S4xE14: GenAI's Impact on Student Help Seeking and More
Episode Summary
Students are increasingly using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in their learning. But what are the implications of this? In this episode, we are joined by Irene Hou, PhD student at UC San Diego in the Design lab, to talk about her recent research, which draws on interviews with students across multiple universities. We discuss GenAI’s impact on how students seek help and how it affects students’ social ties, sense of belonging, and views of peers. We also cover practical strategies instructors can try and things to rethink now that we can’t put GenAI back in the box.
You can also download this episode directly.
Episode Notes
Irene Hou, Owen Man, Kate Hamilton, Srishty Muthusekaran, Jeffin Johnykutty, Leili Zadeh, and Stephen MacNeil. 2025. ‘All Roads Lead to ChatGPT’: How Generative AI is Eroding Social Interactions and Student Learning Communities. In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1 (ITiCSE 2025). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 79–85. https://doi.org/10.1145/3724363.3729024
The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian
Weak ties from social network theory
Transcript
[00:02] Kristin: Hello and welcome to the CS-Ed podcast, a podcast where we talk about teaching computer science with computer science educators. I am your host, Kristin Stephens-Martinez, an Associate Professor of the Practice at Duke University. Joining me today is Irene Hou, PhD student at UC San Diego in the Design lab. Irene, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
[00:23] Irene: Happy to be here.
[00:26] Kristin: So, Irene, first, I’d like to ask you, how did you get to where you are today? What got you interested in computing that led to a PhD program?
[00:32] Irene: So, I actually started out as a UX lead at a startup for a couple of years before I came into my PhD program. But while I was working at this, this startup, I read a book that I thought was pretty meaningful. It’s called The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian, which is about how, how difficult it is to align human values to AI systems. So, while, yeah, so, as I was kind of reading this book, I became very curious about, you know, the people that enter this field and work on this problem, right? And a lot of that sort of stuff starts in education. So, I reached out to Doctor Stephen MacNeil at the Temple University lab. We’d previously worked together, on some other projects at UCSD and then we started working together on some of the papers, that are out now.
[01:22] Kristin: Oh, I was kind of curious how you seem to have published so soon in your PhD program while at the same time knowing that you didn’t do it with your advisor, Phil.
[01:32] Irene: Yeah, yeah, because I knew, Steve for a very long time. We’d, we’ve done some prior work together in the ProtoLab at UCSD, but I was an undergraduate researcher. And then when he left and started, you know, his lab at Temple. I went with him. So, even when I was working at a startup, I was still working with him and then mentoring the students and very interested in his vision on this like very big education-focused lab where, you know, we have a lot of undergrads involved, we’re mentorship to them. So, I was frequently, you know, trying to, to teach some UX stuff, and then I transitioned into a research role there.
[02:09] Kristin: Oh, that’s so cool. So, you, like almost everyone, have an interesting like path that led you to where you are today.
[02:18] Irene: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I didn’t even know what a PhD was until, like that year, I started working with Steve. So, yeah, it’s a, it was a big transition for me.
[02:31] Kristin: Oh, yeah, I’m sure. And like now as a PhD student, it’s probably also a noticeable transition since you were in the industry for a couple of years.
[02:37] Irene: Yeah, yeah. But I really love it. I like, I am a big fan of the community, especially the computing education community. You guys are so, so friendly, and I have been really enjoying like going to these conferences and just getting to meet people.
[02:51] Kristin: I’m so glad. All right, so this episode is my first episode on my podcast where we’re really actually talking about AI. I’ve kind of avoided it for my podcast in the past, mainly because I felt like the variability and kind of like the all over the place was too high to really feel like I could have an episode that like would hit the right note because I couldn’t tell where the right notes were. And now that we’ve had it around for a couple of years, I feel like the, the also like the strong feelings around often like the exhaustion of, oh no, I just finished the pandemic, and now I have to deal with AI and like interrupting my, my, like teaching. I feel like now is the time to like start thinking about it. And so that’s one reason why when I saw your paper, which is the main thing we’ll be talking about in this episode. I really felt like this seems like a good note to start because to me, I’m not anti-AI. I am, let’s be careful with AI and think about it carefully, rather than just throwing it in and hope that the students swim. So, as a quick tease, what would you say is the higher-order bit key takeaway of your paper?
[04:09] Irene: So, I think the highest level tease here is that generative AI is changing how students seek help, and these changes can be negative, right? Some students report some isolation. It’s disrupting peer learning communities. And then as us, for us as educators, we might have to look for new ways to foster this meaningful social connection and learning.
[04:33] Kristin: So, let’s start with, what do you mean by reshaping students’ help-seeking, so that we can help the audience better understand what’s leading to these negative outcomes.
[04:47] Irene: Yeah. So, when I first started this work, I was most curious about how students were using generative AI but more importantly, why, right? We know kind of like the obvious, It’s like, oh, it’s fast, it’s really high quality. It’s incredibly beneficial for students who need a lot of support. And when I was talking to these students, we started noticing this trend where they found that this access was so high-quality, so helpful, so great, available all the time, that it was kind of superseding literally everything else and everyone else. So, it was positioning generative AI as something that was beating out their peers, beating out, you know, professors, beating out their TAs. It was preferable to office hours. And as we kind of heard this preference change from students, You know, it’s obviously beating out like forums on the internet, all the internet search stuff as well. We started thinking about, OK, Well, that’s a pretty big shift, right?, it’s better than Google search for sure. We knew students were already relying on the internet for these sort of things. But now it’s kind of taking away from that, maybe you need help with lab homework. So, instead of going to lab office hours or going to the lab itself, you’re just staying home and asking AI. And we wondered how this was going to change how students interacted with each other and within the classroom.
[06:11] Kristin: OK. And so, how’d you go about trying to investigate this question?
[06:15] Irene: So, we, the first paper we kind of looked at just a mixed-method survey and interview. In this paper, after we kind of observed that, you know, early trend, this paper, we really dove down and we focused mainly on interviews. So, we interviewed 17 students across 7 universities, and we just really tried to get to know them as well, like who they are. Because their perspective, I think, is all a little bit different, and that really contributed to a more like rich set of qualitative data.
[06:45] Kristin: Yeah, and let’s be precise, which paper are we talking about?
[06:48] Irene: Yeah, the 17 student paper is the ‘All Roads Lead to Chat GPT’: How generative AI is eroding Social interactions and Student learning Communities.
[06:57] Kristin: And that was at…
[06:59] Irene: This is ITiCSE 2025.
[07:01] Kristin: So, given all the people that you interviewed, you mentioned that you wanted to like, make sure you really got to know them. So what traits about them kind of connect to some of the main findings that you had in your paper?
[07:18] Irene: Yeah, yeah. I had one of the students that I spoke to who actually had left university for two years, and then she came back after AI came out. So, she was gone for some time. She was a lot older than some of these other students. She was a computer science student at a university, R1 university. And she talked about this notable shift. It was very apparent to her because when she came back, she said that, it was suddenly it became this like all roads lead to ChatGPT like it was all, all these students were talking about, and she just kind of felt lost. It was a culture shock for her. She used those words, culture shock. Which kind of suggests that these interactions, where students are no longer going to each other as much for help, or they’re frequently relying on generative AI, kind of suggests that this might have evolved into a norm for help-seeking. And she was very explicit about how it was, this had been a change. I think the biggest thing that she mentioned was that she herself actually didn’t use AI. She was someone that actively tried to avoid it, did not think it was helpful for her, had personal reasons for not using it. And, these changes were impacting her even though she had not used these tools.
[08:36] Irene:So, an example of this would be, she would go to a friend for help because she was struggling with some programming assignment. And she messaged her friend or she would talk to her friends and they would answer her questions by sending her copy and pasted responses from ChatGPT. And so for her, you know, that really, you know, bothered her as well because she sometimes felt like vulnerable and that, you know, reaching out for help, asking for help, and getting that sort of generated response. And that was difficult for her.
[09:09] Kristin: I remember reading that part in your paper and, and it reminded me of like, back when I was a college student, like, way back at this point. It reminded me so much of, let me Google that for you. Where, like, people were still learning how to do internet search technically. Like, we, we weren’t born knowing how to do it, and some people were better than others. And And those of us that were better did have a bit of an attitude, I think, around others who asked us a, a stupid quote unquote question. And the response sometimes was, let me Google that for you. And there was actually a website called Let Me Google That For You, and you could put a search query in there, and then you would get back a link. That if you send it to somebody, would show them an animation of like going to Google, clicking on the search bar, and typing in that thing, and then hitting enter, and it would serve them the results from Google, which now that I am much older, I apologize to all of my family and friends who I did that to.
[10:21] Irene: Do you think that was something, that people did to actually be helpful or was it more of just like a joke sort of like, hey, like you can just look it up sort of thing
[10:31] Kristin: Speaking for myself, it was me like going, don’t ask me this stupid question, like why didn’t you Google this for yourself first before asking me this question? And the only time I really remember doing it was to my sister. OK, in my defense, at least it was my sister, that I did this to. I don’t, I think the vast majority of the time I wasn’t that big of a, like a, a, a mean person, but I, I do remember doing it to my sister at least once where she asked me what I interpreted as a stupid question where like, if you, if you Google that, you will have the first hit will help you.
[11:04] Irene: That, that’s interesting because I, I think like with students in generative AI from what I noticed, it’s not so much like, hey, like I think that’s a stupid question. It’s more like, hey, I’m too lazy to provide you the answer or engage in this interaction, that’s something students expressed.
[11:22] Kristin: Interesting.
[11:23] Irene: Where it was like, oh, it was just very, it’s like much easier or more convenient for Gen AI to kind of break it down for you instead of me, even if it’s just like a couple, you know, a couple words.
[11:35] Kristin: Though my impression from the paper, though, is that there was also a, a sense of shame around not being able to like the. I don’t. Do, do you remember that part of the paper? I don’t know how to express it right.
[11:48] Irene: Yes, yeah. OK. So, to, to explain, I also think that this is rapidly evolving. So, I think that some students are developing different attitudes around this, especially depending on the classroom setting, especially the culture of the university, maybe in the country. But in this subset of students during this period of time, and I do think this is still common, but what we saw were, especially in classrooms, right? Or in lecture halls or in maybe in more in-person settings, students would minimize or even close the tabs that showed generative AI usage, during these classroom settings because they expressed fears of being perceived or judged as lazy, stupid, or foolish, from their AI usage. They were kind of scared to use it publicly because they didn’t want to be looked down upon as someone that needed this AI assistance. So we have like a quote from students who, who are saying that, oh, like, I’m afraid, you know, it makes me look kind of dumb or even though I have permission to use it in class, I don’t want my classmates to know that I’m using it to pass the class or to get help. Other students even expressed like from the other side, they’re like, oh, hey, I think, you know, students who use these tools or rely on these tools are actually less intelligent. So, it’s kind of this, you know, on both sides, some students are judging others for usage while they’re using it a lot privately at home or maybe with their friends.
[13:10] Kristin: So, was there any shame? Like, I think the, the part that I’m wondering about that’s kind of equating to the, let me Google that for you, is the shame felt by someone who received a chat log from a friend when they asked that friend for help. Did that happen at all, or am I misremembering the paper?
[13:26] Irene: I don’t think it was that they felt shame in receiving it. I think it was that they felt that there was this missed opportunity to connect or engage with their friend or even like a sense of, hey, like I, I overcame a lot of these help-seeking barriers, for example, you know, maybe it’s scary to be like, hey, I don’t know. And then I asked someone for help, and they kind of dismissed me. They don’t engage with me. And it’s more of that emotional, fulfillment, I think that camaraderie that these students suddenly feel like they’re missing, like they’re working on something hard together and their friends not willing to engage or interact with them on it more so, maybe than shame, but I’m just spitballing here because we’re, we’re kind of looking at this now, more closely, yeah,
[14:15] Kristin: Yeah, I’m definitely curious about that part because I agree it’s definitely would be more bit like, part of it would be the general culture of the school and the culture that you develop in your classroom and that kind of thing of how the students will feel about the use of AI.
[14:35] Irene: Yeah, we had students talk about how, you know, they, they felt more, demotivated or they felt like they were less, able to show up to events where they’re supposed to be other students typically. One of the students talked about how there used to be these homework sessions or these big office hours where everyone would go and work on homework together. But then they started noticing like students were just not showing up anymore and this was happening both online and offline. So, in like Discord communities, which is like social social community platform on the internet. They saw that, you know, people no longer even sent questions in the chat. So, there was less opportunity for conversations to start kind of organically at all.
[?:?] Irene: And so, that was, I think, bothering her more than maybe the one-on-one interaction. Because, you know, with your friends, and I did have a student talk about this, like he was like, oh, with, with my friends, like I actually feel a little bit safer talking about my usage of AI tools. I feel like I’m able to, the closer I am to them, it’s OK for me to be transparent about my usage. I feel, you know, like I won’t be judged by them. They’ll understand that I need help. But, you know, not all students start out with so many friends in their computing classrooms. They come in with different backgrounds, you know, different resources. So, that’s another factor as well.
[16:02] Kristin: Yeah. I think after reading your paper, I was like, kind of depressed about what seemed to me like the social fabric fraying and lack of weaving of the social fabric, partially, it seemed because of ChatGPT, and its convenience for lack of a better word.
[16:20] Irene: Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, in earlier work, one of the biggest things that we heard from students about help seeking was that they had a lot of fears in general about these socio-emotional experiences, right? They really, they get anxious, they worry about appearing stupid. They don’t want to harm maybe the trust and relationships they’ve already cultivated. That social cost suddenly seems a lot bigger when you have this, you know, really available and helpful, really nice, you know, never gonna disagree with you or never gonna make a social mistake, right? They, they feel like that, constantly increases, but then that impacts everyone in the community, not just the students who use AI.
[17:01] Kristin: Yeah. Are, are there any positives in this paper?
[17:06] Irene: I think it’s a pretty grim paper. I mean, I, I did have students talk, so some students were, aware, so that they knew and they had noticed this and they were able to reflect on it. And some, some of these students were very, explicit about what they knew they were trading off. So, sometimes they did make the decision to, engage with the peer. One student talked about how he knew that his friends motivated him more when he worked with his friends, because he felt that they all had these different passions and interests, and stories. He’s inspired by this friend that worked with a startup recently. And his friend was talking so much about it, and he became interested in the same startup or the same system that the friend worked on, just because he saw that passion. And so, kind of the, the drive, I mean, this is a quote from the paper, but it’s like the drive, unique interests and passions of one’s peers and community can’t be replicated by Gen AI. And some students are aware of that.
[18:15] Kristin: Yeah. Given what you said about the, the passionate piece that got so another student excited because their friend was so passionate about this project. I feel like for some of this, the results of your interview study, the takeaway might be, we have to ban Gen AI so that we can get the social fabric weaving again. And I, I feel it’s like, to me, it’s out of the box. Like you, you can’t put it back in. We gotta work with what we got. And so, is that a potential entry point where rather than having the students basically talk about what they used to talk about, which is like, this homework is terrible. I’m struggling so hard. Help me with this thing, which is like an easy thing. Are we going to have to partially struggle to figure out what are the things that we can have the students talk about that in some ways are, will be not as easy. It is easy to complain about homework, but we’ll get that social fabric weaving going again.
[19:21] Irene: Yeah, I, I agree with your first part 100%. It’s like, you know, AI is out of the box. There’s no, there’s no going back from this, this stage. I think a big part of that is that even as educators, if you try to ban these these tools in the classroom, that isn’t necessarily going to change anything meaningful for students because, you know, the same students will still rely on these tools regardless. But what we can do, and I think that’s kind of what you’re getting towards is, I also agree that homework is not the most invigorating conversation with peers or your classmates.
[24:26] Irene: But it’s more about, I think, opportunities for students to engage in social interaction spontaneously in the classroom. And this is again, early work and I’m spitballing a bit, but I think a lot of the things that helped in the past, in these lecture settings for very large lectures, like think-pair-shares, having students involved in, you know, unfortunately, group projects, things like this, I think are much more beneficial for naturally getting students to talk to each other again. Even something like, hey, we don’t use generative AI in the lecture hall or in the in the classroom. Questions that we want to ask each other here, at least in this in-person space, are for each other. But, you know, whatever you do outside of the classroom or the lecture hall, there’s nothing that we can really control on that end. Or even things like those, those homework parties or encouraging students to show up for extra credit. It’s more about encouraging students to show up and not be scared. I think a lot of students have a lot of fear when it comes to these sort of things. They have very little incentive to. So, kind of working in that direction, strategies that get students talking might be a really good first step.
[21:09] Kristin: Yeah, that, that’s definitely, I, I feel like for me, I, I’ve had that kind of percolating in my brain since the pandemic because like I wanted to provide students a reason why to come to class in person. Even when I’m like teaching hybrid and you can technically zoom in and, and that kind of thing and I definitely have shifted over time where at first I ran my like post-CS2 data science elective class hybrid where you could choose last minute even whether or not you were gonna attend in person or over Zoom. And then I shifted to like, no, you gotta ask every time you gotta like message you gotta basically you have to plan to be on Zoom that day, because you have to ask me, you have to fill out a form and then I’ll email you the password for the day or like you fill out the form and you get the password after you hit the submit button. But you cannot, like, so technically, yes, you could still do it last minute, but there’s a record, and there’s you explaining to me in that moment why you have to be on Zoom. To force that reflection moment for them,
[22:15] Irene: Yeah, yeah, I like that. I really like that,
[22:16] Kristin: But like to me, like I still wanna teach hybrid because there will always be students who I’m like, I know you’re, you’re sick, but your brain’s functioning, but please don’t spread your germs, or but probably the most common reasons I get nowadays is like I have an interview right before or after this class or I am traveling to a thing, but I still can attend class because I’m like stuck on a bus because I’m an athlete like, and those are the reasons I’m like, I don’t want that to be a reason why you can’t attend class. And yes, it’s not gonna be as good as if you’re in person, but at least it’s better than nothing because I know students, they’re not gonna watch the recording even if the recording is there. Like that’s what the statistics say, and I accept that reality. It’s still like the recording is there because it’s by default, and it like happens automagically, so I don’t have to do anything.
[23:00] Kristin: But yeah, so like, I adopted peer instruction, think-pair-share, group discussion, all of those things very early because the framing that I, I landed on was the usefulness of coming in person is that you get to talk to your peers, and this is more valuable. To like, I’m, I’m trying to bring into the classroom, the making that more valuable than doing it on your own. By having these kinds of discussions in person with each other. And I think for me, the thing that I struggle with a little bit is that at the beginning of the semester, they’re all willing to talk to each other, and then it’s, it, it likes the volume during the peer instructions and whatever just slowly goes down, of course, the whole semester. And I think part of it is probably because they, they realize there is no incentive to actually talk to my neighbor.
[23:52] Irene: Oh, interesting.
[23:53] Kristin: Because like, being right during like the group question during the group phase of the peer instruction, because like there’s two, there’s two rounds. Like the first round, you answer by yourself, then you discuss with your group, and then you answer again. Like, there’s no incentive to being right, unless, unless you care about being right. And the, and there’s no points associated with being right.
[24:16] Kristin: So I even tried an experiment in my class where I told them, all right, everybody, vote on the bonus prize for the day, and they got to vote on if they reached 95% correct on a group, the second part, question for a peer instruction, they would get something. And the options were like double engagement points for the day because engagement points is how I actually get them to come to class. They need to earn a certain number by the end of the semester. It was double engagement points, a hint of what’s gonna be on the exam coming up. Candy, I think I offered candy. And then I don’t remember what the 4th one was. Oh, it was like a late token for, for the, for everyone in the room. And a late, and I have a whole late token system to get so that they can submit their homework late. And so like those are the four options, and they voted. And then the, the winner was double engagement points for the day because in their brain, it’s like, oh, double engagement points means I can skip a day in the future. And I’m like, yeah, like there’s other ways to earn engagement points, so you don’t always have to come to class. But there was no difference between like a day where there was no class bonus reward versus any other day. Generally, for these peer instructions at this point, the vast majority of the time, the difference percent-wise between the first try and the second try is like 10%, like about 10% of the students. It like the percent correctness between the two rounds is just 10% increase. And I’m like, y’all started at 25% right. And now it’s 35. Like, what happened?
[25:55] Irene: Yeah, I I think it’s it’s very difficult to persuade people to do something that they perceived to be a lot more effort than it’s worth. I think part of the problem is that students aren’t aware or they don’t fully understand what they’re missing. Like, they don’t fully understand the scope of this worth. One of the things that I mentioned, and I think this helped maybe, but no, no real like study on this yet. But even just being transparent with students at the beginning of the semester or the quarter and explaining to them that at the end of the day, like, all of your education is, is technically free online. If you really want to learn something, you can Google it. Like, you can find this resource. The only real value that you gain from going to university or going to this, showing up to class is (A) the ability to develop some of these soft skills, right? Because those are the skills that carry you past university. It’s the skills that you need for interviewing, you need to know how to make small talk, to befriend people, you know, in your future careers, know how to make these, you know, understand people, communicate clearly.
[27:03] Irene: And secondly, it’s the network of people that you know in your classroom, right? You have access to all these amazing people that are here with you who have, you know, worked very hard to be here, and to miss out on that is really the core of maybe what university represents. It’s like we’re learning together, but also part of it is this really long-lasting community. Some of the people that I met in university or I met even, you know, or even earlier than that, have continued to help me today in what I do, and they introduced me to really interesting people or interesting places, you know, visiting them. And I, I’m not sure if students are maybe fully aware of that.
[27:47] Kristin: I don’t think they’re aware of it at all. Just because like, they might have. I feel like that’s not information that they would come across.
[27:56] Irene: Yes, it’s that hidden curriculum,
[27:58] Kristin: Yeah, and I think it’s also. They don’t even have the lived experience to believe that’s true if they come across the information. Well, like for us who are post, who are multiple years post-college, we do have that lived experience of going, Oh, the reason why I got this job or knew about this opportunity is that some weak tie, they’re called weak ties in social network theory is, someone who I didn’t know well was an acquaintance, is a weak tie, knew about the thing, and let me know. Or like someone who knew me, someone else who knew that person who knew me. Knew that if they cold emailed me about an opportunity, I would respond. And so, like that friend that weak tie said, yeah, totally email Kristin about this idea, and she will probably at least like engage with you about it. So that encouragement then gets that person who doesn’t know me to email me about an opportunity.
[28:54] Kristin: So, like, those kinds of experiences of just lived experience makes you believe, like, yeah, be nice to everyone around you, and like, be pleasant to work with. And that will pay dividends throughout the rest of your life. And yes, it is easier to talk to no one and stand at the bus stop without talking to anyone nearby. And that doesn’t necessarily help you in the long run.
[29:21] Irene: Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, even, even for me, in my community, I find I have to very much actively recognize this frequently that like, you know, I, me not showing up to this event or this meeting or something in-person gathering at my lab, I need to be aware that it’s a trade-off every time I make that decision. Like, me participating in my community is inconvenient. It often costs me time. It’s a lot of effort. I have to commute quite far. But, me missing out on it is often the same, if not more, right? It’s a real trade-off that you have to actively make every time, which is why I really liked what you said, with the, the, the students submitting like a Google form every time they choose not to show up to class because at the very least, like, they’re reflecting on why they’re not going instead of just making that decision out of ease. It’s not like a you’re like sliding into it, you know,
[30:18] Kristin: I, I’m all about adding friction to force reflection,
[30:21] Irene: Right, right, I love that so much. I actually really, really like that,
[30:23] Kristin: Even if it’s something small and like, but the student still feels like they have to rationalize their choice of asking for the Zoom link, the Zoom password for the day. We’re like, I’m sick right now and I didn’t want to spread my germs, like, great. I read every one of your responses. I know why you’re not here.
[30:42] Irene: It’s a very, it’s a very tough, like, I understand too, you know, it’s tough. It’s it’s, it gets harder and harder today. I think with the way technology has kind of fully permeated our lives. It’s, it’s made it very easy to access everything at the same time, it affects our ability to access other things, you know.
[31:01] Kristin: Maybe it’s, it’s almost like the next level of like how technology is making us less healthy, if you want to put it in like clickbaity terms. Like technology helps us, helped us to the point where now we have to explicitly go out and get exercise. Like we have to think about it and do it. And same with eating healthy, like, and now it’s also to socialize because we don’t, it’s so easy not to socialize. It’s OK because then I don’t get rejected and I don’t have to go out and like. But then why am I lonely?
[31:30] Irene: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s also because a lot of these tools like generative AI, it makes it very easy to never be uncomfortable. But discomfort and being uncomfortable is something that never changes in our life. I don’t think that it’s something that can just go away if we try hard enough. In fact, it often leads to more discomfort just later down the line. And this avoidance of being uncomfortable, feeling awkward, feeling embarrassed, all of that is easier, more and more to avoid, leading to cascading consequences, you know, much, much farther down.
[32:09] Kristin: So, before we close out, can, let, let, let’s see if we can come up from this conversation of like, is, is there a positive that we can think of for, for this situation? I think one positive that I think you kind of alluded to about like fostering meaningful social connections and learning and like how can teachers, practitioners do that in their context? And I think part of that, I agree, would be just implementing active learning. But like, if you’re gonna do that, I, I recommend, if you’ve never done it before, I recommend going to some of my past podcast episodes to understand about peer instruction and that kind of thing. So you understand how to do it and increase your odds of success.
[32:51] Kristin: But beyond that, I’m wondering if there’s other things that we can do. Like you mentioned, talking about the value of interacting with your peers. Like, do you think one thing that would help would be, for example, now that I’m in the middle of the semester, I pause before at the beginning of class, right before my first peer instruction, and go like, hey, everybody, I’m just going to remind you what the point of this is. It’s not to just fill out the form so you get your points. It’s about talking to your peers. And in my class, I’ve emphasized data science communications, practicing communicating in these terms with this language, and being precise, and learning how to be able to talk to people in this kind of setting. But also, you mentioned talking to people to build those social ties that you might be leaning on in the future. Is there anything else that you can think of?
[33:48] Irene: I mean, just as like a small aside, there’s something, Steve talked about this recently with me a little bit, but I thought it was really interesting that one metric that he thinks that some, you know, classrooms should try to measure more is, you know, at the beginning when you came into this class, how many friends did you have? And at the end of this class, how many friends did you have? And that might be something to look at to see are these strategies actually getting students to make friends and engage with one another, right? I think that is something that could be an interesting way to measure this sort of thing. But at the same time, I do fully agree with like the, you know, just prefacing these activities, with kind of explaining clearly like the intention of them or the purpose of them. I know sometimes students tune them out, but for the students that are on the cusp, there’s always students on the cusp, you know, for the ones that are listening. I think that is really valuable. And it’s more explicit, right? It’s less like this thing that’s hidden and spoken about.
[34:48] Kristin: In my, so I had two episodes about peer instruction with Beth Simons. She actually talked about that we’re like, you have to remind them every time, every day, why you’re doing it. And she, I think she talked about a particular student she had, who it didn’t click until the very end of the term, where they finally understood what the point of the peer instructions every day were. And I was like, oh, that like, in some ways, I get it. But also like, that’s so frustrating. That’s so frustrating that I have to repeat myself over and over again.
[35:17] Irene: Yeah, I think it’s hard. These students have it hard, too. It’s such a new, a new generation of all these competing things for our interests and our thoughts.
[35:26] Kristin: I think like every generation has a tough in some way, shape or form, and the question is just like what, what dice roll did you get for your generation and it and it’s gonna be a unique set of dice rolls and guess what, you gotta figure out how to do it because the prior generation didn’t know what they were doing either.
[35:42] Irene: Right, right.
[35:44] Kristin: but yeah, so I think. To close out, can you, I, I like, I thought of one other thing to try, but I feel like never works. So I, but I wish, I wish it was a thing where just to tell students, go to office hours. Like if you need to do your homework, just do it in the office hours room. The TA is not gonna care that you’re there. And they’re right there and available to you if you do end up needing help. But at least like if you’re struggling to find a place to do your homework, just do it in the office hours room. It’s right there.
[36:15] Irene: Yeah. I think, I think that is just providing a space for students. I think that’s important. Like, they know there’s somewhere they can go. So, I do like that. There’s, I mean, I think there’s a lot of little strategies scattered around. I think we have to Look around and kind of see what, what other educators have been implementing, how it’s been working, how, what hasn’t been working to get a better sense. Like I know in Steve’s lab, one of the really big things that he tries to focus on with his, community of students, he has a very large lab. It’s, it’s quite, a big thing that he has to put a lot of effort into maintaining, but, a lot of his undergraduates get involved in research and for them, it becomes very intrinsically motivating to continue participating in the community because they’re fascinated by what they’re doing. They feel independent, like they’re moving towards a real-world contribution. They, they like seeing their work being published and talked about and discussed. And I think all that also helps a lot with students that kind of experience this, like, hey, like, what’s the point? Like, if AI can do it, why, why do I even need to be here? There’s definitely aspects where students can work towards more intrinsic interest in what they do, which makes it easier for them to talk, turn to each other, turn to their peers, like that, that, that classmate that I spoke about who had worked at that startup, right? That passion that they kind of developed that came from that intrinsic motivation.
[37:39] Kristin: Yeah. Intrinsic motivation is so hard to tap into.
[37:45] Irene: It really is. Big word.
[37:45] Kristin: All right, yeah. So, let’s close out with too long didn’t listen. What would you say is the most important thing you would want our listeners to get out of our conversation?
[37:56] Irene: I think the most important thing is that while generative AI might lower some of these barriers to knowledge, it also erodes or negatively affects some of the informal peer networks that make learning meaningful, might impact mentorship, collaboration, community, and as educators, we need to rethink not just how students use AI but how can we protect or nurture the human connections that support this belonging and motivation.
[38:23] Kristin: Yeah, well, future research needs to be done.
[38:24] Irene: Yes.
[38:25] Kristin: Hopefully, we’ll get there someday.
[38:26] Irene: Yeah, yeah, a lot of future research.
[38:27] Kristin: All right, well, thank you so much for joining us, Irene.
[38:31] Irene: Thank you so much for letting me be here today.
[38:33] Kristin: And thank you for listening. If you know a colleague who’d enjoy this episode, please share it or post it on social media. It really helps us grow. Want to support the podcast? Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/csedpodcast, particular shoutout to patrons Mark Guzdial, Vanessa Coote, and Yesenia Velasco for helping to keep the podcast ad-free and supporting production. For past episodes, transcripts, and links, visit csedpodcast.org and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode! And otherwise, this was the CS-Ed Podcast. I’m your host, Kristin Stephens-Martinez, and our producer is Chris Martinez. And remember, teaching computer science is more than just knowing computer science. I hope you found something useful for your teaching today.