Priten: Welcome to Margin of
Thought, where we make space
for the questions that matter.
I'm your host, Priten, and together
we'll explore questions that
help us preserve what matters
while navigating what's coming.
Some of the most important questions
in higher ed are very old ones.
How do students learn to read
carefully, think clearly, and disagree?
Well, today's guest is Paul Blasko,
a teaching professor of philosophy at
the University of Notre Dame, where
he teaches courses on God, the good
life and philosophy as a way of life.
His work sits at the intersection of
liberal education, critical thinking, and
course design with a particular focus on
helping students engage in big questions
with more clarity and confidence.
We also discussed what philosophy
can offer higher education in a
moment shaped by ai polarization and
uncertainty about what learning is for.
Let's begin.
Paul: my name is Paul Blaschko
and I am an assistant teaching
professor of philosophy at
the University of Notre Dame.
I also direct a program for students that
are studying business and liberal arts.
it's called the Sheedy Family
Program and Economy Enterprise
and Society, which is a mouthful.
We call it the Sheedy Program.
but here at Notre Dame,
my central work.
Is introducing students to big
questions, in the context of philosophy.
So both with the Sheedy program, I'm
teaching first and second philosophy
courses that asks students to reflect
on big picture questions, at the
intersection of, the liberal arts
and business, some questions about
justice society, that thing.
And then, a huge part of my job
is to teach a course at Notre
Dame called God in the Good Life.
Which is a first philosophy course.
many, most of our
freshmen actually take it.
it fulfills one of the requirements
that they have to take at Notre Dame.
and it's a question that introduces
them not to the discipline of
philosophy, but to philosophy as a
tradition, as a way of life
and older sort, tradition.
so we're asking big questions, meaning
in life, religion, God suffering, and
every week we're taking on these new
questions and, looking
to historical texts, really important
thinkers, to work our way through those.
Priten: Oh, very cool.
Okay, so we have lots of things
that we should talk about.
before we get into it, I like to
ask folks what their own memory of
using an EdTech tool is as a student.
the earliest one you have,
or the most prominent one.
Even if you, have one.
Paul: Yeah.
So my answer to this, I hope I'm
not avoiding the question, but my
answer to this is actually YouTube.
and here's how I would explain it.
when I was in college, I was
obviously a bit of a nerd.
I think it's important for professors to
remember that we are atypical students.
We're weird, but I was
really, really motivated to
learn more about the things that
we were talking about in class.
And so I remember, you
know, doing the readings.
I would frequently pull up a YouTube
kind of explainer video or tutorial,
to really get me in the head
space, help me get some
of the context in the background.
And then after class, I would
often, seek out, lectures that
were given, by professors.
I think I'm, one of the few
that probably would watch through like 120
minute or, an hour and 20 minute lecture.
but also you know, there were even
then a number of people who were
focused, topically, thematically,
like, here's philosophy.
Let's relate this to, any number
of concerns that we care about.
I do remember in college, we certainly
had like a learning management system and.
I'll say, I've always been very,
kind of an early adopter with
technology and educational technology.
And on the one hand, like, you know,
I, I will explore any functionality
that I'm given and it's like, okay,
this is what it's meant to do.
But at the same time, I'm always thinking
about, from the perspective
of somebody who's less motivated to
get to the actual content or, or,
you know, the, the functionality.
what's the most effective
way, to reach those people?
What's the most effective
way to structure it?
so for me, the internet,
has been a huge sort of
educational technology and tool.
and then over the years, you know,
there's any number of, particular
tools that I've focused in on.
but I would say yeah, as a
student, I'm gonna go with YouTube.
Priten: Yeah.
okay, so I'm curious more
about this YouTube, idea.
Did you, you said you were nerdy, and
so I'm gonna assume that you did the
reading, either before or after the video.
And I wanna hear about
that process a little bit.
Paul: So this is one of the things
that I talk to colleagues the most
about, especially when I'm, you know,
consulting with somebody on designing
like a large lecture philosophy course.
it took me a little bit, but
I, I'd say fairly early in my
teaching career, I realized most
students aren't doing readings.
Like most students, we're kinda
lucky if they're, if they're like
reading, spark Notes, I guess is
what it was when I was in college.
Now it's like
plugging it into Chat GPT.
it's really a high bar, right?
Asking them to read, five, 10
pages if it's dense academic text, I mean,
you know, gosh, 2, 3, 4, 5 pages.
and so that's something that I've
kind of gone back into my experience
and then tried to reverse engineer,
using ed tech tools sometimes.
To get to your question, how did
I process information as
I was walking through a class?
Well, the first thing that I would do
is, I'd look at the syllabus, I'd look
at what we're reading, and I would just
try to find the thing that I already knew
about that was closest to whatever it was.
So, I'm in a and ancient
philosophy course and like,
oh yeah, no, I saw this YouTube
video on Virtue Ethics and Aristotle.
Okay, let's start there and I just
try to get a picture, context,
For me, it was really about exploring.
And I think here's where the nerdiness
or intrinsic curiosity comes in.
I don't expect my students, and I don't
think we should expect our students to
have that motivation with respect to
every single thing that they're studying,
especially if it's a general requirement.
And certainly, there were things,
chemistry or something where I was like,
I need to get through this, help me.
But with respect to philosophy, or
literature, a lot of the humanities
courses I was taking, I'd really
try to get that background, just
the context, because I found without
that, I found this really early on.
I didn't get anything
out of the readings.
And I think that's probably
a reason why many of our
students don't do the readings.
they feel like it's a waste of time,
and in some cases it is.
It's just, if you don't understand some
of the basic assumptions or historical
context, whatever it is, if you don't
have some, schema, but if
you don't have a schema, if you don't
have a way of relating to, the sort of
conceptual framework, of the text, it's
just like running your eyes over words.
I could do that as a
discipline, I suppose.
once I was in that
context, I would read.
For philosophy, I would read
sort of intensely, and I
would actually take notes.
I don't know why, but like I developed
this, this weird system where I
had to have all of the notes of a
particular text on a single page.
And so I started writing teeny, tiny
sort of structures, and I wanted to be
able to grasp the thing as a whole, like,
what is it that's, that's really being
claimed or illustrated, whatever it is.
what is that?
Because once I got in class, even if I
had the context, read the content and
kind of understood it as I went, I'd get
to class and they'd be like, all right.
here's a big question.
And I'd be like, I don't
know how to locate myself here.
Right?
Like, I need a map.
And so that's what I would do.
I would just, take these really tiny
notes and put 'em together,
understand the different chunks.
If it was a big book, okay, a page per
chapter or whatever, and for me that
was such an enlightening experience.
And the benefits compounded.
Like, I would go into a class and I
could spend five hours prepping the
class, reading the text or whatever.
if I spent, seven hours messing
around and understanding it and trying
it out in different ways, I'd come in
and I'd be like I get this, like, it's
like walking into a room where, you're
studying a foreign language and people
are speaking that language and all of a
sudden you're like, oh, wait a second.
Like, I totally get this.
I see where they're going with it.
so for me, that's what my prep
would look like as a student.
and I would spend
days in the library.
I would like, you know,
just, sit there and kind
of do all of this, this work.
Priten: it's interesting 'cause I
don't think I've heard anybody else
explicitly describe this process.
And now I'm thinking like.
even as a, this, this kind of
thing for me also started as like
as an elementary school student.
I remember, every time we started a new
unit, my mom would take me to Barnes
and Nobles and I would grab every book
on the topic we were about to learn.
And I would read all of it.
It'd be like if you lived during the blah,
blah, blah times and like whatever, right?
Like there were all these children
series, especially for history.
and then I'd get to class and I
would have a much more entertaining
time because there was almost this,
like, I knew the plot a little bit.
And so I think that helped just
enjoy the class instead of like be like,
oh, I have to like focus on everything.
I think as a philosophy
student, it was podcasts.
I used to do like, podcasts with
other folks discussing the same
readings before I did the readings.
and then oftentimes after I'd be
like, oh, this random author came up.
But I don't have the time to go read
like more stuff written by somebody else.
But I'm still curious about
like how that's contextualized.
But what strikes me is that you and I were
both intrinsically motivated to do that.
It was not, externally enforced.
I also didn't do it in the classes where
like, it wasn't exactly, my top interest.
I'm curious now, you teach a gen
ed course, you teach it on a topic
that, some students might not
see a direct relation right away.
and so how do you try to get your
students to do the reading, in your class?
And if so, what does that look like?
Paul: Oh yeah, definitely.
I would say there's different strategies
that I have, depending on the size of the
class, and the level at which it's taught.
Although most classes that I teach are
first or second philosophy courses.
so I'll describe the strategy that
I use for God, the good life first.
so like I said, it's a big
first philosophy course.
We call it first philosophy
rather than intro.
I don't know, it's fancier.
And, we organize it around
these four big questions.
So there's four units that
correspond to these questions.
how should you live your life?
what is it to live the good life?
What is the good life?
So an ethics unit, how do you
figure out what to believe?
So there's so many sources of information,
there's so much disagreement out there.
how do you sort through that?
What are effective belief
forming mechanisms?
I'd call it the epistemology unit,
although I think I used that word
twice in the course the whole semester.
and then the third unit's about religion.
so should you practice a religion?
and then the fourth unit
is about meaning in life.
And that's a summative
unit where we're like, all right,
let's take a step back and look at
some of these different pictures.
So, one reason why we teach the course
that way is because, When I was initially
TAing for big intro classes, the kind
of default setting is an introduction
to the discipline of philosophy.
And for somebody like me who, you
know, even in as an undergrad, second,
third year undergrad, I was like,
oh, I might want to go into this.
I want it be a professor or something.
But for 99.8%
of our students, I'd say there's
not even really an awareness of
what an academic discipline is.
They're coming in as freshmen.
they're very smart,
they're incredibly smart.
but you know, the sort of
way we organize higher education,
it's very different than the
way that we organize K 12.
and so they don't really
know what that discipline is.
And even when they do, or if
you explain to them, that's not
an intrinsically motivating,
sort of story, or map for them.
So when we were designing God in the good
life, what we did is, really take a step
back and think about what our students
were already motivated to think about.
and my colleague and I, Megan Sullivan,
with whom I designed God in the Good
Life, we saw that philosophy,
showed up in our lives in all kinds of
ways that we were absolutely sure it was
showing up in our students' lives too.
but in the wild.
It looks very different than it
does in the classroom, right?
so, I'd read a New
York Times op-ed and I'd be like,
man, this is utilitarianism.
Like this is effective altruism.
This is crazy.
Like, yeah, whatever.
And I'd send it to Megan
and she'd be like, oh, yeah.
So for us, philosophy is
relevant, on a day-to-day basis.
as we're working through things,
we're in conversations with people.
I mean, college students love
having big conversations, deep
conversations, thinking about stuff.
They've got a lot of time.
I mean, they're very busy, but like,
you know, so we knew, these are
issues and questions that are already,
part of students', mental scheme.
They're already thinking about this stuff.
so how do we kinda meet them
halfway and say, Hey, look, here's.
A way that, philosophers within
a particular tradition have
articulated and asked that question.
maybe you find yourself spinning your
wheels when you think about religion.
Like, what do I do?
I don't know.
Like, how do I even decide,
like, what is the criteria?
Like, am I having fun?
what is the, what, so like
if you think about that in kind
of a structured way, you might be
able to make some progress there.
I would say, the biggest challenge is
in the first couple of weeks, just,
inviting them into that conversation.
Showing them that you, you've
done enough research, you know.
Not exactly who they are, but you,
you know, roughly where they're at.
you've designed the course and the
questions with them in mind, and
then going through a few cycles
of that to gain their trust.
That like, yeah, okay.
if I do the readings, and for us,
the readings, honestly, we have
readings, primary texts that we've
excerpted, so select it down, and
then we get experts to actually
write annotations for the readings.
it used to be me but now we've
actually got philosophy professors
across the country going through
a peer reviewed process where they
produce these, digital essays that we
collect, in this philosophy library.
And so we have the students going in
there and the thought there is like,
if you start reading Aristotle and
you get lost in paragraph two, it
can feel like you're all alone.
And it's like, I either I force myself
to look through this or whatever,
whereas, if you've got somebody, and
this is where tech comes in, it's so
great if you've got somebody that's
kind of right there, it says like,
okay, I know this sounds crazy, right?
Like, what is he talking about?
Like, we can't skip over that.
Like, what is that?
Right?
and then offer them, kind of
the next step, which often for
me is, these short form videos.
I'm in a way reconstructing the
process that I would go through, right?
and saying, yeah, you might wanna click on
this video here and you can, explanation.
Then, I notice in the first
couple of weeks our students open up
a little bit more and they think like,
okay, I trust the process now.
There are a lot of barriers still at play.
The biggest of which I think is
grades, to be honest with you.
a lot of students, especially at a really
high achieving, institution like Notre
Dame, I imagine everywhere, but especially
here, there's really like a deep fear.
There's almost like a compliance
mindset that they come in with.
It's like, how do I check all the boxes?
And then once I've done that, I
could over and above that kinda learn
some things that I'm interested in.
But first and foremost it's like,
what exactly are you expecting?
Let me perform this
exactly how you expect it.
I need to get the perfect
GPA, the whatever.
and so there are various things
that we then have to work through
with respect to that, right?
So you start building this trust,
but then you still have this kind
of thought in the background.
They're like, okay, but like, are you
gonna trick me and then gimme this test?
So there's any number of things that
you've gotta do with that, but for me
it's starting with the student, kind
of designing the course around their
goals, what they're already interested
in, what they care about, and then
demonstrating, showing them kind of,
allowing them to enact, the way in
which the material can actually help
them with things that they care about.
Like figure out, yeah.
does God exist, suffering?
Like is that a decisive objection?
and then continuing to build
that trust throughout the semester.
so that's, that's how I
approach it in the big lecture.
I would say our readings
are probably shorter.
but I really expect the
students to do them and we hold them
accountable through daily reading
quizzes and that thing.
but really what I'm hoping is that you
do those first couple and you're like.
This feels different, right?
This doesn't, this is like
trigger the reaction
that I might otherwise have.
I gotta get through this.
and then we can build
up a culture, of trust, and
sort of inquiry together.
So that's how we do it in
the big, lecture course.
I could talk about how I do it
in smaller seminars, but, maybe
that's like a good place to start.
Priten: Okay, so this was not on purpose,
but the name of the podcast is Margin of
Thought because, I found myself, there
was a middle school teacher who made me
read a book called Like, how to Read.
And at that point I was a nerdy little
middle schooler, and I was like, how
to read, like, I know how to read.
Like why, why are you
assigning this to me?
and that started a practice of
annotating while I read, for me, and
that was like game changing in terms
of how engaged I was with the text.
and that is where I feel like the
real thinking happens is when you're
kind of able to be engaged in the
margins and put your own little
notes and see other folks' notes.
I think like shared annotations is
another, a great pedagogical tool.
but I love the idea of experts
having already like provided some
annotations in the margins for you
to, engage with the text to kind of
like hold your hand a little bit.
so that, that's great.
I wanna hear, about, I wanna focus
on the big course partially because
I think that the smaller seminar
courses is probably a little bit more
self-selecting, and there's
a larger challenge of like, getting
students to be motivated enough to do
readings, especially in a gen ed course.
I agree that grades are
probably a huge chunk of this.
I'm a proponent of pass fail gen
eds, if I can get one thing changed
in higher ed, that would be it.
I think students would take a lot more
risks with exploring disciplines if they
like, didn't have to pick the easiest gen
ed in each category where they're like,
oh, this professor always gets an A and so
I'm gonna take this gen ed rather than the
thing that they're actually interested in.
But that's a separate conversation I
wanna hear a little bit about, some
of the strategies you've mentioned,
seem already AI proof to me, right?
the student buy-in is obviously
not reliant upon this draconian
enforcement mechanism, that suddenly
becomes impossible with AI tools.
obviously in class, reading quizzes
is another easy, AI proof way to
make sure that students are engaging
in the reading have you noticed a
difference or has it made a perceptible
difference in the classroom post AI in
terms of how much of the reading you
think the students are doing, and has
that changed how you think about it?
Paul: Yeah, I, I.
Haven't noticed as big of a
shift as I thought I might.
In part because the digital essays that
we're assigning to the students, you
know, they exist on their own webpage.
they're pretty highly
formatted and structured.
you know, they've got dropdown
menus and okay, you can click
this and that, whatever.
So it's not really easy to like copy
paste and I'm not giving them
like a PDF or something and so I'm
not sure, if that's like
a deterrent or something like that.
But I think even before AI came around,
you know, to me whether the students
are reading was a huge problem.
It was a huge question.
and one that was really hard to
sort of get information about, right?
Students are incredibly good
at performing learning, right.
They're really good.
it's really tough.
I think like if you had a blind test and
you had two students, one that did the
reading, one that didn't do the reading,
maybe they spent like 10 minutes or
something Googling or something.
I think it's really hard to know, right?
Like in class, in a setting like
that, whether they're doing it or not.
So my default assumption has always been
that we've gotta build some trust in
order for the students to be investing the
time, the time that, Would make reading
and engaging really worth it for them.
some of that is a concession,
and people critique this.
Sometimes when I talk about this,
especially at philosophy, conferences,
some of it's a concession to the way
that the attention economy exists online.
some of it is a recognition that when
students are doing reading for your class,
the laptop's open, the phone's here.
there's so much information
coming in all the time.
maybe 15, 20, 30, 50 years ago, maybe
I could've been like, all right,
here's the book, here's the chapter.
what else are you gonna do?
I've never come in
with that assumption that my
students, owe me, that attention.
I don't know.
I don't know.
if that's the kind of.
Best attitude to have.
But I would say for that reason, I haven't
felt as thrown off by ai, especially
when it comes to the reading part of it.
because for a long time my
question has been like, well,
how is this reading aligned with
the goals that I've got for them?
And if they're not doing the reading,
it could very well be, a failure on
my part as an educator to set the
expectations or explain or whatever.
But it's also an indication
that well, they didn't really
need to do that reading.
That's weird.
is there something in the design
of the course that I could change
so that I'm motivating them,
maybe extrinsically, but hopefully
intrinsically to actually do that thing.
And so I'm often going back and forth
between those things and I don't have.
firm and settled views, that well,
you know, this is the only way, it's
gotta be like a paper copy of A PDF
that, like, I'm really, I I, I really,
at this point in my career, I really
enjoy the back and forth and
the ongoing development and innovation.
And I find with ai, actually, it's
becoming increasingly possible to try out
experiments like the digital essay format.
you know, the first time we
put this together, that was
me with a WordPress site.
I'm not a coder by any means, but I'm
playing with these margins, I got the
technology office here to train me in
some Adobe product to create webpages.
Okay.
That took a lot of time and effort.
I was very motivated to do it.
Now it's like, man, we could actually,
put this together fairly quickly.
You can try that out and if students
respond well to it, oh, that's awesome.
Like, let's kind of
lean in that direction.
So, I guess, yeah, with respect to
reading, I haven't felt it as much.
I don't doubt that it's changed the
way that students engage with the texts
that we're reading for class, but I
haven't felt it as much in the room.
Priten: Yeah.
yeah, I, I've heard both extremes of, like
we have to figure out any way possible to
get them to do the reading because their
reading is good for like, reading's sake
and building attention and discernment.
and then I've also heard
from, folks who are saying.
It's over.
Like, it's not like we have,
we have to like move on.
Like if that's not what students are
doing, it's not, there is probably a
reason why it's not necessary anymore.
And maybe like they're still
consuming a lot of content,
just like not long form content.
Lots of interesting takes on it.
I think I like the, the middle ground of
our, if it, if I can, if I see some
importance in it, let me see how I can
structure my course to get them to do it.
and if I'm struggling to do
that, maybe that particular piece
is not, necessary of reading.
Also the short pieces help.
I think that that's one of the
things I've noticed with, students
now is, getting them to like
read any like, and then this is.
K to 12 Education too is
all excerpt based, right?
Like no one assigns folks to
assign books on a large scale.
we get assigned less books in the
last decade than we did before.
I wanna talk about how our paths crossed.
And so, we got to work together,
through Thinker Analytics,
and that's an ed tech tool.
So I'm curious about, what motivated you
to try it and what has kept you with us,
in terms of using it in your classroom?
Paul: So over the history of God and the
good life, we've tried many different
experiments with learning goals and
especially capstone projects, like
what we wanted students to get out
of the course has looked different.
There's some things that kind of
remained the same and essential,
but has looked very different
from the beginning of the course.
So right at the beginning, our
overarching project that students
would work on throughout the semester,
turn into the end, is what we call
the apology assignment, and apology
as in like an explanation and defense
of your beliefs like Socrates as
apology, or Newman's, apology.
so, we use that as
kind of a hook at the beginning.
Look, you're in this class, you're gonna
be able to write sort of, an apologia.
what, where is it
that you're at right now?
Kinda a snapshot.
It's a philosophical
story of how you're approaching
the world and how you got there.
And I love that assignment.
And the students loved it, in many ways.
But the difficult thing that we identified
almost right away in the semester
is that there was so much intrinsic
motivation to do the, assignment.
And then they would turn it in and
we'd look at it and be like, okay.
They're not like arguing as
well as we'd like in here.
But grading it on a traditional
model of like, great, you get
70%, it really deflated them.
It betrayed the trust in a way.
They're like, look, I just
put my heart out there.
And you're like, yeah, you're
like 70% good at believing things.
Like what?
There was this weird
kind of, back and forth.
So we tried various experiments
to get them to, critically think
and argue and engage.
and a lot of them failed miserably.
So the first thing I did is I created
my own informal, reasoning system.
I wrote a 50 page textbook
and we assigned it to them.
I created a game and there were
rules and all this stuff.
It was great because I learned how hard it
is to teach, informal reasoning and logic.
We did try, actually right before that,
we tried having like a mini logic unit.
so like three days, a week
and a half where we're like
validity, soundness premises.
and then we'd present premised
arguments throughout the semester.
But again, students were not
picking up on that and they were like,
you know, it takes a long, long time
to really get those skills set
deeply enough for it to, be
applicable in what they're writing.
So, I had come across this
idea of mastery-based learning.
Just, I don't know even,
exactly when or where.
but this idea that, practice,
over these sets of problems that
can be very, very extensive, this
is the way that you develop those
kind of habits of mind and skill.
and you know, that was about the
same time where I was like, I
can't write thousands and millions
of practice sets and questions.
well, luckily there's somebody
that's already done that, right?
So, the Thinker Analytics course
think arguments, really takes students
step by step, and it is a trade off.
Because, the students are not
coming out having learned like symbolic
logic or like formal logic in any sense.
and that is that that's a trade off.
on the other hand, in my
experience, I couldn't really teach
them that unless I devoted half or
more of the semester to that itself.
and what we found was the quality
of the students' writing and their
interactions in class kind of
critiquing, analyzing, evaluating,
and argument, shot way up.
Like it was way better.
And it was so obvious to me and the
TAs and the teaching team, that we
were like, oh, we gotta integrate
this into the course and adopt it.
at the same time,
the students actually.
Weren't seeing the growth
as much as we wanted.
and so they would come into class and,
I started surveying them and I'm like,
how good are you at critical thinking?
They'd be like, oh yeah.
it was like 90% of the questions on
this test I'm definitely gonna get.
Right.
and then, I'd have them take a
pre-test and it was like 40%.
And they're like, whoa.
Like, right.
Like they're coming in and they're
sort of learning what they don't know.
And then by the end of the course, I'd,
administer a post-test, and now I give
them like a little report and it's like,
it's got this beautiful little line.
It's like, that's what
you learned how to do.
it's also nice because the pre-post
test that I use, it's based on the lsat.
And so like, that's a pretty
intrinsically motivating, to be able
to be good at something that they
know is like, a skill that is desired,
even if they're not gonna law school.
that again connects up with,
certain motivations that they've got.
so yeah, so we started doing thinker
analytics, three, four years ago and
have gradually integrated it more
and more into the fabric of the course.
and eventually, with some of this
research, I formalized it a bit more.
And then with Aiden,
Ian, thinker, analytics.
We've written up a paper that we're gonna,
it's coming out, this coming summer.
but for me, yeah, that, that's like,
that's the problem that I was
trying to solve for is like, how do we
get these students who are now willing to
be vulnerable and say like, yeah, like,
you know, suffering is a huge problem.
it makes me question
whether God exists.
How do we get them to the next step where
they can really articulate that in a
space where you can go back and forth,
but not in like a kind of, anxious kind
of, I don't know, challenging
identity, challenging way, right?
I, I don't wanna say to somebody
like, oh, that's a dumb reason
for believing in God or not.
But if I can say, well, wait a second.
Like, do you really think that
this claim is supporting this or whatever?
It gives you that distance
to activate whatever part of
your brain it is that's like,
oh, we're on the same team here.
We can be on the same team here.
and this can be a collaborative
project to improve my thinking on this.
So it's provided so many
things for the class.
I'm so glad we've done it.
and I Love all the experiments
that we've been able to run with it.
Priten: so, we have two projects
that we're working with you on now.
both very exciting.
the first, I think, is an experiment
on both RNs, with the integration
of like an AI metacognitive coach.
and I wanna hear from you what problem
you think that was solving, to experiment.
Like what are you hoping it solves
in your classroom, given that you've
already had a pretty good experience.
seeing some results from
the baseline course.
Paul: So, the way that I often think
about EdTech is, if there's a problem
that I'm already encountering, and
then there's some tool that could
sort of meet that need, right?
I sometimes experiment and say like,
oh, this sounds like a cool function.
Let's plug that in and
see what's going on.
more often though, we're hitting some
wall, hitting some obstacle, and I try to
zoom out and think, is there some digital
tool or is there some structure even in
the course that we could use to address
this, problem, That led to this, project
with the AI tutor is that students who
walked through think arguments in the way
that it was sequenced and designed, and
who had enough reasoning ability
at the beginning you hit a snag.
Of course, you've got these
mastery checks, right, where
you've gotta get 90% on the mastery
check for every given lesson.
maybe they're not passing them all on
the first try, They can pretty quickly
see with the feedback that they're
getting in that mastery check, oh,
you've gotta go to this thing, you know?
So a lot of our students were able to
do that and do it on their own.
but there was a significant
chunk, like, 20% maybe,
who got really frustrated.
and sometimes it was 'cause
they weren't going slow enough.
we all know the experience of doing an
online course, whether it's compliance
for your job or whatever, where
you're like, click through,
you know, and it can feel
like that for some of the students.
sometimes it was.
Something further.
It was like there was some basic
kinda wire that was getting crossed.
The best experiences I had were
when students would come in and
talk to me and I'd say, let's
do the mastery check together.
Like, let's walk
through this together.
We'd say like, okay, is it A, B, C or C?
Is it whatever?
And then as they made a
mistake, they would articulate it.
I'd say, well, wait a second.
Let's think about this.
you know, one more time, that's
not the, answer that I came to.
maybe you're right, but let's, okay.
And have this like
quick conversation.
And what I found was like.
Students who had struggled for two hours
with a mastery check and had tried to go
back and everything else within a
matter of five or 10 minutes, were just
like, oh, that, okay, that makes sense.
I get it.
now there's a huge bottleneck problem.
There's a huge feedback loop
problem where, if you've got a student
who is struggling with a mastery, check
on less than two and you're not gonna
see them again for, a week.
And then if they're gonna sign
up for office hours, we try
to be as available as we can.
there's a vast number of students
who will not go through the
process or, by the time they get into
the meeting, it's like, I've kind of
lost the progress and the momentum.
And so my thought was, you know.
if we had like a 1-800 number that
they could call every time they were
stuck and we'd be like, okay,
let's walk through it together.
well it seems like this is a function and
it's something I use AI for all the time.
I'm stuck and I need to get unstuck
and I don't necessarily need like,
a brand new idea or some creative,
I need to talk it out.
I could do that with a friend who
might not even be in the class and
just be like, here's what I'm thinking.
I'm stuck in the whatever.
but AI seems particularly well
designed, or at least like in my
kind of, amateur understanding of it.
especially with a closed, system
where there are distinct rules and there
are moves and, you can keep those in mind.
Seemed really well suited, to
be the thing that could
provide that intervention.
and if students found it useful,
I think it has the potential of
just being integrated into the
kind of learning, strategy that
they used throughout the course.
So that was the thought.
can we, solve the bottleneck
problem with students getting feedback?
Can we create a feedback loop that
is near instantaneous, that's very
quick, and it helps them get unstuck?
so that, when we get to
the interventions and the assessments
that require human interactions and,
you know, grading and giving
feedback, doing workshops, we're
freed up to do that and students, you
know, aren't burning with this
frustration or question that they had
two weeks ago, and now they've, we've kinda lost the momentum with them.
So that was the initial thought.
Priten: Yeah.
I get a chance to teach, a
think arguments course, to adult
learners at a community college.
and what I had also noticed was,
completion rates were very, very
low, unless I explicitly made
time in class to go through, like
on the screen, let's do this.
What does everybody, like, why
are you getting this wrong?
What are we thinking about?
I have not yet taught it
since the tutor came out.
I'm very excited to do so
because that was, the scalability
of that was impossible.
Like, if students were not in
class, they were still behind.
If like we only got a chance to
cover three out of the six modules
that we wanted them to complete, we
didn't get a chance to get them that
individual metacognitive support.
I found ways to in class be like, okay,
everybody, write something down
first, then we'll talk about it to
make sure that even the folks who weren't
raising their hand and engaging, were
doing some of that metacognitive work.
but yeah, that is what I'm hoping
we continue to see with the tool.
But you know, we're still in
the early days and, we'll keep
working on it to get it there.
I wanna finish by, talking about a
new project, we're getting to work on.
so tell me a little bit about,
what sparked that interest,
and what you're excited about.
'cause I know we're in the super
early stages of that still.
Paul: So, with Thinker Analytics, with you
guys with Gary Comstock at NC State with
a bunch of different partners across the
country, we've recently been awarded about
$4 million to study, whether it's possible
scale, critical thinking instruction
with, think arguments, and then also, training in dialogue with people that you
would disagree with and sort of, you know,
civil discourse, whether it's possible
to scale that, not in a class.
I feel confident, in my own teaching,
I'm like, all right, we can do this.
Like for 150 students we get this.
but can you scale that in a way
that would actually have potentially
an impact nationwide?
Right.
what would that look like?
I've done a couple of projects
like that in the past.
the Mellon Foundation, when I was,
just graduating, with my PhD here at
Notre Dame, I was a postdoc on this
project called The Philosophy As a
Way of Life Project, where we brought
hundreds of instructors from across
the country together, to design,
redesign, and share information about
how they were structuring courses
like God in the Good Life, like
the ones, that I was teaching here.
So what I found from that was, an
incredible amount of energy and an
incredible amount of, information sharing.
I think our discipline, the
discipline of philosophy, maybe
academic disciplines in general.
we've got really great venues
for sharing ideas about research,
communicating about research.
but teaching, which is often, maybe the
majority or at least like half of what
we're doing, there are fewer venues.
Like there are fewer kind of,
common ways of thinking or talking.
and my wife who's a K 12 teacher
and has taught, various, different
institutions and structures of the years.
I noticed, and I got really jealous.
Like they've got that
right, they've got professional
development, they've got a certain
kind of operating system pedagogically.
so here the thought was
we've got, think arguments.
we've got this other tool that was new
to me when I started, thinking about
this project with Gary and others,
called Sway, which is, an ai, coach
that helps you engage, in structured
disagreement, with somebody, and kind of,
coaches you and helps you along the way.
So we've got these two tools.
you instructors on the team have had
great success with both of these things,
and they are self-contained in a way.
but at the same time, if you
integrate them into your course.
Intentionally, at least in our
experience, the results are
just exponentially different.
So, when I, first started doing think
arguments, I was like, all right, great.
Everybody go sign up
for an account, do it.
Come back.
Okay.
I saw progress.
I saw, like, I was like, this is cool.
I can discern in the
writing of some of these students.
but when I stepped back and I thought,
okay, we're actually gonna, pull this up
in class, we're gonna go through this.
I'm gonna create maps of the arguments
that we're talking about in class.
we're gonna have check-ins
and assignments related to it.
that's when I saw this, really
incredible substantial growth.
that's when I started measuring it.
I hadn't measured before, but I
guarantee you this was like more growth.
and so it seems like we have this
really unique opportunity where, you
know, what does the world need more of?
critical thinking, and not in
general, not like, oh yeah, we
could get, but like, very, very, very
specifically, critical thinking
about, issues that matter
to us and that we've gotta talk about
in order to have a healthy functioning
democracy among many other things.
it seemed, to me I saw this kind
of vision where it's like, we can do
this with a network of faculty, a
very big network of faculty, and sort
of iterate, study it, improve
it, in ways that I really do think
tangibly like could impact, higher ed.
hopefully on, a scale that
I've never worked on before, I
guess is what I'm saying there.
So the idea is, yeah, we'll bring
faculty together, over three summers.
So this year is a planning summer, and
then over three summers we're gonna
bring these faculty fellows together.
we're gonna help them, design
and integrate these tools.
We're gonna help them with the
course design aspect of integrating
these tools into their classes.
and then we're gonna run a bunch of
experiments and see, okay, what's working?
What isn't, how do we get
really good at, doing this?
What's the process?
Can we create resources and tools that
will then, live on, and allow
even more people to access these things?
so yeah, I'm super excited about it.
it's been like long, long been, one of
my favorite parts of teaching philosophy.
It's been, excellent to see students.
Come into class, really afraid to engage
with other people at all and to leave
class by the end, having
conversations that maybe they're not
the most politically contentious or
risky conversations, but they're way
riskier than any of the thing
that they were willing to do on day one.
They can say like, well, here's
where I'm coming from and I know
that you totally disagree with this.
Like, let's build on that in some way.
And so, having concrete tools, that can
help educators do that more in higher
ed, is a really exciting prospect.
Priten: before we talk about big
picture hopes and ambitions, I wanna
hear about how you're thinking about,
funding from a polarized source to
solve polarized thinking in the country.
because obviously the Department of
Education, and the Trump administration
are a polarized topic across the country.
and so, yeah, what was the thinking
behind, seeking funding from them?
Paul: Yeah, so the grant is funded,
through the Department of Education
and, you mentioned, the,
process, for this round of funding,
I guess in some ways is very normal.
Like as always, there are priorities
that are set by the Department of
Education, whatever administration is,
currently in power, they're announced,
they're sent out, you apply.
in this case there was sort of
a truncated version of that.
it happened more quickly
than it had in the past.
and to be honest, in applying
for the project, none of
that really entered my mind.
Gary and I and Aiden and others, I'm sure
you were part of these conversations.
For the past, four or five months,
which I'll come back to it in a second,
we've been thinking, okay, let's put
something together that looks like this.
we're really confident in
the research that we've done.
We see this possibility to extend it.
we had started the process and I've
gone through this with many different
grant processes, most of which failed.
you start putting together ideas on
paper and you're like, okay, and here,
all of a sudden this one pops up and
it's like Department of Education.
this opportunity.
and because of the mix of people,
the team that we had, who are plugged
into, civil discourse institutes, across
the country, people who have been working
on the critical thinking aspect because
of that team, we saw that call and we're
like, this is perfect this is great now.
My thought was like, yeah, okay, great.
This is a great first deadline to get
us to really put something together
that we can then like cut
up and, change and everything else.
the crazy thing for me is that,
we hit it on the first, go
around, crazy in one sense because
that like rarely happens.
And in another sense though, you know,
having a, a team as varied an expert as
the one that, that we work that we're
working with on this, to me, I was
amazed by how well this proposal came
together and the depth that it had, right?
there was so much experience in, running
these large scale, pedagogical
experiments, assessing and actually
measuring these things that as we went
through, instead of discovering,
oh gosh, there's this huge element
that like, maybe we need somebody
else to come on board and do this.
The pieces really just
sort of fit together.
so that was, A really unique
experience for me in terms of
grant writing and seeking funding.
and like I said, maybe this is
something, that's drew me more generally.
I tend to think that we think too much
about politics at the national level.
and I tend to think, that we tend
to consider, things that we see in
the news to be decision relevant that
often really aren't decision relevant.
And so for me, I certainly not
unaware of like what's going on
structurally and everything else.
but for me, the question didn't arise
in the sense that here's a normal
process, this is what it looks like.
It's a little bit shorter.
Clearly they were trying to
hit the, fiscal year deadline
or something like that.
again, those are things that
happened in politics all the time.
It's like, this is approved.
Here's the thing, whatever.
And so I looked at that and, had there
been some strangeness, had there been
somebody who was like, anonymous email
that's like, we want this person to apply.
I'd be like, you guys,
what's going on here?
but for me it was, in many
ways, a very ordinary, process.
coming together, putting the proposal
together that we really wanted to
put together, there was no.
Thought in putting the proposal
together, well, let's, if
we kind of, it's like bend this part
of it or do that thing, it was just
all the normal kind of, here's the
criteria, this is what we wanna do.
and even more so for me than in
the past, I think, grant writing,
you can sometimes get tempted to be
like, Ooh, we can sell this as that.
and you can, and
sometimes you win that like, a
small grant or something, and then
you're like, well, wait a second.
Do I really want to do that?
for me, a huge part of the,
integrity, the grant as you go through
is looking at each piece of
it and being like, is this stuff
that I wanna do, that I believe in?
and the more it fits the
criteria for the grant.
That's great.
it has come up.
People have been curious about it.
People have asked me, about that.
and it was an odd thing to then come to
Notre Dame and to say to Notre Dame
research and, others on campus, like, oh
yeah, we got a Department of Ed grant.
which Notre Dame doesn't
get a ton of those.
And so it's like, yeah,
it's a very particular time.
Like, there's a lot of noise,
there's a lot of things going on.
but I think in my case, in the case
of the research team, this looks like,
the grant writing funding
building process that, I would wanna see
any big project that gets funded.
Priten: Yeah.
and to be clear, on an ongoing basis,
the content, the pedagogical tools, how
you frame issues, is any of that gonna be
influenced by who's in the administration?
Especially given that this will,
outlive the card administration?
Paul: I think, Gary, Simon Colon,
who's on the project, others, have
been experimenting for years, with
how to deal with polarization through
disagreement and arguments in class.
and so for me, that's
something that has long been.
on the table.
Like, how do we do that?
How do we figure that out?
I talk to colleagues,
all the time about this.
there's a fear of, even approaching
political topics, in classes and maybe,
justified by all kinds of crazy
dynamics that have happened in higher ed.
I've long wanted to find a way of turning
the temperature down in the room, creating
conditions where we can have these
dialogues, and disagreements in classes.
I don't think that's like a
safe activity in the sense
that like, it's not risk free.
Like it's always, you're always
taking a risk when you do that and
when you train students to do that.
But in my own life, I found it to be so
helpful, part of the whole process
of my higher education, graduate
school, but really especially in college,
was this classic like liberating
of the mind this, liberal arts
ideal where it was like, oh, I can think
about things that I vehemently disagree
with and not feel like, okay, my identity
is being thrown into the ring here.
I am personally, being attacked.
and there's better and
worse ways to do that.
So training students, giving them those
tools, is a huge part of the project but
in my teaching experience and certainly
the experience of the folks who are on
the team here, that's long been true.
it's that these tools in
this particular format give
us a really, effective in our
experience way of doing it.
Priten: I, I'm curious now, we,
we've talked about everything from,
having students think about, the role
of religion and whether or not they
have good arguments for believing
in God, all the way up to very, contemporary political discourse.
and you span a pretty wide
spectrum of interest, but also
relevance to a student's life.
when you think about the future of higher
ed, especially with all the attacks
and also questions about what it looks
like in a world of AI and the access to,
both teaching and information getting,
increase, but also jobs looking different.
what do you think your role will
be in 10 years as a professor?
Paul: I think it'll look really different.
I'm really glad that institutions exist
that are very stable and that have
like very deep communities of
practice and see what they're
doing as a craft and that thing.
I'm also very aware that, you know,
the world changes and maybe it's just
like recency bias, but it seems like
it's changing faster than previously.
for the most part I'm
very optimistic about it.
I think in my own teaching, part
of that optimism, comes from a
real focus on, what I think.
Is really valuable or important
about what we're doing.
Like I, I, I really, truly believe,
with all my heart, that if you read
texts carefully, if you think about,
questions that you have on an everyday
basis that others have thought about
throughout history, if you do that,
like you are forming yourself, you're
sort of shaping who you are as a
person, in a way that is like deep,
fundamentally important work to do.
I haven't seen any indication
in my teaching that students
don't feel the same way.
I see a lot of distractions and barriers
and obstacles, some of which are coming
from the outside social media or phone
use or whatever, some of which are
coming from the inside, sort of,
rigid way about, how we define,
what thought is valuable or
what counts as research or whatever.
so there's always
obstacles like that, but.
I consistently find, in my real,
relationships with students and certainly
the intentional community, that we try to
build in the class, in this program that I
run, I consistently find that there's, an
appetite and a motivation for that exact
thing, that process of formation.
as we've gone through different shifts
and changes now we've got the era of
the LMS or the era of the, online class.
Now we've got the ai whatever
in each of those, settings.
So far, I have found, tools that, help us
do that more effectively, as a community.
that's obviously not to say
that there aren't downsides.
Of some of the tools and some
of the technology, et cetera.
But I guess that's what I hold onto
is like, okay, like, year after
year, semester after semester, sometimes
it's a lot more work than others because
I've gotta adapt this whole thing.
Ah, we're switching LMS,
ah, AI came out, whatever.
Sometimes it's a lot more work, but
for me, that's the work that I do.
Like, that's what I wanna do.
And, I expect it
to look very different.
it's like parenting.
I have five kids, and
every time you think like, oh, great,
we've nailed this, now we
know exactly how to deal with it.
They change, right?
It's like they're radically different.
And so, I don't know, by having that
kind of, anchor in the relationship
and the trust that I have with my
students, and then seeing those
results semester to semester.
I don't know.
I'm excited and it will
look different for better and for worse.
but I guess, my hope is like, as long
as I'm still in a position where I'm
able to teach, I'm able to have these
conversations and dialogues with students.
Like I'll feel incredibly lucky.
Priten: Wow.
that it is nice to hear an optimistic
take on higher ed right now.
And so I, I appreciate that and
I hope, I hope the listeners also
get to, leave with a little bit of
optimism and hope, that it will
be different, but still worthwhile.
so that's, that was helpful.
Thank you.
Paul: I love it.
Yeah, no problem.
This is so fun.
I love doing this.
This is great.
I can do it all day anytime.
Priten: Perfect.
Bye.
Paul: in the future.
Priten: Yep.
Take care.
Thank you to Paul for joining us.
What I appreciated about this
conversation is that beneath the
discussion of AI and education,
technology was a more basic question.
What does it take to help students read
closely, think clearly, and stay in
conversation When disagreements get hard,
Paul's work offers a hopeful answer.
Students are still capable of
serious thought and meaningful
growth, but getting there takes
intentional course design and trust.
Keep listening as we continue exploring
the ethics of education technology.
And for more, check out my book
Ethical Ed tech@ethicaledtech. org.
Thanks for listening to Margin of Thought.
If this episode gave you
something to think about,
subscribe, rate, and review us.
Also, share it with someone who
might be asking similar questions.
You can find the show notes, transcripts,
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Until next time, keep making space
for the questions that matter.