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Cogniti is a tool developed at the University of Sydney that instructors can use to create custom AI chatbots ("agents") for use in their teaching. Cogniti makes it easy to create a special-purpose agent, invite students to interact with the agent, and have some visibility into how students are using the agent. 

I have a theory that in a few years, teaching-focused custom AI chatbots are going to be standard tools available to higher education instructors. I may be wrong about that, but if it turns out to be the case, it makes sense to start figuring out the affordances and limitations of these tools now.

On this episode, I talk with Danny Liu, professor of educational technology at the University of Sydney and lead developer of Cogniti, about the tools origin and uses. Danny brought along a couple of University of Sydney colleagues who have been experimenting with the tool: Matthew Clemson, senior lecturer of biochemistry, and Isabelle Hesse, senior lecturer of English. We had a great conversation about the current and potential roles of custom chatbots in teaching and learning.

Episode Resources

·       Cogniti website

·       Videos from the 2024 Cogniti Mini-Symposium

·       Matthew Clemson’s faculty page

·       Isabelle Hesse’s faculty page

·       Danny Liu’s faculty page

·       “Dr MattTabolism: An AI Assistant That Helps Me Help Students with Biochemistry” by Matthew Clemson, Minh Huynh, and Alice Huang

·       “AI as a Research and Feedback Assistant in Essay Plans and Annotated Bibliographies” by Isabelle Hesse

·       Are You a Witch?, a custom GPT by Marc Watkins

·       “Structure Matters: Custom Chatbot Edition” by Derek Bruff

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Higher education in the United States has been faced with some unique challenges in 2025, largely because of actions taken by the new U.S. presidential administration. In this "Take It or Leave It" edition of the podcast, I invited three wise colleagues on the show to discuss recent op-eds that address ongoing challenges to the teaching missions of colleges and universities. For each essay, we decide if we want to Take It (that is, agree with the central thesis of the essay) or Leave It. Our judgments might be binary, but our discussion of the essays and the challenges they address is full of nuance and complexity.

The panelists for this edition of Take It or Leave It are Betsy Barre, assistant provost and executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at Wake Forest University; Bryan Dewsbury, associate professor of biology and associate director of the STEM Transformation Institute at Florida International University; and Emily Donahoe, associate director of instructional support at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi. All three are experienced Take It or Leave It panelists, and I am very excited to have them back on the show.

Episode Resources

·       Betsy Barre’s website

·       Bryan Dewsbury’s website

·       Emily Donahoe’s Substack

·       Essay 1: Higher Ed Is Adrift, Kevin McClure, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2025

·       Essay 2: Institutional Neutrality Is a Copout, John Jenkins, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 7, 2025

·       Essay 3: Are You Ready for the AI University?, Scott Latham, April 8, 2025
 
 

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On the podcast today, I talk with four University of Virginia faculty who are serving this year as Faculty AI Guides. This provost-funded program has enlisted 51 faculty to explore potential uses of generative AI in their teaching and to share what they learn with colleagues in their departments and schools. Back in January, we invited the Faculty AI Guides to share assignments from their fall courses that thoughtfully integrated AI to support student learning. I put some of these assignments in a collection on the UVA Teaching Hub website (see the link below), and on this episode of the podcast, I talk with four of the Faculty AI Guides who contributed assignments.

Kiera Allison is an assistant professor of management communication, Jamie Jirout is an associate professor of education, Spyros Simotas is an assistant professor of French, and Jun Wang is a lecturer in Chinese. In our conversation, the four Faculty AI Guides talk about their motivations for being in the program, what they have learned about AI and teaching through their experiments, how they respond to concerns about students outsourcing their learning to AI, and what’s next for their use of AI in teaching.

Episode Resources

·       Faculty AI Guides website

·       “Integrating AI into Assignments to Support Student Learning,” UVA Teaching Hub

·       “Red Lights, Green Lights, and AI-Integrated Assignments,” Derek Bruff, March 4, 2025

·       AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI’s Future and Save Our Own, Verity Harding, Princeton University Press, 2024

·       “How to Encourage Students to Write without AI,” Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 13, 2025

·       “AI Podcast 1.0: Rise of the Machines,” Planet Money, May 26, 2023

·       “Comparing the Quality of Human and ChatGPT Feedback on Students’ Writing,” Jacob Steiss et al., Learning and Instruction, June 2024

·       “Exquisite AI Corpse,” Maria Dikcis, AI Pedagogy Pr

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In this episode, I share a conversation I had recently with Lauren Malone, assistant professor of communication at the University of Tampa. I met Lauren at a conference in Tampa, where she was presenting her ongoing experiments integrating AI into her communications and media studies courses. In particular, she shared about her use of Google NotebookLM in a game studies course that focused on writing for digital games. Lauren was already on her second semester kicking the tires on NotebookLM in this course, and I wanted to learn more, so I invited her on the podcast. In the interview, she talks about creative thinking with AI, the importance of the struggle in learning, very different student responses to AI, and changes she’s already making to her use of AI as this work in progress continues.  

Episode Resources

·       Lauren Malone’s website, https://lmaloneonline.wordpress.com/

·       Google NotebookLM, https://notebooklm.google/

·       There’s an AI for That, https://theresanaiforthat.com/ 

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Pratima Enfield is the associate dean of instructional design at the United States Naval Community College. Prior to her current position, Pratima was the executive director of online learning at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Pratima and her SAIS colleagues bridged the gap between the instructional design and student support functions that are more typically siloed in online programs. Instructional designers work with faculty and student support staff work with students, so it’s not a given that these two teams will collaborate. But that’s exactly what happened at Johns Hopkins. I’m excited to have Pratima on the show today to tell us about it.

Episode Resources

·       Pratima Enfield’s LinkedIn page

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Today on the podcast, I’m republishing one of my favorite interviews from Leading Lines, the podcast I hosted for the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching from 2016 to 2022. 

In this interview from 2022, I talk with Remi Kalir, who was (at the time) an associate professor of learning design and technology at the University of Colorado. Remi is a scholar of annotation, that simple act of adding a note to a text. Remi takes a broad view of what counts as a “note” and as a “text,” making annotation a powerful lens for examining how we humans make meaning. In the interview, Remi and I focus on the use of annotation in learning contexts, particularly social and collaborative annotation. It’s an interview I find myself referencing again and again, and I’m glad to have it in a podcast feed once again!

And the timing of this episode is intentional, as Remi has a new book out the day this episode of Intentional Teaching airs. The book is called Re/Marks on Power: How Annotation Inscribes History, Literacy, and Justice. Here’s the tag line from the MIT Press website: “An interdisciplinary exploration of annotation that shows how this participatory act marks public memory, struggles for justice, and social change.” So if you like what you hear from Remi about annotation and learning, then follow the links in the show notes to learn more about his new book. 

Episode Resources

·       Remi Kalir’s website

·       Re/Marks on Power: How Annotation Inscribes History, Literacy, and Justice

·       Reading Re/Marks, Remi’s newsletter

·       Annotation in Teaching and Learning, a collection of resources on the topic that I curated for the University of Virginia Teaching Hub

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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

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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

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Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

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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/ 

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

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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  

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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/

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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 

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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/

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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 

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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/ 

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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.

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

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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/ 

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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 

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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 

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Listeners in the United States might have noticed that there’s a presidential election coming up, and we know that can make for a challenging teaching environment. Fortunately, I have an interview to share that addresses just this moment. Bethany Morrison is a political scientist and an assistant director at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan, and she has been working with colleagues at Michigan to support faculty teaching in this election year. 

In the interview, Bethany shares ideas for making connections between course material and the election, managing high-stakes discussions and hot moments in the classroom, and encouraging voting and civic engagement skills among our students. 

Episode Resources

·       Bethany Morrison on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethanynmorrisonphd/ 

·       “Preparing to Teach During the 2024 Election” on the CRLT blog, https://crlt.umich.edu/blog/preparing-teach-during-2024-election 

·       Promoting Democracy Teaching Series, https://ginsberg.umich.edu/teach-democracy

·       “In the Eye of the Storm: Students’ Perceptions of Helpful Faculty Actions Following a Collective Tragedy,” Therese Huston & Michele DiPietro, https://podnetwork.org/content/uploads/In_the_Eye.pdf 

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This is a story about institutional change. The product of that change—a new framework for assessing teaching quality now in use at Appalachian State University—is important, but the process that led to that change is just as important because it's by analyzing change processes that academic leaders can affect change on their campuses. 

In this episode, I talk with Lindsay Masland, interim executive director at the teaching center at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, who not only helped shape the new teaching quality framework at App State but also launched a grant program that has helped multiple departments do some really important work aligning their programs and policies and procedures with the framework. 

Episode Resources

·       The Teaching Quality Framework at Appalachian State University, https://cetlss.appstate.edu/teaching-learning/teaching-quality-framework-0

·       Lindsay Masland on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-masland-25b04511/ 

·       “Assessing Teaching with Beate Brunow and Shawn Simonson,” Intentional Teaching episode 27, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/episodes/14189134-assessing-teaching-with-beate-brunow-and-shawn-simonson 

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Today on the podcast I talk with Mariel Pfeifer, assistant professor of biology. Mariel started at Ole Miss just about a year ago as part of a cluster hire of three STEM faculty who are on the tenure track at UM doing disciplinary based education research. I was excited to hear Mariel was coming to the university because I was already familiar with her work. Back in the spring of 2023, I lead a faculty learning community on the topic of active learning in large enrollment STEM courses, and we read her study on the experiences of neurodivergent students in active learning STEM classes. 

As Mariel points out in our conversation, a lot of the traditional accommodations we use for students with learning disabilities assume that a college course is full of lectures and exams, but that’s not as true for STEM courses as it once was. Mariel shares lots of insight into the student experience in these courses and has practical advice for instructors interested in helping more students succeed. 

Episode Resources

·       Mariel Pfeifer’s lab website, https://www.pfeiferlab.com/

·       "What I Wish My Instructor Knew,” Mariel’s paper on students with ADHD and specific learning disabilities in active learning STEM courses, https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.21-12-0329

·       “Structured Reading Groups,” Derek’s November 2022 blog post about group roles, https://derekbruff.org/?p=3934 

·       “Teaching Students with ADHD with Cathryn Friel,” Intentional Teaching episode 16, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/13140564-teaching-students-with-adhd-with-cathryn-friel 

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Emily Affolter teaches in the PhD program in sustainability education at Prescott College in Arizona. Her students come from all different professions, some even already have PhDs. They’re in the program to pursue what Emily describes as “social and environmental justice as enacted in teaching, learning, and leading.” How do Emily and her colleagues meet these diverse students where they are and help them achieve their goals? That’s where culturally responsive teaching comes in, which Emily describes as reimagining a class with equity at the center.

Emily talks with me about what culturally responsive teaching looks like in her program at Prescott, how to build trust with one's students, the unique position an instructor has in fostering equity, how to work toward equity even in large lecture courses, and what it means to decolonize marine biology.

Episode Resources

·       Emily Affolter’s faculty page, https://prescott.edu/people/emily-affolter-ph-d/ 

·       Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice, Geneva Gay, https://www.tcpress.com/culturally-responsive-teaching-9780807758762 

·       Relationship-rich education with Isis Artze-Vega, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/14292897-relationship-rich-education-with-isis-artze-vega

·       Universal Design for Learning at scale with Thomas Tobin, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/14935277-universal-design-for-learning-at-scale-with-thomas-j-tobin 

·       “The Importance of Indigenous Knowledge in Curbing the Loss of Language and Biodiversity,” Wilder, O’Meara, Monti, & Nabhan, https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/66/6/499/2754233 

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

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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 message.

Back in February 2024, as part of a slow read of my book Intentional Tech, I reached out to Paul Hanstedt, author of Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World, to talk about the "rhetorical triangle" as a way for thinking intentionally about writing assignments and other types of assignments. We had a fantastic conversation that I shared on Patreon at the time, and I’m now very glad to share the interview here on the main podcast feed.

Paul is the vice chancellor for academic affairs and innovation at the University of Minnesota Rochester. We talk about how UMR is not like other institutions, then we talk about Paul's new book, the second edition of General Education Essentials: A Guide for College Faculty. Paul has so much wisdom on the design of general education curricula and on the process of designing those curricula. Finally we get around to talking about authentic audiences and rhetorical triangles.

Episode Resources

·       Paul Hanstedt on Bluesky, https://bsky.app/profile/curriculargeek.bsky.social 

·       General Education Essentials: A Guide for College Faculty, https://www.aacu.org/publication/general-education-essentials-a-guide-for-college-faculty

·       Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World, https://www.routledge.com/Creating-Wicked-Students-Designing-Courses-for-a-Complex-World/Hanstedt/p/book/9781620366974?srsltid=AfmBOoqsAbLJZT5zCC9UovFUp9sTbqZJkd8KgRD0V_vFflZdQ1Wdb6H_

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

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

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During these late summer episodes of the podcast, I’m sharing some interviews I conducted in much cooler times. Back in February as part of a slow read of my book Intentional Tech, I talked with Justin Shaffer, teaching professor in chemical and biological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Chapter three of the book deals with using technology to make visible “thin slices” of student learning. I reached out to Justin, who is also associate dean of undergraduate studies at Mines, to learn about some of the ways he uses technology both in and out of the classroom to learn more about his students’ learning.

That topic quite naturally led to discussions of Justin’s high-structure approach to course design. Justin has a book coming later this year (or maybe early 2025) from Macmillan Learning “High Structure Course Design for STEM” that will incredibly useful to STEM instructors of all experience levels. Justin is now officially the first repeat guest on Intentional Teaching. He was part of a panel way back in episode 9 on studio-style biology courses!

Episode Resources

·       Justin Shaffer’s website, https://www.recombinanteducation.com/

·       Sign-up for updates about Justin’s forthcoming book on high-structure course design, https://forms.gle/PEew6AsgFpijopm96

·       High Structure Course Design on the UVA Teaching Hub, https://teaching.virginia.edu/collections/high-structure-course-design

·       Getting Started with Discipline-Based Education Research on the UVA Teaching Hub, https://teaching.virginia.edu/collections/getting-started-with-discipline-based-education-research

·       Intentional Teaching Episode 9 on Studio-Style Biology Courses, https://intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com/2069949/12409419-studio-biology-with-scott-chirhart-robbie-bear-and-justin-shaffer  

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

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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.