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) podcast producer, read my post for thoughts on growing an audience, pivoting to video, storytelling structures, and interviewing guests.

On that last point, I'll share here the three tips on guest interviews that I mentioned in the blog post:

1. Send your interview questions to the guest in advance. Not every guest needs this (or even wants this), but many appreciate knowing where the interview might go and some will do some intentional prep based on your questions. And your neurodivergent guests who process differently will really appreciate the extra time to prepare.
2. Tell your guests how long you’ll record and how long the edited interview will be. I usually block an hour for an Intentional Teaching interview, record for about 45 minutes, and edit the interview down to 35 minutes for the episode. Giving guests that info, along with the number of questions I’m planning, helps them pace their answers.
3. Feel free to talk to your guests in ways that make them feel comfortable and keep the conversation authentic, knowing that you can cut your own comments out later in editing. I’ll often tell a story to connect with a guest, then edit out my story later to keep the final episode concise and focused on the guest.

For the rest of my takeaways from HigherEd PodCon, see my new blog post!

AI Slop and Authentic Voices

Over the Fourth of July holiday, I hung out with some friends and their kids. At one point during the visit, my friends' fourteen-year-old picked up one of the picture books that was sitting on a side table, looked through it briefly, and then, with all the condescension a teenager can muster, announced that the book was "AI slop." I picked up the book, and, indeed, all the pictures had that weird, shiny, rubbery look we've come to associate with AI-generated images. There was no illustrators listed, so, yeah, probably AI art. What surprised me about this was how the teenager had apparently already decided that AI art wasn't worth his time or attention.

Before I run the risk of being that college president who goes home over the holidays and sees a grandkid playing on an iPad and comes back to campus to announces an entirely new digital learning initiative, let me assure you that my friend's teenager isn't the only one with concerns about "AI slop." There's a running battle in the board game industry over the use of AI art in games, with a handful of board game publishers using AI art and the majority of game players (at least those with social media accounts) objecting to it. Those objections are sometimes about the "slop" quality of the art but more often about the ways that AI image generators were trained on the work of human artists without consent.

YouTube is also worried about "AI slop." The video service recently announced that it was updating it's YouTube Partner Program, which is how creators on YouTube monetize their videos through ads and such. YouTube wrote: "YouTube has always required creators to upload 'original' and 'authentic' content" to be part of the program. "On July 15, 2025, YouTube is updating our guidelines to better identify mass-produced and repetitious content. This update better reflects what 'inauthentic' content looks like today." Translation: If you post "AI slop" to YouTube, there's a good chance that YouTube will de-monetize you, that is, kick you out of their profit sharing program.

Why is YouTube making this change? Probably because there are lots of teenagers (and adults) out there who have no interest in seeing "AI slop" on the platform. They want "original" and "authentic" content, which today means less AI and more human content.

Moving over to the educational context, all this leads me to be less concerned with students not valuing authenticity in their writing, something I hear a lot in discussions about AI. On the contrary, I think originality and authenticity are only more valuable in a world of generative AI, and I think most (not all) students get that. I'm more concerned about students phoning it in on assignments we give them that aren't original, aren't authentic, and don't interest the students in the slightest. As I wrote in my Inside Higher Ed piece, "On the Sensibility of Cognitive Outsourcing," generative AI is forcing us to move toward more authentic and interesting assignments, and that's a good thing.

Thanks for reading!

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