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Christopher McVey is a master lecturer in the writing program at Boston University. Neeza Singh is a senior at BU majoring in data science. Last year, the two were partnered through the BU writing program's AI Affiliate Fellowship program, giving Neeza a role in Christopher's class supporting both Christopher and his students in responsible and effective use of generative AI in writing.

On this episode, I talk with Chris and Neeza about this innovative, AI-focused students-as-partners program. They share about Neeza's role in Chris' writing course, how her work as an AI affiliate benefitted both Chris and his students, and the potential for this kind of program to work in other disciplines. Chris and Neeza have lots to say about the role of AI in learning.

Episode Resources

·       Christopher McVey’s faculty page

·       Neeza Singh’s LinkedIn page

·       Undergraduate AI Writing Affiliate Fellowship, Boston University Writing Program

·       Syllabus for The Philosophy and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

·       AI Mini-Games for Peer Review, an activity by Neeza Singh and Christopher McVey

·       The Case for Slowing Down, by Christopher McVey

·       AI-Enhanced Learning with Pary Fassihi, Intentional Teaching episode 35

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.

Kristine Johnson and Michael Rifenburg are the authors of the new book A Long View of Undergraduate Research: Alumni Perspectives on Inquiry, Belonging, and Vocation. They tracked down alumni who had participated in undergraduate research years earlier. They wanted to know what kinds of impacts these experiences had on students over the long term. What they heard from these alumni was fascinating.

Kristine Johnson is an associate professor of English at Calvin University, and Michael Rifenburg is a professor of English at the University of North Georgia. They were undergraduate researchers as students, and they now mentor students in undergrad research. In our conversation, we talk about the importance of student-mentor relationships, the impact of working on big and meaningful projects, how undergrad research can help students find a vocation, and how these experiences can both enhance and challenge a student’s sense of belonging. 

Episode Resources

·       Kristine Johnson’s faculty page

·       Michael Rifenburg’s faculty page

·       A Long View of Undergraduate Researchby Kristine Johnson and Michael Rifenburg

·       The Meaningful Writing Project by Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Gellar, and Neal Lerner

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.

We’re back with another Take It or Leave It panel. I invited three colleagues whose work and thinking I admire very much to come on the show and to compress their complex and nuanced thoughts on teaching and learning into artificial binaries! 

The panelists for this edition of Take It or Leave It are… Liz Norell, associate director of instructional support at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi; Betsy Barre, assistant provost and executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Wake Forest University; and Bryan Dewsbury, associate professor of biology and associate director of the STEM Transformation Institute at Florida International University. 

We discuss three recent essays on class participation, learning management systems, and generative AI and weigh in with a "Take it!" or "Leave it!" for each one.

Episode Resources

• Liz Norell’s website, https://www.liznorell.com/
• Betsy Barre’s website, https://www.elizabethbarre.com/
• Bryan Dewsbury’s website, http://www.seasprogram.net/ 
• Essay 1: “Making Class Participation Grades Meaningful” by Benjamin Rikfin
• Essay 2: “College as a To-Do List” by Susan D. Blum
• Essay 3: “Saying No to Generative AI” by Cate Denial
• “But How Do I Participate?” by Olivia Bailey 
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman 
• “The Workload Paradox with Betsy Barre and Karen Costa,” Leading Lines podcast 
• OpenAI Operator, https://openai.com/index/introducing-operator/ 
• Goblin Tools, https://goblin.tools/ 

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.

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.