The New Rules for Library Research

Transcript The New Rules for Library Research Kevin Hogan OK. Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Innovations in Education. eSchool News's podcast on the latest and greatest happenings in K12, 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 Hsu, the visionary founder of power notes. 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. OK, Wilson, thanks so much for joining me today. It's nice to see you, although now remotely versus the press room unity, right? Wilson Hsu Yeah, it's great to be here, Kevin, it's been. A, quite frankly, a. Crazy couple of weeks since Isty, you know, with the holiday and all. But you know, we've been super busy here because of AI and a lot of the other circumstances they're happening. In education. Kevin Hogan Yeah, see, it didn't take a minute for one of us to say AI right? Wilson Hsu I mean that's 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 that the show there was certainly a good amount of hype, but also a good amount of reason for the hype, right? I mean, it's still 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's. It's just, it's kind of it's it's all-encompassing. Wilson Hsu Yeah, I think that people are still figuring out what it means to them and education. Both are kind of coming together and as we this semester coming up will be a big test of how schools are reacting and how AI can fit. I think it'll be the first semester where schools are actually being more proactive about it rather than reactive. So I think that can be. Right. Kevin Hogan One of the things I think that piques everyone's fascination so much is the the possibilities, scenarios of schools, right? So I mean, for good or for or for bad? I mean for fearing it you know, and usually it comes down to the idea of cheating. And you know, when 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. 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. They remember having, right? 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 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. So, I mean, you started your company in 2017, right? I mean, so you're about five or six years in? Say I 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. Wilson Hsu Right. Kevin Hogan 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 are more often now I hear media specialist as much as librarian looks like today through the use of products such as of power notes. Wilson Hsu Yeah. So I. Mean 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 it's it's pretty different. There were still libraries with like stacks of books and stuff like that. I I don't see a ton of that any. More you know, people will find their material on computers. There is no more card catalog. Certainly the 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, when you talk to folks throughout the school or the university, in my mind, they are 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 because they do understand the products and the needs and the tech needs 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 and the things that we're doing. Are things that involve AI to get students into the library? Not physically, maybe, but into the libraries materials usually online AI is going to be very good at doing things that students tend to struggle with, especially junior students that are starting out with on 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 since I started started talking to faculty and librarians. They struggle with finding those things for the topics that they're that they're trying to look up. So how do you look? Something up when you don't know what. Search for so like a lot of the features that we're building are, hey, you can do AI and power nodes, you can have the AI give you search terms and 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 or earnestness to, like, come up with their own search terms, right? Cause back in 1992, I had to come up with my own search terms. You know like. There's this. Oh, it's almost like the argument I remember of graphing calculators. Right. And it's like. Put them to 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 that was an artificial intelligence that enhanced the way that, that you learn. And here we are, 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. Yeah, I think. Wilson Hsu That's that's always going to 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 going to prioritize in terms of teaching, like that's not. My job, as you know someone that works at a net tech company, that's really the faculty and the librarians job to decide what they think is going to be important. Understanding how technology is evolving, kind of alongside what they're teaching. So they're going to have to react as well. Yes, there are certain things that if technology just makes the learning of that thing. 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, you know, some automation, maybe that's OK. That's happened throughout history. Certainly my my kids right now are going through grammar school. One of them is learning to do cursive, and one of them is not. Do we need to learn how to? Do cursive like? I don't know. Kevin Hogan Right. Wilson Hsu That's a question. And so that's another one of those evolving things where it's like I really. I am going. To 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 going to 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, in, in their workforce and and whatever they're doing after education, you know, they're they're in the best position possible to succeed. And if I don't need to learn how to do cursive, maybe that's OK. I don't know. And maybe they learned 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 to watch it all happen because. I think AI is just going to make it all go fast. Kevin Hogan And we can stop just having the conversation or whether or not I 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 to sail. So now it's just how to how to most do it in a in a way. That is best for for students. Wilson Hsu No, I think that's the key question right now. We're, I'm at these conferences. When I was at Isti, 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 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 in like New York Times. 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. 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, right, the paper on block. Speaker Yeah, yeah. Wilson Hsu Perhaps not the best use of AI because it can get you into a lot of trouble, but there are things that I can really do. A great job. At for instance, you know 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 are 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. 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. Speaker Right. Kevin Hogan Right. That's good. Now what? Is I know one of the features you have with power notes and there's an emphasis and you mentioned. Law school is the the the citation features and functions right, 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 you 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. It's like you use Wikipedia because of the citations at the bottom. Yeah, those things work out. We find that it will be accurate and I I think the latest surveys I've seen, it's like Wikipedia turns out to be more accurate than than you finds like a crowdsourcing than than in an encyclopedia. Talk about how that works with with your stuff. Wilson Hsu No, that that's a great point. I mean, Wikipedia is a great example too. I mean, in the beginning of power notes, 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 like a a blank. No, like, do not go there. This was in the, you know, in the in the late 2000s and and now when I talk to teachers and. It's like, yeah, and libraries use. Yeah, but use it in these scenarios. It's not an academic work, so you're probably not going to want to cite it for certain things, but getting some background knowledge is not a bad idea. It's fast. You'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. You're gonna understand when to use it when not to. And and hopefully your librarians, your faculty, your educators, are going to be the ones to teach you that. And the way that power nose works generally is. It's really there to help you find those sources. Use those sources, use that library content. What we're going to do is we're just going to 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 power notes and then we're going to generate that citation. There's no other easier way to do it than we can find. And 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 and giving the right people credit. But it's a it's a big time stock for students in terms of like having to go through each step of finding every single citation and making sure that. The formats correct depending on what style you're using. Mike, that's not easy and I'll tell you another thing that we we always do 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 power notes and the citations are like, done much. More easily and yeah, you got to check them. Like we actually have disclaimers in there recommended by librarians to check everything once. Once you do that, like, it just makes the whole process more enjoyable and it's more enjoyable. They're going to learn more because, I mean, learning should be enjoyable and. I get it. I mean, I did citations forever and. I hated it. Tell you. Tell the truth. 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 that going through the footnotes and putting the footnotes in them. He or she's not going to look. At these, I think he just knew. Wilson Hsu Yeah, yeah, we've gotta be better. Kevin Hogan They think they were. Speaker Right. Kevin Hogan So so yes, you know, just just if nothing else is smarter, footnote makes makes the world a better place. Wilson Hsu Yeah, I think so. And you, you don't want to not put. It in that's that's just like a. No go zone, right? So, uh, let's get it done. Speaker Right. Wilson Hsu Do it efficiently. Keep yourself happy. Keep yourself wanting. To do the work. Kevin Hogan Yeah, but and that seems to be a function. That we can watch also get more sophisticated and smarter as we go along. And so even I'm just kind of going off the tangent here. But you know when you would watch it, a presidential debate and a candidate would say something, and then they would try to have, like, a live action fact checker. Go along with it. I could see that would be an AI. Could be something that could like. Just like flag a, a real time conversation, not even necessarily like a historical document. Wilson Hsu I don't know if I would trust today's version of AI to do that, but I can 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 librarians purpose, you know, information literacy, being able to determine what's authoritative and what's not, those are all things that are going to 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 like. Two days after that debate, like, who cares, right. And so having that information right there and like it's going to be tough. I mean, I've seen like the news channels and. The New York Times. All Fact Check. Real time and. It's tough, tough. Kevin Hogan Yeah, it's, it's, it's it's clumsy, yeah. Wilson Hsu Yeah, and. And so you know, maybe maybe the AI gives them a head start. They have a couple of people checking that and and they're good to go. And maybe that just makes it, you know, more robust, more reliable and and and just better for everyone. Kevin Hogan And when it comes to the students and students using your products in, in, for instance, using the citation functions, but all sorts of. Of it, is there a learning curve for them or do you find that now and maybe especially because they've been remote or hybrid the last several years have been that this is just kind of? Part of the way that they learn anyway. Wilson Hsu We always try to 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. 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 like select something. On a page. The things that they. They're going to have to learn more about is, how to then check it because they're not. Just going to look at and be. Like. Yeah, that's APA. Speaker Yeah. Yeah, right. Wilson Hsu They're going to have to pull out a. Reference source that says. This is what APA is and then like. Right. That's what they're gonna need to do and and that still takes work. And that's 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 going to 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. Because, I mean, we use all of the other kind of reference management tools out there. There's a reason that undergrads don't use because it's just too hard. Speaker Right, right. Kevin Hogan Right. Right now we could go on for a while about this obviously. But as we wrap things up here, give me 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, in three years, it is the what sort of conversations will be will be having the. Wilson Hsu Well, I don't. Think AI will be on on the on the table for conversations. I I think it will be so embedded into education that it's it's like zoom like no one like and zoom happened really quickly right? Kevin Hogan Right. Wilson Hsu No one, 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 like no one knew how to use zoom and everyone's freaking out. I think the. Same sort of things gonna happen with AI. I think it's going to be a little slower and I think there's going to 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, there are a lot of aspects from an educational standpoint that the delivery mechanism is. It's important and it is. And that's that's the thing we learned after the pandemic, right? With, you know, things things, people struggling with, you know, 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. But it's a good amount of time and I. Think what's really going to drive it is that students are going to be using it. Right, they're already. I mean, I've seen surveys, I've talked. Anecdotally to students. As far as I know, they're. All using it. Yeah, 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? Right. And that 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. Ways that are safe for students as well as safe for faculty, and that's what we're doing. That's what power notes is doing. Like we, we literally worked, I mean primarily with University of Arizona. But especially, but also with some of our other partner schools to create an environment where, yeah, you're doing the research and power nodes like you've always have. But we're layering on that AI piece so that the AI is now part of the power nodes process, and that process is made safe because of the transparency that power nodes gives. To faculty and educators and librarians, what we found, which is interesting because we had our first few classes use use these features. These AI features built into power notes is that you know if students are doing the work in power notes and that work is transparent to faculty. The students are going to cheat. Right. We're not. We're not here to try to catch people cheating because I think no one likes that kind of mentality like the gotcha mentality. Like we're the we're the police. Like, no. One wants to be the. But all we're doing is creating an environment where there's really no incentive to cheat. 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 because we know. I mean this is this is really the crux of like the the big disasters in the popular presses sources that just don't exist. Yeah, I just made stuff. Kevin Hogan Right. Wilson Hsu You know, if the students find like we have features that allow the students to find their own sources, but then integrated with the AI. Like 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 the what AI is good at and then minimizing what AI is. That. So that's kind of. How we we're we're going to. Right. 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 East School News Innovations and Education. Be sure to subscribe for more. Episodes on your favorite podcast platform and go to eschoolnews.com for plenty of more content.