priorities

Faculty in my college today got an email announcing a new program “designed to encourage Baylor University faculty to reduce the educational costs for their students by using library content, open educational resources (OER), or other low- or zero-cost materials. In particular, it is intended to encourage instructor experimentation in high-quality low- and no-cost learning materials for their students, especially through the use of OER.” Admirable!

But in the same email we also learned that Baylor has bought a subscription to yet another AI product: “Scopus AI is an intuitive and intelligent search tool powered by generative AI (GenAI) that enhances your understanding and enriches your insights with unprecedented speed and clarity.” And who among us has not wanted their insights to be more clearly and speedily enriched?

But wait, there’s more! Baylor has also purchased a subscription to “Leganto, a resource management tool that enables instructors to add course materials in Canvas for students to access.” The advantage for instructors, we’re told, is that we can “track student engagement with course materials.”

Here’s a suggestion: Maybe if Baylor would choose not to invest in more ed-tech/AI snake oil, and decline to further a student-surveillance regime, we could include textbooks and other “learning materials” in the current tuition cost. My guess is that we could do so and have money left over.