I'm delighted to see you write about the idea of 'lateral thinking'. I've discovered the same process myself over this last year or so. It does take a bit more work but as you said, in addition to verifying what you're getting from an LLM, you are mind is often enlightened with another perspective or angle on the topic you're researching. You come away from the experiencing feeling more enriched with insight. And when the sources do not line up - you learn something extremely valuable - the art of discernment.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to approach reading in my Comp I course, since I do want them to actually work with AI as a research tool (to see how helpful and how clunky it can be).
I also think I will need to dramatically increase the number of sources my students are using. I used to do 3-5 sources. I almost feel like I now need to ask them to break up their resources page, so that they tell me which sources they’re using to read laterally and which ones they’re using for more sustained engagement.
Appreciate it, Jason. Your idea reminds me of something we did with students when I worked in online learning: screencasting some of their learning processes so teachers could see a firsthand glimpse of the way they navigate online. How do we help students make their process visible?
If you haven't yet, I would check out Mike Caufield's Substack. He's doing really interesting experiments with AI as a critical reasoning assistant, and I think some of those exercises would be relevant to your students as they make decisions about whether they should be laterally reading AI output or using AI to support deeper thinking about primary texts.
Hi, Eric, again we seem in lockstep. Check out this article I published just last week: https://nickpotkalitsky.substack.com/p/the-three-pathways-to-ai-source-literacy
I love the term lateral reading. I certainly hope media literacy has a renaissance in the era of the new AI.
Yes, we’re very aligned! I think you’d like VERIFIED and the other work Caufield and Wineburg have done. Lots of relevance to your ideas.
I'm delighted to see you write about the idea of 'lateral thinking'. I've discovered the same process myself over this last year or so. It does take a bit more work but as you said, in addition to verifying what you're getting from an LLM, you are mind is often enlightened with another perspective or angle on the topic you're researching. You come away from the experiencing feeling more enriched with insight. And when the sources do not line up - you learn something extremely valuable - the art of discernment.
I'll be referencing this post to my list.
This is great, Eric!
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to approach reading in my Comp I course, since I do want them to actually work with AI as a research tool (to see how helpful and how clunky it can be).
I also think I will need to dramatically increase the number of sources my students are using. I used to do 3-5 sources. I almost feel like I now need to ask them to break up their resources page, so that they tell me which sources they’re using to read laterally and which ones they’re using for more sustained engagement.
Appreciate it, Jason. Your idea reminds me of something we did with students when I worked in online learning: screencasting some of their learning processes so teachers could see a firsthand glimpse of the way they navigate online. How do we help students make their process visible?
If you haven't yet, I would check out Mike Caufield's Substack. He's doing really interesting experiments with AI as a critical reasoning assistant, and I think some of those exercises would be relevant to your students as they make decisions about whether they should be laterally reading AI output or using AI to support deeper thinking about primary texts.