Designed for Learning

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.

When you become a teacher, you commit to a life of learning—not just for your students, but for yourself. You can feel totally comfortable and confident in your teaching practices, and then suddenly some new technology or some new group of students comes along and upends everything you think you know about education.

In those moments, instructors often seek out resources and conversations with peers and students to think through how they might adapt their teaching. But actually giving up a beloved teaching technique can provoke a real sense of loss, and adopting a new approach can be scary.

Jordan Troisi, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Colby College, talks with host Jim Lang about one way colleges and universities can support faculty on this journey: course design institutes. Both Colby and Notre Dame are home to such programs, in which faculty gather with colleagues and teaching specialists in an extended process of reimagining their work as educators.

Key Topics Discussed:

• How course design work led Jordan to make a concrete change to his own teaching practices
• Common features of course design institutes, which run for a relatively short amount of time, and ways they can advance instructors’ lifelong efforts to improve as teachers
• Making the time instructors spend in these institutes worth their commitment
• Incorporating your experience in a course design institute as part of the narrative around your CV
• The prevalence of grading as a topic Jordan sees instructors wanting to discuss
• Drawing on relationships among faculty and a broader sense of belonging to motivate more instructors to participate in structured explorations of their teaching
• The questions to ask when planning a course design institute

Guest Bio: Jordan Troisi serves as the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Colby College. He previously spent nine years as a psychology faculty member, first at Widener University and then at Sewanee: The University of the South. His scholarly work includes more than 20 peer-reviewed and invited publications on effective teaching as well as two books: Midcourse Correction for the College Classroom: Putting Small Group Instructional Diagnosis to Work and, most recently, Developing High-Impact Course Design Institutes: A Model for Change.

Resources Mentioned:

• Book: Developing High-Impact Course Design Institutes: A Model for Change (Routledge)
• Colby Center for Teaching and Learning’s Course (re)Design Institutes
• Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center Course Design Academy
• 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.

Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen an explosion of books and articles about what’s often called “brain-based learning,” as neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists study and explain what circuits are firing when a student tries to memorize a fact or solve a problem.

Without question, this scholarship has been a boon to teachers seeking to improve their practices. But there is a caveat: Not all brains think alike.

Researchers call this neurodiversity, and it refers to the notion that every population will include people who have a range of ways of thinking, learning, and feeling.

Author of the forthcoming book An Introduction to Neurodiversity for Educators, faculty development expert Sarah Silverman talks with us about challenges students who learn differently might face in the classroom and how instructors can foster environments where everyone has an opportunity to thrive.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Sarah’s Ph.D. in entomology—and her journey from studying insects to working in the area of teaching and learning with a focus on neurodiversity
• The origin of the term neurodiversity to describe the full range of cognitive differences among humans as well as the meaning and use of the related terms neurodivergent, neurotypical, and neurodiverse
• How the neurodiversity movement emerged out of the desire of autistic people to be accepted rather than “cured” and the ways that influences Sarah’s work with faculty
• Real-world examples, including from her own experiences as someone who is neurodivergent, that illustrate the value of instructors connecting with students to get a fuller picture of who they are
• Ways instructors might support neurodivergent learners who are encountering challenges
• Access friction—i.e., when the access needs of one person or group come into conflict with those of another—and how being flexible can help instructors approach such situations
• The value of having students themselves help you find solutions (and why it’s okay if they’re not utopian)

Guest Bio: Sarah Silverman is an independent scholar and faculty developer focusing on neurodiversity and accessibility in higher education. In her work on many different campuses, she helps faculty better understand how neurodiversity impacts teaching and learning and how to balance many different needs among instructors and learners. Her book An Introduction to Neurodiversity for Educators will be published next year by the University of Oklahoma Press as part of the Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed Series, which is edited by Designed for Learning host Jim Lang and Michelle Miller.

Resources Mentioned:

• Sarah’s Substack Newsletter: Beyond the Scope
• Neurodiversity concepts discussed during the episode drawn from Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories from the Frontline edited by Steven Kapp
• 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.

If you follow the conversations about higher education on social media or in the news, a primary topic on people’s minds is the impact of artificial intelligence on the purposes and processes of an education.

For better or worse, much of the focus has been 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.

Tricia Bertram Gallant, coauthor of the new book The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI, helps us put these 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 this March. 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)
• Notre Dame’s Undergraduate Academic Code of Honor
• 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.

Can you draw lessons from the way you teach and apply them in your writing? Designed for Learning host Jim Lang thinks so—so much so that he’s written a new book about it called Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom Skills to a Bigger Audience.

To learn more, we flipped the script and asked Kristi Rudenga, director of Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence, to interview Jim, a professor of the practice at the Kaneb Center, about his latest project.

He shares his insights on the intersection of teaching and writing, offering strategies for educators looking to expand their reach through engaging, accessible prose intended for broader audiences. He also talks about how a life-threatening health situation shaped the creation of Write Like You Teach.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Jim’s career trajectory as an academic, speaker, and writer of popular books and columns on teaching
• The inspiration behind Write Like You Teach and how it bridges his passions for teaching and writing
• Translating classroom teaching practices into impactful writing techniques
• Three core areas to consider to write like you teach: questions, attention, and evidence
• Overcoming impostor syndrome when writing for non-academic audiences by recognizing your role as an educator in both classroom and writing contexts
• Jim’s personal journey of recovery from a heart transplant and stroke, and how it affected his writing process

Guest Bios: Jim Lang is a professor of the practice in Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence. The author of several popular books on teaching, including Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It and Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning, Jim writes regularly on teaching and learning for The Chronicle of Higher Education and co-edits a book series on higher education for the University of Oklahoma Press. His latest book is Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom Skills to a Bigger Audience.

Kristi Rudenga is the director of Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence, where she is appointed as a teaching professor. In addition to overseeing the Kaneb Center’s team, strategy, partnerships, and initiatives, Kristi consults with instructors on pedagogical approaches and facilitates seminar series and workshops on teaching and mentoring. She writes about pedagogy for The Chronicle of Higher Education, and she has served on the Core Committee of the POD Network, the national organization supporting educational development.

Resources Mentioned:

• Book: Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom Skills to a Bigger Audience (University of Chicago Press)
• Website: jamesmlang.com
• Jim’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.

With Notre Dame’s Summer Online courses set to get underway in June, we turn our attention to teaching online—specifically ways to create a sense of community among instructors and students when meeting through screens, and why that matters in the first place.

Rebecca Glazier is an ideal person with whom to have this conversation. A professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, she is the author of Connecting in the Online Classroom: Building Rapport between Teachers and Students.

Grounded in academic research, original surveys, and experimental studies, the book provides practical strategies for helping everyone, students and instructors alike, get the most out of their online courses and take advantage of the increased access to education that online learning enables.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Rebecca’s journey as an online instructor after having only previously taught in person and the longitudinal research she conducted to improve her online teaching
• How she found that a high-rapport teaching strategy not only improved the experience for her students, but also for her as an instructor
• The importance of connecting with students early in the semester and building rapport in ways that are authentic to your personality
• Taking proactive steps to ensure students in online classes don’t feel like second-class citizens
• Giving students an AI assignment to help them learn the difference between ethical and unethical applications
• Strategies for leveraging class discussion boards
• Four concrete things you can do to build rapport in your online class, including sending students personalized emails (and using mail merges to help manage the amount of time that takes)

Guest Bio: Rebecca Glazier is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. In addition to researching religion and politics, U.S. foreign policy, and political communication, she studies the scholarship of teaching and learning and is passionate about improving the quality of online education. She is the author of two books, including Connecting in the Online Classroom: Building Rapport between Teachers and Students.

Resources Mentioned:

• Book: Connecting in the Online Classroom: Building Rapport between Teachers and Students (Johns Hopkins University Press)
• Mail Merge Tool for Notre Dame Instructors: Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM)
• Notre Dame’s Summer Online
• Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski Online Course: Learning How to Learn
• 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.

Although artificial intelligence has been part of higher education for a couple of years now, faculty are still struggling with what this development means for themselves, their students, their courses—and especially their assessments.

Notre Dame Learning recently launched the Lab for AI in Teaching & Learning (LAITL), led by Alex Ambrose of our Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence, to help instructors navigate this terrain. Alex is an eloquent spokesperson for the argument that by building their AI literacy and taking advantage of the opportunities it provides, faculty can expand student learning.

But are faculty buying it? And a deeper question: Does everyone need to embrace AI? Or are there times and places where we shouldn’t be welcoming it into our lives and our courses?

Fresh off hosting several campus AI workshops together, host Jim Lang and Alex discuss these issues, AI at Notre Dame, and a variety of helpful resources for faculty.

Key Topics Discussed:

• The experiences that have led Alex to become a cautious optimist/power user of AI, a path informed by his long-standing concern over technology’s impact on student learning
• What’s happening right now at Notre Dame with respect to AI in teaching and learning, including the availability of Google Gemini to all faculty, staff, and students and an AI academy for faculty
• The case Alex would make to a skeptical colleague about AI, one that is centered around empathy, literacy—and a very practical example
• The relationship of the two AIs, artificial intelligence and academic integrity, and the results from a survey of Notre Dame students
• Resources to help instructors articulate AI policies for their courses and assignments (see “Resources Mentioned” section for links)
• Imagining next-generation assessments that push students to go beyond just creating a final product
• An example of how Alex is starting to see AI assist faculty with assessments

Guest Bio: G. Alex Ambrose is a professor of the practice in Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence, where he serves as program director of assessment and analytics and leads the new Lab for AI in Teaching & Learning (LAITL). His work has been published in a range of academic and technology-based journals and earned him the 2015 Campus Technology Innovator Award as well as recognition by Google, IBM, USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Resources Mentioned:

• Generative AI Acceptable Use Scale (aka the traffic light)
• The AI Menu
• Student AI Acknowledgment Form
• Notre Dame Learning’s AI Hub: learning.nd.edu/ai 
• Book: Next Generation Genres: Teaching Writing for Civic and Academic Engagement (Norton Professional Books)
  
  

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.

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.

Resources Mentioned:

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