Developing AI Literacy This week on the podcast, I talk with Alex Ambrose, professor of the practice and director of the Lab for AI in Teaching and Learning at the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence at Notre Dame. I heard Alex on the Kaneb Center's podcast, Designed for Learning hosted by Jim Lang, a few months ago, and I was very interested in what Alex had to say about the evolving state of generative AI in education at Notre Dame. I was thrilled when Alex agreed to come on Intentional...
13 days ago • 4 min read
High Structure Course Design Justin Shaffer has a new book out on high structure course design! I met Justin a few years ago through a Macmillan Learning webinar on teaching with classroom response systems. I learned that not only did he use that particular technology very effectively in his teaching, but he also had a wealth of experience in active learning and course design more generally. When I wanted to put together a podcast episode on "studio" approaches to biology (in which lab and...
20 days ago • 6 min read
Defending Higher Education with Kevin McClure If you've listened to the recent "Take It or Leave It" episodes of the Intentional Teaching podcast, you'll be familiar with Kevin McClure's essay "Higher Ed Is Adrift." In the essay, Kevin outlines some of the many attacks the current U.S. presidential administration is leveraging against higher ed, and he notes that many faculty and staff are finding their institutional leaders' responses lacking. We talked about the essay on the "Take It or...
27 days ago • 3 min read
Podcasting in Higher Ed Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend HigherEd PodCon, the first conference devoted to podcasting across higher ed. Thanks to UPCEA, which sponsors my Intentional Teaching podcast, for sending me to Chicago for this very engaging conference! On my blog this week I shared some highlights from the conference in a post I called "Higher Ed Podcasting Is Having a Moment." If you're interested in higher ed podcasting, either as an avid listener or as a (potential)...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
On the Sensibility of Cognitive Outsourcing You may have seen a headline or two about that new MIT Media Lab study "Your Brain on ChatGPT." This is the study in which more than 50 participants wrote SAT essays either with ChatGPT or with Google search (but no AI assistance) or with just their brains. The researchers took electroencephalography (EEG) measures of the participants and concluded that the ChatGPT cohort didn't have the same brain connectivity seen in the other two groups. The...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Take It or Leave It with Stacey Johnson, Liz Norell, and Viji Sathy We're back with another "Take It or Leave It" panel on the podcast this week. I know it's only been a couple of episodes since the last one, but there's a lot happening in U.S. higher ed right now, and I find these panels helpful for making sense of it all. Once again I’ve invited three smart colleagues on the show to discuss recent op-eds that address the challenges that colleges and universities and their teaching missions...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Teaching with AI Agents: A Conversation about Cogniti I think the first custom AI chatbot I tried was one called “Are You a Witch?” designed by past podcast guest Marc Watkins. This chatbot would answer your questions like ChatGPT, but unlike ChatGPT it would only do so after accusing you of witchcraft (in the most caricatured way possible) and making you solve a riddle. That chatbot was kind of silly, but I soon heard about faculty and other instructors building chatbots to do all kinds of...
2 months ago • 3 min read
New from the UVA Teaching Hub One of my roles at the University of Virginia Center for Teaching Excellence is supporting the growth of the CTE's Teaching Hub. The Teaching Hub features collections of resources on a variety of teaching and learning topics, with each collection curated by someone with expertise in that topic. The goal isn't to build all the great resources, but to point to the really good ones that are already out there, with recommendations like the staff picks at a good...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Take It or Leave It with Betsy Barre, Bryan Dewsbury, and Emily Donahoe Higher education in the United States has been faced with unique challenges in 2025, largely because of actions taken by the new U.S. presidential administration: federal grants cancelled midstream, bans on DEI programs, thousands of international students losing visas, and so much more. These actions are unprecedented, and they are making it very hard to work or study at a college or university right now. This week on...
3 months ago • 4 min read