Keywords

podcast, education, AI, instructional design, accessibility, ethics, learning experience design, technology, higher education, updates

Summary

In this episode, Brandon and Rebecca reconnect after a long hiatus to share updates on their professional lives, discuss the evolving landscape of instructional design, and delve into the implications of AI in education. They explore the transition from traditional instructional design to learning experience design, the challenges of accessibility in AI, and the ethical considerations surrounding AI usage in educational settings. The conversation highlights the importance of critical thinking and engagement with material, as well as the need for collaboration in developing ethical AI practices. They also touch on the tools and technologies they are currently exploring to enhance learning experiences.

Takeaways

• It's been about four and a half years since the last episode.
• Rebecca has experienced significant changes in her professional life.
• The shift from instructional design to learning experience design is underway.
• AI is a hot topic in higher education, especially regarding accessibility.
• Accessibility challenges persist in AI-generated content.
• Ethical considerations in AI usage are crucial for educators.
• Collaboration is key in developing AI policies in education.
• Critical thinking is essential when using AI tools.
• The importance of engaging deeply with educational material is emphasized.
• Brandon is exploring new technologies to enhance learning experiences.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome Back and Updates

02:56 Shifts in Instructional Design

05:53 Accessibility and AI in Education

08:40 Refocusing Efforts and Team Dynamics

11:45 Open Source Tools and Collaboration

14:36 AI's Role in Accessibility

17:35 Exploring AI's Impact on Representation

20:13 Tools for Enhancing Accessibility

23:12 Comparing AI Tools and Their Outputs

28:35 Navigating Ethical AI Usage

34:01 Collaborative Understanding of AI in Education

44:36 Innovations in AI Tools for Educators

53:41 The Future of AI in Educational Practices

Show Notes and Resources

• Lomellini, A., Reese, R. M., & Grennell, K. (2023). The Imperfection of Accessibility in Instructional Design: An Ethical Dilemma. Applied Ethics for Instructional Design and Technology: Design, Decision Making, and Contemporary Issues. https://doi.org/10.59668/270.17103

• Dousay, T. A., Reese, R. M., & Asino, T. I. (2025). Guest Editors' Introduction: AECT24: Framing the Future of Learning and Technology. The Journal of Applied Instructional Design: May 2025, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.59668/2222.21454

• Cornell University webpage - AI and Accessibility

• Goldenthal, E., Park, J., Liu, S. X., Mieczkowski, H., & Hancock, J. T. (2021). Not all AI are equal: Exploring the accessibility of AI-mediated communication technology. Computers in Human Behavior, 125, 106975. 

• Image accessibility creator for creating atl text for images.

This one has been a long time in the making (literally). We are so happy to welcome Dr. Barbara Lockee to The ID and the Ego to talk a bit about interaction. Instructional designers always ask faculty to account for and increase the interaction in their courses, but what does that really mean for instruction? From discussion boards to erm...sheep husbandry, we cover the gamut of interaction possibilities and why you might want to take a minute to think about your next course design or conversation with a faculty member. Please support our podcast with reviews and ratings, suggestions to our form (below) or email address, or by using our listener support link on our Anchor page.]

Show Notes

The ID and the Ego Form for All Your Needs (Comments, Suggestions, etc…)

Asynchronous Classes Must Be The Last Resort For Professors

Project Outbreak Slides and Description

Articles with/by Barb:

The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning

A couple of my fave articles about interaction that I’ve drawn from are:

Anderson, T. (2003). Getting the Mix Right Again: An Updated and Theoretical Rationale for Interaction. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v4i2.149

Gavora, M., & Hannafin, M. (1993). Interaction strategies and emerging technologies. ERIC Document ED363276. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED363276.pdf

A few sources of inspiration for pedagogical interaction:

Shank, P. (2011). Ideas for synchronous and social learning. (Chapter 3). The online learning idea book (Vol. 2). O'Reilly Safari Learning Platform: Academic edition.

Cyrs, T. E., & Conway, E. D. (1997). Engaging students at field sites: Activities and exercises (pp. 143-177). In Teaching at a distance with the merging technologies: An instructional systems approach. Center for Educational Development.

Hello again everyone! After an unplanned hiatus due to workload and personal events, we are BACK. This episode we're talking about trust. How do you define trust in a professional relationship as an ID? What does it mean to your work and the courses you build and design with subject matter experts and faculty members? Does it really matter that much? The editor of the new book The Learner-Centered Instructional Designer, Jerod Quinn, joins us to drop some knowledge on why trust is a cornerstone of any project you undertake in this field.

Show Notes

For the first time in the history of this podcast, I am not running behind! In this episode, Rebecca sings and Brandon struggles to form a cohesive thought. We're talking about building relationships during your career! Our focus in this episode is the mentor/mentee relationship where Dr. Reese and I both have a little bit of experience (and a lot of that experience in common...). From seeking out a mentor to being one yourself and why mentoring is an important aspect of instructional design and technology, we cover as much as we can in our short time together. Listen, share, rate and review, and if you like what you hear, consider supporting our podcast so we can continue to make great content.

Recorded on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2021 - Martin Luther King, Jr. will always live in history as one of the most influential civil rights activists in the United States. He was a leader in the movement to end racial segregation and his achievements transcend time. On the day of this recording, we celebrate MLK day as a reminder to have gratitude for his accomplishments for our country and world. This day we are reminded once again of the struggles many Black Americans faced and continue to face today. It is seen as a day to promote equal rights for all Americans and should be celebrated every day. 

Please read the open letter written by Theodosia Cook (University of Colorado's Chief Diversity Officer) to Dr. King.

Show Notes

On this episode, Brandon says "uh" for the 100,000th time since starting the podcast! But really, we're talking communities of practice. I have four very special guests from Pedagome, a community of practice grown organically by some excellent women in the field of instructional design. On the podcast are Susannah Simmons, an Online Learning Experience Designer at Colorado School of Mines; Lainie Hoffman, a Senior Instructional Designer at University of Colorado; La Dawna Minnis, a Lead Instructional Designer at University of California Irvine; and Laura Widenor, an Instructional Designer at Kansas State University. All four have been integral to the growth and development of Pedagome and share their insight about the community itself as well as on communities of practice. Join us for the first panel discussion we've ever had and a truly interesting discussion!

If you're interested in joining the community, visit the Pedagome website and start your journey!

The first episode of the new year! Happy new year to everyone and we have a great conversation with Shea Swauger to start out 2021. We're covering the iniquities of proctoring and how those affect students and institutions. This is a long episode at around 90 minutes, but I tried to break it up into bite-size segments. This topic is insanely pertinent as we march toward the start of another semester that's likely to be remote learning for just about everyone, so have a listen and please, please share with your friends, colleagues, and faculty members who might benefit from a deep dive into why proctoring promotes discrimination. Show notes below!

Online proctoring is surging during COVID-19

Online proctoring platforms claim to prevent cheating. But at what cost?

But What If They Cheat? Giving Non-Proctored Online Assessments

The Best Ways to Prevent Cheating in College

The Impact of Honor Codes and Perceptions of Cheating on Academic Cheating Behaviors, Especially for MBA Bound Undergraduates

Why Honor Codes Reduce Student Cheating

Exam Surveillance Tools Monitor, Record Students During Tests

Facial-recognition systems misidentified people of color more often than white people, according to a federal study

The Best Algorithms Still Struggle to Recognize Black Faces

Facial-Recognition Software Might Have a Racial Bias Problem

Ed-Tech Specialist Fights Proctorio Lawsuit

Woman says she was subjected to hijab screening before exam

How to Assess Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Your Classroom

How to Make Authentic Research Experiences Widely Available

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences: Current knowledge and future directions Erin L. Dolan Texas Institute for Disc

Authors:

Michelle Alexander

Safiya Noble

Ruha Benjamin

Anna Lauren Hoffmann

In this episode, Rebecca gets impatient and Brandon thinks everything is interesting. I haven't entirely managed my commitment of bi-weekly episodes, but we're coming up on the end of the year and Rebecca wanted to provide a quick wrap on the year with some of our favorites. We cover IDT articles, books for work and pleasure, podcasts, movies, TV, and more. We have a lot of great shows lined up for the new year and we will be back in early January. Please rate and review our show and send us show ideas, feedback, guest connections, fan mail, hate mail, whatever you please. Happy Holidays!

Articles:

Burned Out: Stories of Compassion Fatigue - Patrice Prusko and Whitney Kilgore 

The Emerging Story of Burnout in Educational Design

How to Be an Antiracist Educator: An Interview With Ibram X. Kendi

How Automated Test Proctoring Software Discriminates Against Disabled Students by Lydia X. Z. Brown

Designing Forward - Barbara Lockee

Authentic Language Learning through Telecollaboration in Online Courses - Crystal Marull and Swapna Kumar

Books:

Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone - Thomas J. Tobin and Kirsten T. Behling

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat - Samin Nosrat

The Passion Paradox by Brad Stulberg

Hell Divers Series - Nicholas Sansbury Smith

A Wizard of Earthsea: The Earthsea Cycle Book 1 - Ursula K. LeGuin

Speech Sounds - Octavia Butler

Podcasts:

Movies: Midsommar, Hereditary, The Call

TV/Web: Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, The Midnight Gospel, Kingdom, Dark, The Expanse

We're talking project management this week! There's a lot of ground to cover and this is a fairly long episode, but if you have ever had to deal with a project that seems never-ending or have looked at a contract that boggles the mind, this episode is for you! Check out the resources below for more information.

We're back again! This week I'm excited to share a conversation with our friend Shea Swauger about the prison to school pipeline of ed tech. We delve into a few topics surrounding the two-way commerce of discrimination in education, from the intentional to the unintentional. The idea of the school to prison pipeline, a concept of how certain policies (see: zero tolerance) interfere with the education of students of color and put them on the path to incarceration, but schools also import technology and policies developed or perfected in prisons into their classrooms and courses. This is a difficult -- but extremely important -- topic that Shea was kind enough to discuss with us. The show notes this week are copious with an amazing amount of resources, so please, dive in!

Show Notes

We're back! This episode we're talking about proctoring, from simple programs that lock down a student's browser to the windowless room where you can't talk and get mean-mugged while you furiously scribble down your answers. We cover the different types of proctoring, some of our views on how proctoring affects students, and why you should consider redesigning multiple choice exams. I say "so" about fifty times and Rebecca finds her new plan to strike it rich.