Supporting Student Reading with Jessa Roisen and Donna Battista

Today on the podcast, I’m excited to welcome Jessa Roisen, professor of philosophy at St. Ambrose University. Jessa teaches those intro to philosophy courses with really challenging primary sources—Plato and Kant and Descartes and the like. She’s seen her students struggle with those readings, and it’s changed her approach to teaching these courses. She provides a lot of support and scaffolding for her students, both before and during class.

This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced in partnership with Top Hat, and joining the conversation is Donna Battista, managing director for learning solutions at Top Hat. Donna partners with educators across higher ed, helping them use the Top Hat platform to address the teaching challenges they face.

In today’s episode, Donna and Jessa share their perspectives on the challenge of teaching students to read hard things, and they offer both philosophical and practical responses to that challenge.

Episode Resources

·       Jessa Roisen’s faculty page

·       Donna Battista’s LinkedIn page

·       Top Hat

Transcript

Intro

Jessa Roisen 0:39

So here I was thinking, okay, you guys are gonna go do the reading, and then we're gonna come back and we're all gonna have this conversation. And that having asked them to do that exercise made it really clear that we weren't gonna be doing what sounded like a good time to me. We were gonna do what they needed to be able to digest this material.

Derek Bruff 1:03

Welcome to Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. I'm your host, Derek Bruff. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time. 

Derek Bruff 1:19

For a good 20 years now, I have heard faculty bemoan the fact that their students aren't doing the reading. In the last few years, however, that complaint has taken on new resonance. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges it posed to deep learning, as well as maybe years of watching short-form videos on their phones instead of reading long books, students seem to be genuinely struggling to do the reading, as we say. Whatever the causes of this phenomenon, a lot of faculty and other instructors are looking for ways to engage and equip students in the hard work of learning through reading.

Derek Bruff 1:55

Today on the podcast, I'm excited to welcome Jessa Roisen, professor of philosophy at St. Ambrose University. Jessa teaches those intro-to-philosophy courses with really challenging primary sources, Plato and Kant and Descartes and the like. She's seen her students struggle with those readings, and it has changed her approach to teaching these courses. She provides a lot of support and scaffolding for her students both before and during class, and she shares her approaches on the podcast today.

When did you realize you wanted to be an educator?

Derek Bruff 2:24

This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced in partnership with Top Hat, and joining the conversation with Jessa and me is Donna Battista, Managing Director of Learning Solutions at Top Hat. Donna partners with educators across higher ed, helping them to use the Top Hat platform to address the teaching challenges they face. In today's episode, Donna and Jessa share their perspectives on the challenge of teaching students to read hard things. And they offer both philosophical and practical responses to that challenge.

Derek Bruff 2:56

Jessa and Donna, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I'm excited to talk to you about uh reading and students and learning and all those good things. Thanks for being here.

Jessa Roisen 3:06

Thanks for having us.

Donna Battista 3:07

Yeah, thanks for having us. 

Derek Bruff 3:10

So I'm gonna start uh with a version of my usual opening question, which is, and I'll start with you, Jessa. Can you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator?

Jessa Roisen 3:21

So for me, uh if I had to go beyond just being in my basement when I was a kid, um, having elaborate school uh for my dolls, um, if you want something more recent than that, um I mean I just I've always wanted to be a teacher. And I think for me, the the the really like um the catalyst for me wanting to teach is that experience of watching someone figure something out when you can see the learning happening on their face. I call those light bulb moments when you can just see them get it. And it it sort of feels a little bit like I've kind of been on this in on this trick the whole time. Like I've just been waiting here, waiting for them to get it. And then all of a sudden it's like, yep, you get it. You're there with me. That's my favorite thing in the world.

Why is "doing the reading" challenging?

Derek Bruff 4:12

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a good feeling. What about you, Donna? Do you call yourself an educator?

Donna Battista 4:18

I I don't call myself an educator. Um, I think of myself as a partner to educators. Um, so you know, when I think about my role, I think about partnering with authors and instructors, faculty, you know, to first identify what the global and specific teaching and learning challenges are that need to be addressed and then working with them to develop solutions for it. So I I think I'm a facilitator of education, but not an educator per se. Yeah. Yeah. Um. 

Derek Bruff 4:54

Well, I want to talk about reading. And um, I almost wanted to say, I want to talk about doing the reading. There, that that that particular phrase that has some weight to it. Um, and I know that there is a narrative in higher education. I mean, it's kind of always been there, but I feel like it's been stronger these past few years post-COVID, is that students are really struggling to do the reading. Um, that either they don't want to or they don't have the skills to. Um, and this is a challenge that I think a lot of uh faculty are seeing in their teaching. And Jessa, I wanted to start with you and see and ask do you have you seen that as well in your teaching? And and what is what does that kind of look like for you to see that students are are struggling with that reading part of the learning process?

Jessa Roisen 5:39

So for me, the reading part has always been a challenging piece of education. I teach philosophy, and and that is one discipline that it you don't really get an introductory philosophy text. You're just reading Plato. And, you know, you're just in it. And so to ask these students who are, you know, maybe first, first generation college students, like, here's some Emanuel Kant, dive into that, and let's see how it goes. And um, I very quickly learned that students were struggling with this reading that they're doing because it's so complex. And so I had an exercise that I was having them do where I would ask them to bring in three quotes from the material that they thought were important, right? You can pick anything you want, but just you know, try to identify what do you what are three things that you think are important? And then students would come into class, they'd get into groups, and they would I would ask them to translate the passages that they chose into English. Now they're already in English, right? But putting them, we're putting them into modern English. And what I was finding is that the students were they would find the quote important passages. They they got it right, but then they couldn't translate it. It was a kind of sense that there was something important here, but they had no idea what it meant. And so for me, that was that was a big eye opener that like clearly they're doing, you know, they're their eyes are scanning the page, right? And they're invested enough that they're they're finding something, but just that they weren't able to really connect with what it was that they were reading.

Derek Bruff 7:23

This is important, but I can't really tell you why.

Jessa Roisen 7:26

Exactly.

Derek Bruff 7:27

Yeah, yeah. Um, wow. Um, so um, how does that make you feel as an instructor when they struggle with that kind of work?

Jessa Roisen 7:36

Um, I mean, I'll tell you, what it does is it tells me that my job wasn't what I thought it was, right? So here I was thinking, okay, you guys are gonna go do the reading and then we're gonna come back and we're all gonna have this conversation. That's my picture of how this is gonna go. And that having asked them to do that exercise made it really clear that we weren't gonna be doing what sounded like a good time to me. We were gonna do what they needed to be able to digest this material. And so that was just a, I think it was a real eye-opener for me of trying to understand here's where you guys are, here's why where I am, and I need to figure out to get where you are. Right. I can have an incredibly clever bunch of discussion questions loaded and ready to go. But if you guys didn't understand what you prepared for class, then we're not doing that.

Derek Bruff 8:28

Right. It's the difference of leading a good discussion after everyone's done the reading and spending class time helping them do the reading, right? Helping them actually grapple with the hard work of the text.

Jessa Roisen 8:40

Absolutely. And I think that's just such a powerful realization that, okay, I have to help you walk before I can get you to run. And if if we're not able to read through this content and understand it, because I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to spend, I mean, the hour, the two hours that these students are sitting in front of a text, assuming they're doing the reading, right? Like if we've if like you said, if we're if they're doing the reading, right, right, they're turning the pages, eyes are going across the words, they're outrunning mental errands while they're doing it because they're so bored and they don't understand what this is about. I can't imagine the frustration that must go into that for a student to say, I did everything you asked me to, and I have nothing to show for it.

Derek Bruff 9:31

Right. Doing the reading as opposed to actually reading. Um Donna, what's your take on this narrative that um students are really struggling with reading in today's higher ed? Do you do you do you see that as a as a matter of skills, a matter of motivation, something else entirely, um, a COVID hangover? What what what sense do you make of that narrative?

Donna Battista 9:54

I think the first thing I want to say is I I don't believe students are less capable learners. Um I think that there's lots of evidence that students are excellent learners. I mean, if you think about how they have this ability to go find solutions to things on their own. I mean, a a silly example from my own life, I remember asking my niece how she learned how to put hair extensions in her hair. I mean, like, I, you know, I'm still I'm, you know, older and you know, I'm still figuring out how to put mascara on, and she's like 12 putting hair extensions in. And she was like, I went on YouTube and I watched some videos and I figured out how to do it, like a professional, you know. So they're very, very capable of learning. Um, and they are super efficient navigators of information, right? That they're really, really good at finding and navigating information.

Donna Battista 10:55

But when it comes to deep reading and careful analysis, the cognitive work that that requires is not something that is reinforced in the digital environment that they're in, right? So I think that that is that that is something that has changed over the years. Um, that the skills that they are developing through their earlier years are not skills that are lending themselves to deep and careful reading, which goes back to Jessa's point about like we have to teach them those skills, right? So, this is this to me, this is a matter of changing what you're doing in the classroom. You know, you're going to have a different kind of experience where you are not having this amazing conversation about the reading you assigned overnight. And instead, you're going to talk about how do we approach this reading, right? What do I need to do to scaffold this experience for you so you can become the kind of reader that we need you to become? And that is going to deliver a lot of value to you in your life and your career afterwards.

Jessa Roisen 12:06

I wonder if we do a good enough job of asking students what they think learning looks like. What is the learning experience look like for you? How do you know you've learned something? Because I feel like that metacognition is really missing. And I was reading an interesting passage where somebody was talking about how if you ask a student when they learned something, they will say, I learned it when you talked about it in class. Which, of course, anybody who's a teacher knows, you know, the five minutes I spent going over something in class is not when that took hold for you. It was when you struggled with doing the exercises or the questions afterwards. It was when you wrestled with this and had to try to figure out how to answer a question. The wrestling, the hard part was the learning part. And so I think that because we don't always do a good job of helping students understand when they're learning and what learning feels like, it can be really frustrating to sit and read a text that, you know, isn't fun, isn't necessarily, you know, full of pop culture references, or, you know, isn't just going to be an easy, engaging read. It can be really hard to do that if you feel like this is hard and I don't understand why you're asking me to do it.

What kinds of support can help students learn to read hard things?

Donna Battista 13:18

Yeah. And I'd even take it back even a step further and say, I don't think students understand always that the goal of higher education is learning how to learn, right? So, like we first have to share that information with them. You know, like one of the things that you are getting here is the ability to learn how to learn when you are presented with new information because I can teach you a specific skill, I can teach you a specific piece of content, and there is going to come a time in the future where that is not going to help you, right? There's going to be, I don't know, something like AI that comes along and makes that not valuable for you, right? Or even before that, you know, Google came along and made finding all of this data and information so much easier and faster for things. So I think that um that that's one of the first things that we we need to help students understand is yes, I am here to teach you about Derrida Kant or whatever you're teaching in your philosophy class. But really, I'm here to teach you how to learn.

Jessa Roisen 14:32

Absolutely. 

Derek Bruff 14:34

Well, I keep coming back, I think it was episode three or four of my podcast. I talked to Maryann Winkelmes, who heads up the Transparency in Learning and Teaching project, um, which that framework has just been all the more important since AI hit the scene. And students have lots of questions about why on earth they're they're being told to do things in their courses. And that transparency is so powerful. But one of the things she said, um, and this is interesting in relation to what you said, Donna, about our our students being good at learning. I think it's very contextual, right? Your niece, who is well motivated to um figure out what to do with her hair and has like sufficient background knowledge to make sense of new information pretty readily, right? And has like her ways of finding the information, right? So in that domain, she is a pro learner. That doesn't mean she walks into a philosophy class and you know, it's a different skill set in learning there. And Maryann pointed this out that even at really selective institutions, students come in being really good at high school learning, and then now they need to learn in mathematics or learn in philosophy or learn in nursing. And it's a different skill set.

Jessa Roisen 15:41

Well, you know, I think it's interesting that at least when I was a student, the thing that I was always being told by my instructors was okay, so read the discussion questions at the end of the chapter, and then go back and read the chapter, right? That like so then you kind of know what you're looking for and you can kind of anticipate some of your learning. And and to me, so I use Top Hat in my classes and it's this platform that lets me kind of pick and choose like where I can put questions on the page so that students can have, you know, maybe two or three paragraphs, and then I can put a question in to ask them, which does a couple of things. It makes the reading more bite-sized, right? And it also is kind of drawing their attention to it's pointing an arrow right at, okay, something important just happened. So let's figure out if we know what the important thing was before we move on to the next thing, right?

Jessa Roisen 16:35

And and to me, that makes so much sense because I can't be with it there sitting with my students when they're reading, but it's almost like I can say, hey, before you go ahead, are you sure you've got this? And so I think that is a kind of tool or good course design that you can offer in terms of like making that reading make more sense. Why I --don't just give me 25 pages to pour over and then try to guess where, you know, where the interesting things were, but help me understand why I'm doing it as I go. And really, this is this is the course design that my teachers were offering me. They just didn't have the technology to say, okay, I'm gonna stop this reading and then I'm gonna ask you a question and then I'm gonna have the reading continue, right? They didn't have the technology to pepper those questions through. So they were just telling me, like, hey, figure out what these questions are, and then that's gonna pet, that's gonna set you on a better path.

Jessa Roisen 17:30

So I think that is something that helps. Like that idea that students don't have the skill to do the reading. Um, I mean, obviously, like you guys are saying, I mean, these are people who are incredibly talented, incredibly motivated to do all kinds of things when they know what it is that they're doing, right? But, you know, even your niece, Donna, isn't gonna watch an hour and 45 minute long video that at some point is gonna reveal how to put extensions in, maybe, right? I mean, we we cut to the part that's important, we we do it, we watch it a couple times, right? And then that's how we learn it.

What does reading look like now in your courses?

Donna Battista 18:10

Yeah, yeah. And I think your point about, you know, what when reading is the right modality to deliver the learning, making that reading more intentional and more active by doing some of the things that you're talking about, right? By putting in those kind of speed bumps, you know, and whether that is a conceptual question or an opportunity maybe before the reading to reflect on what do you already know about this topic, right? I I I think about um, you know, the the concept of memory in psychology, for instance, right? You know, they could just be like, okay, I'm gonna read that, you know, okay, there's 25 pages, I'm gonna subtract the boxes, okay. I think I'm down to 17 pages, like I just could have to get through these things, you know. Or, you know, you could ask the question, right? What do you already know about memory? And they know things, right? They know, okay, I I I tend to remember things that were important to me, like when I hit that home run. I never remember what my mom tells me to do, you know, like and they and they're able to articulate some of the things that they know, and then they can apply what they're learning in the reading to that context. Like, oh, this makes sense now because I've just made it about what I know, what I'm thinking about, what I'm aware of already. Um, and or um, I thought I knew this. And after I read it, maybe I didn't, maybe what I thought I knew wasn't totally accurate, right? So giving them that ability to think about what they're going to read and learn before they do the reading, I think helps them digest that reading more as well.

Derek Bruff 19:48

Yeah, let me um so that's yes, right? Like that's something we know about how learning works. And instead of hoping or assuming students will engage in that kind of prior knowledge exploration before they they jump into the text, why not structure that into the activity so that we're more confident that more students are doing that thing that we know is helpful to their learning? Um, Jessa, can you say more about kind of what reading looks like now in your courses and like how you think of it in terms of what happens before class, what happens during class, and how you provide some of that structure for students?

Jessa Roisen 20:27

So I think that part of part of my approach has been that there are there are the essential readings that a student really does need to do. And and I think a big part of being a thoughtful instructor is asking why it is that I think those are the ones, the like these are the really critical ones, because it's pretty easy, I think, to fall in love with some of that stuff because I love it. I chose to spend my life thinking about this. So of course I think everyone needs to read all of Plato's symposium at least once a year. And, you know, so it's so to just, you know, be really, really critical with, okay, so what are the readings? What exactly do I want them to get out of it? Right. And I'm actually in the process right now. I'm working through a translation of the Apology for my students that are in an intro class. And do they need to read every single word that Plato wrote? No. I can make some choices about, you know, essentially, Donna, what you were saying before of let me cut out all those books or all those, you know, boxes that I can squeeze that I can skip and just get to the meat. I can kind of sum up the, the, the rest of it, get them to the meat, and then say, like, okay, so let's really dig into this, right?

Jessa Roisen 21:45

And I can give them some questions before they walk into it that can kind of set them up and pique their interest and demonstrate that actually this isn't a weird esoteric requirement that you have to take and you don't know why it's a general education, right? Like this is actually really connected to your life. Have you ever had a principle that you thought was worth arguing over, even if it was gonna maybe get you in trouble, right? What are those things you have had that are experiences like that? And then now we're off, we're off to the races because now I can relate to this guy. Now I have some empathy for this character that I'm reading about. And so I'm I'm engaged, I'm looking for connections in ways that I might not have otherwise. And if I can focus in on those target spots, Ask the questions that get them to realize why those are targets and then prep them for the next piece they're going to read of like, okay, now here's how this is going to connect up. Get ready. Right. I think it it just makes it easier to do the reading than to not. You know what I mean? When I hand an assignment over to my students, there's, I mean, it is truly, it's a couple of paragraphs. You're then you're answering a couple of questions, you're going on to the next thing. It's just easier to keep going. You know, and you see why you're doing it. Everything you're asking me to do is important. I now I see what how this is all connected. So I don't just feel like you're just giving me a bunch of filler.

Derek Bruff 23:12

Yeah. I was struck, this was years ago. Um, I was I was at Vanderbilt at the Center for Teaching, and I I forget what committee I was on, but we had a few undergraduates on the committee. And I remember this one student saying, you know, when my instructor gives me like five to seven pages of reading, I'll do it. I'll try to make sense of it. When my instructor gives me 25 to 30 pages, I don't even start. Like they don't even read the first five pages, right? Because it's just too much. It's too overwhelming.

Jessa Roisen 23:39

Um well, and you know, one way, one way I I think it's useful to think about is that, you know, if you wanted somebody to really take the, you know, the to see the value in something to really identify where the greatness was, you don't feed them that through a fire hose, right? Like you you want to pick out for them, see how this thing is especially great. Look at how this argument is really good. Um, you know, going back through all the extra content later, that's something you do when you're, you know, a top-level nerd who really wants to dig in and think about philosophy. But if, but if you're just learning how to learn, if you're just really training your brain how to think, I mean, think about the way that we we work in a gym, right? You work one muscle the same way, you do it over and over in these little movements until you get good. You don't just, you know, throw somebody on a track and say, go run a marathon, now go run another one, right? That's not how we train anything. Yeah.

How do you turn course readings into a more social activity?

Jessa Roisen 24:39

So it does, I mean, I just think it, you know, choosing those three pieces, making them really intentional, and then focusing on helping them understand why it is they're doing it. I think that that's that's how I try to get reading to look in my class. Because I'll tell you, I watch those students who are coming into my 8 a.m. class and they've already been to the gym doing exercises that they do not like to do because they believe this is gonna make them a better pitcher. This is gonna make them a better quarterback. And so because they see value in it, they'll do something that they think is hard. They'll do something that's challenging because they think it's gonna pay off for them. Their coach has done a great job of explaining how does conditioning and how does, you know, how do these exercises lead to this thing that you want? And so, I mean, I can take a page out of that, right? And just make that that's what we're doing in class, is I'm gonna make a really great case for you of how this is gonna help you do the thing that you want. And it's gonna be challenging and it might be a little, a little hard sometimes, but uh you guys can do hard things, you do them all the time. 

Derek Bruff 25:48

Yeah. Let me ask um first a logistical question and then maybe a a harder, harder question. Um, you said that um you're using your platform to give them kind of chunks of things to read with questions embedded, right? That are either getting them ready for the next chunk or helping them process the chunk they just finished.

Jessa Roisen 26:09

Yep.

Derek Bruff 26:09

Um are you looking at their responses to those questions?

Jessa Roisen 26:13

Yes, I am. Um now the good news is that I can um I can look at those questions in, you know, sort of an overview kind of way of even if I'm just asking uh objective questions, true, false, multiple choice. Does it look like they're getting it? Do they, you know, are they kind of getting a sense of what's going on? Um, but then also to give them the opportunity to do a little bit of thinking. And those are things that their peers can read, which to me is like the best thing ever, because it's one thing when the teacher comes in and says, like, yep, yep, that's you know, this is the point we were trying to make. It's another thing entirely when there's a classmate who is demonstrating how how accessible this content is, right? My classmate just said something really smart, or my, you know, it turns out you this is really easy. People can get this, people can do it, right? And so not only am I looking at what they're writing, but the great thing is they they are also looking at what each other are writing. And I think that that can kind of help spur on the process a little bit.

Derek Bruff 27:17

Yeah.

Jessa Roisen 27:18

Um, I mean, put those students to work for you, right? Like make a question. Can you can you provide an example of what it is that, you know, Socrates is arguing in this point? And you've got 35 examples from 35 different students who are all, you know, giving something that, okay, maybe, maybe the example Plato gave didn't make any sense, but the example your classmate did.

Derek Bruff 27:41

You know, for some reason I hadn't put two and two together that you can do that in the Top Hat asynchronous mode. I I've used Top Hat for polling a lot, right? And often I do want to echo students' comments back to them so we can talk about it as a class during a live session. Um, but you've got that ability to kind of keep their answers private to you or share them back with the whole class.

Jessa Roisen 28:00

And yeah, and really the feedback that I've gotten from students because I'm just gearing up to do a new class for online, and so I've been really pumping them for information on like what makes a good online class. And, you know, and they are very quick to um hit pretty hard on the like post wants respond twice. You know, they've heard it so many times, they've done it so many times, and I think that they're just like over it. And so to have to have it be where like, nope, it's not, it's not this thing that you have to go out to this other place and I have to go navigate over to this discussion board. It's literally the thing after the paragraph I just read. And I've got all these comments coming from student from my, you know, from my classmates who got to this material before I did. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty nice.

Derek Bruff 28:48

Um, Donna, I want to bring you back in in in a second, but I just have to share, and I've shared this on the podcast too many times. But a couple years ago, I did a War and Peace slow read. One chapter a day, all year long. We got four days off all year. We read this 1400-page book, right? Um, and the reason I persisted was because there was this great online community of other War and Peace slow readers, and half of them were in England. And so no matter what time of day I read my chapter, a bunch of them had already posted in the in the discussions forum for this. And so being able to take what was a pretty challenging reading at times, right? My my my Russian-French history is not great. Um, and and to go in a space where I could see other people grappling with the same thing, I could see what their takes were, right? And and and it was again, it was chunked out, right? It was it was the chapter we all read today. And so I think that was really powerful. I um I tried to do a Les Mis slow read this year, and this will be my first chance to go public to say I have I have quit. I'm a quitter. Um, I got through several hundred pages, and there's like a 75-page section, which is just about the Battle of Waterloo, and I have no idea why it's in there, or none of the characters appear in it, right? Jean Valjean is missing. I'm like, I because I didn't have that community, right? I think I would have made it through if I had had a decent slow read community to kind of get through the hard parts together.

Jessa Roisen 30:10

Well, I was just gonna say, Derek, like you are the target audience then for this for this podcast, for this question, why didn't you do the reading? And it was like, I didn't have a community with me. I was all alone, going through the Battle of Waterloo. I can't do this by myself.

Derek Bruff 30:25

Gosh, it was so bad. Um, so Donna, what what would you add to this? Um, what are you seeing instructors doing to provide this support and this scaffolding for this really crucial part of the learning process?

Donna Battista 30:37

Yeah, you know, um I had an I have another niece who's a freshman in in college right now, and we had dinner the other night, and I was asking her about you know some of her experiences, and um we were talking about reading. Um, and she said that in one of her classes, um, the instructor said, I'm gonna turn my back. Uh if you did the reading, raise your hand. And then he turned back around and he said, Okay, how many people raise their hand? And somebody answered, two, you know, after the class of 30. And at that point, he stopped assigning the reading. And he told me this, and I was like, Well, that's a choice. But I think what that points to is that you know, just assigning the reading does not get students to do the reading, right? If they don't think that the reading is going to deliver on, you know, the their learning goals, or if they don't see it motivating, or if they think you're just gonna say the same thing in class anyway that I read in my reading, then why should I bother doing the reading?

What about helping students read longer texts?

Donna Battista 31:54

Um, and so you know, that's where I think we have to come back to like how are we designing the reading process and how are we motivating the reading? And you are obviously already mentioned tilt. And I think there's a lot of great examples of how you can do that using the TILT framework and having transparency. And Jessa, you talked about like I'm being really um thoughtful about whether or not this is a reading that needs to be assigned, and then I'm sure you're also saying to your students, this is why I assigned this reading to you, right? I was very thoughtful about what the learning outcome from this particular piece of reading is, and this is why I'm assigning it, and this is why I'm super excited about assigning this reading to you, and providing that motivation to the students, I think, is so important to getting them to read. So, you know, I assign the reading because I want to have a good class discussion. Like that's not doing it for them. They need to believe that the reading is integral to their learning, it is going to be important to their learning and they need it to and and they need to be um motivated by that. 

Derek Bruff 33:10

So uh this is a nice segue though into I think the hard question I want to ask, which is um Donna, you mentioned earlier that um students today, particularly kind of traditional college-aid students, don't have the same encounters with deep reading that we might have had when we were youngsters. Um Jessa, you're not giving them those encounters with your approach. So so are you worried that they're they're not gonna have those opportunities to do deep reading of a long hard text?

Jessa Roisen 33:42

Oh, this is a great question. Okay, so so I think this is an excellent example of where we need to be really deliberate about the skill that we are teaching. I think reading a long book with major investment and sustained engagement and attention, that is an important skill. It's just not the skill I'm teaching in my class, right? And so, you know, I absolutely think that there's a place for that and students absolutely need to do it. But in a way, this kind of goes back to what Donna was saying before of like, wouldn't it be great if the sustained reading that you were doing, the time when you put all the energy into that was for the class that was teaching that skill. And then you could save all of this energy that, you know, to use it in a different kind of way. So then you're not, you know, sitting under a pile of books for eight hours a day, not moving, because all you can do is read. Where now you can, oh, I have a teacher who's who's giving me information on a podcast. So I can go take a walk and listen to this and process this information in a different way. Um, I think I I so that would be my answer is I'm not worried that they're not going to learn the skill. I think it's just we need to do a really good job of making sure we know what skill we're teaching where.

How is generative AI changing the role of reading in learning?

Donna Battista 34:54

Yeah. And I would just add to that, like, you know, we talk about scaffolding within a class, right? Scaffolding the experience within a class. We also need to think about how that scaffolding happens across courses, right?

Derek Bruff 35:07

Yes, we do.

Donna Battista 35:09

The learning, I think the learning that Jess is doing in her class is scaffolding to the next class, right? You know, they're gonna they're gonna take that next philosophy class where they're gonna be much more prepared for that deep reading of the long text. Um so I think we have to do look at it across multiple courses and and not just in the individual courses. 

Derek Bruff 35:34

Um let me ask one more question. Um, so I think it was 17 minutes into our conversation where the term AI came up. Um sometimes I track the like time it takes to for AI to enter the conversation. Um there's a lot of conversation about how AI may be changing how students engage with readings as well. Um Jessa, how what have you observed? Uh has has generative AI kind of changed either how your students are interacting with your readings or how you're approaching this process with your students?

Jessa Roisen 36:03

Okay, so I would definitely take that in both of those directions, right? Um, so in terms of how my students are affected by AI, um, I think that the piece that I am still struggling with is that sense of we can't just move our classrooms into a Faraday cage and say, like, there's, you know, there can't be, there will be no AI that happens in here, right? Um, because I don't think that's fair to them when we are preparing them to go out and get jobs in places where people are going to expect them to be very conversant in AI and to understand how to work, work with it and, you know, put it to use for them. So I think that there's a part of me that feels an obligation to encourage really good, successful, um, healthy tool usage of AI. And so I think there's places to model that in terms of um exercises that I've used in class after my students have done, you know, maybe a difficult reading, having them do these kind of um personalized AI bot conversations with one of the characters for the reading so that they can kind of dig in and bring that character to life for them. That's a tool that can help them make this content make more sense in a way that I think demonstrates the power of AI as opposed to just it becoming a kind of tool, you know, it's just a crutch that like I typed in, explain to me what I should have learned in this John Stuart Mill reading, right? Like um, so I think that's that's that's one issue.

Jessa Roisen 37:39

And and being able to ask my students to, you know, designing assignments for them where they're able to take the content that they've just read and then put it to use with AI. So, you know, whether that's a role play exercise that they're doing or if it's teaching the content back to the AI student who's, you know, sort of pretending it doesn't know, right? Those are all ways to take the reading and digest it in ways that are really uh active for them and that are kind of fun. You know, um, I had threatened my students that I was gonna start um testing their parents for when it came time to take an exam. I was gonna be like, okay, you have to explain utilitarianism to your mom, and then your mom's gonna take the exam and you get whatever grade your mom got. They were like, that sounds terrifying. And I was like, okay, what if we did it with AI? Maybe that'd be okay. Um, but but we know that like teaching is an it's another way of activating learning, right? And so being able to build that in is great.

Jessa Roisen 38:36

And so that sort of brings me to the other side, um, which is how does it change me? How does it change my teaching? And I think that using my platform in my classroom, being able to have top hat pages where I can just insert those AI exercises right there. Um, that is again, that's so useful. So that I have always said philosophers are terrible at giving examples for things. And so that, you know, Aristotle will say something that he thinks is really clever and it's gonna help everybody and it's only confused people for 2,500 years. But but being able to, okay, here's where, here's the example he gave. Now let's use AI to put in what's an example that's gonna make more sense to my students, right? What's the population of students that are in this class? Maybe I've got the whole basketball team is in this class. And so I can just really quickly use AI to generate an example that now takes this kind of esoteric reading and puts it into something really practical for them. Um so that makes my job really easy because I can provide those examples really quickly. If I had to, I don't know basketball, I can't provide a great example that's gonna mean something to my students, right? But um, but I have tools that can.

Derek Bruff 39:51

Yeah.

Outro

Jessa Roisen 39:51

And so that speeds up the process for me. So I have time to put, you know, to invest in other places. So I think that having the AI tools that let me um figure out how to design things better for them, um, I think is a really powerful thing. But I do think that, you know, on the other side of that, we have to figure out how do we teach students, these tools are amazing. Um, but there's a reason why they're the tools and they're not doing the thinking, right? Here's how we don't want it to replace you.

Derek Bruff 40:26

Well, we're gonna have to leave it there. This was a really rich conversation. Thank you so much for both of you for coming on and helping us dig into this really hard challenge. I appreciate your insights and your experiences. This has been really great. Thanks for being here.

Donna Battista 40:39

It was a lot of fun. Thanks, Jessa.

Jessa Roisen 40:42

Yeah, thank you. 

Derek Bruff 40:45

That was Jessa Roisen, Professor of Philosophy at St. Ambrose University. And Donna Battista, Managing Director for Learning Solutions at Top Hat. Thank you to Top Hat for partnering with me on this episode and for connecting me with Jessa and Donna. I really enjoyed our conversation, and I was interested to learn how Jessa uses Top Hat in her teaching. As I indicated in the discussion, I'm more familiar with Top Hat's live polling tools, which I've used successfully across multiple courses in the past. I appreciated hearing how Jessa uses Top Hat's asynchronous tools to turn her class into a learning community.

Derek Bruff 41:19

I'd love to hear what you, dear listener, think about the challenge of students doing the reading here in 2026. You can send me your thoughts via email derek@derekbruff.org, or click on the link in the show notes to send me a text message right now. You can also find links in the show notes to more information about Jessa and Donna and their work.

Derek Bruff 41:37

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the Online and Professional Education Association. In the show notes, you'll find a link to the UPCEA website where you can find out about their research, networking opportunities, and professional development offerings. This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced and edited by me, Derek Bruff. See the show notes for links to my website and socials, and to the Intentional Teaching newsletter, which goes out most weeks on Thursday or Friday. If you found this or any episode of Intentional Teaching useful, would you consider sharing it with a colleague? That would mean a lot. As always, thanks for listening.