Shows
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationAI and Cognitive Offloading with Leon FurzeShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. On the podcast today, I talk with author and consultant Leon Furze about the ideas found in some of his recent writing on AI and learning. We talk about resistance as a framework for combatting cognitive offloading, the mental models that educators and students have of working with AI (and how they can lead us astray), and classroom activities that can help students build the kinds of expertise they need to use AI effectively.Episode ResourcesLeon Furze’s website...
2026-06-0244 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationSupporting Student Reading with Jessa Roisen and Donna BattistaShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. 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 join...
2026-05-1942 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationSurviving Peak Higher Ed with Bryan AlexanderShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. The total number of students enrolled in US higher education institutions grew steadily in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. However that total peaked in 2011 at around 18 million students. It’s been declining ever since. You can imagine some of what that means—fewer students means less tuition, which means fewer faculty and staff and the closure of colleges and universities. US higher ed has been on the downhill across multiple measures for about 15 years now.That decline is the focus of Bryan Alexander’s new bo...
2026-05-0547 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationTeaching Math with AI with Amy Langville, Chloe Lewis, Lew Ludwig, and Kathryn Pedings-BehlingShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. A few years ago, it was pretty easy for math educators to ignore generative AI. The chatbots of 2022 and 2023 were notoriously bad at math. But that’s no longer true! Today’s frontier AI models are very good at math—to the point of proving mathematical conjectures that have been open for decades. Today on the show, I have a roundtable of math faculty sharing what AI-aware mathematics teaching looks like here in 2026. Our roundtable guests are Lew Ludwig (Denison University), Chloe Lewis (University of Wiscons...
2026-04-2157 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationTeaching Civic Engagement with Bridget Trogden, James Burns, Megan VanGorder, and Nafisa Nipun TanjeemShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. The Civic Engagement & Voting Rights Teacher Scholars program serves as an avenue for faculty to work together to create classroom teaching materials – by faculty, for faculty – to support a thriving American democracy. The Teacher Scholars are recruited and supported from across the nation to work in cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary, humanities and arts-based faculty learning communities. The Teacher Scholars design, create, and disseminate openly licensed pedagogical materials for use in college courses nationwide.Today's guests are the co-directors of the program, Bridget Trogden, dean of undergraduate education and...
2026-04-0746 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationPop Quiz on Faculty and the Law with Kent KauffmanShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. In the last year, we’ve seen many stories of college and university faculty being accused by students of teaching something that the student didn’t think the instructor should be teaching. These incidents have a lot of instructors worried about teaching controversial topics—and just about any topic can be controversial these days. Previously on the podcast, we've explored pedagogical responses to the current political climate. Today, we look at our legal options.Our guest is Kent Kauffman, author of the 2024 book Navigating Choppy Waters...
2026-03-2445 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationIn-Class Writing with James SeitzShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. Last November, University of Virginia English professor James Seitz offered a workshop through the UVA Center for Teaching Excellence titled “Teaching in the Age of AI: How Students Can Do All Their Writing in the Classroom.” When I saw the workshop announcement, I have to admit that my initial reaction wasn’t a positive one. Was this another call to return to the days of blue books, with high stakes essay exams depending on students being able to practice the lost art of handwriting? No! I’m exc...
2026-03-1045 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationReimagining Grading with Sharona Krinsky and Robert BosleyShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. This past December, I had the honor of being a guest on the Grading Podcast ("reimagining grading as a tool for student success") hosted by Sharona Krinsky and Robert Bosley. We had such a great conversation that I thought I would return the favor and invite Sharona and Boz on my podcast.Sharona Krinsky is the executive director of the Center for Grading Reform, a non-profit that hosts an annual conference on grading, among other things. She’s also a math instructor at California State Lo...
2026-02-2448 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationStudent-Designed AI Chatbots with Windy Frank and Sarah GibsonShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. When I heard my friend Windy Frank, an adjunct faculty at Lipscomb University here in Nashville, talk about an assignment of hers in which students designed custom AI chatbots, I was very interested. Windy teaches in the College of Bible at Lipscomb, and she asked her students to create AI chatbots based on figures in the Old Testament. Students then engaged their chatbots in conversation, asking the prophet Jonah about his biggest failure or Daniel to make up some names for the lions he famously encountered.
2026-02-1044 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationIntentional Tech Six Years Out with Derek BruffShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. Last fall, I was interviewed on a podcast called Transform Your Teaching from the Cedarville University Center for Teaching and Learning. Hosts Rob McDole and Jared Pyles had me on to talk about my book Intentional Tech six year out from its publication date. I shared the Intentional Tech principles I find most relevant today, especially as higher ed continues to respond to generative AI, and I talked about what I would put in a second edition of the book were I to write one. Rob and...
2026-02-0331 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationStudents and AI Literacy with Annette VeeShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. Annette Vee is an associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and co-author (with Marc Watkins and your podcast host) of the forthcoming book The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching. Annette and I met through this writing project, and I invited her on the podcast to get to know her better. Annette and I cover a lot of ground in our conversation: how computational literacy is changing in light of AI, whether there is such a thing as “AI literacy,” what she has learn...
2026-01-1338 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationEducational Technology Advice for Academic Leaders with Derek BruffShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. About a year ago, I appeared on the Ed Up Provost podcast hosted by Gregor Thuswaldner to share some educational technology advice for academic leaders. Topics included strategic planning around edtech adoption to managing innovation and organizational change to investing in faculty and staff, and I think my advice holds up well. Today, I'm sharing that interview here on the Intentional Teaching podcast feed. Whether your job title includes the word provost or not, I hope you find the conversation useful.Episode Resources
2025-12-3046 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationTeaching for Deep Learning with Ken BainShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. Ken Bain was the author of What the Best College Teachers Do, a book that has helped many college educators apply the science of learning to their teaching practice. He was also the founding director of the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching, which is why I interviewed him in 2023 for an oral history I was producing about the CFT.Ken Bain passed away in October 2025, and I wanted to honor his legacy by sharing my full interview with him from 2023. In this episode, Ken talks...
2025-12-1652 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationEvery Student an Entrepreneur with Jeff MeadeShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. What if your college or university decided that every undergraduate student there would be an entrepreneur, not just studying entrepreneurship but doing it? That’s exactly the decision made a few years ago by the leadership at Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas.Paul Quinn is an HBCU with a small student body, just 700 students. This year, the college has launched a new program called Every Quinnite Is an Entrepreneur. The goal? Every student, regardless of major, launches and operates a real venture before graduation....
2025-12-0238 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationTake It or Leave It with Michelle Beavers, Leo Lo, and Sara McClellanShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. I’m back with another “Take It or Leave It” panel! This one is a little different. On October 2nd, in my role as associate director of the UVA Center for Teaching Excellence, I hosted a virtual panel titled “Take It or Leave It: AI’s Role in Online Learning” featuring three fantastic UVA colleagues. The conversation went very well, and the panelists and the CTE gave me permission to share the audio from the panel here on the Intentional Teaching podcast. The panelists for this edition...
2025-11-1852 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationCareers in Educational Development with Leslie Cramblet Alvarez and Chris HakalaShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. On the show today I talk with Leslie Cramblet Alvarez and Chris Hakala, authors of the new book Understanding Educational Developers: Tales from the Center from Routledge Press. The book blends scholarship and personal narratives to explore the career trajectories of the professionals who work at CTLs. How do academics move into these careers? And what can these careers look like over time? Leslie Cramblet Alvarez is assistant vice provost and director of the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Denver. Chris H...
2025-11-0442 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationPeer and AI Review of Student Writing with Marit MacArthur and Anna MillsShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. Today on the podcast, we learn about one initiative that offers a path forward for AI and writing instruction. It’s called the PAIRR Project, where PAIRR stands for peer and AI review and reflection. This approach takes the well-established peer review pedagogy used in writing instruction and adds a layer of AI-generated feedback on student writing. PAIRR has been developed and tested by dozens of faculty at public colleges and universities in California, and I’m excited to have two of those faculty on the podcast toda...
2025-10-1445 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationManaging Hot Moments in 2025 with Rick Moore and Bethany MorrisonShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. Here in the US, the political environment is more heated than I’ve ever known it in my lifetime, and some of that heat is coming directly at higher ed and its faculty. This episode is all about managing those “hot moments” in our classes when just about any topic can be “hot.” My guests are Bethany Morrison, assistant director at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan, and Rick Moore, associate director for faculty programming at the Center for Teachin...
2025-09-3047 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationDigital Accessibility with Amy LomelliniShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. In this episode, we explore why digital accessibility can be so important to the student experience. My guest is Amy Lomellini, director of accessibility at Anthology, the company that makes the learning management system Blackboard. Amy teaches educational technology as an adjunct at Boise State University, and she facilitates courses on digital accessibility for the Online Learning Consortium. In our conversation, we talk about the importance of digital accessibility to students, moving away from the traditional disclosure-accommodation paradigm, AI as an assistive technology, and lots more.
2025-09-1638 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationBenchmarking Online Education with Bruce Etter and Julie UranisShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. The online education wings of most colleges and universities have changed a lot since 2020, with online units moving in from the periphery to the center of operations at most institutions. On the podcast today, we’re going to take a look at the state of online education in the United States, and to do that, we’ll make use of data from the 2025 Benchmarking Online Enterprise Survey (BOnES) conducted by UPCEA, the online and professional education association. On the show today, I talk with Bruce Etter...
2025-09-0239 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationStudy Hall with Lance Eaton, Michelle D. Miller, and David NelsonShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. Today on the podcast, I'm excited to try out a new format. I'm calling it "Study Hall" since we're gathered together to discuss some interesting teaching and learning studies, with this edition's studies exploring the intersection of generative AI and education.The panelists for this edition of study hall are Lance Eaton, senior associate director of AI in teaching and learning at Northeastern University; Michelle D. Miller, professor of psychological sciences at Northern Arizona University; and David Nelson, associate director at the Center for Instructional...
2025-08-1951 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationDeveloping AI Literacy with Alex AmbroseShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. Today on the podcast, we’ll get a window into how AI is affecting the teaching and learning landscape at one university, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. My guest today is 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.Alex discusses Notre Dame’s recent decision to adopt Google Gemini campuswide, surveys of Notre Dame students and faculty about their changing views of generative AI...
2025-08-0539 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationDefending Higher Education with Kevin McClureShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. On two recent episodes of this podcast, we talked about an essay titled "Higher Ed Is Adrift" by Kevin McClure. 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. Today on the show, I talk with Kevin McClure, who is a professor of higher education and chair of educational leadership at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, a...
2025-07-2241 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationTeaching Effectively with ChatGPT with Dan Levy and Angela Pérez AlbertosShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. I have now read a few books on the intersection of higher education teaching and generative AI, and Teaching Effectively with ChatGPT is by far my favorite. There’s no hyperbole here, just practical advice on making the most of generative AI with dozens of concrete examples from the authors and from other instructors in their network. The book was written by Dan Levy, senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and Angela Pérez Albertos, who was first a student in Dan’s class, then...
2025-07-0841 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationTake It or Leave It with Stacey Johnson, Liz Norell, and Viji SathyShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. I’m back with another “Take It or Leave It” panel! I know it’s only been a couple of episodes since the last one, but there’s a lot happening in higher ed in the US 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 are facing here in 2025. For each essay, we decide if we want t...
2025-06-2456 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationTeaching with AI Agents with Matthew Clemson, Isabelle Hesse, and Danny LiuShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. 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 t...
2025-06-1042 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationTake It or Leave It with Betsy Barre, Bryan Dewsbury, and Emily DonahoeShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. 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...
2025-05-2857 min
Intentional Teaching, a show about teaching in higher educationAI-Integrated Assignments with Kiera Allison, Jamie Jirout, Spyros Simotas, & Jun WangShare your thoughts about this episode as a text message. 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...
2025-05-2053 min