Punk Pedagogies

I hear this sentiment often in STEM circles. There is a belief that science should be purely objective, stripped of emotion and narrative. But I am here to tell you that data never exists in a vacuum. Data is always a reflection of the world it comes from. To truly understand it, students need context. At Betty Ivy Reads, we believe that narrative is the most powerful technology for learning.

Our brains are wired for stories. We remember myths, legends, and anecdotes far better than we remember dry lists of facts. Yet, when we teach data science, we often strip away the context. We give students the “Iris dataset” or the “Titanic dataset” without any real connection to the why.

“Data is just numbers. It doesn’t need a story.”

We use creative storytelling—specifically the journey of Betty Ivy—to contextualize technical concepts. Betty is an alien marooned on Earth. Through her eyes, we look at human data with fresh perspective.

When we analyze housing data in Vermont, it isn’t just rows and columns; it’s Betty trying to understand why there are so many vacant homes in a “feeder state” like New Vermont. It becomes a social investigation. When we clean a dataset, it isn’t just removing null values; it’s Betty filtering out “interstellar static” from a communication relay to find a signal from home.

This narrative “hook” does three critical things:

It Fosters Inclusion: By using a sci-fi narrative, we level the playing field. No student has a prior advantage based on their background knowledge of Earth-specific industries (like finance or baseball). Everyone is a newcomer to the world of Betty Ivy, making it a more inclusive environment for diverse learners.

It Captivates Learners: It blends art, poetry, and code to improve retention. Students aren’t just learning syntax; they are solving a mystery. The emotional engagement keeps them going when the debugging gets tough.

It Provides Context: In the real world, data is messy and bound to specific business or social problems. Our narrative simulates this. Students learn that the meaning of the data dictates how they should treat it.

Blends art, poetry, and code to captivate students and improve retention.

We treat code as a language—a way to tell stories about the world. Whether we are analyzing fuel consumption on a starship or the demographics of a lunar colony, the narrative drives the analysis.

It’s not just a textbook; it’s an adventure. We believe that by bringing the humanities back into STEM, we create better data scientists—ones who are empathetic, critical thinkers, and effective communicators. Data science needs storytelling. And sometimes, to tell the best story about humanity, you need an alien to tell it.

The academic world is currently facing an existential threat, and its name is Generative AI.

For decades, we relied on a social contract: we assign work, and students do it to demonstrate their learning. But tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot have shattered that contract. Traditional plagiarism detection tools—like Turnitin—are no longer sufficient. They check for matching text, but AI generates new text. If a prompt is generic, an AI can answer it perfectly, often better than the average student.

The creative storytelling is an ‘unfair advantage’ that is difficult for students to plagiarize using standard AI tools.

This has created an Academic Integrity Crisis. Instructors are terrified. How do we assess genuine understanding when a machine can generate code, write essays, and solve proofs in seconds? We are seeing a retreat to pen-and-paper exams and surveillance software, neither of which supports a positive learning environment.

But there is a better way. The solution isn’t to ban AI; it’s to design curriculum that is “AI-resistant” by nature.

At Betty Ivy Reads, we use narrative-driven content as our “unfair advantage.” Here is the secret: AI models are trained on the internet. They know everything about generic coding problems. They can write a “Python script to calculate the Fibonacci sequence” in their sleep.

But they don’t know Betty Ivy. They don’t know the specific fuel consumption rates of a fictional mining ship on the moon of Barrata. They don’t know the unique socio-political context of the “Neon Punk” universe we have created.

AI-generated content makes it difficult for instructors to assess genuine student understanding and originality.

By weaving technical problems into a unique, bespoke story, we create assignments that are authentic and incredibly difficult to plagiarize. If a student asks ChatGPT to “solve the Betty Ivy fuel problem,” the AI will hallucinate or give a generic answer that doesn’t fit the specific constraints of our story. To solve the problem, the student must engage with the narrative. They must read the context. They must apply the code to the specific, fictional dataset we provide.

This approach transforms assessment. We aren’t just asking students to write code; we are asking them to solve a problem within a specific context. This requires critical thinking, interpretation, and creativity—skills that AI still struggles to replicate authentically.

We call this Plagiarism-Resistant Design. It’s not about policing students; it’s about creating work that is meaningful enough that they want to do it, and specific enough that they have to do it.

Furthermore, our open-source notebooks encourage students to document their thought process. We assess the journey, not just the output. By blending art, poetry, and code, we create a learning experience that is uniquely human.

The age of the generic assignment is over. If we want to save academic integrity, we have to get creative. We have to tell better stories.