Tag Archives: Jackie Baines

Classics and Generative AI: New Resources and Opportunities for Staff and Students

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Figure 1: Baines, Jackie, Edward A. S. Ross, Jacinta Hunter, Fleur McRitchie Pratt, and Nisha Patel. Digital Tools for Learning Ancient Greek and Latin and Guiding Phrases for Using Generative AI in Ancient Language Study. V2. March 12, 2024. Archived by figshare. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25391782.v2.

Over the past year, Jackie Baines and Edward A. S. Ross have been researching the ethics of generative AI in teaching Classics and ancient languages as part of their Teaching and Learning Enhancement Project (TLEP) “ChatGPT: A Conversational Language Study Tool.” Their work on this project has initially led to the Classics Department’s AI guidelines and citation guide, and now Jackie and Edward have produced a guiding phrases document and aseries of tutorial videos for staff and students about ethical and effective uses for generative AI.

The guiding phrases document is a compilation of digital learning tools, including generative AI tools, for learning Ancient Greek and Latin. With the help of undergraduate students Jacinta Hunter, Fleur McRitchie Pratt, and Nisha Patel, the Classics AI Testers for the project, Edward and Jackie prepared and tested 10 “copy-paste”-able prompts to streamline generative AI use for supporting ancient language learning. These guiding phrases are tailored for students of elementary, intermediate, and advanced Ancient Greek and Latin at the University of Reading, but they are also couched with tutorials on how to customize them for a more personalized experience.

In order to increase generative AI literacy and make current guidelines more accessible, Jackie and Edward have also prepared a number of tutorial videos about the ethics of using generative AI and proper methods for using these tools. A playlist of these videos is available here.

Figure 2: #STOPandTHINKbeforeyouGENERATE

Alongside these videos, Edward and Jackie will be hosting a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) workshop on methods for using a variety of generative AI tools to support ancient language teaching and for introducing generative AI ethics to students (Figure 3). This event is funded by a Council of University Classics Department (CUCD) Education Grant and is completely free to attend. There are also some travel grants available for local teachers intending to participate in-person. Please email Jackie Baines (j.baines@reading.ac.uk) if you are interested in a grant. If you are interested in attending, please sign up for in-person or online attendance here.

Figure 3: Using Generative AI to Support Ancient Language Teaching CPD Workshop.

Jackie and Edward have also surveyed staff and students in the Classics Department over the past year about the impact of generative AI on their studies. The results of the initial surveys will be published in the Journal of Classics Teaching shortly. The results of the second set of surveys will be presented at the Digital Humanities and AI conference.

The next stage of their research, now funded with an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP) grant, will focus on the biases present in generative image AI, specifically those related to the ancient world. The pilot study for this part of the project was completed by undergraduate student Shona Carter-Griffiths, and we are currently hiring a second-year undergraduate student to continue this work over Summer 2024 (Figure 4). If you are interested in applying for this role, please find the full details and application requirements here.

Figure 4: Gerard Butler with a Spear: Locating Modern Stereotypes for the Classical World in Generative Image AI

Developments in Ancient Language Pedagogy

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The following blog has been written by Jackie Baines, who organised a workshop on ‘Developments in Ancient Language Pedagogy’ held in the Department on Friday 19th May 2023. We would like to thank Jackie and all those involved for running such a successful event!

Steven Hunt – Edward Ross – Maiken Mosleth King – James Robson – Jackie Baines

On the 19th May I ran an international blended workshop on the topic of advances in ancient language pedagogy. The workshop came about as part of my research leave which, as a teaching intensive lecturer, has given me the opportunity to look at ways in which I might refresh my pedagogical ideas and practices. I am indebted to Edward Ross who assisted me with many aspects of the organisation of this event. The rationale for the workshop and the choice of talks and speakers came about as a result of experiences and observations over a number of years teaching Latin here at the University of Reading, which include the following:

Choice of Textbooks

For many years we used Jones and Sidwell Reading Latin as the main textbook with all its quirks and difficulties for complete beginners.  After looking at the suitability of many possible alternatives we subsequently moved to using Taylor’s Latin to GCSE which is very much more approachable in its presentation of grammar and its layout for 21st century students but has many drawbacks for moving on with speed and full understanding, to higher levels of Latin. 

Teaching Spoken Latin

This academic year (2022 – 2023) I am grateful to my colleague Professor Eleanor Dickey who organised weekly sessions of spoken Latin for colleagues, run by teachers from Oxford Latinitas. It was a revelation in a number of ways, principally, that there are definite advantages to learning to use a language, now considered ‘dead’ by many, as languages are normally used – that is to speak.  Latin was indeed taught orally until relatively recently, so why aren’t we doing more of it?  A subsidiary lesson for me was being returned to the position of student, at times most alarming and stressful when using a language I know well, but in a totally unfamiliar way.  I have set up a student focus group using Ørberg’s Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. I am impressed by the speed of vocabulary acquisition and grammatical understanding gained by reading and speaking using only (mostly!) Latin.

Online learning in the post-pandemic world

The pandemic has made us realise the possibilities of online tools for additional learning support.  The rise of AI, in particular Chat GPT is opening up a myriad of opportunities and unnerving problems, both for teachers and for the students themselves who need to have enough understanding to use such tools appropriately. Edward A.S. Ross has recently published an article discussing this further here. Edward and I are delighted to be able to announce that since the workshop we have been awarded Teaching and Learning Enhancement Projects funding by the University of Reading to investigate and trial ChatGPT as a conversational language study tool by codifying and standardising methods for using conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) models in ancient language classes.

Workshop talks

In the workshop we were treated to six stimulating and thought-provoking talks, listed below with abstracts available here. Speakers reflected on past practices and perceptions of ancient languages and how they have been taught along with learning how the emergence of new technologies and their use can be used to enhance our teaching. Thanks to all speakers for their contributions.

Emergent pedagogies in classical languages teaching in UK schools: Steven Hunt (University of Cambridge)

Capturing the Classroom: A Snapshot of Approaches to Latin Teaching in UK Universities: Mair E. Lloyd (Open University and University of Cambridge); James Robson (Open University)

Using Simple Grammar Videos to Flip the Classroom: Antonia Ruppel (Institute of Indology and Tibetology, LMU Munich)

Digital software as a pedagogical aid in teaching ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs: Maiken Mosleth King (University of Bristol)

A New Frontier: AI and Ancient Language Pedagogy: Edward A. S. Ross (University of Reading)

Living Latin in the Classroom: benefits and challenges of communicative approaches: Mair E. Lloyd (Open University and University of Cambridge)

 

Written by Jackie Baines

What a Year!

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Author: Bunny Waring.
31st December 2020

As the end of 2020 draws near it is time to take stock of all that has been survived and learnt over the last 12 months. From Brexit to COVID19, 2020 has required us all to react, adapt and rethink the way we teach, learn, communicate, organise, care and progress. Here, some of the Classics community at the University of Reading have shared their most memorable experiences.

Barbara Goff – Professor of Classics and Co-Head of Department says:

“A shout-out to the colleagues who organised our thrice-weekly coffee mornings in the first lockdown, keeping us all connected and moderately sane; to the colleagues who experimented with different Teams backdrops, keeping us highly entertained as their hair flew about into various enthralling scenes; to the cleaning staff who went above and beyond; to the support staff with whom I was suddenly having conversations about interior décor; to the brave students who suffered through meetings in my (very spacious) office with the arctic gale blowing through my (virtuously opened) window; to the students who studied my module Transformations of Helen online, contending with dodgy mics and cameras, but nonetheless reading carefully and responding critically; to the students who persisted in coming on to campus, enduring the view of me teaching in my Jimi-Hendrix-headband-visor. Here’s to slightly less embarrassment in the New Year!”

Eleanor Dickey – Professor of Classics says:

“It’s been great fun! First, all the conferences I’d agreed to go to were cancelled because of lockdown, enabling me to get to know my family again and also to do some real research. (Okay, so I still did not completely finish my book. But I tried!) Then in the autumn, I was able to continue teaching in person by switching my first-year module ‘Texts, Readers and Writers’ from the usual lecture-and-seminar format to a seminar-only format. So we were able to do all kinds of fun, interactive activities such as ethopoeia, an ancient rhetorical exercise in which students tell the story of a literary work from the perspective of one of the characters. The students became very good at this, and some of them were very creative filling in bits of the minor characters’ stories; it was lovely to hear their productions. And the MA Approaches module had 12 students, twice as many as the most I’ve ever had in it before, and every single one was a fun person to teach!”

Jackie Baines – Teaching Fellow and Admissions Tutor says:

“With the coming of online teaching due to the pandemic, came the making of screencasts for our lectures and teaching. In response to this new teaching environment, I made some screencasts to explain grammar points for the students of the beginner’s Latin language module. In Microsoft Stream, these screencasts come with automatic captioning and these captions struggle to reproduce exactly what is being said, particularly with unfamiliar Latin words. The resulting captions were some of the funniest things I have read all year. A new view of Latin 1st and 2nd declension noun endings! Below is a sample of how a few minutes of grammar were translated.

Enjoy the adventures of Sir Warham dative and others!”

·(Timing)1:22 -First attention feminine puella.
· 01:25 -Accused him to Alam genitive plural. I dated through a lie
· 01:30 -ablative por la. It is actually along a dirt poor law. Plural
· 01:35 -nouns up well, I accused of porlas genitive por la room.
· 01:41 -Dative and ablative Hoooly Screw
· 01:44 -Elise. And the second attention masculine ending in US.
· 01:49 -Sadwith nominative singular said woman accused of said, we
· 01:54 -genitive said whoa and said, whoa, same endings dative a
· 02:00 – narrative singular plural nominative said we accused of
· 02:04 – said worst genitive plural. Sir Warham Dative, and ablative
· 02:09 – serwis serwis do look at any similarities so you can see in
· 02:16 – the date of inhabited plural ISI
· 02:19 – SIS. And I asked both the 1st and 2nd declension. There is a.
· 02:25 – A similarity is there not between the genitive plural? Who
· 02:29 – are Lauren and the genitive probe Sir war room our room, or
· 02:34 – am so just be aware of that poor Lisa and a stem-nouns, so that’s
· 02:39 – hence the A in there. Also note that there are cases where there
· 02:44 – they are the same as each other, but of course the case could be
· 02:49 – different. So if you got poor
· 02:52 – lie. Could be genitive singular plural, I could be
· 02:55 – dated singer, or it could be nominative plural.
· 02:59 – In the second collection, masculine said we could be
· 03:03 – genitive singular or nominative plural, so you’ve got to lookout
· 03:08 – for those kind of differences.
· 03:11 – This week we will look at nouns which have a slightly different
· 03:14 – ending. In the second
· 03:16 – declension. But nominative singular, like we’re poor.
· 03:21 – Lee, bear again.
· 03:24 – They.
· 03:26 – Look different there, but their
· 03:28 – endings. Immediately become the same. It just depends what you
· 03:33 – and add it onto. So poor boy, poor prayer room, Prairie.
· 03:38 – Libre. A book becomes Libre Libre, so sometimes it
· 03:43 – retains the E. Sometimes it loses the E and then the
· 03:47 – important thing to note is what is this the purpose of these
· 03:52 – cases? What do they do? We’ve already seen that the nominative
· 03:56 – is for the subject of the
· 03:58 – sentence. Accused of is for the object of the sentence. The
· 04:04 – genitive is for the possessor of
· 04:07 – an object. So the goals book or the book of the girl. The
· 04:11 – girl would have to go into the genitive case.
· 04:15 – In English, the genitive is often represented by of or an
· 04:20 – apostrophe, so just watch out what’s going on there, date if
· 04:25 – it’s two or four, the word dative comes from a Latin verb,
· 04:31 – which will be looking at this week, and it becomes a learning
· 04:36 – verb to learn. Doe Dorie I give.
· 04:40 – So give two SO two or four. You’re giving a book to the girl
· 04:47 – you need to put her Twilight into the dative, where lie to
· 04:53 – the slave said. Woe to the
· 04:55 – slaves serwis. And the ablative is used for by with or from,
· 05:01 – very often with prepositions, and sometimes without
· 05:05 – prepositions. So if we’re going with a sword gladi Yo, and you
· 05:10 – need the ablative case.
· 05:14 – So that also brought in at this point are the second attention
· 05:18 – neuter nouns. The majority of endings from genitive onwards
· 05:21 – are the same as second declension masculine, but what
· 05:25 – you need to note is that in normative singular ends in, Umm.
· 05:30 – And they could have similar. Singular is the same, UM then?
· 05:36 – In the plural, Bella Bella surrendered a so there could be
· 05:40 – some confusion with other nouns. So just be careful. You will
· 05:44 – have to learn a list of neuter
· 05:46 – nouns. Sometimes that’s all you can do, or most
· 05:50 – times all you can do you have to learn the list.
· 05:54 – And finally, this week will be looking at prepositions which
· 05:59 – take the ablative, and they’ve got our AB by or from.
· 06:05 – AOX from out of so the difference between R and AB or A
· 06:10 – at X if it’s just the R or the A, The next word begins with a
· 06:16 – consonant. If the next word begins with a vowel, will have
· 06:20 – to say AB or X come means with…