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Greg Loring-Albright is the designer of Keep the Faith, a storytelling game about a religion in transition and about how religious institutions change over time. Greg is also an assistant professor of game, media, and culture at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, where he teaches game design and game studies. 

Greg is also the co-designer of Bloc by Bloc: Uprising, a game about revolutionaries trying to liberate their city from an oppressive police state. He's a proponent of purposeful games, and I invited him on the podcast to talk about the connections between game design and learning design.

Keep the Faith is currently seeking crowdfunding for its first edition through Central Michigan University Press, an academic press that publishes peer-reviewed tabletop games with educational utility. If you're listening to this before March 6, 2025, please consider backing the game by following the link below.

Episode Resources

·       Keep the Faith (crowdfunding), https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/central-michigan-university-press/keep-the-faith

·       Greg Loring-Albright’s website, https://www.gloringalbright.com/ 

·       Bloc by Bloc: Uprising, https://outlandishgames.com/blocbybloc/ 

·       Central Michigan University Press, https://cmichpress.com/ 

·       “Daybreak: Learning at Play with Kerry Whittaker and Matteo Menapace,” Intentional Teaching episode 43, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/episodes/15393666-daybreak-learning-at-play-with-kerry-whittaker-and-matteo-menapace

·       First Player Token, my short podcast about board games, https://www.buzzsprout.com/2292265  

Podcast Links:

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.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

Back in August, I had the opportunity to hear a short presentation from Heidi Nobles, assistant professor in writing and rhetoric and director of Writing Across the Curriculum at the University of Virginia. The presentation was part of a two-day institute on teaching and generative AI, and Heidi leveraged her background as an editor to provide a different way of thinking about working with generative AI.

Heidi pointed out that when we ask ChatGPT or some other AI chatbot to polish a draft essay, we’re asking for copyediting. That’s useful, yes, but there are other, earlier stages to an editing process. Might AI be useful during those other stages? Heidi argued for yes. A chatbot won’t be as good as a human editor, but most writers don’t have access to a human editor, so it’s worth exploring what AI can do.

On today's podcast, Heidi Nobles talks about writing and teaching writing from an editor's perspective.

Episode Resources

·       Heidi Nobles faculty page, https://wac.virginia.edu/people/heidi-nobles 

·       Edits on the Record, https://editsontherecord.com/ 

·       Choose Your Own Adventure maps, https://www.cyoa.com/pages/choose-your-own-adventure-these-maps-reveal-the-hidden-structures-behind-the-books 

·       One Book, Many Readings by Christian Swinehart, https://samizdat.co/cyoa/

Podcast Links:

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.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

How can generative AI help students develop creative and critical thinking skills? Doing means treating AI as more than a super Google search.

Ryan Wetzel is manager of creative learning initiatives for Teaching and Learning with Technology at Penn State. He and his team have developed a number of structured experiences for students (and their instructors) to increase their generative AI knowhow and to use AI to help them pursue course learning goals. While the students work in teams to design board games, create hit singles, or build their personal brands, they learn about AI and about creative and collaborative design.

Episode Resources

·       Ryan Wetzel on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlwetzel/

·       My visit to the Dreamery, https://derekbruff.kit.com/posts/learning-with-and-about-technology 

·       Intentional Teaching Ep. 21: Design Thinking and AI with Garrett Westlake, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/episodes/13619437-design-thinking-and-ai-with-garret-westlake 

Podcast Links:

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.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

Doctoral education in the United States works really well... when it works. Many doctoral students experience a significant mismatch between their career goals and the goals of their graduate programs, which is one reason completion rates for doctoral programs are so low.

Why is doctoral education this broken? And what can higher education do about it? Today on the podcast, we hear some answers to those questions from Leonard Cassuto, professor of English at Fordham University and author of the book The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education with Robert Weisbuch.

I'm joined by special guest interviewer Emily Donahoe, associate director at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi. Emily heads up the center's programs and services for graduate students, and she spends a lot of time in the world of doctoral education.

Episode Resources

Leonard Cassuto’s website, https://www.lcassuto.com/

Len on the Future U podcast, https://www.futureupodcast.com/episodes/the-future-of-the-phd/

Len on the Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning podcast, https://blubrry.com/dead_ideas/131080109/why-is-there-no-training-on-how-to-teach-graduate-students-with-leonard-cassuto/ 

Emily Donahoe’s Unmaking the Grade blog, https://emilypittsdonahoe.substack.com/

Podcast Links:

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.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

Today on the podcast, I’m excited to share an interview with Jane Southworth, professor and chair of geography at the University of Florida and co-chair of the committee that designed UF's "AI Across the Curriculum" program. That program was designed in 2021, two full years before the launch of ChatGPT!

Jane shares about the role of artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning, in her landscape change research, and how that work get her involved in AI curriculum initiatives at UF. Jane also provides a lot of details on the new UF program, including the university-wide undergraduate AI certificate, AI-focused undergraduate research opportunities, and what turned into a herculean effort to get AI literacy embedded across the UF curriculum. I also asked Jane how the launch of ChatGPT affected this big project as it was being launched. 

Episode Resources

·       Jane Southworth’s faculty page, https://geog.ufl.edu/faculty/southworth/ 

·       AI at the University of Florida, https://ai.ufl.edu/

·       “Developing a model for AI Across the Curriculum: Transforming the higher education landscape via innovation in AI literacy,” Southworth et al., https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666920X23000061?via%3Dihub 

·       “Building an AI University: An Administrator’s Guide,” Joe Glover, https://www.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/11/Building-an-AI-university-An-administrators-guide.pdf 

Podcast Links:

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.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

In my new job at the University of Virginia, I recently met Jingjing Li, Andersen Alumni associate professor of commerce. Jingjing teaches business intelligence at both the undergraduate and Master’s levels, and her research interests include artificial intelligence and data analytics. She has conducted some very thoughtful experiments in her courses in using generative artificial intelligence to teach about machine learning in business analysis. 

In our interview, we talk about her scaffolded assignments, the metaphors her students use to describe working with generative AI, and the relationships between conceptual understanding and AI literacy.

Episode Resources

·       Jingjing Li’s faculty page, https://www.commerce.virginia.edu/faculty/jl9rf

·       ChatGPT in Technical Courses, a Teaching Hub collection curated by Jingjing Li, https://teaching.virginia.edu/collections/chatgpt-in-technical-courses 

·       UVA’s Faculty AI Guides program, https://cte.virginia.edu/programs/faculty-ai-guides/ 

Podcast Links:

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.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

In 1986, Vanderbilt University established a new Center for Teaching, a unit that would help thousands of faculty and other instructors at Vanderbilt and across higher education develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching and learning. I’m Derek Bruff, and I worked at the CFT, as we called it, from 2005 to 2022, serving as its director for over a decade. 

When I left Vanderbilt, I wanted to find some way to honor the good work of the Center for Teaching. It played an important role in my professional career and in the careers of the faculty and staff who passed through its doors. I decided to produce this oral history of the CFT as a way to document and celebrate the CFT’s story. I reached out to a number of former CFT staff, including all of its directors, to interview them about their time at the CFT.

You’ll hear from Ken Bain, Darlene Panvini, Linda Nilson, Allison Pingree, Peter Felten, and others CFT alumni, and I hope these stories capture just a bit of the CFT magic.

Additional Resources:

Vanderbilt Center for Teaching's 35th Anniversary Panel (video)

StoryCorps: Derek Bruff and Stacey Johnson on the CFT's work navigating the COVID-19 pandemic (audio)

This audio documentary is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Music: "Isola Bella" and "Contemplation" by Purple Planet.

Podcast Links:

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.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, there are approximately 36.8 million adults in the United States under the age of 65 who have completed some college but left before obtaining a degree. How can universities meet the needs of these potential students, especially when the traditional approach to college didn’t work for them?

Josh Steele is working to answer that question. Josh is the associate vice dean of digital learning at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Josh is helping to lead efforts at UT to reach the “some college, no degree” cohort and help them complete degrees that are meaningful to them. Josh talks about the challenges that adult students face in coming back to college, the experiments that are happening at the University of Tennessee to meet those challenges, and how his team works with faculty to design and implement quality online education. 

Episode Resources

·       Josh Steele on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuabsteele/

·       Vols Online, https://volsonline.utk.edu/ 

Podcast Links:

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.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

I see a lot of scholarly work on active learning in the STEM fields, but much less about active learning in the humanities. So when I read an article about active learning in a large-enrollment Greek myths course at Cornell University, I wanted to learn more.

In this episode, I talk with the authors of that paper: Todd Clary, senior lecturer in classics at Cornell University; Stephen Sansom, assistant professor of classics at Florida State University; and Carolyn Aslan, senior associate director at the Center for Teaching Innovation at Cornell. All three were involved in redesigning Cornell’s Greek myths course as part of Cornell’s Active Learning Initiative.

The interview digs into active learning in this course, especially the use of classroom response systems, as well as pre-class assignments, revised assessments, and more.

Episode Resources

·       Todd Clary’s faculty page, https://classics.cornell.edu/todd-c-clary

·       Stephen Sansom’s website, https://www.stephensansom.com/

·       Carolyn Aslan’s CTI page, https://teaching.cornell.edu/person/carolyn-aslan

·       Cornell University’s Active Learning Initiative, https://teaching.cornell.edu/programs/faculty-instructors/active-learning-initiative

·       “Active Learning Techniques to Enhance Conceptual Learning in Greek Mythology,” https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/870835 

Podcast Links:

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.

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text massage.

This episode features a conversation with another faculty colleague from my time at the University of Mississippi. Becky Marchiel is an associate professor of history there, and she teaches a very interesting history survey course. In our conversation, Becky shares how she goes about teaching the habits of mind of historians, as well as her use of labor-based grading, unessays, and classroom response systems. 

Episode Resources

·       Becky Marchiel’s faculty page, https://history.olemiss.edu/rebecca-marchiel/

·       Michael Bess on teaching with Wikipedia (from 2007), https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/2007/12/episode-1-an-interview-with-michael-bess/

·       More examples of clickable image questions for classroom response systems, https://derekbruff.ck.page/posts/clickable-image-polling-questions 

Podcast Links:

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.