Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning

Dr. Tommy Lee, a behavioral neuroscientist in Barnard College at Columbia University’s Department of Neuroscience and Behavior, joins Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning to challenge one of higher ed’s most persistent assumptions: that memorization is a low-level task standing in the way of real learning. Dr. Lee’s research considers how the brain forms episodic memory, including our memories of experiences and spaces.

In this episode, we tackle the dead idea that remembering and thinking are opposites. Lee complicates this notion by drawing on his own research into the hippocampus and other studies on working memory, disproving the notion that memorization crowds out critical thinking. Lee argues that as AI agents make it easier to “just look up info,” this dead idea is again becoming pervasive in higher education. We end the episode with practical guidance for instructors looking to build retrieval practice into their coursework. The end result is a classroom that lowers the stakes for students, reduces their anxiety, and makes progress more tangible. 

Recommended Readings / References: 

Lee, S. L. T. (Forthcoming 2027). Neuroscience of learning for AI-enhanced teaching. In E. R. Reynolds & B.R. Johnson (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education. Oxford University Press.

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 212–218. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4104_2

Pfeiffer, B. E., & Foster, D. J. (2013). Hippocampal place-cell sequences depict future paths to remembered goals. Nature, 497(7447), Article 7447. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12112

Pan, S. C., & Rickard, T. C. (2018). Transfer of test-enhanced learning: Meta-analytic review and synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 144(7), 710–756. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000151

Cowan, N. (2010). The Magical Mystery Four: How Is Working Memory Capacity Limited, and Why? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(1), 51–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721409359277

Gobet, F., & Simon, H. A. (1996). Recall of rapidly presented random chess positions is a function of skill. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3(2), 159–163. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212414

Qin, S., Cho, S., Chen, T., Rosenberg-Lee, M., Geary, D. C., & Menon, V. (2014). Hippocampal-neocortical functional reorganization underlies children’s cognitive development. Nature Neuroscience, 17(9), 1263–1269. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3788

Bastani, H., Bastani, O., Sungu, A., Ge, H., Kabakcı, Ö., & Mariman, R. (2025). Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(26), e2422633122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2422633122

Smith, A. M., Floerke, V. A., & Thomas, A. K. (2016). Retrieval practice protects memory against acute stress. Science, 354(6315), 1046–1048. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah5067

Haak, D. C., Hille Ris Lambers, J., Pitre, E., & Freeman, S. (2011). Increased Structure and Active Learning Reduce the Achievement Gap in Introductory Biology. Science, 332(6034), 1213–1216. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1204820

Diekelmann, S., & Born, J. (2010). The memory function of sleep. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2762

Thomas Tobin, one of the foremost voices on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), joins us to preview his forthcoming book, UDL at Scale: Whole-Campus Universal Design for Learning. Where his earlier work made UDL manageable for individual instructors, Tobin's new publication asks what happens when an entire campus — including administrators — advocates for and values universal design. Tobin first joined the Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning podcast to discuss inclusive teaching in 2022 (listen to "Student Perceptions of Instructor Authority and Inclusive Teaching").

In this episode, we tackle the dead idea that learners make impartial, rational decisions about how they learn best. Tobin complicates this notion by sharing a contemporary example: students' increased reliance on AI to bypass the fundamental building blocks of learning. He argues that students will thrive as co-designers of learning only when UDL supports underlie those classroom experiences. UDL is only effective when it is possible, permitted, supported, rewarded, and expected across an educational institution at the faculty, student, and administrative levels.

Learn more about our guest’s new publication: Tobin, Thomas J. UDL at Scale: Whole-Campus Universal Design for Learning (Oklahoma University Press, 2026)

Other publications mentioned in this discussion: 

Tobin, Thomas J. Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education (West Virginia University Press, 2018)

Weimer, Maryellen. Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice (Wiley, 2013)

Thomas Tobin, one of the foremost voices on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), joins us to preview his forthcoming book, UDL at Scale: Whole-Campus Universal Design for Learning. Where his earlier work made UDL manageable for individual instructors, Tobin's new publication asks what happens when an entire campus — including administrators — advocates for and values universal design. Tobin first joined the Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning podcast to discuss inclusive teaching in 2022 (listen to "Student Perceptions of Instructor Authority and Inclusive Teaching").

In this episode, we tackle the dead idea that learners make impartial, rational decisions about how they learn best. Tobin complicates this notion by sharing a contemporary example: students' increased reliance on AI to bypass the fundamental building blocks of learning. He argues that students will thrive as co-designers of learning only when UDL supports underlie those classroom experiences. UDL is only effective when it is possible, permitted, supported, rewarded, and expected across an educational institution at the faculty, student, and administrative levels.

Learn more about our guest’s new publication: Tobin, Thomas J. UDL at Scale: Whole-Campus Universal Design for Learning (Oklahoma University Press, 2026)

Other publications mentioned in this discussion: 

Tobin, Thomas J. Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education (West Virginia University Press, 2018)

Weimer, Maryellen. Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice (Wiley, 2013)

For five years, Chris Gallagher, Kristi Girdharry, and Kevin Smith sat down each semester with the same set of twenty Northeastern University students. What began as an analysis of these students’ writing skills evolved into a book on how students often understand the learning process more clearly than faculty recognize. 

Gallagher, Girdharry, and Smith's new book, Getting Learning Right: The Promise of Higher Education, takes aim at some of the myths that circulate in public discourse about college - that students enroll simply for the credential or that everything can be learned online, for example. In this episode, we focus instead on what the students themselves had to say about their own undergraduate experience. These anecdotes and the insights they provide might just be the inspiration we need to reshape the future of higher education. 

Learn more about our guests’ new publication, Getting Learning Right: The Promise of Higher Education (MIT Press).

Other articles mentioned in this conversation: “Not Just Another AI Statement: Modeling Process and Collaboration in Higher Education” (Inside Higher Ed)

In this special bonus episode, we step away from our typical one-on-one interview format to share excerpts from a student panel that our host Amanda Irvin moderated at the recent "Reimagining Teaching and Learning in the Age of AI" Forum. This event was a joint effort coordinated by the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning, the Data Science Institute, Columbia Alliance, the School of Engineering, and Teachers College.

Four Columbia students, representing a range of disciplines, backgrounds, and relationships with AI, reflect candidly on what it's actually like to be a learner in this moment. They share how AI functions in their academic lives, what they wish faculty understood about their use of it, and what they need from instructors as the landscape continues to shift. The conversation is less a debate about AI and more an exploration about the relational fabric of learning. 

A full transcript with speaker attributions and bios, as well as a link to the video recording, are available in the show notes.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Madisson Whitman, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Assistant Director of Curriculum Development at Columbia University's Center for Science and Society, and Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. Drawing on her work in Science and Technology Studies (STS), Whitman challenges one of the most pervasive assumptions of our moment: that AI in higher education is a foregone conclusion.

In her recent letter to the editor in the Columbia Spectator, a student-run campus newspaper, Whitman offered a direct rebuttal to the sentiment that "AI is here to stay, so what does that mean for Columbia?" Instead, she invites us to resist the sense of "technological inevitability" that pervades so much of today's academic dialogue and to ask what we might be foreclosing when we don’t question AI’s presence in education.

Together, we trace the through-lines between pandemic-era surveillance, "dysfunction creep," and the quiet ways AI is being folded into the learning management systems. We also consider what it looks like to teach with AI rather than through it. Dr. Whitman reminds us that progress is never as linear as it's sold. Educators must keep learning at the center of the conversation, even when urgency and marketing do their best to crowd it out.

Other materials referenced in this episode: 

"AI Is Here to Stay: What Does That Mean for Columbia?" — Columbia Spectator

"Letter to the Editor: AI Is Not Inevitable" — Madisson Whitman

"A Rant About Technology" — Ursula K. Le Guin

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Lucy Appert, Senior Director of Teaching Excellence & Innovation at NYU Arts & Science, and host of the new NYU Office of Teaching Excellence and Innovation’s podcast, What Learning Looks Like. As an academic with 25+ years of teaching experience and a deep commitment to student-centered practices, Lucy shared with us her insights on what learning truly means in an age of AI-driven "efficiency."

Together, we discuss a key problem in higher education: while educators may accept the messy, developmental nature of learning, students are being marketed an idealized reality where AI-supplemented education is frictionless and instantaneous. The What Learning Looks Like podcast offers a counter-messaging to this misleading EdTech and AI marketing. Instead, true learning involves struggle, synthesis, and personal transformation. Lucy also challenges one of higher education's most persistent “Dead Ideas”: that we cannot change. From pandemic pivots to new faculty communities exploring AI in the classroom, it is clear that higher education is very capable of fluctuation and change. 

Explore the What Learning Looks Like podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-learning-looks-like/id1839490516 

Other materials referenced in this episode: 

Learning Objectives & Bloom’s Taxonomy

In this episode, we talk with Mike Whitenton, Director of Academic Initiatives at Interfaith America (IA). Mike works at the intersection of rhetoric, religious narrative, and cognitive science to help educators create classroom spaces where students can engage meaningfully across differences.

Our conversation explores what pluralism means in practice and how it intersects with existing research and practice to foster inclusivity and belonging in the classroom. Mike introduces listeners to the three core principles of pluralism: Respect for diverse identities (even those that make us uncomfortable); Relate to those around us in a way that is genuine and mutually enriching; and Cooperate together in the service of the common good. Rather than avoiding disagreement, pluralism asks us to lean into it intentionally. In an educational environment, this means giving students structured opportunities to develop empathy, practice perspective-taking, and build bridges before they encounter real-world conflicts. By creating low-stakes opportunities for students to engage with divergent perspectives, we help them develop the skills they'll need long after they leave our classrooms.

Learn more about Interfaith America: https://www.interfaithamerica.org/ 

Other materials referenced in this episode: 

• Eck, D. L. (n.d.). The Pluralism Project. Harvard University. https://pluralism.org/
• Ed Up Experience Podcast [Audio podcast]. https://www.edupexperience.com/
• Interfaith America. (n.d.). Pedagogies for pluralism. https://www.interfaithamerica.org/resources/pedagogies-for-pluralism/
• Interfaith America. (n.d.). Pluralism Texts Bibliography. https://www.interfaithamerica.org/resources/pluralism-texts-bibliography/ 
• Interfaith America. (n.d.). Teaching & Learning Pluralism Cohort. https://www.interfaithamerica.org/grants/teaching-learning-pluralism-cohort/ 
• Zangwill, I. (1909). The melting-pot: Drama in four acts. Macmillan.

Welcome to Season 11! In our opening episode, we sit down with Karen Costa, a faculty development facilitator specializing in online pedagogy, trauma awareness, and course/community design. Our conversation focused on her forthcoming book, An Educator's Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success, to be published in January 2026. 

In this conversation, Karen challenges educators to rethink how we frame ADHD in the classroom. In reframing ADHD as a normal variant of the human experience rather than a disorder to be corrected, we can avoid ableist language that undermines our pedagogical aims in the classroom. Karen also shared practical strategies for supporting ADHD students, including offering multiple assignment formats and providing clear task lists and deadlines. Both of these approaches strike a delicate balance between creative freedom and helpful constraints in course design. Throughout our discussion, Karen reminds us that reducing shame in the classroom and celebrating students' diverse strengths may be the most powerful tools we have as educators.

Learn more about Karen Costa’s work in her forthcoming book:

Costa, K. (2026). An Educator's Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Other materials referenced in this episode include:

Costa, K. (2020). 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos: A Guide for Online Teachers and Flipped Classes. Routledge. 

Karen Costa’s website: https://www.100faculty.com/

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Robert Gray, Associate Professor of University Pedagogy at the University of Bergen in Norway, to explore a fundamental question about the purpose of higher education: should learning be an act of consumption or production? Maybe the best learning experiences don't simply ask students to absorb information—they invite students to actively re-write and co-create knowledge with the teacher.

Dr. Gray's research draws on Roland Barthes' concepts of "readerly" and "writerly" texts, arguing that valuable learning happens when students are encouraged to "re-write" their classroom materials and become active producers of meaning. We discuss how students bring diverse perspectives and contexts to shared texts and lectures, creating something new and innovative from the materials we provide. As educators, we are challenged to foster an active, collaborative campus culture where learning becomes genuinely additive and co-creative.

Learn more about Dr. Gray’s research in his article: “Learning Is [Like] an Act of Writing: The Writerly Turn in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education”

Other materials referenced in this episode include:

Barthes, R. (1975). The pleasure of the text (R. Miller, Trans.). Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1973).