#Tag · bonfire.cafe

@npub16dsu2ghu9yd363utyw7dejqc8rgx5ps7r4hxddrvx2x64dh73p7qqkh6vy@momostr.pink · yesterday

"Participants were 124 students from a German university (Mage = 22.4 years; 84% women; 16% men)."

@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de replied · yesterday

@npub16dsu2ghu9yd363utyw7dejqc8rgx5ps7r4hxddrvx2x64dh73p7qqkh6vy

After exclusions the sample was closer to 100. That’s actually decent, given typical course enrollments in #higherEd. It’s also enough statistical power to detect the effects that prior research when comparing between (rather than within) participants’.

Nick Byrd, Ph.D.

@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de · yesterday

Looks like I’m not the only one to find that between-person differences in #criticalThinking didn’t replicate in within-person changes over time:

Testing #argumentMapping effects: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390977878

Assessing #higherEd over time: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-025-01000-1

#edu #stats

4 media

"Rational thinking skills were assessed using a German test battery consisting of four subtests of heuristics and biases tasks."

"Cognitive Reflection was assessed using three items of the original CRT..."

"Resistance to Belief Bias was assessed using five items created by Markovits and Nantel (1989) and one new item."

"Resistance to Ratio Bias was assessed using four items by Toplak et al. (2014). In each item, the subjects’ task is to choose between a small and a large tray of white and black marbles...."

"Disjunctive Reasoning was assessed using the knights and knaves problem (Toplak & Stanovich, 2002; adapted from Shafir, 1994) and five new items. In all items, the participants’ task was to decide whether the question can be answered with yes, no, or not at all based on the given information." — "Rational thinking skills were assessed using a German test battery consisting of four subtests of heuristics and biases tasks." "Cognitive Reflection was assessed using three items of the original CRT..." "Resistance to Belief Bias was assessed using five items created by Markovits and Nantel (1989) and one new item." "Resistance to Ratio Bias was assessed using four items by Toplak et al. (2014). In each item, the subjects’ task is to choose between a small and a large tray of white and black marbles...." "Disjunctive Reasoning was assessed using the knights and knaves problem (Toplak & Stanovich, 2002; adapted from Shafir, 1994) and five new items. In all items, the participants’ task was to decide whether the question can be answered with yes, no, or not at all based on the given information."

"Prior to analyses, data were cleaned and checked for outliers. Responses to items of rational thinking skills that were unusually fast (3 SD or more below the item-specific log mean; following recommendations of Ratcliff, 1993) were considered unreliable and were deleted. This applied to 0.27% of all trials at t1 and 0.19% of all trials at t2. For continuous variables (fluid intelligence, rational thinking dispositions, rational thinking skills, student satisfaction), scores deviating more than 3 SD from the sample mean were excluded from path and regression analyses."

"our sample size" was "101, excluding missing values and outliers)" — "Prior to analyses, data were cleaned and checked for outliers. Responses to items of rational thinking skills that were unusually fast (3 SD or more below the item-specific log mean; following recommendations of Ratcliff, 1993) were considered unreliable and were deleted. This applied to 0.27% of all trials at t1 and 0.19% of all trials at t2. For continuous variables (fluid intelligence, rational thinking dispositions, rational thinking skills, student satisfaction), scores deviating more than 3 SD from the sample mean were excluded from path and regression analyses." "our sample size" was "101, excluding missing values and outliers)"

"Regarding rational thinking skills, there were no significant differences between t1 and t2 in the means of cognitive reflection (t(119) = 1.73, p =.086, d = 0.16; all means are depicted in Table 1), resistance to belief bias (t(123) = 0.53, p =.598, d = 0.05), resistance to ratio bias (t(123) = −0.64, p =.521, d = −0.06), and disjunctive reasoning (t(119) = −0.31, p =.756, d = −0.03). Regarding rational thinking dispositions, there was no significant difference in consideration of future consequences between t1 and t2 (t(123) = 0.85, p =.395, d = 0.08). Interestingly, the mean scores of students’ need for cognition slightly, but significantly, declined from t1 to t2 (t(123) = −2.07, p =.040, d = −0.19). Overall, these results suggest that the students’ rational thinking skills and dispositions remained very stable over the course of two semesters in terms of both their absolute level and their relative ranking."

Rational thinking in university students: Examining temporal stability and effects on academic performance and student satisfaction

Hacker News

@h4ckernews@mastodon.social · yesterday

Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots

https://ploum.net/2026-01-19-exam-with-chatbots.html

#HackerNews #GivingUniversityExams #Chatbots #Education #Technology #Innovation #HigherEd

Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots

Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots par Ploum - Lionel Dricot.

⁂

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Andreas Wagner boosted

H-Net Humanities

@HNet_Humanities@h-net.social · last week

Welcome Scholars!

Digital projects take time, care, and collaboration. H-Net Spaces supports digital humanities and digital history work by organizing, preserving, and displaying YOUR research. From early ideas to finished projects, we’re glad to support your research at any stage.

https://networks.h-net.org/h-net-spaces

#spaces #education #academia #digitialhumanities #digitalhistory #digital #humanities #history #highered

H-Net Spaces | H-Net

Build, manage, and preserve digital projects.

H-Net Humanities

@HNet_Humanities@h-net.social · last week

Welcome Scholars!

https://networks.h-net.org/h-net-spaces

#spaces #education #academia #digitialhumanities #digitalhistory #digital #humanities #history #highered

H-Net Spaces | H-Net

Build, manage, and preserve digital projects.

Chip Butty boosted

Josh

@josh@fediscience.org · 2 weeks ago

New article on promoting the human in an AI world.

"This essay uses cyborg anthropology to model interactions between humans and artificial intelligence (ai) and highlights potential strengths and weaknesses of ai regarding learning and innovation. Informed by Haraway’s emphases on inequalities, we recognize ai is neither a separate nor superior form of intelligence, but a tool that augments human agency. Current examples of ai implementation in the civic, domestic, labor, and educational domains expose the potential of ai for biases and oppression as a human construct that reflects and affects the sociocultural and ethical values of its creators and users. These examples inform practical and ethical considerations for the development and use of ai in the future, including structured human-ai collaboration, promotion of human-ai literacy, respect for human dignity and rights, and addressing inherent biases and inequalities."

Wells, Joshua, and James M. Vanderveen. 2026. “ An Anthropological Understanding of Artificial Intelligence Transformations in Civic and Domestic Life, Labor, and Higher Education Through the Cybernetic Organism (Cyborg) Concept”. Maguaré 40 (1):157-84. https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/maguare/article/view/124922

#anthropology #sociology #informatics #computerscience #artificialintelligence #cyborg #openaccess #highered #academicchatter

	 An Anthropological Understanding of Artificial Intelligence Transformations in Civic and Domestic Life, Labor, and Higher Education Through the Cybernetic Organism (Cyborg) Concept
						| Maguaré

Josh

@josh@fediscience.org · 2 weeks ago

New article on promoting the human in an AI world.

#anthropology #sociology #informatics #computerscience #artificialintelligence #cyborg #openaccess #highered #academicchatter

	 An Anthropological Understanding of Artificial Intelligence Transformations in Civic and Domestic Life, Labor, and Higher Education Through the Cybernetic Organism (Cyborg) Concept
						| Maguaré

Nick Byrd, Ph.D.

@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de · 2 weeks ago

The #Philosophy dept. at @MontclairState will consolidate into a new "School of Human Narrative and Creative Expression" with #English and #Spanish?

And #Psychology will consolidate too?

No more departments (or dept. chairs)? 🤔

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/education/2025/12/01/montclair-state-university-humanities-rebrand/87459471007/

#higherEd #philSci #edu

NorthJersey.com

Montclair State's rebrand of the humanities has faculty miffed

Faculty and students at Montclair State University are alarmed by a restructuring move that will eliminate humanities departments.

Anna Pryslopska

@anna_pryslopska@scholar.social · 2 weeks ago

I'm taking a career advice course offered by my uni. One instructor strongly advocated for self-publishing a 20-ish page book on Amazon about whatever we want to find a job doing. I cannot think of a more embarrassing thing for an academic to do but I'm sure it works wonders for SEO.

My online presence is subpar compared to the chair of linguistics at Uni Stuttgart: I'm not on Google's 1st page of results for #linguistics, psycholinguistics, or cognition in Germany.

#academicchatter #highered

Jan :rust: :ferris: boosted

Emma Stamm

@emma@assemblag.es · 2 weeks ago

As a new host on LEPHT HAND, I’m excited to share the first episode of 2026. It’s called “Philosophy After Academia'“; Craig and I talk about the formative experiences that put us on our respective paths to studying philosophy and theory; how artistic practices interface with philosophy; and we begin to sketch what rigorous philosophical research might look like beyond traditional institutions. Link here:

https://lephthand.buzzsprout.com/2374135/episodes/18451929-philosophy-after-academia-public-thought-digital-media-and-the-attention-economy-with-craig-and-emma

#philosophy #academia #highered #theory #art

Emma Stamm

@emma@assemblag.es · 2 weeks ago

https://lephthand.buzzsprout.com/2374135/episodes/18451929-philosophy-after-academia-public-thought-digital-media-and-the-attention-economy-with-craig-and-emma

#philosophy #academia #highered #theory #art

Chewie boosted

Different Than

@guyjantic@infosec.exchange · 11 months ago

This post might seem like it's about #brightspace (the #lms the #suny system is forcing us all to use), but it's actually about having bosses who hold you in such contempt that they can't even be bothered to explain why they paid millions of dollars for a product that doesn't work while telling you to use it or else.

Today's Brightspace issue: hundreds of questions with images (trapped within BS's little walled garden of impenetrable database locations) that appear only as placeholders, but might or might not render when placed into a student quiz. The odds seem so far to be about 50/50.

There is no way to know which items are affected *even when I edit each of the hundreds of items by hand*, because I see this placeholder for MOST of the questions but then the students sometimes see the image. Sometimes not.

It's silent failure. No flags, no checks, no indications of what's wrong. No way to know if any changes will fix things.

Other silent failures: BS will cheerfully tell you it has imported your 5,000 or so items (painstakingly created over the past decade) from your previous LMS--which was also mandated--and then just *won't tell you* that hundreds or thousands of them did not import because BS simply choked and pooped or because BS doesn't even have the functionality to use those question types.

I fucking hate this LMS, but I really hate the fact that the people in charge think so little of me and 30,000 of my colleagues that they shove shit like this at us and tell us to pretend it works.

#professor #rant #highered #broken #shittydesign #baddesign #badsoftware #capturedmarket

Screenshot of an item creation page in BrightspaceD2L showing a question title, a prompt ("given what you know about graphs, what is the measurement scale of the variable being graphed here?") and a blank placeholder where a graph image should be.

tools for commensality 🧿 and 1 other boosted

tools for commensality 🧿

@inquiline@assemblag.es · last month

"“Never before in my time across multiple presidential administrations did we send out press releases essentially saying workplaces or colleges were guilty of discrimination before finding out if they really were,” said one attorney"

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-12-13/former-doj-attorneys-university-of-california-ucla-antisemitism-investigation

archive link: https://archive.ph/NIjFG

#UCLA #uspol #HigherEd #academia

Los Angeles Times

Times Investigation: Ex-Trump DOJ lawyers say 'fraudulent' UC antisemitism probes led them to quit

The Times spoke to nine former Department of Justice civil rights attorneys tasked with investigating antisemitism complaints at the University of California. They all resigned during their investigations. Here's why.

Andreas Wagner boosted

Catherine Davies

@davi_cath@hcommons.social · last month

Update: Students were mostly happy with the screen-free format. They agreed that it made them better prepared and improved the quality of our discussions in class. They had no complaints about the in-class assignments, all of which received good or very good grades.

More difficult is the question of AI policy. Most only use it occasionally but didn't believe it should be fully banned. They worried that by following the strict ban they would put themselves at a disadvantage. I therefore decided to slightly amend it (it is now allowed for punctuation and grammar) and that they would get feedback on their writing but that this would not negatively affect their grade. I told them I wanted them to develop their own voice in their writing even if it didn't sound polished.

#AI #HigherEd #histodons

Catherine Davies

@davi_cath@hcommons.social · 4 months ago

This semester, my class rooms will be screen-free. Students will have to bring print-outs of readings to class. Written assignments (with the exception of the final long paper) will be completed in class. The use of generative AI is not permitted. It's an experiment, and I'm curious to see how it goes...