my in-class writing assignment today—students will complete one of: "I couldn't help but wonder about...[detail in the text, quote of just a few words on page number]" "What's the deal with...[detail in the text, quote of just a few words on page number]" yes, SaTC and Seinfeld set ups

From journal editing experience, LLMs appear to be *undoing* the good research of non-English speaking scholars. You can see signs of a solid study in a manuscript that chat or claude et al - used for "editing only" - have otherwise *wrecked*. I keep suggesting they try again without AI "editing."

Simon Davies@simonfd.bsky.social · 2w ago

People will complain about the deadening effect 'AI' has on writing, then a few sentences later say that it has potential to help non-English speakers publish their work in English. It can't be both. Yes, it will put their work into English, but it will be bland, plagiarised slop English.

It can’t, hope that helps.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2w ago

“…the WRITE AI Center will lead a national effort to answer one of higher education’s most urgent questions: How can AI improve student learning while ensuring students continue to develop the writing, critical thinking and communication skills essential for success?”

On pre-order on the Oxford University Press website: The Oxford Handbook of Protest Music! Many thanks to all our contributors and OUP staff. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

No 👏👏👏 more 👏👏 lazy 👏minimalism 👏👏 jokes!!!

This is my number one piece of advice to new graduate students.

Robert Komaniecki@komaniecki.bsky.social · 3w ago

Biggest thing I tell my students is to avoid thinking of their classmates as competitors. You are all on the same team, in the same community, with the collective goal being success. Their wins are your wins.

TLDR; using generative AI (even in supervised educational contexts) is allowing students to complete tasks quickly but greatly impeding their actual comprehension Duh

Does AI stop children from learning?

New data show the peril and promise of the technology

economist.com

The Bible, by which I mean Zarlino’s Istitutioni harmoniche, belongs in the classroom.

Dr Daniele Shlomit Sofer they/them@shlomitsofer.com · 3w ago

The Bible, by which I mean Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, belongs in the classroom.

Wow who could have predicted this gosh if only people in education had been sounding the alarm for years 🙄

Nicholas Grossman@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 3w ago

Students who get good grades on homework tend to get good grades on tests. But a recent study out of China shows a divergence. The old correlation holds for students who didn't use AI on homework, but it's the opposite for those who did. Using AI = best homework grades, worst test grades

The Bible, by which I mean Frans Wiering's The Language of the Modes, belongs in the classroom.

dr worldwide™️@imanimosley.bsky.social · 3w ago

the Bible, by which i mean Straus’s Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory, belongs in the classroom

I’ve been reluctant even to use research assistants for the “mindless” tasks of cataloguing details from large numbers of sources. Inevitably I learn so much from doing that work myself I really don’t want to hand it off to anyone else.

Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 4w ago

And by the way, those tasks that some people say isn't really writing, or isn't really research, and so is outsourceable to the psychosis machine? It's not okay to use it for them, either. And those tasks ARE writing and research. Insight is an emergent property of doing the work. 5/5

INSIGHT IS AN EMERGENT PROPERTY OF DOING THE WORK

Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 4w ago

And by the way, those tasks that some people say isn't really writing, or isn't really research, and so is outsourceable to the psychosis machine? It's not okay to use it for them, either. And those tasks ARE writing and research. Insight is an emergent property of doing the work. 5/5

Sign up! The AMS Study Group for Early Musics Skills & Resources hosts free Early Music 101 workshops for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, & researchers seeking a 2nd specialization in early music. Introducing longstanding and emergent areas of inquiry & demystifying essential skills.

Just a heads-up - my Semester At A Glance calendars are up and available for AY26-27! They show 4 months of time on a single sheet of paper and are great for high-level overviews of due dates (yours & students'!), breaks, travel, etc. Situational awareness matters!

Confession: I’ve never fully understood what admin types mean by “assessment” and how it interfaces with what I understand my job to be as an instructor, but this makes it clear as day.

Tobias Wilson-Bates@phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 4w ago

There has always been a version of this tension between assessment and learning, but it has never been clearer that grading and educating are two separate and sometimes barely overlapping processes.

I don’t actually want an educational paradigm that gives me a purity score generated by a rapacious corporation next to every assignment a student submits to an online learning site produced by a separate corporation that is using it to harvest data.

Praise be!

Cartridge Games@cartridgegames.bsky.social · last mo.

Bluesky is saved

My library director has assured me again and again that we will have perpetual access to our increasingly large e-book collection. I keep asking: how do we know? And what protects us from cyber attacks, changes to dominant media storage systems, and more?

Shannon Mattern@shannonmattern.bsky.social · last mo.

"In 2022, Wiley removed over 1,300 ebooks from academic library collections; [they said] perpetual access is not an option for subscribed content. In 2025, Clarivate,... announced they would stop offering libraries perpetual access licenses for ebooks and primary-source digital collections."

It’s deeply disturbing that anyone would market a product like this as helping students learn, and worse, that a single university administrator might think this was a good thing for their students.

Jane Rosenzweig@janerosenzweig.bsky.social · last mo.

Trying out the features in Claude for education. Join me as I see how it "helps" me write a research paper. My chosen topic: "AI and education". /1

I expressed my long standing fear of this to our library director who told me matter of factly that in a pinch you should just dive onto a shelf and the books will push through to the other side. Sounds like something she learned from experience??

alix e. harrow@alixeharrow.bsky.social · last mo.

i don't like to police genre, but it's not dark academia unless somebody gets squished in one of these bad boys

The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Ryland Grace of California, Scientist: Who lived Eight Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Ship on the Coast of Tau Ceti; Having been comatose, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates

Using lists of three is not an "AI tell." It's a common trait in human writing because our brains biologically want to make sure there's always one thing to marry, one thing to fuck, and one thing to murder.

Too bad there’s no other way to find papers and professional scholars aren’t *trained* to do precisely that! What can you do? 🤷🏼‍♀️

Alexandra Gallant-Lee 🔜 SPX A3B@alexandragallant.com · last mo.

"I just use it for research" like it's neutral, like nothing built by big tech ever had bias baked in? "It helps me find papers." Okay, but do you think there might also be a chance the plausibility generators surface papers by men more often than women, for instance?

People who don’t collapse their boxes before putting them in the communal recycling dumpster.

Sanjay Srivastava@sanjaysrivastava.com · last mo.

What is an extremely nerdy/obscure/specific thing you hate with a white-hot wrath?

Early fifteenth-century composer John Dunstaple’s annotations add new light to our understanding of the reception of Boethius’s treatise De institutione musica.

Junior women are more likely to succeed when they have mid-career and senior women in their departments. Go figure!

Physgal ⚛️@physgal.bsky.social · last mo.

Fascinating paper on the progression of women in academia. 👩🏻‍🔬 ⚛️ 🧪 #AcademicSky docs.iza.org/dp18477.pdf?... Here's an excerpt from the conclusion:

JM Coetzee has a wonderful essay about the meaning of the "classic" that ends as follows. Possibly one downstream effect of the defunding of the humanities is that people have forgotten the function of criticism: www.scribd.com/document/814...:

EMILY WILSON@emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · last mo.

The oddest thing about the response to this essay is people who say it’s “personal”. You can disagree about some or all of it! I may well be wrong! But it’s not “personal” to analyze a film or other work of art, even negatively. Criticism is more than “Hurray!” or “Hiss!”

Higher ed admin’s eagerness to throw away their entire value proposition must be one of the dumbest and most spiteful own goals in history.

Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · last mo.

www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

It seems like academic book reviews have also veered towards “only say positive things” which is ultimately not that helpful. We can respect each other’s work and also be prepared to offer meaningful critiques in the spirit of moving the conversation forward.

Saeed Jones@theferocity.bsky.social · last mo.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we’re losing recipes re: criticism. Even reviews of Morrison’s novels in the 90s that were ultimately positive would include barbs that I think would shock people today. A lot going on there, but popular criticism used to be just as tough as Emily’s review.