TRANSCRIPT: Tales4Teaching ep. 86 – Mentoring moments: learning through staff and student connection
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Joan: Welcome to Tales4Teaching, a podcast where we explore stories with purpose in higher education. We’ll share expert insights, engaging interviews, and thought-provoking discussions that will inspire your teaching. On behalf of Deakin University I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the unceded lands and waterways on which you are located. I acknowledge the Wadawurrong people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners on which this podcast was recorded, and I pay my respects to Elders past, present and future.
My name is Joan Sutherland and this is Tales4Teaching, brought to you by Deakin Learning Futures.
My name is Joan Sutherland and today I’m joined by Molly Herd and Sofia Paller. Hello. Welcome, both. Thanks for coming on to the podcast.
Molly: Thanks, Joan.
Joan: Well, to get us started, can you both introduce yourself, um, and your role in the context of this podcast? Molly, do you want to get started?
Molly: Of course. My name is Molly, as Joan already mentioned, and I work in the Faculty of SEBE and my role is within the transition and engagement team. Our team works a lot with commencing students, as well as student outreach. We run the peer mentoring program, and my role is based around a lot of, student engagement and, and helping students get used to uni life. Joan: And connect by the sounds of it.
Molly: Yes, definitely.
Joan: And, Sophia.
Sophia: Hi. My name is, um, Sophia. I’m a student at, Deakin University. I study, uh, Bachelor of Science with a master’s in teaching. I’m majoring in mathematical modelling.
Joan: Oh, wow. And, just you know, I’m not gonna ask any questions about that okay. But thank you for joining us today. I heard about the student mentor project that has been spoken about. And you touched on it briefly. Molly, I wonder if you can just give some context of the student mentor relationship and tell me a bit more about that project and how it helps students.
Molly: Yeah, of course. So the students mentoring staff program is run by Deakin’s Disability Resource Centre. So, uh, the aims of their program are really to create a meaningful dialogue between Deakin’s students and staff, um, particularly the DRC students. And it provides an opportunity for staff to hear about any issues or things that work well from the students themselves. I think a lot of the time we kind of hear a lot of this feedback through resources and surveys, but it’s good to actually hear it from the students. So, um, you can have more of a meaningful discussion about things that are affecting them. And it’s also really great for getting to know more about students lived experience, and how we can kind of improve conditions for students and be more inclusive. But it’s also just great for making connections with students and talking a little bit more about what it is that they actually like about the uni and things that they might not like. And yeah, it’s really good fun.
Joan: Well, listening to your introduction, a lot of your role sounds like it’s about connection, and that definitely sounds like the student mentor side of things. So students are paired with a staff member are they?
Molly: Yeah, a student sign up to be a mentor and then the staff can sign up to be mentored by a student. So it’s been really great to chat with Sophia this trimester. So, we could have a bit more of a in-depth discussion about her studies and stuff. Joan: Right. And, Sophia, what made you get involved in such a program?
Sophia: Yeah, I just saw the email and I’m a part of the DRC for a little bit now, but then this time I thought, why don’t I, um, give it a shot? Like, I just sign up, see what happens? I wasn’t sure, like, I was just kind of. And we give it a shot and see if that works. And I think I wrote in there like, you know, because I was like, why do you want to try the student mentoring program? And I just said, look, it’d be kind of cool if I could just help somebody understand a little bit better about, disabled experiences and things like that. But I was like, I might as well, um, and boom, I got accepted. So I was like, okay.
Joan: It opens up a dialogue, doesn’t it and creating meaningful conversations.
Sophia: Yeah. Um, I wasn’t really sure what to expect really, I was just kind of like, well, what do I, um, you know, like me being a mentor. Not sure if, uh, I’m really, like, a mentoring person. I don’t know how, like, this will help somehow, but, yeah, I gave it a shot anyway, so.
Joan: And have you found its helped?
Sophia: Um, I kind of hope that it’s helped Molly at least open up a little bit. I think a little bit more about, um, some, some other experiences that we have and things like that. Um, I think it’s, it’s pretty cool just to talk with people.
Joan: Building connections as well. Going back to that connection side of things.
Sophia: Yeah.
Joan: Now, one of the things that I actually asked around the program was Molly mentioned that you have different experience with AI and how you interact with AI. And I was just wondering, so, is AI playing a part in how you interact, and if so, how?
Molly: One of the topics that we had in one of our meetings, we looked at an essentially, the good and the bad of AI. So we had a really in-depth discussion about the role that AI is playing in our society right now. We just had a good chat about how we perceive it, in particular, uh, within the university life.
Joan: And what about yourself, Sophia? How is your perception, um, of AI in relation to higher education, life and studying?
Sophia: I think it’s a bit of, uh, like a double-edged sword. Uh, like, uh, you can’t say AI is inherently good or bad, in my opinion. I think it really depends on who’s using it. Like, um, and, uh, I know, like, I still kind of like, I feel like universities are still kind of getting their footing around it, but they’re still trying to figure out, you know, how can we let students use it or how can we not let them use it or things like that? Um, when it could in terms of like how it redefines how we interact? For me, it’s actually been quite helpful for interacting because, like, I, I really struggle to interact with people. So sometimes when I talk to AI, it’s a bit like I can predict what they’re going, what the AI is going to say. So it makes it easier for me to, you know, maybe even just talk to an AI instead of just going to a person. Yeah, it’s just that it’s a bit like, you know, I don’t have to worry if I just refresh the page and and I’m like, oh, that sounds a little weird. Or, you know, did I hurt somehow the AI is feelings, you know, I’m just gonna it’s going to refresh the page and then I’m just going to talk about that, take a different approach. So then I can think about how is this going to sound to when I like, socialise. But you know, that’s how I think. But that’s how I use AI, more in the creative side of things. So rather than like, you know, please give me the answer to the essay question, I just kind of use it for more you know, uh, what would happen if, you know, what would we do? Uh, things like that.
Joan: So do you get feedback from the AI in relation to how to interact, or is it more not as much question and answer you just mentioned, but as you said that you talk to an AI, it’s a bit easier. So maybe reduces some of those feelings about talking to a person.
Sophia: I think it’s just my feelings, really. Because like, I don’t I don’t ask the AI or like, oh, how do I interact with XYZ? I’m just like, I’d rather just talk to an AI doesn’t have a face and it can just tell me, you know, things, a sound, sound, something that, um, you know, I know that they’re going to respond in a particular way, and sometimes it surprises me. But I’m always comforted by the fact that it is an AI. So I can just wipe it clean, refresh it, and then it’ll be like new.
Joan: So it sounds like those expectations, you know, what to expect. So as, as the feelings around it, um, but it gives you some reassurance.
Sophia: Yeah, absolutely.
Joan: On that note, what are the biggest benefits of using AI in higher education?
Molly: Well, I think, uh, for someone like me, when I was studying, I found it really hard to come up with titles for my work. So sometimes it’s a good creative tool. So, like Sophia mentioned it’s it’s good for getting you to start thinking about things. Sometimes I find that if you use that to find an answer or something like that, um, sometimes just what it gives you will prompt you to think of something else so it can kind of work as a, a sounding board, almost just to ..
Joan: thinking.
Molly: yeah, uh, to, to get some prompts and stuff going. Um, so yeah, I would say, like Sophia said about the creative side of things, I think that that’s a real benefit with AI. Joan: is there any other ways in which you think it’s beneficial, especially in the higher education context?
Sophia: Well, I think in terms of my education, I thought that it might be really handy to help students with finding sources. Um, you know, like, please give me some sources on x, y, z. But then the thing is that I would say that you shouldn’t take it at like face value. You should always take it with a grain of salt. Um, and then you can, like, just double check just to make sure. Oh, but then it’ll kind of give you like, oh, this is how you put it into a reference. You put like, but the title, you know, uh, the author and their initials and the date and then the title and then you build like, okay, I sort of get that. I think a challenge would be like, uh, students like having to, I don’t know, how to explain it, but resist just taking the AI shortcut now because it’s right there. Right. You just need to. Okay. Um, I have I have this essay that’s due within, I don’t know, two weeks that I’m thinking, okay, like, I could just spend the first week referencing, you know, the second week writing or I could go to AI. I think it’s more of like, uh, you know, resist the urge.
Joan: An ethical dilemma whether to use it or not.
Sophia: I actually don’t I actually don’t think like sometimes when I have like a creative practice, I do a lot of writing when I’m just writing, like creative stuff about stories. Sometimes I get like, I have an idea, but I get stuck on how to write it. And then I ask the AI to please write me, I don’t know a little dialogue about a character finding a treasure or something like that. And then, um, I’ll look at it and I’ll be like, oh, that’s really good. You know, I can use, like, I can, I can I, can I that give me idea. And then I write it again differently. Um, so I think it’s good like that. But the challenge is I feel like it’s just like, oh, can’t I I just ctrl c, ctrl v, and then I’m done.
Joan: No you cannot.
Sophia: No, no you cannot, uh, no, you cannot do that. Um, you know, um, and not to mention there is also like the unbiased question, technically, AI is trained off people’s work, so it is trained off all the things that you would be saying that there is a bias because it is gathering the bias. It’s a machine learning program, so technically it does have a bias.
Molly: Well, it’s a bit scary to think that, like who who is it learning these ideas from? And should we be regulating AI so that it’s not spreading misinformation or harmful information?
Joan: I think it raises a lot of questions, but the main thing is around keeping the human in the loop. And, uh, but you both touched on different use cases of how you use it, what questions you’d ask and what questions it raises within your realm and then that brings me to my next question. If we think about students as a whole and I know Molly, you do a lot with different students. Um, and even being part of this, um, a student mentor relationship Sophia, how do you think students can be better supported to build knowledge around AI, how to use it and how to implement it in their practice, or should we be doing more?
Molly: I definitely think that we need to accurately telling them about how AI works. So I think that it’s important that we have that knowledge around AI, because I think that a lot of people use it, but they don’t understand exactly like one, where the information comes from. Um, some students won’t know much about academic integrity and how AI can impede on that. So it’s important that I think, particularly in higher education, that students are aware of, how they can use AI appropriately and when it crosses those boundaries. I mean, I know with Deakin the use of AI is supported by the university, but of course, with its limits, um, it can be a great education tool with AI becoming so accessible. It’s most likely that a lot of the new generations coming through would have already used it or know how to use it, so it’s better to be prepared.
Sophia: I think like, as Molly said, um, I, I’m a student, so I definitely see like, um, usually in like the first week or so of, like the trimester when, like you’re in new units, they have an introductory, lecture and then they have the slides. Um, they do actually, place in like, oh, regarding the use of gen AI. So they do actually touch on it. So the university does support, um, using AI, but I think like the seriousness of like using AI, so I think, it’d be nice if there was some sort of regulated that maybe it Deakin had their own AI, like all of their own ChatGPT, um, that would be kind of cool. But at the same time, that would be like, I think we just need to spend a bit more time sort of educating people in AI.
Molly: I think it brings up the importance of always being critical in what you’re, intaking as well. I mean, we preach it a lot for of like, social media always question everything that you’re saying and don’t take anything at face value because it’s always, in some sort of way manipulated for you know, views and stuff like that. So I guess AI is kind of similar, isn’t it? Using it might not always garner the correct results if you’re looking for answers. Um, so yeah, you always have to question it and, and think about what it’s actually telling you. Definitely don’t rely on it. Use it alongside your own thinking to help you, but definitely don’t rely on it like it’s that pure source of truth.
Joan: Yeah, well, it sounds like that human in the loop. You’ve talked about how AI has helped you interact and what you’ve done to leverage AI in your work, but also as a student perspective. We’ve talked about the benefits of AI, and how students can be better supported to use AI in higher education here at Deakin. So it’s really good to hear that these connections that were brought to the forefront around the student mentor relationship. that leverages your thinking as well and evolved your thought process around AI and the experience from a student perspective and a staff perspective, so you can both learn and build those connections. So I would like to thank you both for your time and just as a lasting comment, do you have any comments or anything you’d like to say for anyone that would be interested in the student mentor, relationship when it comes up again?
Molly: Yeah. I mean, anyone listening who hasn’t done the Students Mentoring Staff program, it’s really great for building connections with students. I mean, in terms of being a staff member, but also, if you have any involvement at all with students or, anything that impacts students, um, it’s a really great way to kind of get that feedback one on one. Yeah. And I mean, even for me, I was a student at Deakin, but for me, I keep thinking, it wasn’t that long ago, but so much has changed in those years. And so it’s important to stay on top of the things that students are facing. So and obviously we’ve seen a lot of change in the last few years. So, um, sometimes you think, you know, but you don’t actually know, so, it’s important to stay engaged and stay in the late with the students. So, yeah, you’re a staff member and you’re thinking about it definitely sign up and, it’s really great.
Joan: And Sophia, do you have any lasting comments you’d like to say?
Sophia: Um, like, if you haven’t done it before, I think just give it like a red hot go. Um, I think it’s really cool just to talk with somebody else. It’s just that, that nice just talking. But also, um, it also makes you feel a bit more heard. So, um, like, you talk about your own personal experiences or something that you’ve noticed. So I think it’s, I think it’s really cool you get to talk about your own experiences to somebody, and they can sort of learn from that as well. So I think that that but I think you should give it a shot. You can tell your experiences around disability and higher education.
Joan: Look, I’d love to thank you for your time today, Molly and Sophia. It’s really been interesting to hear the student mentor project and what you’ve both gotten out of it, and how you conversations evolved in the context of AI and higher education and what you’ve shared with us today. So thank you for your time and look forward to hearing your next phase of your mentoring journey.
Molly: Thank you so much Joan.
Sophia: Thank you, thank you.
9 October 2024