Ed Tech for Grad School – Doing More with Less
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Regardless of the way a grad student leans, it looks like almost all of us are combining digital and analog tools to make it through our programs.
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Introduction
Grad students are sometimes an overlooked community on college campuses. They’re a smaller group than undergraduates, of course, and they have a different relationship to the university, whose broad cultural mandate is to educate the future citizens of the world. They have one foot in both camps — student and teacher. So, we were curious about how grad students at UIC use educational technology. Are they forward thinking, embracing the newest tools as fast as they come out? Or has their training made them skeptical of new tools?
Before you keep reading, if you’re a grad student at UIC and you have thoughts about this, we would love to hear from you. Email LTS’s learning design specialist, James Sharpe, and set up a time to get some coffee!
Questions
- What tools or apps do you rely on to manage your schedule, track tasks, or stay organized? How do they help you?
- Are there any tools you’ve found particularly helpful for balancing coursework, research, and other responsibilities? Why?
- What tools or platforms do you use to find and organize research materials (e.g., journal articles, books)? How do they improve your workflow?
- Which writing tools (like Grammarly or AI tools) do you use, and how do they support your writing process?
- What’s one tool or app you think every grad student should know about, and why?
- Have you ever been disappointed by a tool? What didn’t work for you, and what would have made it better?
It’s A Spectrum
One of the first things we noticed was that grad students seem to fall along a spectrum in their uptake of ed tech. Some prefer the old school mindset — pen, paper, a quiet library and as much time as the world can give them. Others say hey, why sweat the repetitive stuff? If a system of levers and pullies can make my bibliography for me, show me the schematics.
It’s probably not too surprising that this spectrum exists. And it’s also not surprising that ed tech differs depending on the kind of grad work you do. Humanities grad students are, perhaps, a little more inclined toward pen, paper, and library. (I confess — as one myself, I certainly lean this way). STEM grad students may lean more favorably toward adopting new tools for making life easier. Heck, there’s a chance they’re making the tools themselves.
Insights
Regardless of the way a grad student leans, it looks like almost all of us are combining digital and analog tools to make it through our programs. So how do grad students manage their busy lives?
An engineering grad student explained, “I mainly rely on alarms and the Notes app on my phone for keeping track of tasks.” They also highly recommended gizmoa.com, so check it out!
An education grad student reported using Excel to construct broad schedule outlines, then using a physical journal to fill in the details.
When it comes to writing, one of the biggest tasks grad students have to learn to master is tracking citations. That’s where programs like Zotero and Overleaf come in handy.
Another major task, of course, is just “getting good” at writing. AI has changed the game on this score. Our engineering informant noted that he uses ChatGPT, asking it questions like “How can I make this sentence more friendly or welcoming?” to help revise his writing.
Grammarly, which UIC provides to students for free, can also be used for this kind of task. Our education informant remarked that “it has actually helped remind me of certain prescriptive grammar/punctuation rules I’ve forgotten, like when to use a comma to combine independent clauses, or when to use which vs. that as pronouns. I’ve found that after reviewing those mistakes through Grammarly enough times, I’ve actually learned when to use what and don’t find those mistakes popping up as often anymore!”
Conclusions — “More Research Is Currently Needed”
This is the cliché about research; it always concludes with the need for more research. We would love to hear about how grad students feel about AI in higher education, but besides ChatGPT and Grammarly for writing help, it doesn’t look like our first round of interlocutors had much need of them. In fact, it looks like our grad school informants were more tuned into highly specialized applications that met highly specific needs.
The phrase “information overload” is fifty years old now, and today it seems like it’s not just information that there’s “too much of.” There are a million tools out there to experiment with, and who has the time to try them all? But that’s just one more reason for us to keep talking to students and hearing about what works and what doesn’t.