the attempted takedown of alternative grading models. www.city-journal.org/article/grad...

Also: yes, I know that "mean" and "average" mean the same thing. I was typing too fast...

Higher Ed Has a Trust Problem. Yale Thinks It Has Solutions. A group convened by the university’s president cited three main factors fueling the loss of public support: cost, admissions, and speech. It proposed reforms in each category.

Yale has decided to one-up Harvard in its "solution" to "grade inflation." Rather than cap A's, as Harvard is likely to do, Yale is going to force a 3.0 mean average in courses. Grades can't bear the weight people try to put on them. They're not scientific measures. www.chronicle.com/article/high...

Excellent! See you soon!

can't wait!

Heading to Tucson today for the AAC&U's CLASS conference, where I'm teaming up with @thetattooedprof.bsky.social @cjdenial.bsky.social and @liznorell.bsky.social for a panel on resisting AI as an act of pedagogical care and courage. We're planning to leave it all on the field. 🔥🔥

Congrats!

Kata Robata for upscale; Osaka for delicious standard fare.

Daniel's suggestions are great. I left Houston in 2019 and miss the food. If you wanted Szechuan or Thai I'd have some recommendations too. Oh, and sushi! It's such a wonderful food city. If you also want a drink, Anvil is one of the best cocktail bars in America.

Sort of both? I didn't list student work there, the quality of which is the thing that supposedly remains constant while grades go up.

Not yet. Working on something now!

Fabulous! I'll give it a read. Thanks!

"Standing on the shoulders of science." Yes.

Grade Inflation Is a Myth. Here’s Why. | The Saturday Evening Post Are grades much higher now than they have been in the past, due to diminished academic standards? Josh Eyler argues that not only are grades an impossible standard to measure, but they’re also not an ...

Brilliant! I wrote a piece calling it a myth before but missed that important angle. www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2024/08/grad...

I'll do you one better, grade inflation is a myth founded on anti-counter culture freakout over mass access to higher education. The very term exists simply because of the high inflation of the late-1960s. Grades cannot inflate!

Setting aside any debate about grade inflation I think it is true that college teaching is much better presently than in the past.

If you want to talk about grade *compression* (a smaller range of grades being used), then let's have a conversation about why that is happening. But don't rely rhetorically on an educational past that never existed to try to make what can only be flawed claims about "grade inflation."

Yet these fallacies will get trotted out, implicitly or explicitly, in order to undermine the work of current students and faculty in the name of "rigor" and overly narrow impressions of what education is supposed to mean and what degrees are supposed to signify. 2/2

Thought for the day:

Grade inflation narratives rely on a dangerous kind of nostalgia. That somehow, in the past, standards were higher, teachers were better, exams and assessments perfectly captured learning. I think we have evidence to show that none of those assumptions are true. 1/2

Agreed on all fronts!

And the College Board just lost what legitimacy it had left. All students and families should know about this.