August 2024 – Learning Aloud

How many AI tools?

It’s not that I don’t find AI to be useful. I generate a half dozen images a month to embellish my writing. I search for journal articles I then read to examine an educational issue I want to write about. I examine what I have written to identify errors in grammar or syntax or even identify my use of passive voice which I still can’t figure out. My issue is the monthly subscription fees for the multiple tools that best suit these and other uses. It is simply difficult to justify the $20 a month fee which seems to be the going rate for each of the services and the level of use I make of each service.

I regard my use of AI as both a benefit to personal productivity, but also a subject matter I explore and write about. Writing about the intersection of technology and education is a retirement hobby and I don’t need to do what I do on a budget. However, I don’t think this is true for everyone and I can set as a personal goal an exploration of the financial issues others might need to consider. AI tools differ in how flexible they are. Often, the less flexible tools are optimized to accomplish a specific set of tasks and this narrow range increases ease of use. Users can find themselves evaluating the cost-effectiveness of options based on ease of use versus total cost.

Grammarly as an example

As someone who spends a great deal of time writing, it is worth my time to consider how AI tools can be used to improve the productivity of the time I spend writing and the quality of what I write. Grammarly is a tool suited to such goals. I have relied on both the free and pro versions of Grammarly for a quick way to edit my writing. This is a great product I find helpful. Again, the issue is the Pro version adds another $12 to the total of my monthly subscriptions bill. The free version is great for basic errors, but the pro version is necessary for complete sentence rewrites. It is helpful to compare what I said with the suggested rewrite to decide whether I want to accept the alternate version.

What I have been exploring lately is the use of more general-purpose AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Abacas.ai) as an alternative. I understood that many others were using such tools in this matter, but because I had already been using Grammarly I had not invested the time to explore how more flexible tools might be used to achieve similar goals. Here is the approach I have settled on. I use a multi-level prompt to specify what I want to learn from an evaluation of something I have written. I keep this prompt in a note app so that I can copy and paste the prompt at the beginning of the content I want to evaluate. The prompt appears below. The prompt is written to be flexible so that I can adapt it to different circumstances by adding or removing specific guidelines. For example, I realize I often write in passive voice and some tasks should not include text expressed in this way. The guideline “write in active voice” can be included when I think this approach is important. If writing for a specific age group might be a goal, a guideline related to this goal can be inserted.

To demonstrate what this prompt accomplishes, I will take what I written here to this point and apply the prompt.

Evaluate the following content using the following guidelines:

Correct spelling errors
Correct grammatical errors
Correct punctuation errors
Write in active voice
Suggest corrections
Only list the lines containing errors and the proposed corrections
Add an explanation for the need for a correction

[Insert content to be evaluated here]

Response from Abacas.ai.

1. **Original:** I examine what I have written to identify errors in grammar or syntax or even identify my use of passive voice which I still can’t figure out.

   **Correction:** I examine what I have written to identify errors in grammar or syntax and even identify my use of passive voice, which I still can’t figure out.

   **Explanation:** Added a comma before “which” to correctly punctuate the non-restrictive clause.

2. **Original:** It is simply difficult to justify the $20 a month fee which seems to be the going rate for each of the services and the level of use I make of each service.

   **Correction:** It is simply difficult to justify the $20-a-month fee, which seems to be the going rate for each of the services and the level of use I make of each service.

   **Explanation:** Added a hyphen in “$20-a-month” to correctly form a compound adjective and a comma before “which” to punctuate the non-restrictive clause.

3. **Original:** I regard my use of AI as both a benefit to personal productivity, but also a subject matter I explore and write about.

   **Correction:** I regard my use of AI as both a benefit to personal productivity and a subject matter I explore and write about.

   **Explanation:** Replaced “but also” with “and” to correct the parallel structure.

4. **Original:** Writing about the intersection of technology and education is a retirement hobby and I don’t need to do what I do on a budget.

   **Correction:** Writing about the intersection of technology and education is a retirement hobby, and I don’t need to do what I do on a budget.

   **Explanation:** Added a comma before “and” to separate two independent clauses.

5. **Original:** Grammarly as an example

   **Correction:** Grammarly is an example.

   **Explanation:** Added “is” to form a complete sentence.

6. **Original:** Again, the issue is the Pro version adds another $12 to the total of my monthly subscriptions bill.

   **Correction:** Again, the issue is that the Pro version adds another $12 to the total of my monthly subscription bill.

   **Explanation:** Added “that” for clarity and changed “subscriptions” to “subscription” for correct singular form.

7. **Original:** What I have been exploring lately is the use of more general-purpose AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Abacas.ai) as an alternative.

   **Correction:** What I have been exploring lately is the use of more general-purpose AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Abacus.ai) as an alternative.

   **Explanation:** Corrected the spelling of “Abacas.ai” to “Abacus.ai.”

8. **Original:** I understood that many others were using such tools in this matter, but because I had already been using Grammarly I had not invested the time to explore how more flexible tools might be used to achieve similar goals.

   **Correction:** I understood that many others were using such tools in this manner, but because I had already been using Grammarly, I had not invested the time to explore how more flexible tools might be used to achieve similar goals.

   **Explanation:** Changed “matter” to “manner” for correct word usage and added a comma after “Grammarly” to separate clauses.

The feedback I have received would normally have resulted in my making several adjustments. I have not done so for you to consider both the original and the suggestions. The feedback makes specific suggestions and I either copy and paste the suggestions to the original source material or simply retype what needs to be fixed. This is clumsier than just clicking on the recommendation offered by Grammarly and it often requires that I use the search function in a longer text to locate the offending sentence. When writing on my desktop machine I simply open a second window and move between one window with the AI feedback and the original document to make adjustments.

The Medium is the Message

Marshall McLuhan’s famous declaration “The medium is the message” never made sense to me. It sounded cool, but on the surface there was not enough there to offer much of an explanation. It seemed one of those things other people understood and used, but I did not. Perhaps I had missed the class or not read the book in which the famous phrase was explained.

The expression came up again in the book club I joined while we reading a book by Johns (The Science of Reading). A sizeable proportion of one chapter considers McLuhan’s famous proposal and provided a reference to his first use of the phrase. The original mention was a comment he made at a conference and then continued to develop.

The page is not a conveyor belt for pots of message; it is not a consumer item so much as a producer of unique habits of mind and highly specialized attitudes to person and country, and to the nature of thought itself (…) Let us grant for the moment that the medium is the message. It follows that if we study any medium carefully we shall discover its total dynamics and its unreleased powers.

Print, by permitting people to read at high speed and, above all, to read alone and silently, developed a totally new set of mental operations.

Johns’ book is about the history of the study of reading as a science with more on how reading and the methods by which reading skill is developed became a political issue. My effort to create a personal understanding of what any of this would have to do with McLuhan now is based on my consideration of different media and what McLuhan had to say specifically about reading. I have come to think about reading as a generative activity which is a topic I write about frequently. From this perspective, reading is an external task that gives priority to certain internal behaviors. In contrast to some other media, reading allows personal control of speed. A reader can take in information quickly or pause to reflect. A reader can reread. Text sometimes requires the reader to generate imagery in contrast to having imagery offered to them as would be the case with video. Reading cannot transfer a complete experience from author to reader and much is constructed by the reader based on existing knowledge. Reading has a social component. In most cases reading involves an implied interaction with an author, but also with others who have interpreted the same input and who often interact to share personal interpretations.

What McLuhan had to say about media now reminds me of the notion of affordances. Affordance refers to the potential actions or uses that an object or environment offers to an individual, based on its design and the individual’s perception of it. The term was originally coined by psychologist James J. Gibson in the context of ecological psychology to describe the possibilities for action that the environment provides. Affordances can be both obvious (like a door handle that affords pulling) or less obvious, depending on how the individual perceives and interacts with the object or environment. It is this less obvious type of affordance that applies based on expectations for texts and for how we anticipate texts to be used. Factors such as the allowances for controlling speed and pausing with a medium that is essentially static when we are not interacting with it to allow reflection are more like the obvious affordances Gibson proposes.

Those who reject a media effect

Having reached what I hope is an appropriate understanding of McLuhan’s famous insight, I realized that I have encountered a contradictory argument commonly taught within one of my fields of practice (educational technology). This controversy concerns what tends to be called the media effect.

The “media effect” refers to the idea that the medium or technology used to deliver instruction (such as television, computers, or textbooks) has a significant impact on learning outcomes. This concept suggests that different media can produce different levels of learning or change the way people learn.

This perspective was challenged by Richard Clark in his influential 1983 article, “Reconsidering Research on Learning from Media.” Clark argued that the media itself does not influence learning; rather, it is the instructional methods and content delivered through the media that determine learning outcomes. Clark famously stated, “media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition.”

Clark’s challenge to the media effect emphasized that it’s the instructional design, the way content is presented, and the interaction between learners and content that are crucial for learning, not the medium through which the instruction is delivered.

I always struggled when teaching this position. Instructional designers are expected to consider this argument, but my interpretation never allowed me to understand why this would be true. If I wanted to teach someone the cross-over dribble, wouldn’t it make more sense to begin by showing the move rather than describing it with text? I understand that each of us learns through our own cognitive actions, but how we access inputs (external representations) would seem to matter in what our cognitive behaviors have to work with. When you ask advanced students to deal with arguments such as Clark’s that challenge actions they might be prone to take, it is common to match the challenging position with a source that offers a counterargument. I paired Clark’s paper with a paper written by Robert Kozma. If you are inclined to pursue this controversy, I recommend this combination.

Does it matter?

Possibly. I think we are experiencing changes in how we experience information. Most of us experience more and more video both for entertainment and for learning. It is worth considering how we might be influenced by the medium of input. If we are trying to learn more frequently from video, how do we attempt to process the video experience in a way similar to how we can take control and process text?

References:

Clark, R. E. (1983) Reconsidering research on learning from media. Review of educational research 53 (4), 445-459.

Johns, A. (2023). The science of reading: Information, media, and mind in modern America. University of Chicago Press.

Kozma, R. B. (1994). Will media influence learning? Reframing the debate. Educational technology research and development, 42(2), 7-19.

Desirable Difficulty

Despite a heavy focus on cognitive psychology in the way I researched and explained classroom study tactics, I had not encountered the phrase desirable difficulty until I became interested in the handwritten vs. keyboard notetaking research. I discovered the idea when reviewing studies by Luo and colleagues and Mueller and Oppenheimer. Several studies have claimed students are better off taking notes by hand in comparison to on a laptop despite being able to record information significantly faster when using a keyboard.

Since having a more complete set of notes would seem an advantage. The combination of more notes associated with poorer performance is counterintuitive. Researchers speculated that learners who understood they had to make decisions about what they had time to record selected information more carefully and possibly summarized rather than recorded verbatim what they heard. This focus on what could be described as deeper processing seemed like an example of desirable difficulty. The researchers also proposed that the faster keyboard recording involved shallow cognitive processing.

Note: I am still a fan of more complete notes and the methodology used when demonstrating better performance from recording notes by hand needs to be carefully considered. I will comment on my argument more at the end of this post.

Desirable difficulty an idea attributed to Robert Bjork has been used to explain a wider variety of retention phenomena. Bjork suggested that retrieval strength and storage strength are distinct phenomena and learners can be misled when an approach to learning is evaluated based on retrieval strength. I find these phrases to a bit confusing as applied, but I understand the logic. Students cramming for an exam make a reasonable example. Cramming results in what may seem to be successful learning (retrieval strength), but results in poorer retention over an extended period of time (storage storage strength). Students may understand and accept the disadvantages of cramming so it is not necessary that the distinction be unrecognized by learners. In a more recent book on learning for the general public, Daniel Willingham suggests that the brain is really designed to avoid rather than embrace thinking because thinking is effortful. The human tendency is to rely on memory rather than thinking. Desirable difficulty may be a way to explain why some situations that require thinking prevent something more rote.

Increasing difficulty to improve retention

There are multiple tactics for productively increasing difficulty that I tend to group under the heading of generative learning. I describe generative activities as external tasks intended to increase the probability of productive cognitive (mental) behaviors. I suppose desirable difficulty is even more specific differentiating external tasks along a difficulty dimension. So in the following list of tasks, it is useful to imagine more and less difficult tasks. Often the less difficult task is the option learners choose to apply. In connecting these tactics with personal experience, I would recommend you consider the use of flashcards to conceptualize what would be the easier and the more challenging application. Then, move beyond flashcards to other study tactics and consider if you can identify similar contrasts.

Retrieval Practice: Testing oneself on the material rather than passively reviewing notes is considered retrieval practice. The classic empirical demonstration of the retrieval practice or the testing effect compared reviewing content versus responding to questions. Even when controlling for study time, spending some time on questions was superior. With the flashcard applications I recommended you consider, answering multiple-choice questions would be less challenging than answering short-answer questions (recognition vs recall).

Spacing (Distributed Practice): Instead of cramming, spreading out study sessions over time is more productive. This method helps improve long-term retention and understanding. Spacing allows some retrieval challenges to develop and the learner must work harder to locate the desired information in memory. See my earlier description of Bjork’s distinction between retrieval strength and storage strength.

Interleaving: Mixing different types of problems or subjects in one study session. For example, alternating between math problems and reading passages rather than focusing on one at a time. A simple flashcard version of this recommendation might be shuffling the deck between cycles through the deck. Breaking up the pattern of the review task increases the difficulty and requires greater cognitive effort.

Other thoughts

First, the concept of committing to more challenging tasks is broader than the well researched examples I provide here. Writing and teaching could be considered examples in that both tasks require an externalization of knowledge that is both generative and evaluative. It is too easy to fake it and make assumptions when the actual creation of a product is not required.

Second, desirable difficulty seems to me to be a guiding principle that does not explain all of the actual cognitive mechanisms that are involved. The specific mechanisms may vary with activity – some might be motivational, some evaluative (metacomprehension), and some at the level of basic cognitive activities. For example, creating retrieval challenges probably creates an attempt to find alternate or new connections among stored elements of information. For example, in trying to put a name with a face one might attempt to remember the circumstances in which you may have met or worked with this person and this may activate a connection you do not typically use and is not automatic. For example, after being retired for 10 years and trying to remember the names of coworkers, I sometimes remember the arrangement of our offices working my way down the appropriate hallway and this sometimes helps me recall names.

I did say I was going to return to the use of desirable difficulty as a justification for the advantage of taking notes by hand. If keyboarding allows faster data entry than handwriting, in theory keyboarding would allow more time for thinking, paraphrasing, and whatever advantage one would have when the recording method requires more time. Awareness and commitment would seem to be the issues here. However, I would think complete notes would have greater long-term value than sparse notes. One always has the opportunity to think while studying and a more complete set of notes would seem to provide the opportunity to have more external content to work with.

References:

Bjork, R.A. (1994). Memory and metamemory considerations in the training of human beings. In J. Metcalfe & A. Shimamura (Eds.), Metacognition: Knowing about knowing (pp. 185-205). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Luo, L., Kiewra, K. A., Flanigan, A. E., & Peteranetz, M. S. (2018). Laptop versus longhand note taking: effects on lecture notes and achievement. Instructional Science, 46(6), 947-971.

Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological science, 25(6), 1159-1168.

Willingham, D. T. (2021). Why don’t students like school?: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. John Wiley & Sons.

YouTube Annotation with Glasp

I take a lot of notes and have done so for years. I have tried many different tools over this time period. Social Annotation is a subcategory of these tools that allows users to share their highlights and notes. The idea is that the sharing of notes allows individuals to find resources they have not personally explored and offer their own discoveries to others. Glasp serves these purposes.

I have written about Glasp on several previous occasions. A unique capability allows built-in AI capabilities to “chat” not only with your own notes, but also the annotations stored by others.

Glasp is a combination of a Profile page that is the online location allowing access to the content you have collected (see above) and a browser extension that provides the means to highlight and annotate the content viewed within your browser. Kindle content is imported automatically. Glasp could provide the storage location for all of your notes, but I export notes to Obsidian to take advantage of more advanced features.

I don’t spend a lot of time collecting information from Youtube because most of writing is based on books and journal articles. There are exceptions when I review tutorials for software tools and want to keep track of specific tactics. I understand that others use YouTube extensively and I wanted to explore the capabilities of Glasp with this information source. The following video is my effort to describe how notes and highlights are generated from YouTube content.