One and a half decades on Google Keep

So I did a thing. I am trying to organise myself better, and I have one and a half decades worth of notes on Google Keep, in various accounts. I tagged all the notes that were work related, set the view as list, saved as pdf and then asked NotebookLM to collate my key insights from this time.

Figured I might as well share:

“Throughout the years, as documented in your worknotes, a rich tapestry of insights has been gained, reflecting on pedagogy, professional identity, the impact of technology, and personal values. These insights often challenge conventional wisdom and highlight critical considerations for academic practice and personal development.”

On Learning, Engagement, and Pedagogy:

• Aesthetics matter for engagement: The visual and structural appeal of learning materials, such as a book’s font, structure, or layout, can significantly influence deep engagement with its content. If these elements are unappealing, true engagement may not occur.
• “Good is good enough” for efficiency: There’s an insight that striving for “perfection” in teaching materials, like PowerPoint presentations, can be counterproductive. It’s important to question how perfect something truly needs to be and how much information can realistically be included and taught.
• Craft embodies theory: The notion that “teaching doesn’t need theory” is challenged by the insight that any craft, including teaching, inherently involves and teaches theory, models, and frameworks.
• The learning environment is a “portal”: The specific physical or digital format of a classroom (a “rectangle in a building” or “above a keyboard”) is less important than its function as a “portal” through which learning occurs.
• Staff well-being is foundational to student experience: A crucial insight is that “students first = staff first,” meaning that staff must be supported to provide a positive learning experience for students, as they are essential to that experience.
• Reflection requires a safe space: It’s important to formulate reflective questions that offer a choice for engagement, recognising that deep reflection can be uncomfortable. Participants should feel safe to disengage if they are not ready to explore certain topics.
• Nature and nurture are a complex interplay: The “dusty debate” of nature versus nurture is understood as a complex interplay between both factors, rather than an “either/or” scenario.

On Professional Identity, Impact, and Organisational Processes:

• Impact is difficult to prove but crucial to demonstrate: Proving impact, particularly for Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship (LTS) staff, is identified as a significant challenge. An insight is the need to influence processes and develop systems for “impact case studies” to help staff effectively prove their contributions.
• Professional identity holds power: Devaluing a profession by denying its name or distinct identity is harmful. There is power in a name, and stripping it away can lead to invisibility, redundancy, and job insecurity. Personal experience reveals the profound, even physical, impact of threats to professional identity and job security.
• Workload models need comprehensive accounting: A deeper understanding of “teaching load” reveals the need to include all forms of teaching, such as one-to-one coaching, mentoring, and continuous professional development (CPD) sessions, not just formal course teaching. Similarly, editorial and ethics committee work need to be properly counted, and funding for conferences and workshops should be clearly allocated.
• Processes can be counterproductive and disillusioning: Regularly filling in administrative forms can be counterproductive to actual work, especially without adequate support for colleagues with neurodivergent conditions like ADHD. Disillusionment arises when project quality is secondary to navigating an unspoken “hidden curriculum” of institutional politics.
• Strategic investment yields greater returns than short-term savings: Institutions often make decisions based on short-term financial savings, but a key insight is that strategically utilising the reputation and intellectual capital that comes with academic contracts, and investing in pedagogical knowledge, yields a much stronger Social Return on Investment (SROI) than causing long-term financial and reputational damage. This includes recognising the reputational damage caused by undermining established expertise.

On Technology, Especially Artificial Intelligence (AI):

• AI is a paradigm shift, not just a tool: A profound insight is that Artificial Intelligence is not merely a tool like a dishwasher or a calculator; it represents a “paradigm shift” with the potential to fundamentally change humanity, not necessarily for the better. It’s crucial not to equate AI with simpler technologies.
• Information acquisition is not learning: A consistent insight is the critical distinction between using AI to obtain information and genuine learning. Simply improving assessment performance with AI is not the same as improved learning.
• AI systems can embed biases: It’s recognised that AI systems can be trained with “strongly built-in misogynistic biases,” leading to a privileged and romanticised image of AI’s benefits that overlooks inherent inequalities.
• AI for pragmatism when resources are limited: Despite the critical stance, AI can be pragmatically used for purposes such as translation in academic publishing when funding is unavailable, even with the understanding that the translation may be imperfect.

On Personal Growth and Values:

• Beyond the “time barrier”: While time is a significant barrier, it’s often a “safe space to hide behind” to avoid acknowledging other, deeper barriers.
• Leadership requires specific permissions/directives: A personal leadership blind spot identified is not always recognising when it’s necessary to explicitly give permission or tell people exactly what to do, as these actions do not “sit well” personally.
• Success extends beyond financial gain: A powerful insight challenges conventional wisdom that equates success solely with high income. Instead, success can be defined by having a job one loves, that has purpose, and aligns with personal values.
• Distraction is detrimental to success: Distraction is identified as a major obstacle, capable of stunting and destroying one’s cognitive abilities and ultimately hindering success.
• Selective advice-taking: An insight suggests that one should be discerning about who to take advice from, specifically avoiding those who are not in a life position one aspires to.