Rigor and Relief: Rebuilding Student Success in an AI-Driven World, With Dr. Mitch Colver

Full Transcript

Dr. Emma Zone (00:00):
The recipe for student success has many ingredients, and what we know is that most learners push through demanding academic and personal challenges, relying on a mix of support systems along the way.
(00:12):
My guest today has spent his career studying that recipe. Together we explore how rigor and relief shape learning, how support structures influence student success, and how emerging tools like AI intersect with the reality of everyday academic life.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to Teach & Learn, A Podcast for Curious Educators, brought to you by D2L. Each week we’ll meet some of the sharpest minds in the K to 20 space. Sharpen your pencils, class is about to begin.
Dr. Emma Zone (00:41):
Today I’m joined by Dr. Mitch Colver. Mitch serves as Associate Provost for Engagement & Retention at the American Public University System, where he oversees the Center for Teaching and Learning, Teaching and Technology, and Academic Insights and Success. Mitch has spent years helping educators understand how students experience both challenge and support. That balance is central to our conversation today. We’re going to explore how rigor and relief work together in learning, how AI and human mentors fit into that landscape, and how educators can think about students’ wellbeing in practical, grounded ways.
(01:20):
Mitch, welcome. I’m so happy to have you here.
Dr. Mitch Colver (01:23):
Thanks so much, Emma. So glad to be here with you.
Dr. Emma Zone (01:25):
Yeah, it’s a great way to spend some time, and I want to jump right in because I know we have a lot to talk about, so let’s get started.
(01:32):
I want to start with this concept, I love when you talk about rigor and relief as this paired experience and learning. So to kind of set the stage today, can you explain a little bit about what those ideas really mean to you, and how do they help us understand what our students might be working through?
Dr. Mitch Colver (01:52):
Absolutely. So the fundamental thrust of education is the idea that through some kind of structured adversity, students can increase their competence. And that structured adversity, or some people call it productive struggle, is central to all kinds of learning science and curriculum design. That no matter what you’re doing, you have to build some kind of rigor into the educational experience. Rigor often manifests in two main ways. Adversity, asking students to do something hard or challenging, and mild failure, also asking them to practice with the adversity in a way that produces learning episodes that include some feedback, criticism, mild failure, so that they can hone, craft, and improve. If you didn’t go into a situation of rigor, university, elementary school, secondary school, none of it would work. If you arrived to the academy and it was easy, it wouldn’t have the outcomes that it was designed to produce.
(03:06):
And so rigor, I think most people accept, is a cornerstone of the academy and I think most faculty are happy to implement that, and pursue it. But there is the other side of that, which is that we know, like with our immune system, if you go to a gym and you work out, it’s actually the rigor of the weightlifting that shreds your muscles. That’s why they call it getting shredded. And your immune system kicks on and rebuilds that tissue, stronger or better than it was, when you first shredded it while lifting. That building back requires some key essential resources that your immune system uses to make you get the gains that you’re after. It’s things like rest, nutrition, a lack of stress.
(03:57):
And that same principle of relief, following the rigor, applies in academic settings as well. You can go to a Chemistry 100 class, you can look through the syllabus, you can read the text, and you can be absolutely shredded by it. Because it shreds you up, it’s hard.
Dr. Emma Zone (04:15):
Yeah.
Dr. Mitch Colver (04:15):
But unless that’s accompanied by some kind of relief, academic rest, taking a break from your classes, going out with friends on the weekend. Academic nutrition, getting maybe some tutoring that you need, or supplemental instruction, or office hours with the faculty. Academic stress relief, making sure that there’s periods of play, and intramural sports, and extracurriculars. That academic relief is the very thing that makes the rigor work, because without the balance between both, you don’t actually see those gains in competence.
Dr. Emma Zone (04:51):
Right.
Dr. Mitch Colver (04:51):
Because you see burnout, crash out, and the gains don’t actually get the student where they need to be.
Dr. Emma Zone (05:00):
Right, right. I love that. I think about, the analogy with the working out is so great, just in terms of thinking through the recovery itself and what that might look like. We know that there’s products, we know that there’s maybe a stretching routine, or there’s a counter exercise you do. So in thinking about that, you named some great examples of where that relief might come from. So I’m sort of curious how, you know, students can draw support from lots of different places. You mentioned a few kind of external things, but we also know there’s structures within our institutions, things like mentors, maybe advisors or even peer advisors, peer communities. Certainly digital tools play a role in this as well. So I’m sort of curious, in your work, how you’ve seen those pieces that are already part of that institutional fabric sort of help learners through some of those demanding moments, and ultimately help them stay engaged, right?
Dr. Mitch Colver (05:50):
Yeah, absolutely. So I am a humanist, first and foremost, but as a student of the learning sciences, it’s also important to me to understand what data is there to represent that these ideas are actually borne out in real life, and in real situations. And at one point in my career, I was blessed to be the founding director of a Center for Student Analytics, and I went on to be a vice president of an analytics company called Civitas Learning. Where one of my main stays, in that role, was to help institutions carry out impact analysis on all of their various add-on services.
(06:31):
So we were looking at the retention impacts of tutoring, of supplemental instruction. Of advising, of peer mentoring, of orientation, all of these relief-based programs. Co-curricular, extracurricular, embedded in the curriculum. Anything that was really helping students to close the gaps that were being created by the rigors of the institution, we were evaluating to determine, “How many percentage point gain can we see in retention and persistence, because the student makes it over the hump as a result of the service?”
(07:05):
And very consistently, we saw all of those services that were human-based, one-on-one interactions, contributing four, five, six, eight percentage point gains in student retention and persistence. Another way to phrase it, through all those hundreds and hundreds of research projects that we did, I worked with over 60 institutions and we completed more than 500 of those types of impact analyses on these types of extracurricular, co-curricular services. In all of that data, it was the one-on-one, things like advising, faculty office hours. Even smaller group, like study groups, supplemental instruction, anything that had a human relationship built into it was always the thing that was boosting student retention and helping them get past the rigors, and really get some relief.
(07:56):
And I think that’s because when you’re in those small groups, one-on-one situations, every student, every learner engages with the rigor in a different way that produces gaps that they’re juggling. And it’s often through the one-on-one human touch where the helping professional turns and says, “Oh, I know how to fill that gap. Have you ever gone to X, Y, Z? And have you thought about this strategy, or have you thought about this thing?” And it’s the very thing that the student needs to hear and they go, “Ah, that’s the relief that I need. That’s the academic nutrition that fills the gap that I have been struggling against for weeks. And now I know what to do.”
Dr. Emma Zone (08:35):
Yeah, I love that. So it sounds like this idea of productive struggle really can be supported through these different structures, but it’s also really, it’s not just the structure it’s the human piece, in terms of the student being seen in that moment and having a direct intervention. Whether it’s a referral to a service, or some other type of, as you mentioned… Maybe it’s even somebody saying, “Hey, you need to get outside and take a walk.” Sometimes you need somebody else to say that kind of thing.
(09:03):
So is that what you feel really also lends to, maybe, confidence building? Because I’m curious, of course we have the academic piece, which is looking at things like retention persistence. But when we think about, going back to the humanist side, things around being confident as a student in higher education and beyond, and kind of building that mindset or skillset around that work. Do you think that that’s also part of the recipe? I assume so, but kind of curious your thoughts there.
(09:29):
And also, we have a lot of academic leaders that listen to our podcast. So as somebody who’s been in that type of position previously, and is looking around transformation with some of these concepts, what does leadership need to know around some of this work too?
Dr. Mitch Colver (09:43):
I do think a lot of it has to do with identity. That if you have a person who’s reflecting back to you, that they’re saying, “I know that being a student is hard, but I also believe that you are the kind of person who can do it.” That that identity building tends to be the thing that is the confidence piece, that stepping into the role of student.
(10:03):
You know, student, it’s a Proto-Indo-European word, and a lot of those Proto-Indo-European words are violent in nature. They have a lot of energy, violent energy. And student is one of those words, it goes back to its root, studere, and even further back. It means painstaking application of oneself to some endeavor. And the painstaking is important, right? This is the rigor. To be a student is to be in pain, and that’s hard. It’s hard to face. But if you have a mentor, a faculty member, a peer, an advisor, who’s saying, “Oh, I know you’re in pain. That was kind of part of the plan. To be a student, it is to be in pain, but it’s not senseless violence. Yes, your Chemistry 100 test is kicking you in the teeth, but it’s not senseless violence, and you can do this.” And I think from an administrative perspective, that culture of really helping everyone to take it on, that, “Yes, it’s supposed to be hard, but it’s not supposed to be senseless violence,” I think that can help.
(11:11):
The only other thing I would add is that we’ve talked about rigor and relief as if they come from different sources, rigor in the classroom, relief in the extracurricular.
Dr. Emma Zone (11:20):
Sure.
Dr. Mitch Colver (11:21):
But on Monday, I’m opening our annual faculty training summit called the Engage Summit at American Public University System. I’m opening it, the keynote session, about a talk about how faculty feedback can be both a source of rigor and relief. That faculty members are in this perfect position to yes, be hard on the learner on their paper, but also simultaneously be that encouraging identity builder. Of, “Yes, this is hard. Yes, I’m holding high expectations. And I know that you’re the type of person who’s about to live up to them.”
Dr. Emma Zone (11:55):
Yeah, I love that. I want to dive into the faculty lens. Prior to coming to D2L, the better part of my career has been with faculty engagement initiatives. And I think there is just a unique position where faculty can really support those challenging moments, as you’re describing. Within not just the just-in-time perspective, but really thinking about it, again, in terms of relationship building and in some ways helping students maybe see themselves in a way they hadn’t previously as they kind of come into these new identities.
(12:25):
So I’d like to dive into that a little bit more. What does it look like for faculty to really recognize these students as a whole person, beyond that academic sphere? And I think that can be particularly challenging in a virtual hybrid environment in some ways, in some ways not. So what would you say to the faculty side, in terms of how do we begin that process, beyond thinking of ourselves as those who just give feedback and are teaching content?
Dr. Mitch Colver (12:52):
Yeah. So I cut my teeth in land grant and regional comprehensive brick and mortar institutions. And this current position is my first time working at an institution that’s fully online. American Public University System, a lot of people aren’t familiar with it. We have over a hundred thousand students in 24 time zones, it’s all fully online. We have two institutions, American Military University and American Public University. And our military university, honestly, it has some 80,000, 85,000 active duty service men and women. And they’re spread all over the world. Some of them are deployed, some of them are awaiting deployment, some of them are in training, and I had never known an institution to be so mission-driven in a way that it trickled down to everyone.
(13:43):
Because what goes on at APUS from a faculty perspective, is our faculty are really taught from their initial faculty candidate training, like their first training experience at the institution, that our institution’s mission exists to make sure that we are flexible to these transient learners. All of our classes are eight weeks long, we have monthly starts, and that that model is so that these people who are literally taking classes at some military base around the world, they literally can do it and they make progress. This week, for example, we have seen the outbreak of war. And I am new, just two years into the role. And I asked, “How does an active conflict affect our students’ enrollments?” And was surprised to find the answer was, “Oh, they just keep going. They just keep taking classes.” And I was like, “Really?” And they’re like, “Yeah, well, that’s why, it’s what we do. We do it really well.”
(14:45):
And from the faculty perspective, our faculty are so flexible with our students. Where they have to go, no radio communication for some number of weeks or days. And faculty are just like, “Great, you do that. Love it. When you get out, you come back and we’ll get you back on track. We’ll figure it out, we’ll make it work.” We have really flexible extension policies. If a student needs to extend the course beyond the eight weeks. And so our faculty, from mission and from training, come into a space and a place where they understand that their role and goal with these students is to provide that flexibility, so that the education becomes possible when it otherwise wouldn’t be. And I’ve never seen an institution so committed to mission, that it just absolutely permeates all of those one-on-one interactions that exist at an institution.
Dr. Emma Zone (15:39):
Right, right. Yeah. And that’s certainly cultural, not just operational, right? I mean, that doesn’t happen by accident, so that’s really interesting. And what a timely example.
(15:51):
In thinking about that too, we know that many of our students are coming to us with just rich experiences. I mean, just what you described, what fodder for classroom discussion and conversation, I’m sure it’s incredibly rich. So I want to dive into your commentary around this idea that students have funds of knowledge. I mean, we all do, right? Experiences that we might bring to the learning environment. And so I’m curious, in your experience, both in your current role and maybe some of the other work you’ve done. How can faculty really recognize those funds of knowledge, those lived experiences? And what are some things that you have seen work well throughout that?
(16:33):
And also in terms of how it has sort of translated to student success, because it’s not just recognizing somebody’s experiences. So then what? What do you do with that?
Dr. Mitch Colver (16:42):
I do think that faculty achieve this when, they achieve honoring students’ funds of knowledge, when they write their assignment prompts and their discussion prompts in a way that assumes prior learning, prior knowledge, prior expertise. That expertise may not always be disciplinary adjacent, disciplinarily adjacent, but the reality is that there are always bridges, and that’s how people learn anyway. They take new information and they incorporate it into kind of existing cognitive real estate. The nearest neighbor of, “I know kind of some things about this, and I want to learn more, and I want to build on the strengths that I already have.”
(17:21):
When you prompt a discussion in a way that assumes that the content the students have just consumed is their very first blush of experience with the content, the discussion goes flat because this tabula rasa notion that students are just sitting there and it’s the first time that they will have been exposed to this, isn’t as powerful as saying, “Here’s what I want you to know. Here’s this new content that I want you to know. What do you already know close by to this? Or how does this relate and connect with your lived experiences thus far? And what can we do to take more of an interdisciplinary approach to really building out an understanding of this discussion that honors multiple perspectives?”
Dr. Emma Zone (18:02):
Yeah.
Dr. Mitch Colver (18:02):
I think those conversations, those interdisciplinary conversations, where it’s assumed that every conversation should branch out, go much deeper than conversations that are flat. And that, from a banking model, assume the students are completely empty.
Dr. Emma Zone (18:17):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think there is something really interesting around the curriculum design piece for that, but also I think there is a skillset related to the facilitation, to understand even if you have a curricular piece that maybe doesn’t work as you intended, because we’ve all done that. We write something, whether it’s a discussion, or even if it’s in person, online, it doesn’t matter. It might not always go as planned. So then, where do the facilitation or teaching skills come into play, where does the evidence-based practice show up, so that we’re ensuring students have the space to be able to share those experiences and create that layered effect? And so they’re doing something with it. So I think that’s also kind of an interesting interplay with what you’ve just described, right?
Dr. Mitch Colver (19:01):
Absolutely.
Dr. Emma Zone (19:02):
Yeah. And I think there’s something there, too. I mean, I love this notion of we’re not just necessarily filling these brains. We want to be able to help students co-create their learning experience, using knowledge that they have, but also maybe building off of that.
(19:18):
So I think, of course, the conversation is going to shift to talk about AI because it’s one of the questions that has been coming up a lot. Around not only content creation, but curriculum development, how we’re AI-proofing courses, which is just a whole different probably topic. So I want to shift a little bit around the conversation with AI and how we’re supporting students, whether it’s from a curricular perspective, but also a success perspective.
(19:43):
But I have to pause for a second and ask you about your fabulous statistic where you were in the top 1%. Is this really true, the top 1% of ChatGPT users last year? Fact? Or am I-
Dr. Mitch Colver (19:43):
Yeah. So Open-
Dr. Emma Zone (19:58):
… I’ll fact check myself. But…
Dr. Mitch Colver (20:01):
Yeah. So OpenAI mirrors the Spotify Wrapped, end of year statistics and summaries. And so in my ChatGPT Wrapped, it said that I engaged, in 2025, 13,600 prompts. And that that was in the top 1% of users, which puts me… I asked, “Well, how many people is that?” And it puts me with about a million people, it’s a huge number of people, because there’s like 100 million users.
Dr. Emma Zone (20:31):
Sure, sure.
Dr. Mitch Colver (20:31):
So, 1%. Yeah, but there’s a lot of us that are pretty enthusiastic about it. But that is true, and I thought it was funny. I was a little bit alarmed. I was like, “Oh, do we have a problem? Is this becoming a problem?” I don’t think so, but yeah, that happens to be true.
Dr. Emma Zone (20:48):
Wow. I mean, that’s impressive. But I think it’s also interesting because you’ve obviously engaged with the technology. And so I’m sort of curious how your use has really shaped your vision and view on students’ use of AI. We’ve done a lot of research and partnerships here at D2L around student perceptions. But not only that, but also to tie it back to our early conversation, and what that might mean for these different, either pressures they’re carrying, either as a way to enhance rigor, or maybe also to find relief, right?
Dr. Mitch Colver (21:20):
Yeah. So for me, it was curious and what I wanted to do was find out, “Well, what does it mean for me, personally?” And so, I did the math, and I was prompting GPT about two and a third times per waking hour. And I think people are confused by it, like, “How do you do that?” And the answer is that I’m using it in many domains.
(21:43):
Do I use it at work? Yes. I help it craft different policy statements, or write different statements of work that I have to contract with a third party contract review, to make sure that the contract makes sense.
(21:56):
I use it as a fitness coach. It sets up all my work-outs day to day, because that’s the rigor, and I need relief. It is also my nutritionist. It helps build my protein goals, and my variety of micronutrients that are flowing into my body, and so I have it tuned up that way.
(22:16):
And then, I also use it in relationships. So I’m single, I date, and in dating I use it to bounce ideas off. Like, “Did I handle this thing incorrectly, or correctly?” A lot of the dating these days is text-based, so there’s a lot of messages that you can feed in, and it will give you kind of a rundown or evaluation of the dynamics that way.
(22:39):
I use it as a parent. I ask parenting questions. “I don’t know what to do, or how to handle the situation.” And so, it’s so much usage.
(22:51):
I also realized that I didn’t understand how students were using it in the classroom. So as much as I love it, I had this big blind spot, because what does that look like on a Saturday night with the deadline looming, your assignment is due at midnight. And it’s not going well. Because the temptation arises like, “Well, I could just get ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude,” or one of these humanizers. “I could do this. It’d be so easy to cheat.”
(23:24):
And so what I decided to do ultimately was go back to school. Now, I already have three degrees, and a PhD, and I’m well-educated. But I felt like actually enrolling in a master’s program, to get a second master’s, was the only real way that I would really understand. Because if I audited the course, that deadline wouldn’t be real, the pressure wouldn’t be on. And I admit that it has given me completely new ideas about what it means to be a student in the era of the advent of AI. And it even happened, like last night, for example. I had a discussion post to do, it was not a long one, like a two page. I had to do a two-page discussion post. And I was… Oh. My day did not go well, and I was running out of time. And I finally sat down to do it, and I had no energy. And I was just like, “I don’t want to do this.” And the idea of, “Well, just use GPT, it’s right there. Just, it’s constantly like, “Look how easy it would be.”
(24:30):
Of course, I would never. First of all, as associate provost, I would never. But then, I do find ways to use it that are academically productive, that keep the rigor in place, that still streamline the work, and still help me to do. And in this case, for example, last night, I got my sources lined up and I started writing. And then I asked GPT, “Based on my scan of this document, I’m making these assumptions about this particular organization I’m writing about. Is that assumption accurate, or is it off base?” And it came back and was like, “No, that’s accurate.” I was like, “Okay, then I can keep writing, because I scanned correctly, I read and I’m summarizing correctly.”
(25:13):
And then I got to another point. I’m like, “Wait, can I say it like this, or do I need to say it like that? I don’t know. What’s better?” So I said to GBT, “In my writing, I can go this way or this way, which is more consistent with the documented evidence?” And it said, “Well, this one’s more consistent.” I was like, “That’s right, because on page 17 of the PDF I’m working on, it actually does say that, which now I can quote that.” So I’m still doing the work, but in that bleary-eyed state of like, “Oh no, I just got to get this in. I got to get it done,” this confirmation that, “You’re on the right track, you’re doing the right thing, you’re drawing the right conclusions,” allowed me to hit submit at the end and not fret that I had gone off the rails.
(25:56):
That kind of utilization would never have been known to me. As much as I use it in all these other domains, I never would have understood how a student could use it appropriately, given the allure of using it inappropriately.
Dr. Emma Zone (26:15):
Right, right. Well, and I think it’s interesting, as you were talking about your prompting and thought processes during that experience. What does that say about the obligation we have to students for them to learn those skillsets? I mean, because that’s one thing that in a lot of conversations that I’m having across all different organizations in higher ed institutions, depending on where they are with AI integration maturity, and there’s obviously the policies and practices piece. But there’s this sort of renewed interest about, students want to know the how because they’re already doing this, but maybe not in a way that is as sophisticated as you just described. So they’re not necessarily looking for that quick, “I want somebody to do this discussion post.” They are looking for an ethical way to engage. What’s your feeling on it, or what have you seen in the field that has worked?
Dr. Mitch Colver (27:09):
I do think that one of my favorite quotes, pull quotes on this topic, comes from a dean. I don’t even know who they are. One of the Microsoft OpenAI trainers, or Copilot trainers, was talking about standing with a dean at a university during a prompt-a-thon last, maybe two years ago. And the dean turned and said to this Microsoft executive, “The trouble is, we haven’t prepared them to handle this level of ambiguity.” And it’s that ambiguity of what’s fair play, versus what’s foul play, that I think institutions really need to rapidly race. If you’re not showing students how to use it correctly, you’re failing them. Because if the only thing you know how to do is whomp them on the head with a plagiarism, AI misconduct, that’s not productive use of AI by the institution. If you want students to use it productively, you got to teach them.
(28:09):
We have a really good heritage of that at APUS, our English department, for example, I’m constantly talking about them because they have such good examples of helping students to see the strengths and limitations of GPT, and to use it in order to complete their assignments in legitimate ways. They’re not the only ones, we have, I think something like 15% of our classes have assignments that require some use of AI in order to accomplish the rubric, for any given assignment. And so, in that, those assignments, those courses, are helping students step into it in a way that, “This is how you use it productively, this is how you use it ethically.” But those decisions, those curriculum decisions, had to be made by the department. They had to go out on a limb. They have to win students over to it. We have some students who don’t like it. They’re like, “Well, you’re just teaching me how to use AI for everything.”
Dr. Emma Zone (28:09):
Right.
Dr. Mitch Colver (29:03):
And, “That’s not really the goal, to use AI for everything, but there is a goal here to help you understand this new tool and to use it to its fullest extent, and maximize your relationship with it. Within bounds of understanding that it has severe limitations that you can’t have blind spots about.” And so I do think that there’s this institutional onus, that if you don’t want students misusing it, you better step up to the plate and show them how to appropriately use it.
Dr. Emma Zone (29:32):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And thinking through that, I know you’ve also talked about the importance of really curating that AI history. So there’s the use piece, but also, helping students understand that curating their AI history can contain personal content, sensitive content. So I guess, what do educators need to know about digital hygiene, and maybe the habits that students have? Or they don’t have, that we need to help them build, as they’re using these tools?
(30:01):
Because I think you’re right. We talk a lot about the ethical use of it, we also talk about the onus and obligation of institutional support, which you just described so eloquently. But I think your take on the AI history, and what that might mean from a digital hygiene perspective, isn’t something I’m hearing as much in the space. And I think it’s really important.
Dr. Mitch Colver (30:21):
I do think there was a headline this week from Anthropic, saying that they refused to work with the Department of Defense because they were worried that the contract, the RFI that they were responding to, demanded them to surveil the American people on behalf of the Department of Defense and they weren’t willing to do it. Curiously, the following week, or the following news cycle, OpenAI agreed to fulfill that contract. And deletions of OpenAI accounts jumped to 265%, day by day.
(30:59):
It shows that people have this realization that in the prompt exchange with a large language model, there is a new type of experience that has emerged that is very unnerving if that text is available to others, is available to companies, is available for consumption. And I think this is incredibly legitimate for people to have that concern. For example, as an avid OpenAI user, I have elected this week to do two things. Which is, one, to download a complete archive of my utilization since… I signed up the first week it was available, way back in 2022, I think it was, ’23. And I’ve used it avidly since then. Whatever, November 30th of that year, was it ’23 or ’22? I want to say it was ’23. Yeah.
(31:59):
And I’m downloading the whole history into a single file and archiving it, and then I’m deleting all of it from OpenAI servers. So those are the two steps. I’m going to start fresh. And I plan to do that now, every quarter. So every about three months, I plan to take a complete archive, and delete everything and start fresh. And it does mean that the LLM has to get used to me again, and all those things, I don’t mind. I think that’s safer.
(32:28):
One of the reasons why I think this is necessary is because the chat log represents a new type of interaction with technology that I don’t think has ever existed before. And I’m going to describe it by talking about what are called cognitive interiors. About 50 years ago, some theorists said, “One of the important things to understanding the human mind is the understanding that there is this part of the mind that is always private.” And that, although there is a periphery where a person can put words and actions to what they’re thinking, there’s no other way for you to directly observe what I’m thinking. There’s always an insulated interface between me and you, Emma. I can’t truly know what you’re thinking, and you can’t truly know what I’m thinking, but through this periphery of words and actions, we can guess at what each other’s thinking. Come to common reality.
(33:28):
That concept is called cognitive interior. And the cognitive interiors are starting to bleed into these chat logs with LLMs, because there are things that a person is willing to say to an LLM, in that ultimately private space of that prompt sphere, that they would never say to another human being, they wouldn’t say to their partner, they wouldn’t say to a therapist. And the reason they wouldn’t say those things to other humans is because there’s something non-human about that space that feels more akin to a journal, or a diary, but it also is stochastic, and it’s being contributed to by a machine. Which means it can go a lot of different directions.
Dr. Emma Zone (34:13):
Sure.
Dr. Mitch Colver (34:14):
And so this new type of interaction with technology is this bleeding of the cognitive interiors, in a way that people really need to be ultrasensitive to, really need to curate. And that if people aren’t taking control of their chat logs by doing things like this hygiene of downloading the log, archiving it, and then deleting it from the servers of the company, they’re probably not up to speed about how dangerous it can be for their cognitive interiors to bleed out into these companies’ systems.
Dr. Emma Zone (34:54):
Yeah, it’s fascinating. And I love that deeper sort of theoretical lens as well, because I think it does help bring to bear what we all probably need to be considering when using these tools, not just for our students. I mean, certainly how to teach, but also as we think about it personally, institutionally, there’s lots of different lenses.
Dr. Mitch Colver (35:11):
Well, and I should ask you in return, when you interact with a large language model, do you feel that same sense of your cognitive interiors bleeding onto the page? That it is, ultimately, can be very at times private and not for consumption by others?
Dr. Emma Zone (35:27):
For sure, for sure. Right. And as somebody who’s an English faculty by trade, who is a big proponent of reflective journaling and those kinds of things, and critical reflective both in practice, but also personally, I think that there’s absolutely a bleed over. And so, it’s putting a takeaway in my to do list, so thank you.
Dr. Mitch Colver (35:46):
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Emma Zone (35:47):
I know we’re running out of time, so I do want to ask you one final question. We have a really mixed audience that listen to our podcast, and so I’d like to end with your final perceptions around, if you’re thinking about faculty, instructional designers, academic leaders who might be listening today. What is one mindset that you really hope that they carry into their work as a result of listening to our conversation?
Dr. Mitch Colver (36:15):
I think the watchword that comes to my mind, after everything we’ve discussed, is the word rebuild. There are lots of hard things that we have to do in life. We’ve talked about rigor, we’ve talked about relief, we’ve talked about this notion that AI has to be used with care, and maybe people need to take a different tack or try something new. Of all the hard things that human beings have to do, one of the hardest things that human beings have to do, is to rebuild.
(36:45):
We rebuild when we ask for feedback and incorporate it, we rebuild when we realize we’re not being rigorous enough, or we’re not being oriented to the relief of the academy enough. We rebuild when we start using AI in a different way. We rebuild when as a learner, as a student, we take on the identity that, “I can do hard things, I know how to do it, and there’s people who are going to help me.”
(37:09):
All of that rebuilding is some of the hardest work that we can do, because sometimes when you rebuild, you kind of have to tear away what was already there.
Dr. Emma Zone (37:18):
Right.
Dr. Mitch Colver (37:19):
And I think that, my belief in the human spirit is that, no matter what happens, you can always… And how terrible the things are. You see this outbreak of war is so awful. Whatever happens, we are confident that the human spirit will find ways to locate the opportunities to rebuild, and to engage in that very hard thing, of tearing back some of what’s there, the rubble, smoothing out what needs to be smoothed, and then rebuilding in a way that’s better or that’s healing, or whatever it may need to be.
(37:56):
And I think that this is true for our students, that the rigors they face, the rigors that they can feel shredded by, and kicked in the teeth, this senseless violence. That when they really commit to the institution, they’re committing to constantly rebuilding, and that’s what we can empower them to do. And we also can model it in the way that we live our own lives.
Dr. Emma Zone (38:18):
Well, that’s awesome. Agree 100%. What a wonderful way to end our episode. Mitch, thanks so much for joining me, and thanks to our dedicated listeners and curious educators everywhere.
(38:30):
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Speaker 2 (38:59):
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(39:24):
Thanks for joining us. Until next time, school’s out.