Dangerous Ideas
My course, Dangerous Ideas in Science and Society, is grounded in the belief that open, rigorous, and charitable discussion is our best tool for deeply understanding arguments and strengthening our beliefs. As a robust literature in the psychology of reasoning shows, engaging with opponents is the closest thing we have to an epistemic immune system. In Dangerous Ideas, students are confronted by arguments they are inclined to reject—and encouraged to defend their own views against serious objections. They explore arguments concerning education, speech, identity, abortion, guns, immigration, and religion, among other topics.
Inside Higher Ed covered the class and my lab's ed-focused AI projects
Promoting autonomy to improve student motivation, performance and well-being
What if the key to boosting college students’ attendance and performance isn’t stricter rules, but more freedom? My work with Danny Oppenheimer, published in Science Advances on July 17, reveals the importance of giving students control over their own learning.
In one experiment, students were given the choice to make their own attendance mandatory. Falsifying faculty expectations, 90% of students chose to do so, committing themselves to attending class reliably or to having their final grades docked. Under this “optional-mandatory attendance” policy, students came to class more reliably than students whose attendance had been mandated. The pattern has held true. Across five classes of 60-200 students, 73-95% opted for mandatory attendance and at most 10% regretted their decision by semester's end.
A second experiment produced equally surprising results. When given the option to switch to an easier homework stream at any time prior to midterms, 85-90% of students chose to tackle the more challenging work. The “optional-mandatory homework” policy led students to spend more time on their assignments and to learn more over the semester compared to students who were compelled to complete the same work.
Argument visualization
Imagine Microsoft invents an ultra-realistic toy guitar: It lets you do something a bit like what we call "playing air guitar", but unlike an air guitar, Microsoft's toy will make you sound like Jimi Hendrix. How could you improve the public's guitar skills, if people who can't strum a chord to save their life were indistinguishable from talented guitarists? How would teachers know when a student had mastered a simple strumming pattern? How would they diagnose errors? In the real world, many college students do something in their midterms and final papers that looks like engaging with an argument. And sometimes things are as they seem. But the woolly medium of student prose often masks deep problems in students' understanding. It's hard for their teachers to detect these problems because, like a Microsoft guitar, prose creates misleading evidence of student ability, and the curse of knowledge makes it even more difficult for instructors to assess students' true understanding.
My colleagues and I have found that a technique called "argument visualization" can help students and instructors to overcome these challenges. You can read about our experiment with first-year college students in seven small (15-student) seminars at nature.com, and you can see some students in action in the short video below this text. In my CMU class, Visual Intro to Philosophy, I'm exploring ways to promote similar benefits in the context of a large, lecture-based course that's open to all students. I also collect materials for beginners on my website, PhilosophyMapped, and I will soon launch another site, ArgumentBase.org, which provides an organized and searchable Wiki-like resource for sharing and collaboratively refining short, intriguing argumentative texts. I hope these materials will help teachers integrate argument visualization into their classes and provide members of the public with interesting arguments for practice and thinking.
Games for improving discussions
Most people's attention will drift after 20 minutes of intense concentration, so interspersing discussions with 2-4-minute games can improve learning. In the video below, CMU students in an upper-level seminar on moral psychology take a break by playing "Whoosh!". This game is about spontaneity and attentiveness. It helps students be more aware of their classmates and feel less anxious about contributing to discussions. It's also super fun.
In the first meeting, start with the simplest move, "Whoosh!", which passes the energy along in whatever direction it's traveling. Students should focus on keeping the energy moving smoothly around the circle. Next meeting, introduce "Boing!", which bounces the energy off a player's chest, changing its direction. Then, introduce "Zap!", which zaps the energy to anyone in the circle who can't be reached using one of the other moves. This move keeps everyone on their toes (see what happens when a student takes a glance at her watch in the clip below) and is useful for breaking any "Boing!"-loops that might occur. Once students are comfortable with the basic moves, challenge them to invent new ones and to experiment with motion. This semester, my students invented "Yip!", a move that skips one person; "Yippy", a move that combines two "Yips"; "Ba-Boing", a combination of "Boing!" and "Yip!"; and "Yoink!", a move that intercepts a "Yip!" or "Yippy!" and zaps the energy to another player. It's also fun to play with the volume and speed of the game, for example, by playing silently or in slow-motion.
Shared materials
These course websites are accessible from anywhere (CMU students: search your CMU-provisioned email account for links to readings and submission forms):