๐จNew genAI teaching material: an Electoral System Explorer built with Claude. It lets students see how votes translate to seats under different electoral systems. Try it here: claude.ai/public/artif.... Feedback, as always, is very much appreciated!
#poliski
You can read more about the context and other information collected by the secret police, as well as get a flavour for their operation here: www.propublica.org/article/how-...
When talking to @howardhliu.bsky.social about his new project, I remembered this great graphic made by the Stasi showing the social connections of a poet they were spying on projects.propublica.org/graphics/sta...
I will be presenting my first paper using data collected while incorporating genAI into my module on 15/10. If you can join us, Iโd love to hear your thoughts ๐ญ
Read the full paper: "Multi-purpose populist policymaking in practice: the Polish academic evaluation reform"(Piotrowska, Szkurลat, Szydลowska, 2025).
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
This shows how populist reforms can be formally legal, yet designed to entrench ideology and institutionalise patronage. Higher education policy, often overlooked, is a crucial site of populist governance: shaping elites, promoting ideology, and redistributing resources.
But most of all, 3๏ธโฃCatholic-affiliated journals gained disproportionately, embedding a conservative-nationalist agenda and rewarding pro-government institutions.
1๏ธโฃHumanities and 2๏ธโฃPolish-published journals were given a boost โ framed as responsiveness to scholars worried about internationalisation.
The reform of Polandโs academic evaluation system looked like a technical adjustment. In practice, it reshaped how prestige and funding were distributed across universities and disciplines.
Together with Izabela Szkurลat and Magdalena Szydลowska, we argue that populist policymaking is multi-purpose governance. A single reform can:
โก๏ธappear responsive to โthe peopleโ
โก๏ธembed ideological content
โก๏ธchannel resources to loyal actors
Populist policymaking is not only about courts and media crackdowns. It can also hide in technical reforms. In Poland under PiS, changes to academic journal rankings were used to reward allies, promote ideology, and claim responsiveness. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Next...๐งต
Have you ever wondered why itโs so hard to compare public administrations across countries?
This article tackles the confusion around Administrative Traditions
3๏ธโฃAI detection - LLM group displayed significantly lower ability to quote one own's essay - AI use detection could leverage this by randomly sampling students for oral exams discussing the essay. Alternatively, only suspect cases could be subject to such an exam.
In my module, I do that by asking the students to complete independent research first and only then engage with the genAI task.
2๏ธโฃ When integrating LLMs into teaching activities, start with cognitive effort, followed by the use of genAI - "Brain-to-LLM participants could leverage tools more strategically, resulting in stronger performance and more cohesive neural signatures".
1๏ธโฃ Blank page syndrome - LLMs are often seen as an antidote to it. But the paper finds that "the LLM group produced statistically homogeneous essays within each topic". Hence, if you want your piece to stand out, using LLMs to fight the syndrome might not be the best idea.
We've felt it and now we have the evidence: using genAI to write essays yields shallow encoding.
Here, the subjects write essays using one of 3 tools (LLM, Search Engine, brain๐ง only) for 3 sessions. In the 4th session, LLM group needs to rely on ๐ง , and ๐ง group gets LLM. Key consequences for me:
Weโre hiring 3 permanent (tenured) lecturers in the Department of Political Economy at Kingโs College London. These are โeducation pathwayโ posts (in Economics, Research Methods, & Comparative Politics) 1/4
www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117268-...
www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117209-...
www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117245-...
The Anthropic Education Report (www.anthropic.com/news/anthrop...) offers a great insight into how students use Claude. The (relatively) good: half of the conversations are collaborative (dialogue with AI to achieve goals). The bad: students mostly outsource higher-order cognitive functions (see โฌ๏ธ)
Iโm not 100% sure that this wonโt actually improve his chances among voters of other far right candidates.
Day 2 is over, but there are three more to go: www.kcl.ac.uk/ai/assets/pd...
3๏ธโฃ However, if you lack the motivation to learn, no amount of technology will help - and replacing cognitive effort will lead to skill atrophy.
1๏ธโฃ Learning requires thinking deeply (exerting effort), over extended periods, and at regular intervals.
2๏ธโฃ GenAI can support this by boosting motivation to exert effort (e.g., through gamification) or by adjusting difficulty to an appropriate level (e.g., customised explanations).
Yesterday's session during the @aiatkings.bsky.social conference attracted a wonderfully engaged audience.
In the slides, youโll find the GPTs and exercises demonstrating applications of point 2 (below).
Key points โฌ๏ธ
The state of research on AI and education from controlled studies: Growing evidence that, when used as a tutor with instructor guidance, AI seems to have quite significant positive effects. When used alone to get help with homework, it can act as shortcut that hurts learning.
Still early days.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detenti...
6/6 I hope that you find it helpful. Please share any feedback on how your interaction could be improved.
5/6 Each deepened scenario is narrated immersively, and then reflection prompts are presented one at a time, for example:
โขย What values guide you?
โขย What steps could you take?
โขย Who could you lean on?
After each: type Done to move on, Develop to dive deeper, or Another scenario to switch paths.
4/6 You can share personal context (e.g., age, occupation, region, dependents) for tailored scenarios, or go anonymous and get a generalised one. I find that adding at least your broad job info makes it feel much more realistic.
