[PODCAST] Listen or Read: The New Rules for Library Research (AI)

Libraries and librarians are a cornerstone of teaching and learning--and AI is reshaping their pivotal role. Here are a few of the key topics discussed in the interview between Wilson Tsu and Kevin Hogan.

• The transformative impact of AI on student research in the digital age
• Integration of AI into the PowerNotes platform
• AI's role in providing assistance for efficient research
• PowerNotes' auto-generated citations for easier and more enjoyable academic work
• Importance of educating students about responsible AI use
• The predicted integration of AI as an integral part of education in the future

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Full Transcription 📜

Kevin Hogan:

Okay. Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Innovations in Education, e-School News' podcast on the latest and greatest happenings in K 12 Ed Tech. I'm Kevin Hogan, and I'm glad you found us. This month we'll be diving into the realm of artificial intelligence and its transformative impact on the way students perform research in the digital age. Joining us is Wilson Tsu, the visionary founder of PowerNotes. Wilson talks about how AI teaching and learning tools are integrated into his platform to track student research and how the rise of AI has transformed his company into a way for students to prove that they, and not AI, actually did the work behind writing their essays and papers. Now, that's not to say there aren't still a bunch of challenges and roadblocks to making all of these new research practices solid state, but we are on the way. Give a listen and hear how the path goes.

Okay. Wilson, thanks so much for joining me today. It's nice to see you, although now remotely versus the press room at ISTE. Right? Yeah,

Wilson Tsu:

It's great to be here, Kevin. it's been, quite frankly a, a crazy couple weeks since ISTE, you know, with the holiday and all. But, we've been super busy here 'cause of AI and a lot of the other circumstances that are happening in education.

Kevin Hogan:

Yeah, I see. It didn't take a minute for one of us to say AI, right.

Wilson Tsu:

I mean, that's on the forefront of pretty much everyone's minds these days. Hopefully that calms down a little bit once people have a better grasp of it.

Kevin Hogan:

Yeah, it certainly seemed at the show there was certainly a good amount of hype, but also a good amount of reason for the hype, right. I mean, we're still trying to kind of figure out where it falls on, on the spectrum of where that topic and actually getting a definition of what that topic is and what it means. Right. I mean, it is just, it's kind of, it's it's all encompassing.

Wilson Tsu:

Yeah. I think that people are still figuring out what it means to them, and education both are kind of coming together and this semester coming up will be a big test of how schools are reacting and how AI can fit. I think it'd be the first semester where schools are actually being more proactive about it rather than reactive. So I think that can be exciting.

Kevin Hogan:

One of the things I think that piques everyone's fascination so much is the possibility scenarios of schools. Right. So it would be for good or for bad, I mean for fearing it, you know, and usually it comes down to the idea of cheating. And you know, when I was thinking about our conversation this afternoon and knowing about the products and services that you provide, those are some of the elements that I think could kind of go into some scenarios of what it means to work in the library or do a library project. And I think everyone from parents to teachers all have that scenario. They remember the Dewey Decimal system. Yeah. They remember having that project and their favorite librarian who introduced them and showed them how to use the library and do all those things, you know, before the internet.

And now those scenarios are so drastically different for everyone. Now, the students themselves might not find any of this novel, but I think as adults everyone does find it novel. Talk a little bit now, you started your company in 2017, right? I mean, so you're about five or six years in, AI was was a topic then, but I wouldn't say it was necessarily, well it certainly wasn't the talk of the town like it is now. Can you talk a little bit about how you see the scenarios of what a future library looks like and what the job of a librarian or more often now I hear media specialists as much as librarian looks like today through the use of products such as PowerNotes.

Wilson Tsu:

Yeah, so I think it's been evolving. I mean, it's been evolving even when I started this company. And I go and visit libraries back in the 20-teens, going today, and visiting libraries today, it's pretty different. There were still libraries with like stacks of books and stuff like that. I don't see a ton of that anymore. You know, people find their material on computers. There is no more card catalog. Certainly libraries are evolving. And they need to, and they're doing a good job of doing that. And I think the librarians are evolving as well in my experience. And we do talk to folks throughout the school or the university, in my mind, they're one of the most tech savvy constituents at a school. I think they understand that that's a role for them to fill and they've kind of embraced that role.

And it's been always great to talk to librarians 'cause they do understand the product and the needs and the techniques of the students, even if the faculty is one step behind them. And so it's been great to kind of interact with them. We've got a lot of great feedback. And I do see AI specifically being a big help for libraries. Specifically the things that we're doing are things that involve AI to get students into the library, not physically maybe, but into the library's materials. Usually online AI is gonna be very good at doing things that students tend to struggle with, especially junior students that are starting out with new subjects that they don't know a lot about. AI is very good at doing things like giving them some general information, but also giving them things like search terms and search phrases. I never really understood this until I started talking to faculty and libraries. They struggle with finding those things for the topics that they're trying to look up. So how do you look something up when you don't know what to search for? So a lot of the features that we're building are, hey, you can do AI in PowerNotes. You can have the AI to give you search terms, and then you can jump right from the search terms into your library.

Kevin Hogan:

Some would say that students are now losing an element of, I don't know, diligence who to like come up with their own search terms, right? Because back in 1992, I had to come up with my own search terms. You know, like there's this, it's almost like the argument I remember of graphing calculators, right? Yeah. I mean, it's like you put them away, and now you're gonna do the real work and the hard work. So there's like this balancing act between, again, that was an artificial intelligence that enhanced the way that you learn. And here we are again. Are there some things that we should be willing to kind of toss away and in order to then maybe focus on other things like say digital literacy and working on false information and, and other skills now in 2023?

Wilson Tsu:

Yeah, I think that's always gonna be evolving. And so when you have students with a limited amount of time and faculty with a limited amount of time, you pick and choose what you're gonna prioritize in terms of teaching. Like, that's not my job as someone that works at an EdTech company. That's really the faculty and the librarian's job to decide what they think is going to be important. Understanding how technology's evolving kind of alongside what they're teaching. So they're gonna have to react as well. Yes, there are certain things that if technology just makes the learning of that thing obsolete, I don't know that you need to teach it anymore. Maybe you can teach a lot more things outside of that. Things that are more advanced, maybe a little more attuned to what your actual learning and teaching goals are.

And that was just kind of a, a little foundational step in terms of getting to where you eventually wanted to be. And if that was taken over by some automation, maybe that's okay. That's happened throughout history. Certainly. My my kids right now are going through grammar school. One of 'em is learning to do cursive and do we need to learn how to do cursive? Like, I don't know. Right? That's the question. And so that's another one of those evolving things where it's like, I really am gonna kind of like leave it up to the educators to decide what they feel is, is most important to teach. They're the experts in the field. No one knows what the future is gonna be like. But we do know, at least I feel, and the educators that I've talked to feel is that AI is going to be part of it.

Given that let's slowly get into a place where we can start evolving with the technology that's out there. Because we want our students to be able to compete in their workforce and in whatever they're doing after education, you know, so they're in the best position possible to succeed. And if I don't need to learn how to do cursive, maybe that's okay. I don't know. And maybe they learn something else because of that. And that's great. I think it's a, it's a dynamic thing. I don't know that there's a right or wrong answer but it's an exciting time to watch it all happen. 'cause I think AI's just gonna make it all go fast.

Kevin Hogan:

Yeah. And we can stop just having the conversation of whether or not AI should be in the classroom. Right? I mean, it's kind of the same with the calculators. Kind of the same with computers in the classroom, like that ship has sailed. Uh, so now it's just how most do it in a way that is best for students.

Wilson Tsu:

Yeah. No, I think that's the key question right now. When I'm at these conferences, when I was at ISTE, when I'm at higher ed conferences, that is the big, big question is how do we teach the material? How do we let students know how to use AI? Because quite frankly, there's been a lot of, and we work a lot with law schools as well, and there's been a lot of articles out there in the popular press around how professionals have really kind of shot themselves in the foot by using AI incorrectly. Things like New York Times and all over the country, like senior people, junior people, it doesn't matter. There are things that you should just not be doing with AI, at least at this point in time. And they don't know how to do it. Um, they're just using AI with the, the same way that like you, if you just see most students use it, what their prompts are, it's like, write me a paper on blah.

Kevin Hogan:

Yeah.

Wilson Tsu:

Perhaps not the best use of AI, because it can get you into a lot of trouble. But there are things that AI can really do a great job at. For instance, I did a bunch of research. I went to my library, I found a bunch of material, I pulled it all together.

AI, can you help me do something with this? Write it in a certain way, be concise when I'm doing that, so I'm not just struggling for hours on end on like what that first sentence should be like getting me a start. These are all things that I've heard from the faculty members that I've talked about that are really things that AI can help with. Things like, I have a disability, english is not my first language. Those things are things that AI can really help you with and even the playing field. And so I think there's a lot of exciting and very beneficial applications to AI, but students need to know what they are and they need to know what the pitfalls are. And there's no better time to learn that than when you're in school, because that's when you can fail and not have it be on the New York Times.

Kevin Hogan:

Exactly.

Wilson Tsu:

Right. Right.

Kevin Hogan:

That's good. Now I know one of the features you have with PowerNotes and there's an emphasis and you mentioned law school is the citation features and functions, right? Yeah. And that seems to me to be one of these things that, you know, if you can run it through an engine where everything is fact checked or everything is cited, you know, it brings me back to the arguments about Wikipedia where everyone was like, well, don't use Wikipedia because you don't know where it's coming from. Use Wikipedia because of the citations at the bottom. Yeah. If those things work out, you find that it will be accurate. And I think the latest surveys I've seen, it's like Wikipedia turns out to be more accurate than that he finds like a crowdsourcing than an encyclopedia. Talk about how that works with, with your stuff.

Wilson Tsu:

No, that, that's a great point. I mean, Wikipedia is a great example too. I mean, in the beginning of PowerNotes, when I would talk to faculty, they would always cite Wikipedia as something you should worry about. And when I was a lawyer, Wikipedia was just a blank no. Like, do not go there. This in the late two thousands and now when I talk to teachers and faculty, it's like, yeah, in libraries use Wikipedia, but use it in these scenarios. It's not an academic work, right? So you're probably not gonna wanna cite it for certain things, right? But getting some background knowledge, not a bad idea. It's fast. It'll help you with those search terms, right? Right. Understand the scenario where it's useful and then understand the scenario where you probably don't want to go there.

That's the same thing with AI, right? So you're gonna understand when to use it, when not to, and hopefully your librarians, your faculty, your educators are gonna be the ones to teach you that. And the way that PowerNotes works generally is it's really there to help you find those sources, use those sources, use that library content. What we're gonna do is we're just gonna generate the citation really, really quickly and easily. Probably more easily than anything that's that's out there. All you have to do is just highlight something on any page with, with PowerNotes, and then we're gonna generate that citation. There's no other easier way to do it that we can find. So just keeping that function in place so that students don't get into plagiarism trouble or cheating trouble is a huge benefit to students and for faculty, it's, it's something that they recognize that we need to do in the education space because it's part of having academic integrity and providing the right attribution, giving the right people credit.

But it's a big time suck for students in terms of like having to go through each step of finding every single citation and making sure that the format's correct, depending on what style you're using. Like, that's not easy. And I'll tell you another thing that we always do is surveys of students every year. Citation is always the most disliked thing in the entire process of anything education. It just gives them a bad taste in their mouth and it just makes the whole assignment less enjoyable for them. And one of the things that we found is that like, hey, if you're using PowerNotes and the citations are done much more easily, and yeah, you gotta check 'em. Like we actually have disclaimers in there recommended by librarians to check everything, once you do that, it just makes the whole process more enjoyable. And if it's more enjoyable, they're gonna learn more. 'cause I mean, yeah, learning should be enjoyable. And I get it. I mean, I did citations forever and I hated it. <laugh> I hated it. So having a tool like this, I think can, can go a long way. And just making the whole educational experience better.

Kevin Hogan:

I remember thinking, going through both in high school and college, the going through the Footnotes and putting the footnotes and I'm like, he or she's not gonna look at these.

Wilson Tsu:

Yeah. <laugh>

Kevin Hogan:

Right? So these, so yes. You know, if nothing else a smarter footnote makes the world a better place. <laugh>.

Wilson Tsu:

Yeah, I think so. And you don't wanna not put it in -- that's just like a no go zone, right? So let's get it done, do it efficiently, keep yourself happy, keep yourself wanting to do the work.

Kevin Hogan:

Yeah. But that seems to be a function that we can watch also get more sophisticated and smarter as we go along. And so, even that, I'm just kind of going off the tangent here, but you know, when you would watch a presidential debate and a candidate would say something and they would try to have like a live action fact checker go along and it. I could see that would be an AI, could be something that could just flag a realtime conversation, not even necessarily a historical document.

Wilson Tsu:

I don't know if I would trust today's version of AI to do that, but I could easily see that happening in the future where you are having that kind of real time component. And I think, again, going back to the librarian's purpose, you know, information literacy, being able to determine what's authoritative and what's not, those are all things that are gonna be super important, especially today and going forward and, and being able to have information being fact checked when you're receiving it. Because let's admit it, two days after that debate, who cares? Right? And so having that information right there, it's gonna be tough. I mean, I've seen like the news channels and the New York Times all kind of check real time. And, it's tough <laugh>.

Kevin Hogan:

Yeah. It's clumsy.

Wilson Tsu:

And, and so, you know, maybe the AI gives 'em a headstart. They have people checking that and they're good to go. And maybe that just makes it more robust, more reliable, and just better for everyone.

Kevin Hogan:

Yeah. And when it comes to the students using your products, for instance, using the citation functions, but all sorts of aspects of it, is there a learning curve for them? Or do you find that now, and maybe especially because they've been remote that or hybrid the last several years have been that this is just kind of part of the way that they learn anyway?

Wilson Tsu:

We always try to just design things to be as intuitive as possible, but you never are able to design it to be intuitive for everyone. You know, that's always something that technology struggles with generally. And we're no exception to that. What I've already mentioned is that, you know, the way that we generate citations is super easy and intuitive. Literally, you don't have to do anything but select something on a page. The things that they're gonna have to learn more about is how to then check it. 'cause they're not just gonna look at it and be like, yeah, that's APA. They're gonna have to pull out a reference source that says, this is what APA is, and then compare it. That's what they're gonna need to do. And that still takes work. And that's something that I think faculty and educators and librarians want them to do.

And I don't think that's something we're gonna take out of the process because that's important. But over some time, they'll start to get into the flow. Like, yeah, I know what APA looks like. I can be a lot more efficient about it now. That will save them time over course of their research or the course of their educational career. And the point would be that it was made a lot easier by something that was actually pretty easy to use. 'cause I mean, we use all of the other kind of reference management tools out there, and there's a reason that undergrads don't use 'em <laugh>. They're just too hard.

Kevin Hogan:

Right. Now we could go on for a while about this obviously, but as we wrap things up here, give me a look into your crystal ball. Talk about where you see, you know, specifically your technology and your products, but also maybe kind of the space in general when we see each other in three years at ISTE. What sort of conversations we'll be we'll be having then?

Wilson Tsu:

Well, I don't think AI will be on the table for conversations. I, I think it will be so embedded into education that it's like Zoom. Zoom happened really quickly. No one doesn't know how to do a Zoom call in education anymore. That's like, not even a thing, but when the pandemic started, no one knew how to use Zoom and everyone's freaking out. I think the same sort of thing's gonna happen with AI, I think it's gonna be a little slower. And I think there's gonna be a lot more caution because there are really important things that are getting touched by AI, things like academic integrity that we're gonna have to think really hard about. And, you know, Zoom is just a delivery mechanism. There are a lot of aspects from an educational standpoint that the delivery mechanism is important.

And it is. And that's the thing we learned after the pandemic, right? With people struggling with the Zoom classes and stuff like that, what they learn. And so it's going to be a slow wade into AI, but in three years, that's a long time. Maybe not so long for education, but it's a good amount of time. And I think what's really gonna drive it is that students are gonna be using it regardless. They're already, I've seen surveys, I've talked anecdotally to students and as far as I know, they're all using it. At least the ones that aren't afraid of it. And the ones that aren't afraid of it, I'm worried about because are they at a disadvantage? And that's not a fair disadvantage. And so what I want, what I think needs to happen is that we need to find responsible ways to incorporate AI into the curriculum in ways that are safe for students as well as safe for faculty.

And that's what we're doing. That's what PowerNotes is doing. We literally worked, I mean primarily with the University of Arizona, but especially, but also with some of our other partner schools to create an environment where you're doing the research in PowerNotes like you've always have, but we're layering on that AI piece so that the AI is now part of the PowerNotes process. And that process is made safe because of the transparency that PowerNotes gives to faculty and educators and library. What we found, which is interesting 'cause we had our first few classes use these AI features built into PowerNotes is that, if students are doing the work in PowerNotes and that work is transparent to faculty, the students aren't gonna cheat. We're not, we're not here to try to catch people cheating.

'cause I think no one likes that kind of mentality, like the "gotcha" mentality, like we're the police. Like no one wants to be the police. But all we're doing is a creating environment where there's really no incentive sheet. Hopefully like we're a place where faculty can introduce AI, use AI and feel confident that what they're doing doesn't impact negatively, like academic integrity generally. And gives them a lot of cool tools, not just to use AI in the classroom, but to integrate AI with student learning, like student learning before AI. Especially things like finding sources. 'cause we know, this is really the crux of the big disasters in the popular press - sources that just don't exist. The AI just made stuff up. If the students find, like we have features that allow the students to find their own sources, but then integrate it with the AI, removing the AI's ability to just make stuff up and just using the AI's language capabilities to really make that output strong. And, and then allowing students to then edit that. So a lot of the things that we're doing are really trying to build that environment where we're bringing that safety in. We're we're maximizing humans using what the AI's good at and then minimizing what AI's bad at. So that's kind of how we we're, we're going about it.

Kevin Hogan:

Well, you have your work cut out for you, that's for sure. Again, it's an exciting time, but you know, with the work that you and others are doing, I think it's going to ultimately be a big benefit for the way we teach and learn. So Wilson, once again, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And that's all there is for this month's episode of eSchool News's Innovations and Education. Be sure to subscribe for more episodes on your favorite podcast platform and go to eSchool news.com for plenty of more content.