Introduction

By Dave Bostwick

An influential article in the Chronicle of Higher Education asked a crucial question about undergraduate college coursework: Is this the end of reading?

A source in the article suggested that “we’re entering into a hybrid oral-written culture.” Supporting statistics included one estimate that only 20% of college students actually read anything that’s assigned to them outside of class.

One quote in the article provided this advice to college educators: “If you design a class based on the assumption that students will do the readings, you’ll get nowhere.”

Here’s a video with additional perspective from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

This OER was built with multi-modal content to increase audience engagement, but it does not abandon static text. Reading is still an important skill to develop and maintain for critical thinking and personal enjoyment.

Media Literacy and History

Media content creators and educators share a similar purpose to inform their audiences, and a primary focus of this OER text is to help you make informed decisions that improve your media literacy. Here’s a related flip-card question.

That’s an important distinction. And keep in mind that media literacy is more than just gaining skills to identify misinformation and disinformation or follow reliable news sources.

You also need to understand that many of our current ethical concerns and debates about mass media are not unique.

Or put another way, a crucial component of gaining media literacy is understanding mass media history.

Ultimately, media literacy skills help both consumers and professionals create, publish, broadcast and share reliable content, including via social media, in an ethical manner and with an understanding of the long-term effects.

A Personal Approach

Although we’re in a brave new world of AI content and immediate media gratification, the present can still resemble the past.

When I was a child, I could manually dial a phone number hosted by a local business to hear an automated voice that gave me the current time and temperature along with a brief weather forecast.

Many of us have a similar routine today, except we consult apps on our smartphone screens instead of dialing numbers on a rotary phone.

Throughout this text, you’ll have opportunities to share your own reflections about media changes in your lifetime.

What About AI?

The rapid evolution of AI-generated content has further complicated the concept of instructional design.

In the audio below, an AI voice conversation agent, Sarah (with a British accent), will read my brief summary of the approach used in this OER text.

Or if you prefer to read, here’s the audio transcript:

It’s still important for students to develop and hone their reading skills, but it’s also critical for them to develop fluency in decoding other media forms, such as audio and video along with emerging interactive and immersive platforms. With that in mind, this OER text incorporates paragraph text along with interactive presentations, audio and video embeds, self-check quizzes, and a variety of digital flip cards. You’ll find that the OER chapters are designed to avoid long blocks of uninterrupted paragraph text.

Is it appropriate to include AI-generated narration in an educational project such as this OER? That’s a question the educational community will decide in the next decade or so.

AI has also affected students’ attitudes toward learning. A video from Gizmodo included the following observation:

“American students are increasingly viewing homework and testing more like a high-stakes video game to solve rather than learn from.”

Do you agree with that assessment, and does it reflect your attitude?

To combat students using AI tools on writing assignments, some faculty members have even started requiring students to use old-fashioned blue books to compose handwritten essays during class.

Some chapters in this OER include observations about how AI is affecting our media platforms. You’ll even see and hear a few examples of AI-generated content so you can form your own opinions about the value of AI in today’s media landscape.

Thinking About AI

Here’s an analogy about our AI usage. Many of us jog or lift weights for exercise. Sure, we have automated machines that could lift the weight for us or vehicles that transport us. However, our bodies won’t benefit without the physical exercise of moving our own muscles.

Similarly, perhaps we shouldn’t rely too heavily on AI for critical thinking and problem-solving, even though AI seems to require less effort. We need to exercise our brains regularly so that AI isn’t doing all our thinking for us.

A press release from the American Association of Colleges and Universities cited survey results showing that more than 80% of college faculty believe the use of AI will diminish students’ critical thinking skills and attention spans.

And a New York Times case example illustrates how reliant some students have become on AI for writing. Professors from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign received identically written apologies from students who had cheated in an introductory data science course.

Because the apologies themselves were not graded, this wasn’t necessarily a case of academic misconduct. However, you can consider whether it was appropriate for students to use AI tools to craft a sincere personal apology.

Future examples such as this are likely inevitable due to AI being embedded in many popular writing tools, as illustrated in the screenshot below.

As a trial, I entered the following prompt into the embedded AI help tool in my Gmail account.

I am a college professor who was late for the first day of class because my dentist appointment lasted much longer than I had expected. Help me write an email to apologize to the class.

It yielded the following text that I could copy/paste, add a date, and send to students.

Dear Students,

Please accept my sincere apologies for being late to our first day of class. My scheduled dentist appointment lasted much longer than I had anticipated, which unfortunately delayed my arrival.

I understand the importance of our first meeting and regret any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused. I am looking forward to a productive semester with all of you and will see you at our next scheduled class on [Date].

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Best regards,
Professor Bostwick

Here are three questions to ponder.

• Would you recognize the use of AI if you received this?
• If you were a student in my class, how would you feel about receiving an AI-generated email from a faculty member?
• Do you think your attitude will evolve over the next few years?

Enjoy!

As you learned in the opening comments, some education analysts wonder whether we’ve reached “the end of reading.” Thanks to those of you who did read to the end of this page.

I hope you enjoy this OER project as much as our team enjoyed creating it. Send any feedback or suggestions to Dave Bostwick (bostwick@uark.edu).