Corin Peacock (Arts University Bournemouth) and Liz Peet (Manchester Metropolitan University), with the help of Chloe Smith (Birmingham City University), organised a fantastic online event for ARCLIB, attended by 18 members. This included two lightning talks and plenty of discussion and feedback time, including the use of Padlet for Q&A – we had a very fruitful discussion on managing print journal collections, their future, or lack thereof, the challenges of weeding and the opportunities and risks provided by e-access for visual arts materials. The immediate response to this event was universally enthusiastic and it is definitely a format that we should repeat in future. I particularly enjoyed Corin’s graphic design for the event, tying in a light but fun way with Valentine’s Day. Introducing and coordinating the event, Liz did a great job keeping us to time, coordinating breaks and encouraging interaction from participants.
The first session by Carla Marchesan (The King’s Foundation), focused on the use of crosswords in information literacy. These were developed using a subscription service (https://wordmint.com/) which has a limited free version you can try. Other similar services are available. Carla has written a summary for the blog, so I will focus on my personal take aways from this event – that the group interactivity and fun element worked well to encourage engagement and retention especially in online delivery with relatively small cohorts. It sounded ideal for an ice-breaker or to de-stress toward the end of a more intensive two hour skills session.
I had tried treasure hunts and various polling and quiz type software e.g. Menti, Kahoot, but crosswords were a novel approach to me. I will certainly be trying these in future. I have a drop-in with a first year lecture to bring sample print journals to encourage their use. This is only a few weeks away and it would be an ideal opportunity to pilot a crossword to test their knowledge. I can offer a few books as prizes – like Carla did for her quiz for ARCLIB attendees. I think they might be more widely applicable for our institution too e.g. for induction or other activities by the engagement group I chair. You can see Carla’s crossword in her report. Here’s an excerpt from the event’s crossword challenge (I’m delighted to have received a copy of ‘Anti-architecture and deconstruction by Nikos Saligaros – we needed did not have that in stock – thanks Carla!):
Corin’s talk focused on AI and Information Literacy, showcasing some wonderfully designed slides and a very clear (to this non-expert) introduction to AI and the various sub-branches of the technology, as well as which feed specifically into the generative, large-language models we are so suddenly familiarising ourselves with. By building on this with some excellent examples of how AI actually works in practice – in a probabilistic way, making complex connections between words in the online materials it’s trained on, using ‘deep learning’ (understanding the context via a method akin to the brain’s neurons). A philosophical application combined well with these to explain why you would not wish to rely on genAI to write your work for you – essentially it predicts but does not really understand what it is writing, reproducing patterns from billions of points of data, hence vulnerable to hallucinations.
In some examples you can encourage students to ask ChatGPT for example to tell you how many A’s there are in architecture- because it doesn’t actually count it will come up with a plausible but probably incorrect answer. It will also fall down when asked where the A’s are in the word… or more tellingly if you ask it a leading question e.g. about when someone famous has died (who hasn’t died yet). Again, it will get very inventive in an entertaining but fallacious way. All in all, rather than a reflexive ‘do not use these tools’, this session encourages students to understand them, their strengths and weaknesses, so as to be able to decide themselves – critically – to use them in a more considered way and definitely avoid using them to write their coursework!
There are also a host of ethical implications. Corin had built in discussion topics and mind mapping exercises to draw out the key points from students themselves. This was intended to highlight such things as biases, but also less obvious repercussions such as the appropriation of labour by AI using copyright materials without consent/credit, the huge energy resources required to power AI, the low-paid workers employed to check and correct errors, etc. This would all build to a discussion on the implications for architecture students – the future of architecture as a profession as these tools become more varied and powerful, capable of visual designs too. Will this reduce the emphasis in education on drawing, sketching and rendering? Perhaps developing the ability of the student to be creative will be more important – as well as how they work with these new AI tools, appropriately and effectively.
Overall, this was a varied and informative event. I know I have a lot of ideas for how I can improve the training I deliver and I’ve already begun working on these. This has also whet my appetite for the upcoming ARCLIB Conference in Newcastle in July. See you there!
Report by David Stacey | University of Bath
All images by Corin Peacock
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