Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher education

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Welcome to the 100th episode of Intentional Teaching! I am very excited to reach this milestone, and I am deeply grateful to all my guests and all my listeners for making this possible. I learn so much from my guests, and I'm thrilled to know that folks out there appreciate the interviews and the show.

In this 100th episode, I take a look back at some of the light bulb moments I've had interviewing guests over the last four years. What quotes and ideas and examples have really stuck with me and informed my work? 

My hope is that you'll find these moments interesting and perhaps useful to your work in higher education, and that this clip show might interest you in digging into the podcast archives and listening to some older episodes.

Episode Resources

Episode 2: AI Writing with Robert Cummings

Episode 5: Transparent Teaching with Mary-Ann Winkelmes

Episode 7: The Hidden Curriculum with Anthony Jack and Missy Foy

Episode 11: Generative AI in Computer Science with Brett Becker

University College Dublin's statement on the passing of Brett Becker

"Promptly: Using Prompt Problems to Teach Learners How to Effectively Utilize AI Code Generators"

Episode 41: Take It or Leave It with Stacey Johnson, Emily Donahoe, and Lance Eaton

Episode 51: Teaching Habits of Mind with Becky Marchiel

Episode 58: Writing, Editing, and AI with Heidi Nobles

Episode 68: Teaching with AI Agents with Matthew Clemson, Isabelle Hesse, and Danny Liu

Episode 69: Take It or Leave It with Stacey Johnson, Liz Norell, and Viji Sathy

Episode 71: Defending Higher Education with Kevin McClure

Episode 77: Peer and AI Review of Student Writing with Marit MacArthur and Anna Mills

Support the show

Podcast Links:

Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference. 

Share your thoughts about this episode as a text message.

Deborah Barnett is assistant dean for education at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, where she has been talking with her faculty colleagues, recent alumni, and employers of her school’s graduates about the ways that AI is changing the work of public health professionals. On the podcast today, Deborah shares about the need for schools of public health to respond to AI, the new AI competencies needed by those who work in public health, and the ways that her “Three Pillars” document can inform and shape curriculum revision in the near future.

Episode Resources

Deborah Barnett's UC Berkeley page

"The Three Pillars of an AI-Competent Public Health Professional"

Support the show

Podcast Links:

Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference. 

Share your thoughts about this episode as a text message.

How can humanities courses and majors help students develop the kinds of durable skills--communication, collaboration, adaptability, and more--that employers want?

Today on the podcast, I talk to three University of Kentucky faculty about a program at UK called “Transdisciplinary Educational Approaches to Advance Kentucky,” or TEK for short. TEK helps faculty design courses that help students build those durable skills. One of those courses is called Humanities in Action, and one of the goals of the course is to help students see the ways that studying the humanities can build those durable skills—and help them get quality jobs, in or outside of the humanities.

Today’s guests are: Chelsea Brislin, course lead for Humanities in Action and associate director of the Gaines Center for the Humanities at UK. Shawna Felkins is a senior faculty consultant at the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CETL) at UK and community coordinator for the TEK Faculty Fellows program. And Jennifer Osterhage is director of TEK and associate professor of biology. 

Episode Resources

Chelsea Brislin's faculty page

Shawna Felkins on LinkedIn

Jennifer Osterhage's faculty page

Transdisciplinary Educational Approaches to Advance Kentucky (TEK)

"Fold in the cheese!"

Support the show

Podcast Links:

Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference. 

Share your thoughts about this episode as a text message.

Today on the podcast I talk with Jessica Bernards, an experienced online math instructor. Jessica teaches math at Portland Community College and the University of Oregon. She’s also an author and a consultant helping other educators adapt to the world of AI. In our interview, she talks about all the moves she makes to make her students learning visible, to support her online learners when they struggle with learning math, and how her approach to teaching math online has changed because of AI. 

Episode Resources

·       Jessica Bernard’s website

·       Jessica’s Study Skills Playlist

·       Jessica’s structured online discussion process

·       Jessica’s student-designed AI chatbot lab

·       Photomath

Support the show

Podcast Links:

Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference. 

Share your thoughts about this episode as a text message.

The ebook version of my new book, The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching, co-authored with Annette Vee and Marc Watkins, is out! To celebrate its release I’ve interviewed a few of the faculty whose AI-aware teaching we highlight in the book, and I’m excited to share another one of those conversations here on the podcast today.

Jason Gulya is a professor of English and media communications at Berkeley College, where he teaches a variety of online and onsite courses in the humanities. I started following Jason on LinkedIn a few years ago, giving me a glimpse into all the many ways he has adapted his teaching to respond to the challenges and opportunities posed by generative AI. He’s a thought leader in this area, and I was very excited to get him on the line for an interview. In our conversation, he talks about the risks of transactional education and how he pushes back against that model of education through some pretty radical approaches to student agency in their learning. 

Episode Resources

Jason Gulya on LinkedIn

Jason Gulya on Substack

Jason’s book, co-authored with Paul Matthews, Artificial Intelligence, Real Literacy

Support the show

Podcast Links:

Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference. 

Share your thoughts about this episode as a text message.

The ebook version of my new book, The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching, co-authored with Annette Vee and Marc Watkins, is out! To celebrate its release I’ve interviewed a few of the faculty whose AI-aware teaching we highlight in the book, and I’m excited to share another one of those conversations here on the podcast today.

Eric Loepp is a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater and co-director of Whitewater’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching, Learning, Scholarship, and Technology. Eric is passionate about teaching political science—something that comes through loud and clear in our interview. He’s also had to figure out a variety of AI-aware teaching practices in the last few years in response to generative AI’s impacts on learning—and on our political discourse. In our conversation, Eric shares some very concrete and AI-aware assignments and learning activities that will, I think inspire you as you adapt to AI in your teaching. 

Episode Resources

Eric Loepp’s website

Support the show

Podcast Links:

Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference. 

Share your thoughts about this episode as a text message.

Susan Ray is associate professor of English at Delaware County Community College outside Philadelphia. Susan teaches a mix of on-site and online composition courses, and she’s been redesigning her teaching for a few years now in response to generative AI. We highlight some of her teaching practices in our new book, The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching, including an AI-integrated syllabus activity. 

In my conversation with Susan, we talk about that syllabus activity, as well as the AI transparency journals she asks her students to keep during her courses. We also talk about how her personal background prepared her to navigate the challenges and opportunities that AI has posed to her teaching, how she approaches assessing student learning in this age of AI—especially in her online asynchronous courses—and much more.

Episode Resources

Susan Ray’s Substack

Susan Ray on LinkedIn

“I Embraced AI in My Community College English Class—and My Students Loved It!”, Susan Ray, EdSurge, July 21, 2025, with details about Susan’s AI-integrated syllabus activity

“Technological Privilege, AI, & the Fourth Literacy in the Classroom,” Susan Ray, Susan’s Substack, February 28, 2026

Support the show

Podcast Links:

Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference. 

Share your thoughts about this episode as a text message.

It’s book release week! The ebook version of The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching publishes on July 1st, the day after this episode drops. I am very excited to have this book, co-authored with Annette Vee and Marc Watkins, out in the world! 

I wanted to put the spotlight on the new book, but I didn’t want to have to interview myself, so I asked my colleague and friend Stacey Johnson to interview me, Annette, and Marc about the book. Stacey and I worked together at the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching, and she’s now the director of learning and engagement for the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities. I'm happy to share that wide-ranging interview in this episode. Thanks, Stacey!

You can order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching ebook through Norton, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks. The ebook will be available for free to faculty who have adopted Norton textbooks--contact your local Norton representative to get access.

If you would like to order multiple copies for a campus reading group or some other faculty development effort, Norton offers a significant discount. To take advantage of this offer, contact Peter Wentz at [email protected] with subject line “Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching.”

Norton is hosting a launch party for the book on July 8th at 1:30pm Central. It's free to attend, and you can register here. Perusall is hosting an asynchronous book club for the new book from July 6th to August 2nd on their social annotation platform, and you can find out more about that here.

Episode Resources

Stacey Johnson's blog and LinkedIn page

Annette Vee's blog and LinkedIn page

Marc Watkin's blog and LinkedIn page

Support the show

Podcast Links:

Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference. 

Share your thoughts about this episode as a text message.

Study Hall is back! This is the format where I talk to three fantastic guests about three recent studies on generative AI in higher education. 

Guests for this edition of Study Hall are: Flower Darby, incoming director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Estrella Mountain Community College; Josh Eyler, senior director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and assistant professor of teacher education at the University of Mississippi; and Regan Gurung,  professor of psychology at Oregon State University.

Episode Resources

STUDY #1

Kestin, G., Miller, K., Klales, A., Milbourne, T., & Ponti, G. (2025). AI tutoring outperforms in-class active learning: An RCT introducing a novel research-based design in an authentic educational setting. Nature Scientific Reports, 15, 17458. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-97652-6

STUDY #2

Lodge, J. M., and Loble, L., (2026). Artificial intelligence, cognitive offloading and implications for education, University of Technology Sydney, https://www.uts.edu.au/news/2026/03/experts-warn-unstructured-ai-use-in-schools-risks-cognitive-atrophy/contentassets/ai-cognitive-offloading-and-implications-for-education.pdf 

STUDY #3

Wadinambiarachchi, S., Kelly, R., Pareek, S., Zhou, Q., & Velloso, E. (2024.) The effects of generative AI on design fixation and divergent thinking. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 380, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642919 

• Flower Darby's website: https://flowerdarby.com/
• Josh Eyler's website: https://josheyler.wordpress.com/
• Regan Gurung's website: https://regangurung.com/
• Study Hall 2025 with Lance Eaton, Michelle D. Miller, and David Nelson

Support the show

Podcast Links:

Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference. 

Share your thoughts about this episode as a text message.

On the podcast today, I talk with author and consultant Leon Furze about the ideas found in some of his recent writing on AI and learning. We talk about resistance as a framework for combatting cognitive offloading, the mental models that educators and students have of working with AI (and how they can lead us astray), and classroom activities that can help students build the kinds of expertise they need to use AI effectively.

Episode Resources

Leon Furze’s website

Leon Furze on LinkedIn

“Resistance as a Framework for Combating Cognitive Offload,” Leon Furze, March 22, 2026

“IYKYK: How Do We Know What AI Can Really Do?”, Leon Furze, March 18, 2026

“Resistance Training Toolkit: Expertise,” Leon Furze, April 22, 2026

“On the Sensibility of Cognitive Outsourcing,” Derek’s take on that MIT study, July 7, 2025

Lodge, J. M., and Loble, L. (2026). Artificial intelligence, cognitive offloading, and implications for education. University of Technology Sydney

Corbin, T., Tai, J., and Flenady, G. (2025). “Understanding the place and value of GenAI feedback: A recognition-based framework.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 50, 718-731

“It’s time to move past the notion of AI as an answer machine,” Derek’s elaboration on Leon’s comment about mental models of AI, May 15, 2026

Support the show

Podcast Links:

Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.

Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribe

Support Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteaching

Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.