Instructors everywhere responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with new ideas and strategies for teaching students. Georgetown University’s Maggie Debelius is the co-editor of a new book of essays highlighting this work with the intention of helping colleges and universities become more resilient centers of learning.

Here, Maggie joins host Jim Lang to discuss the book, titled Recentering Learning: Complexity, Resilience, and Adaptability in Higher Education, and explore how higher education should evolve in our post-pandemic, AI era.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Where the idea for Recentering Learning came from
• The undeniable power of residential experiences, but the moments of beauty brought about by remote learning in the midst of the pandemic’s disruption
• The ongoing importance of resilience to meet future challenges
• Why Maggie and her co-editors made sure Recentering Learning features contributions from staff and students as well as faculty
• What institutional responses to the pandemic say about higher ed’s ability to adapt in the long term when there is no immediate crisis to contend with
• How the prevalence of generative AI makes the central premise of the book—that is, the need to recenter what makes for good learning—even more urgent
• Maggie’s advice for recentering learning for both individual faculty and institutions more broadly, including by prioritizing relationship-building

Guest Bio: Maggie Debelius is the senior director of faculty initiatives at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown University, where she also serves as a professor of English and of learning, design, and technology. With Joshua Kim and Edward Maloney, she is co-editor of the essay collection Recentering Learning: Complexity, Resilience, and Adaptability in Higher Education, published in December 2024 by Johns Hopkins University Press. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University and an M.A. from Georgetown.

Resource Mentioned:

• Book: Recentering Learning: Complexity, Resilience, and Adaptability in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press)

Designed for Learning is hosted by Jim Lang, a professor of the practice in Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence and the author of several influential books on teaching. The podcast is produced by Notre Dame Learning’s Office of Digital Learning. For more, visit learning.nd.edu. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn.