By the time an Australian student is 15, they will have already spent as many as 11,000 hours at school. Many formative social and emotional experiences occur at school. Because of this, there is increasing curiosity about what elements of this environment have the most impact on students’ mental health and wellbeing. School connectedness – […] … learn more→
Author Archives: Kevin
What role does high school play in mental health? Feeling connected to other students and staff is key
Friendship is built over time, through ordinary moments – I teach lonely college students to notice them
The first skill I learned when I became a political science professor nearly 20 years ago was how to quiet a room full of chatty undergraduates. These days, I often walk into a silent room, with students staring at their phones and barely acknowledging the classmates beside them. As I read more about the United […] … learn more→
Unis and schools are moving away from AI‑detection software. They should stop using it altogether
Since artificial intelligence (AI) software ChatGPT was released in 2022, teachers have been looking for ways to tell when AI has been used to generate text in assessments. AI-detection software is still sold by some tech companies, such as Pangram, as a potential solution. This month, the New South Wales Education Standards Authority updated its […] … learn more→
“Not sufficiently…”: the objections EU evaluators raise most often — and how to answer them before you submit
I write European research proposals for a living, and I also evaluate them. Sitting on the assessor’s side changed how I read my own drafts. When you score proposals against a rubric, at speed, alongside a dozen other proposals, you stop looking for brilliance and start looking for reasons to be reassured — and reasons […] … learn more→
Can you lend me a hand? Researchers are developing wearable robotic limbs
How many times have you asked someone to hold open a door while carrying something, or fumbled with your front-door keys with your arms full of shopping? Wouldn’t it be great if you could give yourself the extra hand you need? This is one of the goals of human movement augmentation, a new and growing […] … learn more→
The Library Under Siege: How the Trump Administration Is Turning Bookshelves into a Cultural Battleground
In the United States, libraries are caught between threats to their funding and a growing offensive against books deemed “inappropriate” by various fundamentalist groups. Behind the book removals, pressure is intensifying against librarians themselves, who are sometimes victims of harassment and intimidation. The “book war” has become a national political battle: the demands of religious […] … learn more→
Girls or boys: the prestige of their studies does not influence their career choices in the same way.
Why do people choose one university course over another? Is it primarily a question of career prospects and salary expectations? The research we are publishing in the journal Formation et emploi shows that another factor plays a central role: the social prestige associated with professions. But this prestige does not affect girls and boys in […] … learn more→
Why AI resembles a charismatic religious leader
People are turning to artificial intelligence for a seemingly unending variety of reasons. Many ask AI what to cook for dinner or how to develop a workout plan. Some even rely on AI to create school handouts or revise a work email. Increasingly, however, they are asking it different kinds of questions. How do I […] … learn more→
How to know if you can trust an AI’s answer to your question
I recently typed a simple question into Google search: How much screen time is too much for teenagers? Instead of presenting links, as Google had been doing for many years, it gave me an AI-generated answer. The artificial intelligence agent cited a number, then complicated that reply, noting that quality and balance of time could […] … learn more→
Learning another language may be one of the best ways to keep your brain healthy as you age
Learning another language is a highly complex mental activity. It requires people to remember words, distinguish unfamiliar sounds, recognize patterns, work out grammatical rules and retrieve the right expression at the right moment. All of this happens while listening, interpreting and preparing a response. Could all this mental activity also help keep an aging brain […] … learn more→
