For better or worse, much of the talk about AI’s impact on the purposes and processes of an education continues to focus on cheating: Are students outsourcing their work, and their learning, to tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini? Some high-profile stories have gone so far as to suggest cheating is so rampant that the whole college system is basically collapsing around us.

This month, we’re revisiting our most popular episode to date, a conversation with Tricia Bertram Gallant, coauthor of the 2025 book The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI.

Tricia helps us put the cheating claims into context, providing insights into the deeper questions that we should be asking about academic dishonesty and integrity and sharing pedagogical strategies for adapting to AI’s widespread availability. 

Key Topics Discussed:

• Why students cheat (spoiler: the reasons aren’t new)
• The role of “neutralizing,” or moral justifications, in allowing people to view cheating as bad in the abstract but not in their current situation
• Not putting the burden to intuit the purpose of an assignment on students
• How AI has changed cheating, but not why students do it
• Experimenting with AI tools so you can create guardrails for students—and why doing so doesn’t mean you think less of them as people
• Strategies for communicating effectively with students about generative AI
• Rethinking when, why, and how writing is assigned, including the benefits of having students complete some of that work in the classroom
• The potential of pairing written exams with oral assessments—which it turns out students often appreciate
• How Tricia suggests instructors react when suspecting a student has cheated

Guest Bio: Tricia Bertram Gallant is the director of the Academic Integrity Office and Triton Testing Center at the University of California San Diego. President emeritus of the International Center for Academic Integrity, she has more than 20 years of experience as an academic integrity researcher, author, teacher, and practitioner.

Her fifth book, The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI, which she co-authored with David Rettinger, was published in 2025. It is part of the Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed Series at the University of Oklahoma Press edited by Designed for Learning host Jim Lang and Michelle Miller.

Resources Mentioned:

• Book: The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI (University of Oklahoma Press)
• Tricia’s Podcast and Contact Info: theoppositeofcheating.com
• Notre Dame Learning’s Lab for AI in Teaching and Learning (LAITL)
• Related Designed for Learning Episode: Navigating AI’s Evolving Role in Teaching and Learning
• Notre Dame’s Undergraduate Academic Code of Honor
• Episode Transcript

*Note: This episode was originally released in July 2025.

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/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.

It’s something that sounds so basic it’s easy to overlook how daunting it can be:

Learning and remembering student names.

This month, we’re going back to our very first episode (and one of our most popular ones), a conversation with cognitive psychologist and author Michelle D. Miller about why mastering names isn’t simply a memory exercise—it’s a step toward creating a welcoming, inclusive classroom environment.

Key Topics Discussed:

• The science behind why names are uniquely difficult to remember
• The importance of knowing students’ names for fostering connection and inclusivity
• Michelle’s four-step strategy to improve name recall: Attend, Say, Associate, Retrieve
• The role of attention and retrieval in reinforcing memory
• Practical tips for large and small classes, including the use of name tents and group activities
• How learning names enhances engagement and classroom participation

Guest Bio: Michelle D. Miller is a professor of psychological sciences and President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Northern Arizona University. Originally trained in cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience, she now focuses mainly on using the findings of these fields to help faculty choose and use educational technology and design engaging, effective college courses. Her latest book, A Teacher’s Guide to Learning Student Names: Why You Should, Why It’s Hard, How You Can, offers practical, research-backed strategies for educators looking to build a sense of connection with their students.

Resources Mentioned:

• Book: A Teacher’s Guide to Learning Student Names: Why You Should, Why It’s Hard, How You Can (University of Oklahoma Press)
• Michelle’s R3 Substack Newsletter
• Michelle’s LinkedIn
• Episode Transcript

*Note: This episode was originally released in January 2025.

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/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.

For better or worse, the educational theory that seems to have permeated American education more than any other has been the notion of learning styles. Although the definition can vary, the most popular version of the idea argues that people can be categorized as visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners.

From its earliest origins, though, critics have underscored the very thin and tangled research line that supported the learning styles framework, and in recent years cognitive psychologists have tried to toll the death knell of this approach—without much success. Something about the broader idea of learning styles seems so appealing or persuasive that it continues to shape the thinking of many classroom teachers and parents as well as our own self-descriptions.

Thomas Fallace of William Paterson University has written a book titled You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea, tracing the theory from its early origins through a half-century of teaching and thinking about education.

He talks with us about whether learning styles actually exist, whether the concept has helped or harmed students, and—if learning styles don’t exist—whether we should just abandon the idea once and for all.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Cold War psychologist Herman Witkin’s experiments to test whether people could tell they were seated upright in a tilted room and the unlikely link between those studies and the idea of learning styles
• The problematic application of the learning styles idea over time, often emerging out of the efforts of well-intentioned people trying to improve educational outcomes—and in fact succeeding in some cases
• The vagaries of the “kinesthetic learner” label and how it’s been applied disproportionately to Black and Hispanic students, those with special needs, and English-language learners
• Why the idea of learning styles has been so popular and persistent
• Why the danger comes from labelling students as one kind of learner or another, not from varying the modalities in which they engage with course content
• Drawing on the history of research on learning styles as we think about the role of AI-assisted learning

Guest Bio: Thomas Fallace is a professor of education and director of the master’s in secondary education program at William Paterson University. His research focuses largely on curriculum history and the history of ideas in schools, and he is the author of five books, most recently You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea.

Resources Mentioned:

• Thomas’s Book: You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea (The University of Chicago Press)
• Episode Transcript

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/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.

Faculty who teach online know that it comes with distinct benefits, with the ability to reach learners who might not otherwise have access to your course prominent among them.

But as meaningful as that is, the logistical challenges online teaching can present means we don’t necessarily think of it as a “joyful” exercise, particularly in those courses with limited live interaction between instructor and students.

An author and longtime advocate for online teaching, Flower Darby has written a new book titled The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes. It has much to offer anyone teaching in the online modality, whether your course is entirely on-demand or features regular live sessions.

Key Topics Discussed:

• The turning point with a student that reshaped Flower’s approach to online teaching
• Drawing on positive psychology’s PERMA theory of well-being to create a better online learning environment
• Why being a “joyful” teacher entails something different than surface-level happiness
• The importance of introducing energy to and generating energy in online classrooms
• The impact instructors can have on students by doing simple things like knowing their names and genuinely responding to what they’ve said
• Why Flower believes instructors bringing their full selves into their asynchronous classes is the most effective way to counter unethical uses of AI
• Finding creative ways to connect with students and lean into what gives you joy as a teacher to improve their experience and your own

Guest Bio: Flower Darby is an associate director of the Teaching for Learning Center at the University of Missouri, an author, and a keynote speaker. She’s taught in higher ed for more than 30 years in subjects ranging from psychology to jazz dance. Her latest book is The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes, which is part of the Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed Series at the University of Oklahoma Press edited by Designed for Learning host Jim Lang and Michelle Miller.

Resources Mentioned:

• Flower’s New Book: The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes (University of Oklahoma Press)
• PERMA Theory of Well-Being
• Sarah Rose Cavanagh’s Book: The Spark of Learning (West Virginia University Press)
• Flower’s Website
• Flower’s LinkedIn
• Episode Transcript

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/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.

American higher education has always stood out for its strong commitment to general education courses, or gen ed, the premise being that undergraduates should not necessarily jump directly into a major but instead have the room to learn and explore a variety of fields before choosing a particular path.

With that principled purpose comes a practical teaching challenge: Most students enroll in a gen ed course to fulfill a curricular requirement, not because they actively chose to take that class.

So how do teachers make the best possible case for a required course? And how do they make it a good experience for the students who may never return to the subject when the semester ends?

A professor at Boston College and regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Carlo Rotella has written a book that follows 33 students through his own general education course and explores answers to questions like these.

Key Topics Discussed:

• A description of the required literature course Carlo teaches at Boston College and why he chose to write about it
• How he uses the first day of class to attempt to overcome students’ skepticism
• Leading with the utility of the course, even when you as the instructor believe in the subject’s inherent beauty
• The distinct value to students of coming together to participate in a classroom with peers and an instructor and why that value only continues to grow as technology advances
• Strategies for getting students to participate, including working with those who aren’t as comfortable speaking during class
• Carlo’s approach to managing the flow of discussions, why he doesn’t fear silence, and thinking of what goes on in the classroom as “the main event”

Guest Bio: Carlo Rotella is a professor of English, journalism, and American studies at Boston College. He writes regularly for The New York Times Magazine, and his work has appeared in a number of other outlets, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The Best American Essays. He has written books about cities, boxing, blues, and literature and film, among other subjects; his latest, What Can I Get Out of This? Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics, was named a Forbes Best Higher Education Book of 2025.

Resources Mentioned:

• Carlo’s New Book: What Can I Get Out of This? Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics (University of California Press)
• Episode Transcript

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/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.

Imagine you have a student who starts the semester strong but unexpectedly misses a deadline, and then you don’t see them in class for a few sessions. You reach out and are surprised to learn it isn’t because they lost interest in the course; it’s because they were so ashamed of missing that due date that it prevented them from coming back.

Maybe you don’t have to imagine. If you’ve been teaching awhile, chances are you’ve had this exact experience, one that might be related to a student having ADHD.

So what do learners with ADHD need from us as teachers? In her new book An Educator’s Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success, Karen Costa shares strategies aimed at not only supporting these students but also taking advantage of the valuable strengths and perspectives they can bring to the classroom.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Thinking of the ADHD neurotype as a house with all its doors and windows thrown open
• What we need to unlearn about ADHD, starting with the implications of the name attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
• Tapping into the creativity and outspokenness often exhibited by students with ADHD to improve the overall classroom environment
• Strategies for helping students with ADHD that will benefit everyone in the class
• Karen’s own experiences as someone with ADHD—both as a student and a professional—and why that drives her to talk about them openly, even when it’s uncomfortable
• Navigating potential sticking points between students who might thrive with more flexibility and faculty who are responsible for structuring a course
• How helping learners with ADHD can start with something as simple as making a checklist

Guest Bio: Karen Costa is a faculty development facilitator, adjunct faculty member, and the author of 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos: A Guide for Online Teachers and Flipped Classes. Her latest book, An Educator’s Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success, was published in January 2026 by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Resources Mentioned:

• Karen’s New Book: An Educator’s Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success (Johns Hopkins University Press)
• Karen’s Website: 100faculty.com
• Episode Transcript

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/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.

For decades now, the call to college teachers has been to rely less on lecture and to draw more on active learning techniques such as discussions, small group brainstorming, and think-pair-shares.

Strategies like these fit well within smaller courses. But in an auditorium with a couple of hundred students, how do we encourage participation and community?

To meet this challenge, Notre Dame’s Rachel Branco has turned to an assessment approach known as the two-stage exam. It’s worked so well that she has now written a how-to guide to help other instructors incorporate this active learning experience into classes of any size.

Key Topics Discussed:

• How Rachel initially encountered the concept of two-stage exams, in which students answer the same set of questions first as individuals and then in groups
• Her experience incorporating two-stage exams into her smaller courses and why that inspired her not only to adapt the setup for her larger classes but also to write a guide for other instructors interested in doing so
• Well-established advantages of using two-stage exams as well as Rachel’s own observations of the benefits based on surveys of her students
• The logistics of deploying two-stage exams in a class with hundreds of students, including the importance of seating plans, the creation of the exam documents themselves, and group construction
• Why Rachel has each student turn in their own answer sheet for the group part of the exam and the kinds of questions that work best in light of the group dynamic
• Why it’s critical to communicate the rationale behind this style of assessment to students

Guest Bio: Rachel Branco is a neuroscientist and an associate teaching professor at the University of Notre Dame, where she teaches courses through both the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and the Neuroscience and Behavior Program. She is passionate about researching and implementing practical classroom strategies that improve how students learn about and experience science.

Resources Mentioned:

• Rachel’s Implementation Guide for Two-Stage Exams
• Mail Merge Tool for Notre Dame Instructors: Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM)
• Grading Assistance Software for Notre Dame Instructors: Gradescope
• Episode Transcript

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/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.

Among the most fundamental promises education makes is this: What you learn here, on campus, will help you when you’re out there, in the world. Learning researchers call this far transfer, describing the process by which students take a skill and apply it in another class, in an internship, or even in their careers after college.

But what does it look like when that far transfer is part of the class itself? In community-based learning, professors embed their courses in real-world contexts, creating partnerships with organizations who have real needs connected to the course material.

Notre Dame’s Wendy Angst has long embraced this approach to teach design thinking and business consulting, and she has now amplified it to a whole new level with the help of virtual reality (VR) technology. The result has been to give her students an unforgettable experience that makes an impact far beyond their classroom.

Key Topics Discussed:

• How coming from an industry background motivated Wendy to incorporate hands-on consulting work into her teaching
• The evolution of her Innovation & Design Thinking course to build a robust partnership with Saint Bakhita Vocational Training Center in Northern Uganda, starting with an eventful trip there in March 2020
• Working with ND Learning’s Office of Digital Learning to use VR to bring the experience of being on the ground in Uganda to more Notre Dame students
• The businesses in Uganda that have grown out of student-partner projects in the course
• How VR builds empathy and understanding among the large number of students who do not actually go to Uganda—but also among those who do
• Lessons Wendy has taken away from years of leading community-based learning and advice she’d give instructors looking to get started with it

Guest Bio: Wendy Angst is the Michael & Melanie Neumann Director of the Powerful Means Initiative and a teaching professor in the Department of Management & Organization at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. She also serves as the director of undergraduate studies for the impact consulting minor and has been instrumental in shaping experiential learning opportunities that empower students to drive meaningful social impact and grow the good in business.

Resources Mentioned:

• More About the VR Immersion in Wendy’s Class
• Office of Digital Learning’s Digital Learning Sprints Program
• Project Partner Website: Saint Bakhita Vocational Training Center
• Episode Transcript

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/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.

With the advent of AI, many are questioning the traditional model of having students do much of the heavy lifting of a course on their own. If outside of class students can prompt AI to do homework, write essays, and create presentation slides, should instructors be using time inside the classroom differently than in the past?

An applied ethicist, Lily Abadal has been a vocal proponent of a philosophy that has always existed on the edges of higher ed but that has taken on new prominence in this current moment: If we care about it, students should be doing it in class.

Lily and host Jim Lang explore this idea and how she applies it to continue to push her students to become better writers and, in the process, stronger thinkers.

Key Topics Discussed:

• How virtue ethics informs Lily’s argument that instructors should bring writing assignments into the classroom—and make students take their time with them
• The way she has reimagined the traditional term paper as an in-class assignment
• What this restructuring has meant for both the material she covers and what she does during a class period
• The role of the instructor as coach in pushing students to expend the effort to master the fundamentals
• Lily’s still-evolving approach to grading these assignments and getting students to focus on the process rather than checking boxes
• How student attitudes toward the paper assignment change over the course of the semester

Guest Bio: Lily Abadal is an assistant professor of instruction at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. Her research focuses on virtue ethics and moral formation, particularly in relation to emerging technologies. She is interested in helping mission-centered schools design pedagogical strategies, develop integrity-centered policies, reimagine assessments, and encourage genuine character formation in the age of AI.

Resources Mentioned:

• Inside Higher Ed Piece: “A Way to Save the Essay”
• Journal Article: “Ensuring Genuine Assessment in Philosophy Education” (Teaching Philosophy)
• Lily’s Website: drlilyabadal.com 
• Lily’s LinkedIn
• Episode Transcript

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/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.

When satellite maps became available on our phones, some wondered what we would lose by becoming less oriented to the places we live or visit. But most of us have used these maps for many years now and find them to be incredibly useful. Which begs the question: Does it matter if we’ve lost our sense of direction a bit? 

Educators now find themselves asking similar questions about AI and teaching. What happens when we stop using a skill and allow technology to do it for us? Do we become de-skilled? When does that de-skilling matter? And in those cases where it does matter, how do we help students understand the importance of committing themselves to the hard work of learning?

Educator, author, and higher ed consultant Derek Bruff joins host Jim Lang for a thoughtful conversation exploring how we might answer.

Key Topics Discussed:

• The rubber duck effect as a way to think about AI’s potential role in brainstorming processes
• Concerns over people accepting the responses of AI as authoritative
• The sycophantic tendencies of chatbots and the importance of teaching students to read AI outputs with a degree of skepticism
• How consulting AI compares to collective class discussion as a starting point for student papers
• Developing students’ metacognitive awareness and self-regulation so that they can determine when it’s helpful to use AI and when it’s not
• The value to students of encountering course material in both digital and analog ways
• The need to be intentional about AI use because the skills and experiences at play feel more core to who we are as humans
• A low-stakes experiment for instructors who don’t currently use AI much

Guest Bio: Derek Bruff directed the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching for more than a decade and is currently an associate director at the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia, where much of his work focuses on helping faculty respond to the challenges and opportunities posed by generative AI. Derek has written two books, most recently Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching. He writes a weekly newsletter called Intentional Teaching and hosts and produces the Intentional Teaching podcast.

Resources Mentioned:

• Derek’s Podcast: Intentional Teaching
• Derek’s Newsletter: Intentional Teaching
• Alternative Use Test Article: “How does generative artificial intelligence impact student creativity?” (Journal of Creativity)
• Example Assignment: Do Something Impossible with AI
• Notre Dame Learning’s Lab for AI in Teaching and Learning
• Episode Transcript

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/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter.