Category: motivation

467. Learning Reinforces Curiosity

Posted in engagement, higher education, learning, motivation
October 14, 2026

Many past guests have emphasized the role curiosity can play in stimulating student learning. In this episode, Yaniv Abir discuss his recent study examining the impact of satisfying initial curiosity on subsequent curiosity about related content.

Yaniv is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research at University College London. He is one of the co-authors of a study entitled “Learning Reinforces Curiosity,” which was published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Many past guests have emphasized the role curiosity can play in stimulating student learning. In this episode, we discuss a recent study examining the impact of satisfying initial curiosity on subsequent curiosity about related content.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Yaniv Abir. Yaniv is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research at University College London. He is one of the co-authors of a study entitled “Learning Reinforces Curiosity,” which was published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Welcome, Yaniv.

Yaniv: Thank you, thank you. I’m very happy to be here.

John: Thanks for joining us. Today’s teas are:… Yaniv, are you drinking any tea with us today?

Yaniv: I am. I’m just having an English breakfast tea, actually, with milk.

John: Excellent. Which is the appropriate British way of doing it. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: I have a gin tea and rose today, John,

John: And I have a spring cherry green tea today.

Yaniv: That sounds nice.

John: It’s very good.

Rebecca: It always smells really good, but I don’t like the taste of it. [LAUGHTER] So we’ve invited you here today to discuss your study on the effect of learning on curiosity for related information. To set the foundation for the discussion, it might be helpful if you could explain the role that curiosity plays in learning.

Yaniv: The role that curiosity plays in learning, and the role that learning plays in curiosity, of course. So we think about curiosity as our motivation to seek information. So, sort of seeking information is a really important part in learning, and that’s what motivates us to do that. So we know that curiosity is very important for learning. If you’re motivated to do something, you’ll do more of it and you’ll do it better. We know, for example, that people remember better facts or skills that they learned when they were curious about those facts and skills versus when they weren’t, and we know that works across the lifespan. So if you let people memorize a few facts or anything, any new material, invariably you see that older adults perform slightly less well than younger adults. But one of the very few places where you don’t see that is when you are looking at information that people are curious about. Older adults would be just as good as younger adults. So there’s something interesting that curiosity is so powerful that it can save learning from one of the most robust and reliable effects that we know that affect learning. So older age memorizing becomes more difficult, except if you’re curious about what you’re memorizing. So curiosity is really, really powerful. We know it’s very important for childhood learning. People who build robots think that it’s very, very important for building robots that are good at handling the real world. So it’s a core part of learning, and obviously learning is a core part of curiosity because it’s what it’s about.

John: In the paper, you know that past studies have generally treated curiosity as being static and focused in those studies on the demographic and personal characteristics that affected curiosity. Why might that approach be somewhat problematic?

Yaniv: Right. So studying curiosity has been around for a long time, and it’s gone in and out of fashion in waves. In the last wave we’re part of and very much in debt to, cognitive scientists wanted to understand this phenomenon of curiosity. The first thing that we do as cognitive scientists is that if we find the human capacity we’re interested in and we want to understand how it works, first thing we do is break it into bits. We want to isolate it. We want it to reduce it to its absolute essence. Sort of the essence of curiosity? It’s someone being motivated to seek information, and there, people who studied curiosity added “for the sake of information,” information for its own sake. And why are they adding that? Because they’re coming from a tradition of studying learning, or what we call instrumental learning. So, learning where there’s a very clear goal to seek an immediate, tangible reward toward a good outcome, and that is sort of the tradition that they’re coming from. Sort of make sure that they’re not studying that because that is well known. That would be trivial, so they don’t want to study how people seek information when they’re learning for a test. For example, I recently moved to the UK. I have to retake my driving license here. I had to study for the theory of driving test. So I really have to memorize all these facts about the rules of the road in the UK, and I’m not curious about them. That’s an easy way to distinguish two different behaviors. But I have to do it, otherwise I won’t get my license. So there’s a clear goal that I can explain why this individual is seeking information, and that is not internally motivated. It’s not about themselves. It’s about something that they have to do that comes from the environment. So we definitely don’t want to study that. We want to study something pure, internally motivated curiosity, that thing that we all feel as academics, as people, as children. And in order to do that, they want to isolate the experience of curiosity from everything else. They will just look at a question that either makes a person curious or not, and we’ll measure just that, and we’ll isolate it from everything else that’s going on. And that was very, very important to sort of establish the ways that we’re measuring curiosity, the tasks that we’re using, the way we’re asking people. But what it did is it threw out the purpose of curiosity. Curiosity is for learning. It is to guide our learning. It is to make our learning better. And if we look at curiosity as an isolated instance, we’re throwing all that out because curiosity doesn’t live in isolation. We learn one fact, and that already leads us to be curious about the next question. We all have that experience of going down a rabbit hole in Wikipedia or whatnot. One thing leads to the next, and then we’re curious about this, and then we’re curious about that. Curiosity doesn’t live as one idea. I’m curious about a question. I got the answer. I’m satisfied. Curiosity quenched. That’s it.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about how your approach in this study differs from this tradition?

Yaniv: So it’s not very different. The tweak that we made was very, very minor, and I’m actually quite proud, and I like that aspect of the study. It’s very simple. We didn’t invent anything too novel. We took a very well- established way of measuring curiosity, which wouldn’t surprise people very much. It’s showing people a question, a trivia question, and asking them whether they want to hear the answer. And the way we usually do that is we say you’re going to have to wait three seconds to hear the answer to this question. Are you willing to wait, or do you want to skip to the next question? And we know from a lot of previous studies that our participants are volunteers. Their willingness to wait to hear an answer tracks very well with their curiosity, and people are consistent. So they’re consistent within individuals. I agree with myself about what is interesting and what arouses my curiosity from one time point to the next. You’d be surprised. You’d think that curiosity is this very personal, idiosyncratic quality of a person, but people they agree by and large which trivia questions are interesting or not. So we took this very established paradigm, and the only thing that we did was we said let’s take trivia questions from a few different categories. So we have a little bit of variance in topics, and the one thing that we’re going to do is instead of just looking at question – Am I curious? – answer, I’m going to look at the previous answer and how I felt after I learned the previous answer, and what that does to my curiosity when I encounter the next question. And that next question may be related, so it could be from the same category, or it could be different, and then we asked, “Do I change my curiosity in any way after I read a very satisfying answer, or after I read a dissatisfying answer?” So that’s the only thing that we did. We said instead of trying to isolate each experience, which as experimental psychologists we call it a trials, instead of trying to isolate each trial, let’s look at how people learn from one experience to the next.

John: So it’s a more dynamic approach to investigating curiosity. Is that a good way of viewing this?

Yaniv: Yes, absolutely. And there’s already been a little bit of work on the dynamics of this. So there’s great work by David Lydon-Staley and Danny Bassett, and they looked at how people explore Wikipedia, and they looked at whether they tend to sort of explore pages in a single topic or whether they tend to jump around. And it turns out that different people tend to do different things, and they were looking at the dynamics of how you explore in this knowledge space led by your curiosity, but they took an approach of let’s describe the overall statistics, the type of jumps that you might see from one topic to the next. We did something simpler, but also more specific. We said, let’s see if we can predict by your response to one fact whether you’d be interested in the next fact. And then there’s also been really cool work from Alison Adcock’s lab looking at how curiosity unfolds within one experience. So if you have like a story going on or something visual that you’re seeing that unfolds, how curiosity unfolds over time and show how it fluctuates and it has a lot to do with your affective responses, which makes a lot of sense. So this is sort of a new approach that has been coming up in the literature in the past two, three years, five years by now.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about what question your study was hoping to address with this dynamic approach?

Yaniv: Yes. So we realized that a very simple question can actually resolve a conundrum that’s been plaguing the curiosity, or exploration, or information-seeking literature. There’s been a lot of names for it for the past more than 50 years. So the very simple question was: “What happens when you encounter a satisfying answer?” You learn the answer, and you satisfied your curiosity. What happens next? So one account that sort of comes from the word satisfaction says the question aroused something in you. That thing was something that needed to be resolved, and the answer resolved that, maybe this slightly aversive thing that you felt, and now everything is over. Your curiosity is satisfied, and you’ll actually be less curious. And another version of this actually says, and I think a lot of people would find that intuitively appealing, is: “If you learn something interesting, satisfying that only opens and grows and reinforces your curiosity to learn more in the same topic,” and these two predictions come from different theories about curiosity. So the older one looks at curiosity from the lens of optimal arousal theory. It’s this idea that people don’t like to be bored, basically. So even if all your needs are met, you need sort of a minimum optimal level of stuff happening, of interesting stuff in your life to be happy and satisfied. And you’re always aspiring to maintain that very minimal level of arousal. So you don’t want stuff to be boring. You don’t want to be sitting in an empty room with nothing happening, but you don’t want to be overstimulated, so you’re titrating yourself all the time in this homeostatic process, where if I’m bored, I seek out stimulation, but if I’m overstimulated, I seek less of it. So that’s the idea. If I learn something interesting, then now it’s time to tamp it down. Let’s relax. If I’m bored, if I didn’t learn anything interesting recently, then I seek out. And the other approach frames curiosity as part of reinforcement learning. So this is really a wide-ranging framework that people may have heard of a lot in connection to machine learning because it’s a very efficient way of training machines to be intelligent, and we see that relevance in AI and LLMs and all of that. But it’s a wide-ranging framework of thinking about how organisms learn in the environment. And the basic idea is that if something good happened, I want to repeat the action that led to it. So, if I learn something interesting, I want more of the same. I want to explore that topic. I want to get more information from that information source, and the’re different ways of thinking about curiosity. One kind of sets it apart from instrumental learning, from doing stuff for other goals, while the other one says it’s just another way of instrumental learning. It’s another way of achieving our goals. For our goals, we need money and food and shelter. We also need a lot of information, and we realize we could adjudicate between these two accounts by looking at this very simple question: After you satisfy your curiosity, what happens? Does curiosity grow or is it diminished?

John: We don’t want to get right to the results of your study because we want to keep people in suspense, let their curiosity build a little bit. So, could you tell us a little bit about the experiment that you designed? You talked a little bit about how you measured curiosity, but what was the actual experiment you used to test between those two hypotheses?

Yaniv: So, we invited volunteers online, and what they did was play this game that we call the waiting task. So, in every round of this game, we present a trivia question, such as which country in the world has the most libraries, and we tell them if you want to learn the answer to this question, you’re going to have to wait an X amount of seconds, could be 3, 6, 9, or 12 seconds, and if they choose to wait, they wait and they see the answer, which is probably Russia. But if they’re not interested, they can just skip on to the next question. And crucially, we tell them in advance: look, you’re going to be here for 20 minutes, no matter what. So how you choose is not going to affect how long this is going to take or anything else. Please base your choices on your actual interest. Another thing is that every time they see an answer, we ask them, “Was it worth the wait?” and they rate whether it was worth the wait. So they tell us about their satisfaction with the answer that they read, and after they complete this game, we show them another bunch of questions that come from these same set of trivia questions, and we ask them to rate their curiosity in learning the answer to each question. Here, we don’t show them the answers; we just want their ratings. So overall, what we have is their expectations about how good of an answer they’re going to get if they pursue a question. That’s their curiosity rating. We have their satisfaction after having read the answer, and we have their choices of whether to pursue this bit of information or not. And then the way we bring them together answers our main question of what happens after you read a satisfying answer versus a dissatisfying answer.

Rebecca: So, are you saying we are left hanging at the end of this game and not knowing the answers to some of the questions we’re curious about?

Yaniv: Yes, yes, that’s unfortunately [LAUGHTER] a part of the deal. Yeah, you’re left without an answer to some of these questions, and that’s of course important because at that part of the experiment we want to make sure that we don’t have these learning effects of one question interferes with the next question. So there’s a lot to say about this purist reductionist way of measuring curiosity, but also we want to see how curiosity evolves and adapts from one bit of information to the next. That’s why we leave our participants without answers to some of the questions, unfortunately. But I’m sure that they can find the answers on the internet if they’re really interested.

Rebecca: How large was your sample for this experiment?

Yaniv: So we actually run this experiment twice, so to speak. The first time we recruited 300 participants, which is an OK sample, and would show us anything when we’re thinking about sample sizes. If you can show something reliably in small samples, that means that it’s a large meaningful effect. But to make sure that we can show it reliably, we also replicated it in a much larger data set that we had, that we previously collected actually during COVID of over 2000 participants. So it’s quite big, and happily we find the same patterns in both.

John: So you gave one example about libraries as a type of question, could you give us a few other examples of questions that were raised during this trivia game?

Yaniv: Yes, definitely, and this is going to tell us a little bit how we’re going to learn from people’s choices and reactions to the questions, because some of the questions in our dataset people found quite interesting. So, for example, what is the most stolen food in the world? A lot of people thought that that’s quite an interesting question. On a scale of one to five, they rate it at above four, so quite good. And the answer to that is cheese. And when you look at whether people were satisfied with the answer, they were quite satisfied. So people are happy with the answer. So it’s an interesting question, interesting answer. And we’re going to call this a high-engagement stimulus or question-and-answer pair. And then of course there were boring questions and answers in our stimulus set. So one question like that was, “In which city was Bob Crane killed?” Actually, to this day, I don’t know who Bob Crane is, [LAUGHTER] and most of our participants didn’t either and didn’t care, and they give it a very sort of low-curiosity rating. And the answer is Scottsdale, Arizona, and people don’t really care about the answer either. So this is a question and a low satisfaction answer. So we call this a low-engagement question and answer. But then, importantly, there’s a question like “Which book was written in response to an editor’s challenge to write a book using fewer than 50 different words,” and people are sort of mid-level curious about this question. But then they read that the answer is Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, and they’re very satisfied with the answer. They know the book; it’s a funny book, it’s an interesting book, so they’re pleasantly surprised by the answer. And this is important. This pleasant surprise, in reinforcement learning terms, we call this a positive prediction error. So I had a prediction, how interesting the answer is going to be, and that was my mid-level curiosity. But then there was an error. My satisfaction was actually higher than I expected. So this is a positive surprise, and this is really important because if the reinforcement learning hypothesis is correct, this is the learning signal. Something is interesting here that you didn’t think about before. And then we had questions like, “Cured salmon is the main ingredient of which food?” And again, people are sort of mid-level curious about this question. The answer we gave was gravlax, which people are really disappointed about. It’s obvious it’s not interesting. I mean, gravlax is cured salmon, so I didn’t learn much. And people give the answer a very low satisfaction rating. So again, we have a prediction error here. Our prediction didn’t match the outcome, but now it’s a negative prediction error. I find it surprisingly dissatisfying, and that is also important. That is a learning signal. Maybe in this task, questions of this type are going to be disappointing, and I should avoid them. Maybe this type of knowledge is disappointing in general, and I should avoid it. So that’s the idea. And then you already have sort of hypotheses about what should happen next. So if the reinforcement-learning hypothesis is correct after learning an answer that gives you a positive prediction error or high-engagement answer in general, you should want more of the same kind of knowledge, and vice versa. If it’s disappointing or just not interesting you should want less, whereas the optimal arousal theory says, “If it was good, I want less of everything. If it was bad, if it was dissatisfying, I want more information.” Doesn’t matter which. So very different predictions.

John: So I gather that your sample did not include very many people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s from the U.S., because they probably would have been more curious about Bob Crane because he was a lead of a popular TV show back in the 60s and 70s called Hogan’s Heroes, which was based on a prison camp in Germany. That was very popular in the U.S., but probably before most of your participants were familiar with it. [LAUGHTER]

Yaniv: Yes, absolutely. I think that’s the right inference to make. Then we have some older participants, but always more difficult to get them online. So yeah, most of our participants are around the age of 30.

Rebecca: Well, I know I have a burning question that we’ve been holding out on, which is, what did you find? [LAUGHTER]

Yaniv: You wouldn’t be surprised by the way I described it so far that what we found was evidence in favor of the reinforcing hypothesis. So if you learn something that is very satisfying, especially if it was surprisingly satisfying, you’re more likely to want more of that kind of information going forward. So if it was the questions about animals, and you were pleasantly surprised with the answer, you’re going to be more likely to want to wait for answers about animals going forward, and vice versa. If it was disappointing, you’ll be less likely to wait for an animal-related question on the next trial. And it was very robust and reliable, and we find it across different types of questions and across different data sets. So, really strong evidence in favor of thinking about curiosity as something that we learn from experience to experience. So, we learn what to be curious about and how much curiosity is warranted by the way the world is, which is a very important insight. We know some people are more curious than others. We know that in some situations we’re more curious than other situations. Thinking about it from the frame of we learned to be that way, rather than this is an innate trait, is really really helpful when you think about how can we make people more curious, more engaged with whatever content it is that we want them to be engaged with.

John: So when people get a positive result in terms of the curiosity, does that increase curiosity in general, or is it just within that category, that domain of knowledge?

Yaniv: Absolutely, just within that category is what we see. So if you learn something interesting about food or about geography, it is going to increase your subsequent curiosity just within that category. Sometimes we see that it might make you less interested in other categories. Sometimes not. I suspect it sort of depends on the structure of the problem. Do you feel that this is sort of a competition between different categories, or whether that aspect is not there, and we did this once, where in an experiment, as I described, where there were four distinct categories: animal, foods, geography, the arts, and we saw this dynamic of you learn only within a category. But then, when we replicated it in our larger previous experiment, then we didn’t have distinct categories. The questions were just from everywhere in the internet. There were trivia questions and interesting tips that you can find on the internet, so sort of a very large variety. And what we did there was rather than look at distinct categories, which was very easy, we measured how similar each question and answer were to the ones that came next, and again we saw the same pattern. When they were similar in terms of the content, then you saw that learning positively satisfying increased your curiosity, positively surprisingly dissatisfying decreased your curiosity. But when they were very very different from one another, you didn’t see that, it didn’t affect each other.

Rebecca: So that certainly leads me to more curiosity about how this might be applied in a classroom setting and what the implications are for teaching and learning. What thoughts do you have about what instructors might consider as they take this information in and think about their own classroom contexts?

Yaniv: Yeah, I think that’s a very interesting question. So first of all, to sort of qualify, this is not an applied research, so we didn’t test it in the classroom with real material. But rather, we’re trying to flesh out the theory of how curiosity works and how it changes dynamically. And I think that’s really important. But then we also have to do the applied research about adapting this theory now into practice. But I think one of the reasons I started my journey into the research of curiosity was that I used to work as an outdoor educator, and the most basic question we found ourselves thinking about all the time was how to get the audience we were working with, so kids from various backgrounds, how to get them engaged, how to get them to be curious about the things we cared about, which was the outdoors and plants and animals and ecology and being a better citizen for the planet and that sort of thing. And that question was recurring, and we had various mentors and training, and a lot of applied knowledge that passes from one educator to the next about how to get people curious. And this sense that, I mean, I’m sure that teachers and educators know that when students are curious, everything works better, and everyone has their own tricks. It’s a craft to get their audience curious. And there’s this idea that yeah, if you can approach people through something that you know would get them interested, something that speaks to their personal interest already, and you can connect whatever you’re trying to teach to that, that is going to be beneficial. And I think by and large our findings support that. But they also say it has to be connected, and the connection has to be real. The person, the student, has to conceive these as really related or part of the same information-seeking action. These are of one kind because if that doesn’t happen, either the learning won’t occur, or even worse, you’ll have a compensatory effect. So I’m really, really interested in whatever content you started the lesson with, and then the transition into the actual content that we have to learn was so stark that now this comparison is actually going to backfire, I’m less curious about it. I’m more preoccupied with whatever you showed me before. But I think obviously these are speculations based on the basic science that we find. How it works in the classroom. I’m sure is more complicated than that, and I’m actually very interested in delving into how educators are thinking about these topics, because I think there’s a lot of wisdom in the craft that we can pursue as interesting questions when we’re thinking about the next stage of understanding this very human phenomena.

Rebecca: I think you even demonstrated with the kinds of questions that you asked in your study that like some are good hooks and some aren’t, but they can still probably even be in the same domain of information, [LAUGHTER] thinking about how to start something and having a good hook question seems really important and relevant to even how your study works.

Yaniv: Absolutely, and we’ve been staring at these lists of questions forever, trying to formalize what makes a good hook and what makes a satisfying answer versus a dissatisfying answer, and it’s not at all easy to formalize. And what I’m very very happy about is actually one of our reviewers on the paper said, “Look, there’s now all these AI tools, large language models. I’m sure they’d be able to explain what is a satisfying answer and what is a dissatisfying answer. They’d be able to predict it, they have all of human knowledge, all of human language. That’s the solution.” And we did that. We did that with four or five models, even new models at the time. We’re very poor at predicting people’s satisfaction, and I think because of two things. So first of all, they’re models of the whole of human knowledge, so to speak, almost, but not a specific person’s human knowledge, and that was very very important because when we substituted your own personal ratings and judgments for the group average, we couldn’t see your learning anymore. So whatever was your idiosyncratic component in there was very very important. And then the other thing is that it’s still not simple. Not even these fancy models can solve it so simply. So there’s still something interesting and very human and very hard to objectify and to reduce in that curiosity phenomenon. And even though we’re explaining it with a framework of reinforcement learning that we use to explain things like how people study for tests or how rats learn to press levers, there’s still that very interesting and funny and uniquely human essence to it, which remains.

John: So, if we’re successful in provoking curiosity in students in our classes, it may encourage them to delve more deeply into the discipline potentially, but it may not make them more successful in other areas. In fact, it might potentially decrease their curiosity in other unrelated areas, or at least not increase it there. Would that be a fair prediction to take from this study, or is that going a little too far?

Yaniv: I think it’s going a little too far, yes, because another thing that we’re doing as we’re getting them to be curious about whatever it is that we’re teaching is that we’re also teaching them how to seek information, and we do that explicitly. But that’s not the part that we measured in truth about in the study. What we thought about is how people learn the craft of seeking information through trial and error, through the satisfying and dissatisfying bits of information that they encounter after seeking information. So that’s really important, and I think that’s one of the really core skills that we acquire, especially in higher education. I think it applies also to kindergarten: how to seek information, how to identify what you’re interested in and pursue that and help that grow. That’s a very important skill, and crucially, it takes so much learning and information to become a good information seeker and learner. So I think that’s important. I think that backfiring dynamic is more at the level of the single lesson than the material at hand. If you’re dealing with an audience that’s low in motivation and you’re trying to motivate them, then that dynamic of introducing something from far out that doesn’t really connect in their eyes is maybe not going to help you. But I think in general, introducing interesting information from maybe fields that they didn’t realize were interesting is really great for teaching them how to seek information and also teaching people that seeking information is worthwhile. So one of my strongest experiences from undergraduate studies… so I studied psychology in a department where 90% of people wanted to be clinical psychologists. So, starting first-year undergrad, they really didn’t want to hear about statistics. And of course, when you study psychology, statistics is most of what you do. And then you had these 10% of people who thought we’re going to be clinical psychologist, find the statistic class really, really interesting. Some of my friends left the course and switched to studying statistics instead. But something that you didn’t expect is going to be interesting because you didn’t know much about, and because maybe the cultural way it is viewed is negative, find that that is actually interesting. That the structure, that there’s something that you didn’t know about before, that’s a great experience and one of the best things that university education can give you.

Rebecca::One of the things that you’re pointing to is the social context that curiosity takes in a classroom setting that was absent from the study. If you’re answering questions in isolation [LAUGHTER] on a computer, that’s different than in a classroom setting, and maybe some of the expectations or judgments around what is acceptable to be curious about could also be at play in a context where there’s other humans.

Yaniv: Right, completely absent. So we’re still reductionist at heart. We want to study curiosity. We’re not studying social learning, but of course, this all works in tandem on one another, and we know that learning from others, seeing others’ responses to outcomes, is such a strong reinforcer in and of itself. So of course, when you have a whole classroom, that’s going to be really, really important. But it also suggests that you have a really, really strong tool harnessing that social aspect, the fact that students are together. If you can harness it towards making them curious and other human beings is something that we’re very curious about. You can see that manifests as gossip, but it also manifests as caring and any sense of the way about our fellow people around us that share a reality with us. So that’s, of course, something potentially that can be very, very powerful in harnessing and getting people curious, getting people involved. And one of the co-authors on this study,, my fellow mentors, Caroline Marvin, actually taught me a course in mandatory practicum in teaching when I was a graduate student in Columbia. And a lot of these ideas and what we know and don’t know about best practices in teaching, where there’s evidence and where this evidence comes from. So a lot of the best evidence about practices of teaching, as far as I know, I’m not an expert, actually comes from like physicists and chemists and hard STEM people who have really thought about how they teach in class and then done the experiments, rather than from social scientists, humanities, psychologists, where you’d think it’s where it’s at. And of course, there’s a lot of work in those fields as well. But it was striking that so much comes from there that got us thinking about these questions and looking at these questions and looking at the links. But of course, our work is at the basic science level, and we’re in no means experts in this literature on this field of how the applied craft and evidence and science of teaching a class.

John: There’s been a lot of focus in terms of professional development for teachers in emphasizing intrinsic motivation and de-emphasizing extrinsic motivation, and that’s a topic you talk about a bit in the paper. What do your results suggest about the relative importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation?

Yaniv: Our results actually suggest that it may not be as useful a dichotomy as we think it is when we look at how people talk about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is really easy to identify. If I am telling you you have to pass this test and otherwise you’re failing the course, or I’m going to give you pizza if you read three books, that’s really really easy to identify, and it’s very difficult to know if someone’s intrinsically motivated because that’s inside them. And if you are an outsider observing them, then that’s an unknown for you. But making lists of what is intrinsically motivated versus what is extrinsically motivated doesn’t really teach us a lot about the mechanism. And that’s where a lot of this literature has been at. Let’s like make a long list of intrinsic motivations, and let’s try to encourage those. There’s a very interesting take on this that I like quite a lot from Arie Kruglansky at the University of Maryland, where they analyze this from the frame of what is the goal and what is the means to arrive at that goal. So when we are thinking about extrinsic motivation, they’re separated. So there’s an end and there’s a mean, and they’re separate. So the end is getting praise for my parents, or getting a degree, or getting a good grade, and the means is studying for the exam. But when we’re thinking about stuff that should be intrinsically motivated, really, it’s the means and the ends have become fused. So seeking information in a certain field has already become fused with an end and is an end in and of itself. And the other place that we see that is in habits. So when a habit forms, it’s like the goal and the means to achieve that have become fused. And I think that’s really interesting. Reading or seeking information is now a habit. I’ll be curious even if I don’t have enough evidence to warrant my curiosity, and that is super super useful. And why is it super useful? Because we’re really bad at estimating what would interest us. So it’s kind of easy in trivia questions, but when you think about stuff like what degree to pursue, I had absolutely no idea what psychology was about before I undertook my major in psychology. Really, I didn’t know. I had a complete misunderstanding of the field, and I’ve seen that many times in my education. Something that initially I thought no way I’d be interested in that, or something that I thought I’m actually very interested in that, with a little bit of experience that changes your mind a lot, and being open to that, being open to that little bit of experience, can teach you a lot. Because without that habit of curiosity, you’re going to shut off these potential experiences based on actually very little knowledge, even though you might not be aware of it. Thinking about it as habit is really really important. And thinking about it, how do we form habits? And everything that we know about forming strong habits that applies to smoking could actually apply to being curious.

Rebecca: There’s so much to think about and be curious about. [LAUGHTER] But we always wrap up by asking: “What’s next?”

Yaniv: First thing that is next is really to acknowledge my fabulous collaborators and mentors on this project. So Daphna Shohamy, who was my PhD advisor, and Caroline Marvin, who’s the Dean of General Studies at Columbia, and Chris Baldassano and Jane Mok, who was a research assistant and really helped with collecting all this data. And this was a really fun team to work with. Thinking about what’s next is this is one tidbit of information about how curiosity works. And even in this conversation, we thought about all these factors came out. How does it work in the social domain? What are the boundaries? So what really is an experience here? So do I get these interesting dynamics within a lesson. Do I get it within a degree, within a whole year of experience, a whole three years of experience? Do people ever get satiated and have had enough information seeking because they got a lot of interesting information? We kind of have a feeling that it should exist at some scale. That at some point, we will become overstimulated. That enough is enough. So, really understanding the boundaries of these phenomena, I think, is interesting. And then, of course, thinking about whether any of this could be translated into things that we could actually test in a classroom and see whether different practices change outcomes in terms of curiosity. I think measuring curiosity when we’re doing all these applied research is really an interesting avenue to complement how we’re thinking. Not think only about exam results as an outcome, but also these intermediate cognitive states and is important of them, I think. Curiosity can really inform us about the mechanisms of what works and what doesn’t work, and I think for me personally, I’m really interested in how this interfaces with our well-being. I think being curious, being interested in the world, is you saying the world is good enough, interesting enough, it has enough structure and predictability for me to invest in it. And I think that’s really, really important for our well-being when we’re feeling well and performing well and flourishing. I think that’s an important part of it. But also when we’re not doing that great, when we’re depressed or when we have difficulties, reigniting interest and curiosity in the environment is a really, really important part of being motivated, and I think that’s something that could be researched more in all of these fields.

Rebecca: Well, it sounds like you’re going to be really busy. [LAUGHTER]

Yaniv: Hopefully.

Rebecca: Thanks for joining us. This is a great conversation.

Yaniv: Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed our talk.

John: Well, thank you, and you’ve left all of us with much to be curious about.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing Assistance provided by Madison Lee.

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439. AI Pre-Mortem

Posted in edtech, educational technology, higher education, learning, motivation, teaching
April 1, 2026

Many faculty, administrators, and students often become caught up in the potential benefits of new technology, but do not always consider the long-term consequences. In this episode, Rebecca Winthrop joins us to discuss a report summarizing the long-term benefits and risks associated with student use of generative AI.

Rebecca is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, where her research focuses on education globally. Rebecca leads the Brookings Global Task Force on AI in Education and co-leads the Family Engagement in Education Network. In addition to her work with many other global education initiatives, Rebecca has served as the U.N. Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative’s Technical Advisory Group and served as co-lead for the Learning Metrics Task Force with the UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Rebecca is also a lecturer at Georgetown University and, with Jenny Anderson, the co-author of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Many faculty, administrators, and students often become caught up in the potential benefits of new technology, but do not always consider the long-term consequences. In this episode, we discuss a report summarizing the long-term benefits and risks associated with student use of generative AI.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Rebecca WInthrop. She is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, where her research focuses on education globally. Rebecca leads the Brookings Global Task Force on AI in Education and co-leads the Family Engagement in Education Network. In addition to her work with many other global education initiatives, Rebecca has served as the U.N. Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative’s Technical Advisory Group and served as co-lead for the Learning Metrics Task Force with the UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Rebecca is also a lecturer at Georgetown University and, with Jenny Anderson, the co-author of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better, which we talked about on an earlier episode of the podcast. Welcome back, Rebecca.

Rebecca W.: Thank you. It’s great to be back.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Rebecca, are you drinking tea with us today?

Rebecca W.: I, of course, am drinking tea. I believe this is my third podcast with you, so I have it in hand. It’s Bengal spice herbal tea, and it’s delicious.

Rebecca: That sounds quite nice.

John: it does. I just have an English breakfast tea today.

Rebecca: Just?

John: Yep, the standard Twinings English breakfast tea.

Rebecca W.: Simple, classic.

John: Yes.

Rebecca: You can’t go wrong.

Rebecca W.: Yes.

Rebecca: I have a Scottish afternoon tea, John.

John: One of your favorites.

Rebecca W.: What is Scottish afternoon tea?

Rebecca: It’s a little bolder than an English breakfast.

Rebecca W.: Okay? It’s like, wake you up, keep it going.

Rebecca: It is.

Rebecca W.: All right. Love it. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: It’s been a long week…[LAUGHTER]

John: Just today alone.

Rebecca: It’s been a lot of Fridays today.

John: So we’ve invited you here today to discuss your Brookings Report on A New Direction for Students in an AI world: Prosper, Prepare, and Protect. Can you tell us a little bit about the study and why it is described as a pre-mortem, which I thought was a wonderful term for this. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca W.: So, we at Brookings thought that we should get ahead of generative AI in students learning and development as it is rolling out and collectively, we all know that there is a parallel movie here with social media that did roll out to students into their bedrooms and classrooms [LAUGHTER] without much attention from people who work with and care for kids, be they parents or coaches or teachers or school leaders. And this time, we really wanted to make sure that all of those communities were at the table. And so the idea was, let’s not wait for five [LAUGHTER] or maybe six, seven years until all the evidence comes back from all the randomized controlled trials, and frankly, after social norms have been ossified, to assess how generative AI may or may not impact students’ learning and development. So let’s move, quote, unquote, the autopsy forward to just see where we’re at and ask the question, “Are we heading in the right direction currently in terms of generative AI implementation?” And we looked at the risks and the potential risks from what we know about student learning and development and how AI is rolled out, and we looked at the benefits and the potential benefits, and that was what we called a pre-mortem.

Rebecca: So part of the study was a Delphi panel. For those that are not familiar with this approach, can you describe how a Delphi panel works?

Rebecca W.: You bet. So first, let me tell you what we did. It was a year of research, and we convened a very large global task force with a number of working groups. Hundreds and hundreds of people were involved. We have data from across 50 countries, and we looked at the literature that is emerging fast and furiously, including reviewing over 400 studies, and we spoke to parents, students, educators, education leaders, technologists, who were in schools on the ground about what they were experiencing. And then the last thing we did was, as you said, a Delphi panel, which is a methodology that is very good for forecasting and is useful when a field is new or undeveloped or doesn’t have clear rubrics or guidelines or principles, which is the case we are in now, and it consists of gathering a very diverse mix of experts and running them through a series of very structured questions. So those were the three main things we did to gather data to assess this question, “Are we on the right track in terms of generative AI rollout for primary and secondary students’ learning and development?”

John: And the report provides a lot of discussion of potential benefits as well as potential harms. Let’s start with the more positive thing first. In what ways might generative AI be supportive of student learning and perhaps improve some of the equity that we are not always seeing in our educational system.

Rebecca W.: So we found a lot of potential benefits that were often from very strategic intentional narrow uses of generative AI. In the report, we list our top six alongside the top six risks. And the benefits are things like helping bring kids who are not participating in the teaching and learning process into the teaching and learning process. You mentioned equity, John, so one of my most vivid examples of this is from work to support Afghan girls who, once they reach secondary school, are banned in their country from going to school. And there’s a whole initiative with Afghan diaspora educators who are using AI to create little mini lessons [LAUGHTER] that go by whatsapp on their cell phones to help girls keep going to school, basically, at home, and that is an incredible use case. Now this isn’t AI doing this alone. It is educators who are using this as a tool to help deliver this content that is also adaptive. That’s one example, a very large example that all over the world, people mentioned, especially educators, is saving teachers time. Teachers are overburdened in virtually every country [LAUGHTER] in the world, and there is a lot that generative AI can do to really remove some of the mundane tasks, or at least make them much more efficient, and teachers find that incredibly helpful. It could be admin paperwork. It could be trying to also use AI to improve their lesson planning or materials for students such as, “I have three different grade levels in my eighth grade classroom, can you give me this [LAUGHTER] for the three different reading levels my kids are out so they can all access it and succeed and grow.” So that was really useful. I will put an asterisk next to that one, because many teachers also said, “I hope my managers, be they school leaders, be they more actually, school board [LAUGHTER] leaders, don’t find out how much time I’m saving, because then they’re going to give me double the workload.” So this saving teacher time and freeing them up to do new, more relational, more interesting, more caregiving, more exciting, teaching and learning activities with their time only holds if teacher workload remains constant. There is also a wide range of other ways in which people are experimenting with generative AI, such as new forms of assessment, really being able to see where kids are stuck in their learning journey in a much more granular way, we think, has the potential [LAUGHTER] to be incredibly effective to help educators really help address where kids get stuck, things like helping neurodivergent kids, kids with learning disabilities, multilingual kids. These are the types of benefits that we found in our research.

Rebecca: Are the ways that you’re describing, the ways that AI is actually being used. Is there alignment between them?

Rebecca W.: Yes, Rebecca, you have hit exactly on the issue, which is we found that that is part of the ways in which the education ecosystem is ingesting and deploying AI, but that is not the main way in which young people are interfacing with generative AI. One of our findings was that for young people that live in communities with access to broadband and families with devices, so they may have a phone, they may have a laptop, they can get on the internet, they are interfacing with generative AI anywhere and everywhere. It’s in their Google searches, it’s on their social media platforms, it’s in their gaming platforms, and the line between technology for learning and education, technology for entertainment, and technology for communication have totally broken down. It’s all blurred. One young man told us last year, a high school student in the US, “Well, my school banned ChatGPT, but my friends, we just all go on to social media and get AI to do our homework that way. You can go on to Meta AI or Snapchat AI, and there are AI friends and companions. You can talk to them about how annoying your parents are or get relationship advice. And then you can take a picture of your homework and say, ‘Please write my essay for me.’ And then you can run it through a AI Humanizer that will insert some typos and then you turn it in.” So the thing we worry about most is young people being able to access commercial, often frontier lab AI chatbot models that are not designed for kids and not designed for learning. And I would say the same about AI friends and companions. Currently, by the way, one out of three teens in the US say they prefer talking to an AI friend or companion equally or more than talking to another human being. So this is a lot of kids, and it’s very early days in this technology.

Rebecca: That’s deeply troubling.

John: It is, [LAUGHTER] and one of the reasons why they may prefer that is AI systems tend not to be very judgmental, so if they say something that people might find offensive or troubling, it doesn’t have the same impact if they share that with an AI friend. And it is troubling because we’ve seen some really negative outcomes from some of those where kids were getting some really bad advice, and it’s led to some teens committing suicide.

Rebecca W.: Yes, and Common Sense Media has done a lot of work on this, and they say nobody under the age of 18 should be accessing AI companions just because of that, John. They are designed to be super, super friendly and to keep you talking to them. And everybody, by now, has heard the word sycophantic. [LAUGHTER] So if you’re a teen and you’re out there chatting with your AI friend and your mom makes you do the dishes, and you say, “Oh my gosh, my mom’s so annoying. She’s making me do the dishes, I just find it so unfair.” Your AI friend or companion is likely to say, “I am so sorry. You’re so misunderstood. That’s really terrible, and I’m here for you. Let’s talk about it.” Now, if you were to say the same thing to an actual human peer, they would say, “Dude, my mom makes me do the dishes [LAUGHTER] all the time. What is your problem?” And that right there is the core of the problem. If you repeat that type of social interaction over and over and over and over, that is how young people will develop their social interaction skills, their expectations for how others will treat them, and, frankly, their emotional resilience. Now learning, at the core of it, is about making mistakes and trying new things and taking risks. And if you are a young person who is developing socially and emotionally and your emotional muscles are to be agreed with all the time, we do really worry about what does that do for their ability to take feedback in the classroom, for example, [LAUGHTER] when they need to learn and they need feedback to grow.

John: And, as you note in the report, you’re also learning some social skills by interacting with other real people in the classroom, which is an important part of education, which gets lost when that’s being outsourced to interactions with AIs.

Rebecca W.: Yes, one of the things I keep repeating when talking about this report to people outside of education, in particular, is reminding them that young people are not little mini cognitive processing machines, and that classrooms do not only transmit knowledge from adults to youth. That is an important function, but by no means the only function. A lot of it is, how do you do perspective taking? How do you communicate with other people? How do you read a room? How do you self regulate if you’re used to getting your way all the time? Many things are happening that are really important inside classrooms. We only have to look back a couple of years to COVID when parents were tearing their hair out [LAUGHTER] and saying, please open schools back up and let me send my kids to school, to remind ourselves how important schooling is in kids lives for many reasons. Most kids were getting content at home through online learning, and that was not successful for most kids, again, because they aren’t little mini cognitive processing machines.

Rebecca: So we’ve talked a little bit about some of the harms, including the chat companions and not doing your own homework. [LAUGHTER] Are there any other harms that you’d like to highlight that come out in the report?

Rebecca W.: So we did find that, currently, the risks of generative AI, in terms of how it’s being rolled out, are overshadowing the benefits of generative AI for student learning and development, because the risks are of a very different nature than the benefits. They are undermining young people’s ability to think independently, to relate to other people, to take feedback, as we just said, and to have a trusting relationship with their teacher, which are all foundational to even harnessing and accessing the benefits that generative AI poses. So the risks are things like impairing cognitive development when young people over rely on generative AI, not to assist, but to actually do their thinking for them, they are not learning. We all know that children’s brains develop the way they’re used, and if kids are doing their work through a chatbot, their brains are not doing the work, and it’s like going to a gym. If they go to a gym and bring a machine that lifts the dumbbells for them, and they leave, they’re not getting stronger. It’s the same thing. So it’s not just that they’re skipping steps on their homework and being more efficient. It’s that they’re entirely missing out on developing independent, critical thinking skills. We also, as we discussed already with AI companions, are worried about the social and emotional development. We’re additionally quite worried about the decline in trusting relationships that we heard from many people we interviewed, and it’s across the entire teaching and learning [LAUGHTER] instructional core ecosystem. So educators saying “I’m not entirely sure if I trust that my kids are doing their own work.” 50% of educators say they don’t trust their kids work in the US, and that is very hard. Educators need to know if it’s kids work, because that’s how they know how to teach next and what to do if they don’t know where kids are struggling, they’re flying blind. But students also talk about generative AI undermining their trust of teachers. They don’t use that word, but they say things like, “my teacher doesn’t care about me because they’re using generative AI to give me feedback, and I don’t think my teachers are really doing their job because they’re using generative AI to make a lesson plan.” So even if teachers are using AI in a way that they believe could help kids, it’s not a bad thing to give students opportunity, for example, to get feedback on your written work before you turn it in, because maybe that’s an opportunity to improve. But if you introduce that in an environment where there’s minimal trust, the interpretation on the part of the student is that it’s lack of care and professionalism, and that degrades trust even further. We also heard from educators that parents were doing weird stuff too, like taking their students graded assignments that came home, running them through [LAUGHTER] ChatGPT and getting a different grade and confronting the teacher. There’s also educators saying students are challenging me on my expertise because they came up with an alternative answer in chat GPT and the authority by which they’re imbuing ChatGPT as a veritable source, they seem to equate it sort of equal with the teacher’s perspective. So it is troubling, … that part is very, very troubling. There is, of course, other concerns, which we can go into if you want, but we touched on them very briefly, around children’s safety, whether it’s data privacy, whether it’s emotional manipulation towards self harm, which is not everybody, of course, but there’s been enough cases to show that it’s not just a one off and quite dangerous. Again, those are often commercial, general purpose products, not designed for kids, not designed for learning.

John: And one of the problems that kids are faced with is, in their social media feeds, they’re getting ads nearly constantly about all the things they can do to have AI assist them with their schoolwork, or do the school work for them in ways that are not detectable. And one of the concerns that I’ve heard many students express is that they’re reluctant to not use AI if they think all their classmates are. So there is some adverse peer pressure in the current environment too.

Rebecca W.: Yes, this is a huge issue. I am spending a lot of time now out in communities, disseminating the findings from the AI task force report, talking at conferences, meeting state level leaders and talking at school districts in the US, but also schools. And a lot of time, I talk with students, alongside teachers, and students are really worried, young students, you know, I’ve talked to fourth graders, fifth graders all the way through 12th grade. They have a lot of opinions and perspectives. One of the things I have always been surprised at is how much they’re tracking what this technology is doing. And sure enough, in a classroom of 9 year olds or 10 year olds, multiple kids bring up this question of, “What am I going to do for a job. I’m in school to learn. I’m supposed to learn. But what if robots do everything in the world? What is my role? And how am I going to get money?” And then they bring up things like… this is often more middle school kids like, “We’re supposed to be going to school here to learn and get better. And I don’t understand the point anymore. What does it mean to go to school if a robot chatbot can do everything that I’m being asked to do, what does that mean for me? What am I supposed to do? Now this is very demotivating.” They’re very worried about getting dumber [LAUGHTER]and worried about society getting dumber. [LAUGHTER] One young fifth grader last week, who I was talking to at school assembly with students, was saying, “What if we all get dumber and then I have to go to the doctor’s office or go to the hospital and I get sick, and there’s a doctor who isn’t quite as smart as he or she should be, and is relying on AI, and they accidentally take my heart out…” [LAUGHTER] like only a young child could do. That probably is not going to happen, but the general trajectory [LAUGHTER] is one that we all are worried about. So, yeah, it’s a real concern, and I think the social narrative around AI is problematic. I speak with parents a lot, and one parent told me… I was out in California, I was in Silicon Valley… and she said, “How do I keep motivating my child? She’s in middle school. I drive her to school every day, and we drive past a very large billboard that says, ‘Don’t hire humans, hire our AI agents.’” And I said, “Yes, that’s not a helpful social narrative. I wish that the technology companies would abandon that, first of all as a actual goal, [LAUGHTER]… I think they should abandon that… and as a social narrative, because the truth is, of course, we are here. We live here. We will have many, many things that we can do that are productive. 95% of what makes me me, and what makes John you, you and Rebecca you, you is not documented online, [LAUGHTER] right? Only a sliver of our human experience is really documented online. And there’s great things that AI can do. I wish our social narrative would be about AI directed towards scientific breakthrough, solving climate change, solving the question of food insecurity, figuring out how to cure diseases like that. That’s the promise of AI, not let’s just make humans irrelevant. That’s such a ridiculous social narrative.

Rebecca: And although that’s disturbing, at the same time, I find it good that our young people are concerned about these things. [LAUGHTER] That shows some faith in the future, that we have young people who are concerned about where this might take us if we don’t intervene.

Rebecca W.: They’re very, very aware, and they want to talk about it. And I always urge schools and ed leaders to start thinking about not just AI literacy, but questions of, how does the online world work? We talk about, in our report, it’s holistic AI literacy. People throw around the term AI literacy and mean very different things. We don’t mean prompt engineering and we don’t mean necessarily more time on screens. What we mean is learning about how the online world works. And let’s start by having conversations in person around what is exciting? What are you worried about? And then working through things. There’s all sorts of moral dimensions. Can I break up with my girlfriend by using AI to write a breakup note? Can I write a happy birthday to my parent using AI? [LAUGHTER] Kids want to talk about this stuff, and it really is very interesting if you sort of take a step back and think about what it means for human relationships, thinking, experience, what makes us really human? So those are all important questions that we can start with before you ever introduce a chatbot.

John: Right now, the path of AI use is being determined by the big AI companies with very little oversight or very little direction, but in your report, you do provide recommendations on three pillars that may help redirect this in a more positive way. And the three pillars that you use are prosper, prepare, and protect. Can you give us a few examples of strategies in each of these categories that might be used to shift things so that that balance of benefits and risks are altered in a more positive direction.

Rebecca W.: Yes. Our goal was to say, “Are we on the right track?” And we discovered, “no, we’re not.” And then our goal was, “How do we bend the arc to make sure AI can enrich learning and harness it for benefits and mitigate the risks?” And there were three big pillars, as you said, John. One, under prosper is, “What can we do as educationalists in the system today to shift how our teaching and learning is done, so that AI cannot hack the student experience?” Underneath that, we talk about having co- design hubs with educators. This would be developers partnering with educators and education organizations and education unions who are going to lead the way on what are the use cases that me as a teacher in the classroom, or as a librarian or whatever your role is in a school and in the education system, could use generative AI in a positive way? We talk about making sure students are at the table. I really do think every district in the US, or every school, if districts don’t do it, should have a student AI Council. We had a student author as part of our writing crew, and she very much advocated for this, again, because kids are living it, using it, experiencing it, right alongside educators. And she advocated for young people, saying, “Look, we can review procurement contracts. This is our data, by the way. Hey, we can red team and beta test the AI products before they’re procured by our district. We can help educators say how we might get around an assignment, maybe shift it.” So ultimately, I think what we need as educators to have a very clear mix of pedagogical strategies that are AI aware. And what I mean by that is, if you can shortcut an assignment with an AI chatbot, don’t assign it. Do something else. This can be incredibly difficult and [LAUGHTER] time consuming for educators. It’s really hard at the higher education level if you have large classes, but in the K-12 space, it is doable, for sure. And AI assisted… Where can AI help? Is it neuro divergence? Is it assessment? Is it leveling reading materials. And then AI resistant… when should AI not have a role in educating young people, or rather, when and what types of experiences still need to be human to human? So that’s in the prosper pillar.

Rebecca: So we talked a little bit about how widespread these tools are, and how easy it is for students to get their hands on these tools, commercially or otherwise, it’s kind of hard to just like, turn it off. It’s everywhere. But many elementary and secondary school systems are reintroducing mobile device bans during class hours. Is this something that might be helpful? But then also, I mean, we know that there’s AI glasses and things like this too that are in the mix.

Rebecca W.: So, in our report, we definitely support the large social movement started, frankly, by parents towards digital health [LAUGHTER] and good digital hygiene practices, which includes less screen time for kids. Most kids in the United States spend hours and hours. I think the average is five or seven hours online each day. It might be much higher than that I’m forgetting, but that’s important. We support bell-to-bell cell phone bans in schools if there’s a pedagogical exception, especially for schools that might be rural and not have good science equipment, and they use their cell phone as a gyroscope and stick it in a plastic bag and do an experiment, spin it around, great, but it’s teacher controlled. And I do think we currently know that kids are using screens to access generative AI, but exactly to your point, Rebecca, this will change soon, and so a movement that is about screen free childhood will soon need to pivot to be a pro presence, pro human, pro interaction childhood, because generative AI will be embedded in our clothes and our glasses and our, I don’t know, our writing implements. Who knows? And maybe that’s better and can be used in very specific ways to help augment learning, but it also presents a whole new landscape of difficulty [LAUGHTER] in thinking about how you control that.

John: I am concerned about some of the new technology coming out. Meta glasses, in particular, are a little bit troubling, because right now they’re not being used that often by students, but I’m seeing more and more student posts on various forums asking, “Well, how can I use this?” And one of the challenges is, right now, they’re voice controlled, but they could always put things up on a screen that has answers to test questions or something that may not be easy for instructors to see, even if they are taking tests on paper, for example, and the fact that AI is multimodal makes it a bit more challenging. One of the issues I’ve run into is I’ve been using polling software for many years in my classes, and in the past, students would generally think about it and then pick their own response, but because they’re coming in on their laptops or on their smartphones, they can just take a screenshot of it and just have it automatically answered. Or there are so many browser plugins that if they’re using a laptop, it can automatically provide an answer to them with questions. And that type of instruction used to be really helpful in giving students and me feedback on how students are learning and their progress, and it’s become almost meaningless today because of multimodal AI.

Rebecca W.:yeah, it’s a big challenge, I think, for everyone, but particularly at the higher education level. And I imagine we will eventually evolve for a little period. There’ll be a brief period where we reach some equilibrium, and there’ll be other ways to gather that sort of feedback that you’re used to from the clickers that is no longer relevant, or maybe if classes are small enough, we’ll do just a lot more Socratic dialogs and oral presentations. I know the class I co-teach at Georgetown, we just moved from a final paper to a final oral exam, one hour with each student to present to us their final findings in a PowerPoint that we say you can use AI, because we won’t be able to really control that, but we’re going to grill them [LAUGHTER] and whether they know their stuff, and we can do that because it’s a seminar. Now, if you have 100 students or 60 students, it’s a much bigger challenge, and to me, the alternative seems to be going back to blue books, [LAUGHTER] and nobody is used to writing by hand anymore.

Rebecca: John, you have some experience with this, I believe. [LAUGHTER]

John: In my econometrics class this semester, I had moved away from paper exams during the pandemic, and I really appreciated the fact that having exams that were online or assignments that were online, and projects and so forth that were online gave students much more flexibility in terms of time, for the students who needed a little bit more effort to catch up. They could do that,… for students who process things a little more slowly. But I was finding that that wasn’t happening in the same way anymore, because the responses were all kind of looking like they were AI generated, and the projects that they were creating look very much like AI-generated projects.

Rebecca W.: How can you tell, John? I’m sorry to interrupt you in the middle of your story, how could you tell they looked like AI generated? I’m always curious what people see.

John: The main thing was that students were doing so much better on their written project than when I asked them questions in class. They sounded very professional quite often, in ways that the students generally didn’t in other forms of writing. And they were very polished, and it just showed a dramatic leap in their performance, and I talked to them a bit about it, and they said, a lot of us use AI because we’re concerned that everyone else may be. And I talked to them about all this on the first day of the class, and put the syllabus together, and I was thinking about moving back to blue book exams. An- I talked to them about it, and they liked the idea. And the blue book exams in particular are two stage ones. So they take it first individually, and then I grade them, but then the next class day, they take an equivalent exam in small groups where they’re explaining things to each other, and it’s a very positive experience. I had done this many times before, prior to COVID, before I moved to entirely project-based assessment, the work was dramatically weaker than it had ever been before. And so I talked to them a little bit about that, and they said, we’ve been relying on AI when we got stuck, because it’s just so much easier, and it’s a bit of a challenge.

Rebecca W.: It is, and that’s one of the things that we found also in our risks, such high levels of dependence. Young people are saying, I can’t start anything anymore without AI there to help get me going the minute you sort of are stuck, rather than pausing, thinking, doing the deep reflection, which is needed to deeply engage and embed what you’re learning, [LAUGHTER] You get a quick “Oh, wait, I think, let me just ask AI and it’ll help me get on the right track.” And it feels like it’s okay, because maybe you’re asking a friend, but really it’s stopping young people from doing deep learning.

John: The desirable difficulties that Bjork talked about, they’re bypassing those, and that’s where we get long-term knowledge retention and transferability. And it’s not happening in the same way that it used to.

Rebecca: It seems like we’ve snuck into that second pillar, “prepare,” a little bit here. It’s a nice transition. Just telling students to stop using AI or don’t use it seems like a very different circumstance that won’t work, compared to the conversations like you’ve been having with your students, where they’ve had the opportunity to try to do something that’s not using AI, and they’ve realized that they’re not able to do it, and realizing how much the AI has prevented them from learning the materials. So how do we convince faculty that we need AI literacy? How do we help students recognize that using AI in certain ways is not actually helpful to them. It might be helpful in the moment, but not long term.

Rebecca W.: Yeah. Well, again, as you said, if the first pillar is, let’s shift teaching and learning, that’s something we can control. The second pillar is, let’s make everyone in our education institutions prepared to do teaching and learning in an AI world, which includes, for young people, but also educators, “How does the online world work?” In a K-12 setting, we teach young people about biology so they learn about how the living world works, but we don’t teach every kid about how the online world works, even though they’re spending huge amounts of time there, not because we want them necessarily to all go be a computer scientist. We don’t want every kid to go be a biologist either. But when they know it’s zeros and ones and lives off of our ideas and our data, how it does pattern recognition, what it’s really good at, what it’s not good at, that is very empowering. Knowledge is power, and we know that the more people know about AI actually, the less they use it. So I think we need holistic AI literacy that’s about how the online world works. I think that simple bans, although I empathize with the educators who do them because they are trying to help their kiddos learn. Kids always get around them, I just don’t think they’re feasible. And then, on the flip side, open ended, you can use it no matter what type of a thing is definitely risky, because a lot of the tools are not safe for kids, as I’ve said, and not made for learning. So we really do need to have assignments [LAUGHTER] in a school setting that kids can succeed on and that force them to get knowledge into themselves. You need to get knowledge into yourself [LAUGHTER] in order to be able to use it, to be creative, to apply it. And I do think that everybody needs really some holistic AI literacy. It’s students, it’s families, educators, school leaders, we all sort of need to get ourselves up to speed. And I would say that to the skeptical leader, skeptical educator, that there’s a real urgency to this, because, just like John said, we will miss out an entire generation who will rely on AI too much, even though they might not think they are and actually not be developing their cognitive abilities that they need to thrive.

John: So the last pillar is “Protect,” which involves trying to regulate AI platforms so that they are used more effectively. And I know that is being done to some extent, at least in Europe, we haven’t seen a lot of evidence of that here. In fact, we just saw in late February, the federal government has declared one platform a threat to national security because the federal government wants to allow it to do illegal things without any constraints. In the current environment, at least, is it very likely that we’ll see much regulation of AI platforms at the federal level?

Rebecca W.: It’s very unlikely that we’re going to get significant federal level AI regulation. There does not seem to be hardly any appetite for regulating large tech companies at the federal level from the administration, however, I do think we will probably get regulation at the federal level around children’s safety. This is, to me, the one bipartisan issue that I see, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, we all have kids, and we all want our kids to be safe and generative AI is worrisome, AI companions are very worrisome. They should not be available and used by kids, and so there’s a lot of bills, actually, bipartisan bills at the federal level around regulating generative AI for kids, particularly AI companions. But there’s also a great deal of legislative action at the state level because of the gap in federal legislation, states are jumping in and trying to regulate, and that’s annoying for technology companies, because then they have this really complicated landscape of regulation that they’ve got to try to navigate and design products around. It would actually be much better and more efficient if they got together and supported sort of national safeguards and guardrails and appropriately [LAUGHTER] effective regulation at the national level, but they haven’t yet done that. So states are jumping in. So I actually think this is a parent-, student-, teacher-, driven movement, and state houses across the country are very, very concerned about it.

Rebecca: So I’m a parent, I’m an educator, I’m a member of the public. [LAUGHTER] What do I need to do to help change the trajectory of AI in a more positive direction?

Rebecca W.: Yeah, I think you can think of yourself as in concentric circles. As a parent, talk to your kids about it. We are developing a list of tip sheets for families and parents that talk about what families and parents need to know, and also key things to talk with your kids about around generative AI that is derived from our report, little, short, bite size, one pagers and on social media, because we found that this is a huge gap. People are looking at educators and students and leaders and jurisdictions and parents and families are left out of this conversation. So those are available at brookings.edu anybody can download them for free, and we’re beginning and there will be more posted throughout the next couple months. So that’s one. Two, as an educator, obviously you can lean into having conversations about generative AI with your students and really open up and see where they’re at. And if you don’t have an institution that’s leading on it, you could form your own little AI council with your students in your classroom for your class, like, hey, how should I handle this? This is my struggle. You guys want to learn. You’re feeling pressured by students like, nobody’s happy, nobody’s happy about this situation. It’s not like kids are like, this is the best thing in the world, and thank God, especially at the higher ed level, they’re there to learn, and they’re like, oh my gosh, but everyone’s using it, and then I’m going to get worse grades, and I want to go to grad school, so I need to use it too, or I want to get a good job. So I would have conversations at an educator level, and then as a citizen, there’s lots of groups to get engaged, and I would reach out to your local representatives, of course, especially at the state level, possibly the federal level, there’s groups like the EDSAFE alliance that have lots of briefings and opportunities to move these issues forward that you can get engaged at.

John: And we’ve also seen some large educational groups starting to push back. One area in particular is over the use of agentic AI, which can log into a course, complete all the assignments, and then log out all without any human intervention other than giving it the URL, your user ID, and password. And I know, the Modern Language Association and quite a few other groups have been pushing back on the AI companies to limit the use of agentic AI in learning management platforms.

Rebecca W.: I think this is just going to be the story for the next couple years, because the technology is moving so quickly. Again, young people and students are really creative, [LAUGHTER] and I’ve never seen a tech system that fully keeps them out. And so I’m sure there will be, and I’m sure it already is happening, technology companies who are working to make sure agents aren’t logging in for students, there’s real vested interest, especially in anybody doing online distance learning,[LAUGHTER] virtual learning, delivering certified learning courses that it isn’t they’re certifying the work of an AI agent. So I’m sure there’s work arounds. I’m sure there will be long cat and mouse games played for several years to come. And the question is, how much will that undercut our students ability to learn? It won’t undercut the most motivated and engaged kids, highly, highly, highly motivated and engaged kids, which is, as I know from my work with my colleague Jenny on our book, The Disengaged Teen, is a sliver of the K-12 student population. Those kids are going to rock. They are going to use AI to go farther and faster and grow. The issue is all the kids who are in passenger mode or busy or maybe managing work and trying to complete a degree. That’s the issue. How do we make sure those kids have a learning experience where they actually are doing the work they need to grow?

Rebecca: Yeah, I think the fact that many of us are overloaded, even as young kids these days, certainly motivates the desire to reduce workload in whatever way possible, or to remove the tugs on time. I wish there was a solution for that.

Rebecca W.: Seriously, I do think this whole thing of “You’re gonna get to a three-day work week and you’re gonna have so much free time.” It’s never happened before. We’ve had technology evolving. What I’m seeing in my work, at least, is I’m expected to do a lot more in a shorter period of time, and I think that’s what’s going to happen. So we have agency. We all are part of a system. So I do think we can exert agency over our own little ecosystem, and I have a lot of colleagues who I work with on my team who I can try to model, and if I’m not a good model, at least I can manage and tell them, “You should go home. This is too much. You can’t do it all. That’s okay. We’ll tackle it next week.” [LAUGHTER]

John: And that’s one of the possible outcomes of increasing use of AI, that we all become more productive and we decide we don’t need to spend as much time working as a society. Another possible outcome is it could end up lowering the return to education, resulting in increasing income inequality and perhaps more unemployment, with more and more of society’s benefits going to a small number of owners of these tech firms.

Rebecca W.: Yeah, and/or introducing… we talk about in the report, maybe there’s a new dimension of inequality around cognitive stratification, where the highly motivated, highly engaged, and the people who can afford the most expensive and therefore the most accurate and powerful generative AI models combined will be super humans, [LAUGHTER]and the rest of us who are maybe less motivated, less engaged and might not have access to even the top models will just not be able to keep up.

John: It reminds me a little bit of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine where there was an elite that lived on the surface, but all the work was being done by the masses underneath the ground. And that’s another possible outcome of all this, which I’m hoping we’ll be able to avoid.

Rebecca W.: Yes, let’s all work towards avoiding that. [LAUGHTER]

John: and doing these types of pre-mortems before things become ingrained could really offer some benefits, because, often, as you said, these things become ossified, that we get locked into these directions, and it’s hard to change things once they become the norms.

Rebecca: Yeah, I’d like to keep dystopias to my fiction reading [LAUGHTER] as opposed to my lived experience.

Rebecca W.: That’s right, me too. That’s the goal.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking, what’s next?

Rebecca W.: What’s next for my work is, with my colleagues, we are out talking to people, sharing our findings that came out. It’s about a month and a half ago now, and we are thinking about what is our next phase of research. I’m particularly interested in thinking about how generative AI can enrich learning, but not just learning outcomes, but how could it be used in a way, or not used, to make sure we have trusting, supportive, agentic [LAUGHTER] learning experiences for kids,

Rebecca: We always look forward to seeing what is next for you. Each of your reports is really helpful, and we enjoy talking to you. Thank you.

Rebecca W.: likewise. Thanks for having me on.

John: And thank you for all the work you’re doing in these areas that are so desperately needed.

Rebecca W.: Thank you.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing Assistance provided by Madison Lee.

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437. Impostor Phenomenon

Posted in cognitive psychology, diversity, emotion, engagement, equity, first-generation students, growth mindset, higher education, learning, motivation, teaching
March 18, 2026

Impostor phenomena can deter college students, especially students from historically underrepresented groups, from pursuing majors in STEM disciplines. In this episode, Sara Kien joins us to discuss strategies that can reduce imposter phenomena and reduce equity gaps in student success.

Sara is an Associate Teaching Professor at Northern Arizona University. She has a PhD in cognitive psychology and recently completed a masters degree in information and data science. Sara is an award winning educator with over 20 years of experience and the author of Data Science and AI in Psychology, an interactive eTextbook on data science, big data, and machine learning in psychology.

Show Notes

Transcript

Rebecca: Impostor phenomena can deter college students, especially students from historically underrepresented groups, from pursuing majors in STEM disciplines. In this episode, we discuss strategies that one faculty member has used to reduce impostor phenomena and reduce equity gaps in student success.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Sara Kien. Sara is an Associate Teaching Professor at Northern Arizona University. She has a PhD in cognitive psychology and recently completed a masters degree in information and data science. Sara is an award winning educator with over 20 years of experience and the author of Data Science and AI in Psychology, an interactive eTextbook on data science, big data, and machine learning in psychology. Welcome Sara.

Sara: Thank you so much. It’s great to be here. Thank you for having me.

John: Thanks for joining us.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Sara, are you drinking tea with us today?

Sara: I am. I was so excited about this part of the podcast. This tea, I have to say, is pretty legit. I love tea, and I put time and effort into tea, yeah, so I was really excited about this. So my tea comes from a local company in the southwest called Old Barrel Tea Company, and so we have one of their flagship stores here in Flagstaff, Arizona, which is where Northern Arizona University is located. And so they just have a wide range of tea options. And so this tea today, I chose berry, and then I even have some special honey, like oak-infused honey added to this tea. And so I was just really excited to get my tea ready and to brag about my tea, and also to plug the Old Barrel Tea Company, because they’re fantastic. and the oak

John: And the oak-infused honey certainly fits with the old barrel, [LAUGHTER] nicely.

Sara: Yeah.

Rebecca: Yeah, it sounds right up. John’s alley.

Sara: Wonderful.

Rebecca: Today I have Scottish Breakfast tea.

Sara: Hmmm

John: Good. I had that a couple times yesterday, but today I have a ginger peach green tea.

Sara: Oh yum.

John: We’ve invited you here today to discuss your work addressing impostor phenomenon and your work in redesigning data science classes in psychology. What does the data suggest about the prevalence of impostor phenomenon among college students?

Sara: That’s a great question. It’s also a bit of a complicated question, because it really depends on how impostor phenomenon is measured, and it also really depends on the context. So just to provide a little background regarding this construct, impostor phenomenon, which is also commonly known as impostor syndrome… so I think a lot of folks will be familiar with that terminology… was actually coined in 1978 by Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes as part of their work examining or investigating highly successful women who had a really difficult time internalizing their success. And so at that time, they coined the term impostor syndrome, and over the years, increasingly, the research has suggested that impostor syndrome, or now as we refer to it, impostor phenomenon is highly prevalent. It’s quite pervasive, actually, with recent findings suggesting that, in terms of just generalized impostor phenomenon, rates might be high as 80% in the population of individuals experiencing a sense of impostorism. And so what is impostor phenomenon? What are some of the defining features or characteristics? Currently the field identifies three elements. So the first is a really intense or chronic feeling of self doubt in spite of overwhelming evidence of achievement. So really just a belief that you’re a fraud. That’s really the heart of impostor, right? That I’m an impostor, that I’m a fraud, that I don’t belong here, that I’m here by accident. Everybody else belongs here, but I don’t. And so that second element, like that I’m here by accident, is discounting our success, or believing that our success is undeserved, and that we attribute our success to factors other than ability, so luck, for example, or maybe in the case of academics, a lenient professor. So I received an A in that course because my professor is really lenient and it’s just an easy course. Or I just worked harder than everyone else, but everybody else just has, like, natural ability that I lack. And again, I just really want to emphasize that it’s not just any feeling of self doubt, but really a feeling of self doubt in the face of conflicting evidence suggesting otherwise. So like in many cases, in spite of overwhelming achievement. And so how can we experience such levels of self doubt that contradicts the evidence, by discounting the evidence. And then the third element is just a fear of exposure. So if I’m a fraud and I don’t belong and I’m an impostor, then I’m just constantly sort of hyper vigilant about covering my tracks, and very concerned about being exposed as a fraud. As I mentioned, there’s recent evidence to suggest that rates of academic impostor phenomenon can be as high as 80% in the general population, and for this reason, recently, researchers have moved away from “impostor syndrome” as a relevant term to “impostor phenomenon,” because that level of prevalence really suggests potentially more systemic issues, rather than individual level factors. So syndrome suggests that there are issues at the level of the individual. In addition, it’s not a clinical diagnosis, syndrome really often refers to something that’s more clinical in nature. This is a common set of thoughts and feelings that are experienced by many individuals, quite commonly. With respect to academia, more specifically, the estimates for the prevalence of academic impostor phenomenon vary quite widely, again, often depending on how it’s measured. So, in some cases, the measurement might just include feelings of impostorism. But in other cases, measures might include all three defining elements that I mentioned earlier. And really one of the issues has been that within academia, or academics, more specifically, we haven’t had a relevant measure of academic impostor phenomenon. And so the evidence suggests that the rates range from maybe 20% to 50% or higher, depending on the degree program, depending on the context. And so in degree programs that tend to be more competitive, where there’s an emphasis on like hyper-productivity and the stakes are really high, like in medicine, for example, we see higher levels of impostorism. And again, that just highlights potentially systemic level issues, system level processes that are contributing to how individuals are experiencing their success and how they’re interpreting their experience within academia. So, fortunately, recently, some of my colleagues have developed an academic impostor phenomenon measure. So Valerie Todd and David Mcilroy published a validated measure of academic impostor phenomenon in 2025. Recently, as part of a joint effort within that collaborative team, we have been applying that specific measure in a program of research that’s examining academic impostor phenomenon. We’re very excited about the potential to examine rates of impostor phenomenon in the academic context, more specifically. And then in our case, as a research team, we’re all psychologists, so we’re starting with psychology majors and exploring rates of impostor phenomenon within the field of psychology. I guess one thing I could add, actually, before I say a little bit more about our program of research with respect to the validated measure that was recently developed by Todd and Mcilroy, that that measure is available for anybody who’s interested in the Journal of Current Psychology. And then the other thing I wanted to mention, in terms of addressing prevalence within academia and the call for a more validated measure, there’s an excellent review of the literature that was published in 2023 by Dana Ménard and Laura Chittle in the journal Review of Education. And so for anybody who’s interested in more details regarding prevalence and measurement, that’s a really excellent review.

Rebecca: It’s exciting to hear that there’s new measurement tools available, because even in casual conversation with students, in my context, it’s orientation for all the graduate students at our institution, they all easily say, “Yes, I know what that is. [LAUGHTER] I’ve had experience with that.” And when we bring it up and try to address it as a group, there’s a really high affect towards that in acknowledgement that that’s an important thing that we’re addressing in our orientation for these students.

Sara: Exactly. So that’s such a great point, because that actually leads to the next thing that I wanted to say. But just to address that specifically, as we’ve been developing this program of research, the number of students who are interested in getting involved in the research, either as participants or as undergraduate/graduate level researchers, or even just colleagues, like other faculty. So this is pervasive throughout academia, feelings of impostorism and self doubt. In spite of academic achievement. The number of individuals who want to get involved in this work really is quite overwhelming. For students. It’s very relevant, especially within the field of psychology, as I’m sure is the case in other fields, students really want to make a difference, and they’re very familiar with their experience and the experience of their peers, and they want to get involved in work that they think will be supportive and help to support wellbeing among their peers more generally. And the same is true for faculty. Of course, faculty care about student success and want to do everything they can to support students and so learning more about this phenomenon and the factors that predict this phenomenon, or intervention strategies and even to support their colleagues or even help to enhance their own wellbeing within the context of their career. It’s just really relevant. It’s very personally relevant for many folks in academia. So this research team includes Valerie Todd and David Mcilroy, who are both at institutions in the United Kingdom. So this is part of an international collaboration, but also Jennifer Coleman at Western New Mexico University and Ivette Merced at Irvine Valley College. We’ve started investigating rates or prevalence of impostor phenomenon among psych majors with this new tool, and what we found is that, as you just mentioned earlier, actually the majority of students report some level of impostor phenomenon. And then what’s also interesting with respect to prevalence, and so I mentioned that it’s a little complicated because it turns out it’s context specific. As part of this work, I’ve actually been leading one line of research in this larger program that’s focused on supporting students, supporting psych majors in more STEM-focused courses as a part of their psychology degree program. So we contextualized this tool to measure academic impostor phenomenon in relation to statistics, more specifically, or research methods more specifically, or psychology in general, in addition to the more generalized measure. And what we found is statistically significant differences in average scores of academic impostor phenomenon depending on context. For psych majors, academic impostor phenomenon in relation to statistics scoring significantly higher than other types of AIP. So again, what’s the prevalence? It really depends on how we measure it. It depends on the context, it depends on the domain, and we’re seeing like just a growing body of research and literature in this area. So I think it’ll be really interesting to continue exploring this question moving forward.

John: So you mentioned some ways in which it varies. You mentioned in statistics classes, for example, there seems to be higher rates. You mentioned earlier that in the more competitive fields, there seems to be more. What other factors seem to result in higher levels of impostorism.

Sara: So, in terms of the factors that predict impostorism, there are a few individual level factors, but we’re seeing increasingly that the individual level factors really interact with what’s happening more at the systems level, with systemic factors. Some predictors include some personality characteristics. There’s some evidence to suggest that neuroticism, for example, predicts impostor phenomenon more generally, as well as academic impostor phenomenon to the extent that that’s been measured in academic context. Perfectionism is strongly correlated with academic impostor phenomenon. We also see other correlates. So for example, academic impostor phenomenon, and impostor phenomenon more generally, is associated with mental health issues like depression and anxiety, psychological distress, burnout. But one thing to note here, in addressing these correlates and the factors that predict academic impostor phenomenon, is there’s really a lack of research that investigates causality. So it’s difficult to know, for example, whether feelings of impostor phenomenon give rise to perfectionism or lower self esteem, which is another correlate of impostor phenomenon, or whether lower self esteem and perfectionism predispose individuals to higher levels of impostor phenomenon. So it’s hard to discern the nature of that relationship, but some other factors as we start thinking about like, “Well, what’s happening at the individual level versus a more systemic level?” There’s been a body of work examining demographic differences in impostor phenomenon. So Kevin Cokley at the University of Texas at Austin has been studying impostor phenomenon in academic contexts for over 10 years, and has published some really interesting work in this area, and also in the area of mental health implications of impostor phenomenon. And again, that review that I mentioned earlier, the Ménard and Chittle review, published in 2023, does a really nice job of highlighting essentially what is intersectionality, or the interactive nature of individual level variables and what’s happening at the systems level. So with respect to demographic factors, a number of researchers have explored group differences between individuals who are historically minoritized in certain settings or pathways, and examined variability among those populations. And ultimately, the findings are mixed, with some research suggesting that there are group differences, for example, gender differences or differences based on race or ethnicity, while other research suggesting that there are no group differences. And so follow up research has revealed that with respect to group differences, the answer is, “it depends.” So, there aren’t just inherent differences in academic impostor phenomenon across demographic groups, with certain minoritized groups, for example, Women in Data Science focused degree programs or computer science focused degree programs. In the field of data science, for example, women only make up 20 to 25% of all data scientists. So in fields where women are historically minoritized or are underrepresented, we don’t necessarily see higher levels of academic impostor phenomenon among women. What matters is the context. So whether the context that women are in highlights those disparities. So is there evidence of racial discrimination or gender discrimination in these environments? Is there evidence of prejudice? Are there sufficient role models who can serve in a mentoring capacity for individuals who might be underrepresented within a particular industry or domain, and is there access to representation? In addition, often environments that are more competitive in nature tend to exacerbate impostor phenomenon for individuals who might be historically minoritized or underrepresented in certain domains. And so really, what the research suggests is that academic impostor phenomenon may serve as a mediator or a mechanism by which prejudice and discrimination underrepresentation, hyper productivity and competitiveness can impact mental health. So without that context, group differences in impostor phenomenon may be similar, but if you add those stressors, then we might see an exacerbation of impostor phenomenon, in the sense of: “I don’t belong here. I don’t belong. I don’t fit in. I don’t know how I got here. I’m at risk of being exposed for my lack of ability,” which then can have implications for mental health and for future outcomes.

Rebecca: You’ve talked a bit about the prevalence and that it’s pretty common that people have some of these feelings. What are the consequences if students experience impostor phenomenon in their persistence?

Sara: The consequences can be widespread and cascading, unfortunately, and different people handle the experience of impostor phenomenon in different ways. Generally speaking, the research suggests that some of the most prevalent or pervasive kinds of consequences include effects on mental health… so, depression, anxiety, psychological distress, burnout. There is also a relationship with lower self esteem, lower academic self confidence or self efficacy, so your belief in your ability, which aligns well with those three elements of impostor phenomenon… maladaptive perfectionism, so a kind of perfectionism in which you set almost unattainable standards and goals which can exacerbate feelings of distress and burnout and exhaustion. And in turn, these mental health struggles can lead to unfortunate outcomes, for example, procrastination, like, how do we cope with these kinds of mental health issues, right? And how do we cope with these distressing thoughts and feelings related to self doubt? So procrastination, avoidance, and withdrawing can lead to delayed graduation. In the case of students, we might change degree programs. In the case of faculty, we might change careers. We might leave academia and pivot and pursue a different line of work. Sometimes students are at risk of dropping out. Another unfortunate outcome that can occur is a type of self sabotage, in which students become less risk taking because beliefs about their lack of ability, in other words, are less likely to pursue certain scholarship opportunities, or maybe less likely to pursue graduate school, or, in the case of professionals within academia, are less likely to pursue promotion. So that’s one kind of consequence or outcome, another outcome related to perfectionism. And then what we see also, in relation to certain personality traits like conscientiousness, is that we see on the flip side, some individuals compensate over-preparation, which can be a mechanism leading to exhaustion and burnout. So then again, we see, in terms of the impact on academic performance like GPA, the findings are mixed because many individuals who are experiencing impostor phenomenon overcompensate through over-preparation and perfectionism, so they’re still dealing with the mental health struggles associated with impostor phenomenon, but because of a fear of being exposed, they’re working harder than anyone else to try to hide what they perceive as their lack of ability. The language I’m using is like “t\They’re doing this, [LAUGHTER] you know, this is what they do,” but just as full disclosure, most of us are familiar with this phenomenon. So even for myself, on a daily basis, I’m challenged with feelings of impostorism. Even preparing for this podcast, I have a perception that there’s a certain level of expertise that I should be demonstrating as part of this podcast interview, have self doubt at times about my level of expertise and whether I can communicate effectively. For me, I fall on the more perfectionist side of the equation, so that I’m at risk of over-preparing and starting to feel self doubt about whether I can cover everything that I want to cover. A little later, we’ll talk about strategies and intervention for addressing feelings of impostor phenomenon. But I have to take a step back and recognize what’s happening and reframe my experience, and just to highlight that this is a common experience, and even for those of us, or maybe even especially for those of us who are conducting research in this area, we’re motivated by similar kinds of experiences that we’ve had that have impacted us throughout our educational journey or throughout our career. So with respect to students, for educators who really care about students and who are really student centered, it’s really important to consider the mental health struggles that they might be experiencing and the ways in which those could be impacting their performance in the classroom as a function of academic impostor phenomenon, including whether students participate in classroom discussions or how engaged they are in group work. If they are concerned about a sense of belonging, whether they belong, they might feel less comfortable sharing or engaging with other students, with their peers, and in particular, if they feel that there’s risk of being exposed as a fraud. So in many cases, a student who may seem withdrawn isn’t necessarily disinterested or uninterested in the course material, they might be dealing with significant feelings of self doubt, fear of exposure, that are leading to mental health struggles, all of which might be associated with their behavior in the classroom.

John: A while back, we interviewed Peter Arcidiacono, who was one of several authors of a study that looked at the attrition rates from students in STEM majors. In particular, what they found in the study was that women, on average, did better in introductory STEM courses, yet they were more likely to not pursue a major in it, even though they were interested in a major, in large part because of the lower grades received in STEM classes. Is it likely, perhaps, that impostorism may be one of the factors where the signal of lower grades in some disciplines may encourage some people to leave the discipline, especially if they’re already underrepresented in those areas.

Sara: Yeah, absolutely. impostor phenomenon could be one of probably several factors that are relevant, like one of the things that unfortunately occurs in more competitive degree programs, like STEM degree programs, a kind of a culture and environment where showing struggle can be penalized, where there’s additional pressure to maintain a perfect facade. If an individual is from a historically minoritized background with respect to that degree program or that domain, and is experiencing a fear of exposure for a lack of ability, may be less likely to reach out for support, may be less likely to engage in help seeking behaviors where they share openly about their concerns and their doubt and their struggle, and therefore are less likely to receive support, both in terms of mental health, but also academically. And then, as I mentioned earlier, what are the factors that predict persistence. What helps the student to be more likely to persist and to follow their interests and to follow their passion? Self efficacy is a strong correlate. So belief in your abilities, which is undermined by impostor phenomenon… faculty support which is less likely to occur if students are afraid of being exposed, and if the culture, as I mentioned, emphasizes projecting an image of success, so less likely to access faculty support if we feel penalized for sharing our struggles. Aso, you know, one major issue with respect to impostor phenomenon is that we don’t talk about it enough. It’s such a relief to hear that more institutions are introducing these discussions for incoming classes of students, because it’s not just what students can be doing, what faculty can be doing, but really what needs to be happening at the institutional level, where we’re normalizing impostor phenomenon so that students feel like they’re not alone in these experiences, and they feel more comfortable reaching out for support and sharing their struggles, especially in highly competitive contexts. For students who start to experience any type of failure, who are internalizing their failure, but failing to acknowledge their success and maybe even essentializing that failure as an indicator of lack of ability, those failures are pretty high-stakes situations. For those students, that’s an indicator of lack of ability that suggests that you’re not cut out for that field or that discipline. In those more competitive environments, it is the case that grades and research productivity and networking success are pretty high stakes, so early evidence of failure can feel catastrophic in those types of competitive environments where the stakes are so high. And again, if we had more opportunities to normalize the experience, more faculty support around these issues, potentially students would feel more comfortable reaching out and getting the support they need early. I really want to emphasize that it’s not students who are self selecting out. It’s really systemic, which is why, at an institutional level, we need to provide these supports. Without an institutional support system, it’s really the system pushing students out, especially students who are historically underrepresented, who maybe also feel lack of role models that they can reach out to, or lack of representation, which exacerbates their experience of impostor phenomenon.

Rebecca: You’ve talked a bit about the importance of normalizing impostor phenomenon as a way of systemically starting to address some of these issues, because if more of us in leadership roles or in an educator role are also modeling that we experience this too, then it becomes less scary for a student to also admit those same experiences. What are some of the strategies that you’re using in your own classrooms, to start to mitigate the feelings of impostor phenomenon and the potential outcomes that can result?

Sara: That’s a great question. I feel like there are some strategies that I’ve been implementing for several years, and I also continue to improve in my ability to provide support in this area. Normalizing, as I mentioned, is a really important one, and we can also model our own impostor phenomenon experience in an effort to normalize. And what I find is that students experience great relief in learning that an individual who’s in a position that they might aspire towards also has experienced similar kinds of feelings. And really, what I found is that it helps to really open students up, and then students are more likely to share some of their own experiences of self doubt and concern. In my case, I’m teaching research methods and data science courses within the field of psychology, and the statistics and research methods courses for psych majors tend to be the most dreaded courses. And as a woman within the field of psychology, teaching data science, where women are underrepresented by and large (even in the subfield of quantitative psychology, at the upper levels, we see an under representation of women), I think it provides additional support for students with diverse gender identities to relate, in particular, to a role model who is underrepresented with respect to that particular domain or within that field or subfield. And so I do as much as I can to just share openly and honestly, to allow myself to be vulnerable in a public setting with students. For me personally, that’s required that I do my own work in addressing my feelings of self doubt and trying to understand the source of those feelings. Then that leads to the second highly effective strategy, which is cognitive restructuring or reframing. It’s quite normal to have thoughts and feelings related to self doubt, even if we understand the source of those thoughts and feelings, it’s still common for us to experience those thoughts and feelings, but we don’t necessarily need to attach ourselves to those thoughts and feelings. So reframing those experiences when we notice them can be highly effective, and there are a few different strategies for doing that. Mindfulness meditation is really helpful in becoming increasingly aware of automatic thoughts and emotions that arise, and becoming aware of those thoughts and emotions in a non-judgmental way. So mindfulness meditation is often a strategy that’s suggested in relation to cognitive reframing, but once we notice those thoughts and feelings, we can apply a new frame, for example, a growth-mindset frame. One thing I should emphasize is that there’s actually some evidence to suggest that the outcomes associated with impostor phenomenon are not necessarily negative, that there are actually some positive outcomes associated with impostor phenomenon. For many of us, if we experience feelings of self doubt, it can be a motivator. It can motivate us to learn more and grow in our abilities and to work harder. So when we experience feelings of self doubt, we can actually reframe even that impostor phenomenon from a growth-mindset perspective, like these feelings are just like my mind and body’s way of helping me to feel motivated. Of course, if they become maladaptive and start giving rise to depression and anxiety, then it’s important to start addressing those specific thoughts. More specifically, one example is if we’re feeling self doubt and concern about our ability in relation to any academic task or a particular academic course. Instead of identifying a specific end result that relates to social comparison, like I need to be at a particular level, we can reframe our experiences just in a perspective of growth. You know, I’m going to put effort into this activity that I care about, and my goal is to simply continue growing and developing in my experience, regardless of standards of success that are presented within a particular field or within a particular profession, so to reframe in terms of like interest and growth and effort, rather than essentialized abilities that have a particular end goal. One helpful approach to cognitive reframing is to reframe our thoughts and emotions in terms of growth mindset. So a growth mindset emphasizes effort and improvement, even in the face of failure as a function of effort. So really understanding that our abilities grow out of interest, passion and effort. In contrast, a perspective of traits or abilities as fixed suggests that these traits and abilities are innate, that we’re born with particular traits and abilities, so that failure reflects a lack of ability. Really, failure is an opportunity to continue to learn and grow, and imagine that we could continue to improve as a function of effort, even in the face of failure. So that would be an example of cognitive reframing in relation to growth mindset. And research has shown that growth mindset, in particular, is a really helpful approach to cognitive reframing.

John: Are there other things at the institutional level that can be done to reduce the impact of impostor phenomenon?

Sara: Yeah, and actually, I can say a few more things about instructor-level support. So in addition to normalizing and cognitive reframing, other approaches that are helpful that I also try to encourage in my own classroom include helping to support sense of belonging. So opportunities for students to work together in meaningful ways where they actually get to know each other and can support each other in accomplishing a challenge or a task is an effective way to help offset feelings of impostorism, but also to allow students opportunities for support among their peers. And as part of the research that I’ve been conducting in collaboration with my research team, we’ve actually started developing more formalized interventions that incorporate all of those elements, so normalizing, reframing, cognitive reframing, the value of faculty support and modeling, the relevance of role models that students can relate to, and increasing sense of belonging. We’re just currently launching a study that specifically examines the effectiveness of an intervention that includes all of those different elements. At the institutional level, some strategies can include integrating mental health support into the curriculum, increasing access to mental health support for students, normalizing at the departmental or institutional level, which is something we’ve already discussed, having those conversations for, like incoming cohorts of students. There’s research showing that faculty who have greater self efficacy in addressing diversity are more effective at addressing diversity in the classroom, and that can be particularly relevant for addressing impostor phenomenon that’s exacerbated among historically underrepresented students, students from racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation backgrounds that are not necessarily represented within their fields of interest. Some of the findings coming out of our teams include the importance of classroom comfort and faculty support, so normalizing and discussing these issues, not just at the level of student, but also among faculty, providing opportunities for faculty to learn and share about their own impostor experiences, so that they are better equipped to bring these kinds of strategies into the classroom or to have these kinds of conversations with students.

Rebecca: We always wrap up by asking, what’s next?

Sara: The focus for our research team, as I mentioned, is really to continue this intervention work, and members of our research team continue to offer workshops as well. We give talks and seminars related to impostor phenomenon that can help to support faculty and staff and students within academia as they address impostor phenomenon in their own lives, but also that offer strategies and tools and techniques that they can bring with them into their departments and into their classrooms. We want to continue to expand the research to include more diverse contexts, disciplines, and even more diverse institutions. So right now, we’re focused on psychology majors, but we are really looking forward to extending this research to other disciplines and other institutions. As I mentioned, it’s an international collaboration, and we’ve had a lot of interest among other faculty and researchers who want to join this effort. And so we really want to expand our research to include international contexts, and then to continue to develop workshops to support faculty training around academic impostor phenomenon. We’ve discussed the possibility of writing a book together that addresses, in particular, context specificity of impostor phenomenon. So one of the novel findings that we are bringing to the literature is the variability in academic impostor phenomenon in relation to even specific courses within a degree program, in relation to different contexts within a discipline. And so I think it’s really important to continue investigating intersectionality and the complexity of impostor phenomenon. Under what circumstances do particular contexts give rise to impostor phenomenon? So it’s not just like for whom, but for whom under what circumstances. And another element of that is, for whom, or under what circumstances, are particular strategies or interventions effective. So there probably won’t be a one-size-fits-all formula for helping to mitigate experiences of impostor phenomenon. The strategies that are effective will depend on for whom and under what circumstances the kind of impostor phenomenon that a student is experiencing. And so we’re really excited about really diving into the complexity of this phenomenon, of this construct.

Rebecca: We look forward to hearing where the research leads and your findings.

John: Thank you for joining us. This is an issue that clearly is affecting a lot of people. So getting more information out to other educators, I think, is going to be helpful.

Sara: I’m really grateful that you invited me to participate in this podcast. As I mentioned, I did some cognitive reframing for myself in preparation for this interview. And for me, one of the helpful thoughts and strategies was to just acknowledge that even if there’s some information that I really would like to cover that I forget, let’s say, or like, even if I’m not quite as comprehensive in addressing all of the relevant points that I would be really excited to share with you, that increasing awareness at any level is meaningful with respect to academic impostor phenomenon, because almost all of us experience it, and unfortunately, many of us experience it in isolation. So the more aware we are of the shared experience of self doubt, even in the face of high levels of achievement, I think the better equipped we’ll be to navigate our own educational and professional journeys in an informed way, in a way that will help us to maximize our true potential and pursue our passion and interest. I just really appreciate an opportunity to share some of this information, to have this dialog and this discussion. It really is my passion, in particular, to support students and to support psych majors in STEM related courses. So, thank you.

Rebecca: Thank you so much.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing assistance provided by Fred Llerena.

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436. The Joyful Online Teacher

Posted in emotion, engagement, higher education, instructional communication, learning, motivation, online discussions, online learning, pedagogy, social presence, teaching
March 11, 2026

Online classes provide opportunities for students not served by traditional in-person classes, but asynchronous experiences can seem isolating for both students and instructors. In this episode, Flower Darby joins us to discuss ways to make online instruction more joyful for both students and faculty.

Flower is an Associate Director of the Teaching and Learning Center at the University of Missouri. Prior to this position, she served as an Assistant Dean of Online and Innovative Pedagogies and Director of Teaching for Student Success. Flower has over 30 years of teaching experience, including both in-person and online modalities, and is frequently invited as a keynote speaker at academic conferences. She is a co-author of Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Sciences in Online Classes, and The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching. Her new book, The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes, has just been released by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Online classes provide opportunities for students not served by traditional in-person classes, but asynchronous experiences can seem isolating for both students and instructors. In this episode, we discuss ways to make online instruction more joyful for both students and faculty.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Flower Darby. Flower is an Associate Director of the Teaching and Learning Center at the University of Missouri. Prior to this position, she served as an Assistant Dean of Online and Innovative Pedagogies and Director of Teaching for Student Success. Flower has over 30 years of teaching experience, including both in-person and online modalities, and is frequently invited as a keynote speaker at academic conferences. She is a co-author of Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Sciences in Online Classes, and The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching. Her new book, The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes, has just been released by the University of Oklahoma Press. Welcome back, Flower.

Flower: Thank you so much. It’s my true delight to be here with you both.

John: We’re really happy to talk to you. It’s been a while.

Flower: Yes, we’ve all been busy, I think. Lots going on.

John: And certainly you have been. [LAUGHTER] Our teas today are:… Flower, are you drinking tea with us today?

Flower: I do have tea, and I went with a classic Earl Grey today.

John: Very nice.

Rebecca: Nice!

John: In a nice inclusive education mug. Is that what I saw on there?

Flower: That’s what I have, from CU Boulder, inclusive educators. This is actually from their podcast, Inclusive Educators.

John: Nice.

Rebecca: I have a cinnamon cardamom tea.

John: And now that the temperature has risen above zero, today we have a heat wave. I think we just checked and it was 12 degrees. I am having spring cherry green tea in honor of the spring, which will be here sometime in the next few months.

Flower: Love it.

Rebecca: Sounds good with the temperatures rising. Flower, we invited you here today to discuss The Joyful Online Teacher. Can you tell us about the origin of this book?

Flower: Yes, Rebecca, this has been a long time coming. It originally started through inspiration from Dr. Sarah Rose Cavanagh’s really transformational book in my life and in the lives of many educators and students. Her book is The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion. She has other ones, but that’s the original inspiration for this book. And as soon as I read it, I thought, “Wow, there is so much potential when we truly apply the findings from emotion science to asynchronous classes in particular.” So I began cultivating this idea. This book is also inspired by the work of Dr. Barbara Means, a very well published scholar, researcher on education, learning, and technology, and in 2022, she put out a paper calling for the application of psychological literature to online classes. She pointed out that the frameworks that we are accustomed to talking about really come out of educational technology, and we need to go a little deeper into how people learn online. So that factored into this. And then I would say the third ingredient that sort of shaped this book is just my ongoing sense that online classes are kind of less than. They’re just not as fun [LAUGHTER] as teaching in person, at least for me. I love teaching in person. I love when we get to be together in a room, and yet I see so much value and purpose in asynchronous online classes as well. Student demand is growing. It is an equity issue for me to make these classes as positive and supportive as they can be, and so what we ended up with is The Joyful Online Teacher.

John: And s peaking of positive, your first chapter begins with a discussion of Martin Seligman’s PERMA model of well being to provide a theoretical framework for your book. It’s been a while since we discussed this model on the podcast, and I think we only discussed it once before. So can you provide our listeners with an overview of this model?

Flower: Yes, so I did deviate from what a lot of us who write about online education really tend to rely on like the Community of Inquiry framework, for example. And I just wanted to find out how we could foster thriving and flourishing and well-being in our asynchronous classes in general, because in my experience teaching online for decades, it doesn’t feel like I’m flourishing in that environment. And what the students tell us, and what many educators tell us, is that that’s a common experience. So I turned to PERMA, as you said, Seligman’s theory of well-being that he introduced in a 2011 book called Flourish. And PERMA is an acronym for five building blocks of individual well being. And what I love about this model is, first of all, it’s extremely well tested, and there’s a mountain of empirical evidence that shows that it reliably predicts well being and success better functioning in every life domain. So I love that it’s so well validated and supported. But I also love that you can pick and choose between these five building blocks based on what resonates with you, your personality and such. So let me quickly summarize the five building blocks, and the idea is cultivating experiences within any of these domains are going to enhance our own sense of well-being, our own happiness. So “P” is for positive emotions, and what the literature shows is that when we are experiencing positive and pleasant emotions, like enjoyment, like gratitude, satisfaction, pride, a whole range of pleasant experiences, we’re going to feel better. And that makes sense, right? But as Seligman himself points out, about 50% of the world does not go around feeling positive all the time, and so I love that there are other sort of building blocks. “E” is for engagement, that’s the state of flow. That’s where we’re so absorbed in the task at hand that we lose all sense of time and self, and that’s a source of well-being. “R” is for relationships, and specifically positive relationships, I think about these especially in an online class in terms of supportive social connections. “M” is for meaning. When we find value and purpose in the thing that we are doing, that in itself, is another way to boost our own well being. And “A” is for accomplishment and this one resonates with me. It is crossing the item off the to do list. It is winning the game of cards just for the sake of winning. It is helping our online students cross the finish line of our classes. So what I did in this book is I highlighted two of these domains as particularly relevant and impactful for asynchronous online classes. I take a deep dive on positive emotions, what does the emotion science say? And how can we put that to work in online classes, and then “R,” relationships, supportive social connections? How can we help everybody thrive and persist in those online classes based on those two elements specifically?

Rebecca: So in your book, you provide an analogy between building a course and preparing for a road trip as a way of establishing this sense of well being. I know, personally, I enjoy planning trips. So what are some design strategies that can be used to promote well being during the semester, particularly around these like positive emotions?

Flower: Yeah, it’s funny you said that, Rebecca, because I hate planning for a road trip, and I got to be so real, I don’t love all the stuff that we have to do as instructors to get ready for an online class. I feel overwhelmed, and I don’t think I’m alone by all the rubrics, all the checklists, all the frameworks, all the “you should do this” and “best practices that,” organizing the modules, it’s not my favorite. It’s not where I find the fizz, making sure the rubrics are there, the dates are all right. All of that is not my favorite, but it’s funny that you said that, because, of course, I discuss everything with my amazing husband, Tim. He’s an instructional designer. He’s been supporting faculty teaching with technology in classrooms and online for over 30 years. And he was like, “Wow, I kind of like planning for the road trip.” [LAUGHTER] And I was thinking specifically about the tasks that may not be as fun, like getting the car to the mechanic, getting the wheels aligned, but when you take the time to do those things, then you foster a more enjoyable trip when you’re actually on the road trip. So chapter one really is about what I find to be a little bit less fizzy, but then I know there’s other folks like you who are like, “No, it’s okay, let’s get our checklists done.” And so, thinking about how do we set up our course? And this is not really new [LAUGHTER] for anybody who has any experience supporting online teaching or teaching online. It is about, well, first of all, I encourage us to remind ourselves of the “why,” of the meaning and of the purpose. Again, back to the “M” in PERMA, I know for a fact that online classes literally change lives, to quote one of the folks who’s featured in this book, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, “they make it possible for people to attain a college credential or degree when it would not otherwise be possible to do.” And so when I do get a little bit bogged down with the tedium, the administrivia of preparing an online class, I have to remind myself of my “why,” and so that’s what we start with in chapter one. Then, I kind of go through some of those relatively well understood strategies in terms of making sure your course is organized. And to your point about fostering a more enjoyable experience, when my course is confusing, then what happens is the students get confused, and what we know from emotion science is frustration or confusion demotivates learning and learners, then they email me with questions, as they should, and then I have a whole mountain of email, right? And so it’s kind of like when the wheel is out of alignment, it’s harder to steer the vehicle and keep it on track, but when you take the time to make sure that things are set up, that they are organized, everybody does have that more enjoyable experience. So one other thing that I would mention here, as we’re setting up the class is to kind of set ourselves and our students up for success by announcing our availability. Now more than ever before, online students might expect an answer in the moment, and we are not AI chatbots. We are not available 24/7, so help our students know that. When life circumstances come up for ourselves that impact our availability, let our students know that. Let them know if we need to be away for a few days, when we’re going to be back, anything like that that we feel comfortable sharing. All of those are ways to set up the journey for success.

Rebecca: One of the things that I heard you say, that I think everyone can relate to, is not enjoying piles of email. So having less piles of email alone could make for more joyful experiences for everybody. [LAUGHTER]

Flower: And if I could just comment on that, any strategy that has been successful in my own teaching and anything I recommend that seems to resonate with folks more broadly is pretty much all about saving me pain. [LAUGHTER] There are tedious aspects of teaching, and oftentimes it is something that we could do better. If a lot of my students are missing the mark on an assignment, maybe I wasn’t as clear or explicit in the instructions. So if I go back and I add to the transparency of what I’m asking students to do, eventually the result is less grading time for me because they’re getting it on the mark. So I admit it’s purely selfish, but whenever I can save myself pain or help other faculty save themselves some pain, I actually think it’s benefiting their well being and student success as well.

John: Now, I’m with you in that I much more enjoy the interactions with students as the course is progressing, but after I started teaching, I realized I couldn’t really be that improvisational and just do things day to day and so forth. And I’ve learned also that putting in the extra effort, getting all the details in, creating a consistent course structure, making sure that everything is there in advance, just makes it so much more enjoyable later. I don’t enjoy that part of it, but it does pay off in terms of the rest of the course, and those few weeks of getting things ready in advance, or maybe more than a few weeks, depending on whether it’s a course you’ve done before or if it’s a new course, really pays off nicely.

Flower: That’s exactly right, John, I agree with you 100%.

John: And I was thinking when you mentioned that about how we started this podcast. When we first started talking about I said, “Okay, well, let’s record one tomorrow, and we can release it later this week.” And Rebecca’s response was, “Well, why don’t we plan to start releasing them in about a month or so? Let’s get everything organized and planned first.” So it worked out well, but it was a bit of an adjustment there.

Rebecca: It’s a little yin and yang going on here.

Flower: That’s good!

John: So, in an in-person class, having an energetic and enthusiastic instructor can help inspire student engagement, because we know that emotions are contagious. It’s a little bit harder, perhaps, to do that in an online class. How might instructors create a similar environment in an asynchronous course?

Flower: This is such an important question, and the beauty of it is that a little goes a long way. And one of the things that I do in this book is I tell the stories of people who love teaching online, and we just get to learn from their experiences. So the book is as much storytelling as there is research and empirical evidence to support the recommendations, but there’s also people who love teaching online, and I really think keeping our focus on that, on the people in the class, seeing our online students as people, and not just names on a screen, which I myself have been guilty of, and really highlighting the importance of regular interactions, but not in a mechanical way. So to get to your point, as you already mentioned, emotion is contagious, and there is a lot of evidence to show that teacher enthusiasm literally infects students and energizes them, and this definitely applies in online spaces as well. Anybody who’s familiar with my work are going to see some themes [LAUGHTER] that have been characterizing my work for some time now. But let’s think about, how do we convey our passion to our online students? Whether it is in the recording, maybe an audio or a video recording. The research shows that even, especially video, even like animating our facial features and inflecting some enthusiasm in our vocal intonation that can energize students, even in an audio recording. Again, there’s more depth and nuance, and we can convey that excitement about what we’re doing in class. We can also convey that we really care about our students when we’re more willing to bring that media. It doesn’t even have to be just media, though. We can do this in our written comments, announcements, feedback, discussion posts. It really is about being “the sun” is the way I think about it. I personally think Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, places like these, are ugly. I really do. [LAUGHTER] I cannot believe how they are so not user friendly, so unappealing visually. So I think about what individuals, as instructors, what we can do to bring warmth, energy and enthusiasm into our classes. And it may be that you send an announcement with a meme, or maybe you tend to use emojis. Those kinds of things that are resonant to our authentic selves, and being mindful to project our enthusiasm about our topics, about student success, those are ways that we can create a similar environment in online classes.

Rebecca: One of the other areas where there’s a lot of growing evidence is that students are more likely to persist and learn more when they feel like they belong. What are some of the strategies you recommend to help students feel that they belong in an online class, particularly in an asynchronous setting?

Flower: Yeah, I’m really glad to be talking about this. My co-authors and I took a deep dive on this in The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching, which is freely available thanks to W.W. Norton. That’s where I really began to articulate, “what does the research say, and how do we apply it in online classes?” And what we know is persistently, consistently, for decades now, students in asynchronous online classes have told us that they don’t feel they do belong, they feel isolated, they feel lonely, they do not feel connected with other people. In fact, there’s a relatively recent study that reports one student saying that they don’t even think it’s possible to feel that there’s a community in online classes. So we have work to do here. Those feelings of isolation and loneliness definitely contribute to those higher attrition rates that we experience in online classes. I love the example of, again, my friend and colleague, Dr. Isis Artze-Vega, lead author of The Norton Guide, and she really put into practice this idea of relentless welcome, which we learned about in Relationship-Rich Education by Felton and Lambert. It’s this idea of communicating to students repeatedly that we’re there for them, we will help them. If they have a late assignment, what can we do to help them get that assignment in, to help them cross the finish line? Again, Isis’ story about asynchronous teaching is in the book. There are many others, but it is about helping our students see us as a real person. For example, I’m in a lot of online classes, and I speak with a lot of online instructors, and it surprises me, and quite frankly, it saddens me, how frequently there is not even a photo of the instructor in the online class. There may be good, valid reasons why an individual instructor does not want to post an image of their face. I understand and respect that. But I think there’s a lot more of us who just haven’t put two and two together. Students tell us they feel like we’re not real. They tell us that they think we’re just computers or bots. So let’s help our students see who we are as a real person. A headshot, a photo of ourselves doing a hobby, and again, it’s not just one and done. It’s not just an “all about me” page at the beginning of the semester. It is about interacting in ways that help our students see that “Wow, we really are ice hockey fans,” and “did you see that game over the weekend,” right? Or whatever our personal interests might be, that we feel comfortable bringing into class. Again, not crossing any boundaries, but helping our students see that we are real people can help them feel connected to us. And the flip side is also true as well, being intentional to get to know our students as real people really goes a long way. As I already mentioned, I have been guilty of seeing a name on a screen and struggling to envision the real person who was on the other side of that screen. So first-day information sheets, where we collect some information from our students, and maybe invite disclosure, I don’t think we should require, but maybe invite students to share a little bit about their personal interests, hobbies, career goals. Those kinds of activities can help us demonstrate to our students that we do see them, that we do care about them, that they are a valued member of the community, that fosters belonging and that predicts academic success and completion of the online course.

John: And we’ll include links to The Norton Guide, as well as Relationship-Rich Education, as well as a couple of podcasts we had with some of the authors. Along those same lines, one of the things that may be difficult is that we know that there’s research that suggests that when people read written feedback, they’re more likely to perceive it as negative than if they hear it being said, because we don’t see facial expressions, body language, tone, and other things. Now, video can help address some of those things, but if people are not going to be using video, how can they convey this more positive and supportive environment to reduce the risk of misperceiving some of the comments that students may see?

Flower: Yeah, great question, and again, a relatively simple thing that we can do when we pay attention to the words that we write. I alluded to this earlier in this conversation, it is 100% possible to convey enthusiasm, support, encouragement, “you got this,” when we take another moment or two to write some of those quick phrases. Some online instructors find it helpful to have some template text that they can copy and paste. I personally tend to be more spontaneous and in the moment, but there is an aspect of taking a few more moments to share a few more words that help students and being intentional. Now, I don’t think any of us should be inauthentic. As you may know about me, I tend to have kind of a natural cheerleader kind of a personality like, “Come on, we can do this!” And I don’t think people should break that way if that’s not their style, but I do think we can overcome the transactional distance, create warmth that is not always evident in these text heavy environments. The course material itself is often written in a dry academic language. I take inspiration from research that shows that warming up the tone of your syllabus can help students feel better prepared for success, the same is true in our written materials in online classes. And the last thing I would say is findings from research on immediacy cues in asynchronous classes, specifically immediacy cues that comes out of the field of communication and it’s a way to help students feel that you are approachable as an instructor, that you are on their side, you are available to help them. We often think about these immediacy cues in in-person classes, for example, maintaining a pleasant facial expression of body language that is a little bit more relaxed, not standing at the lectern and just reading your notes. These are in-person nonverbal immediacy cues, but research has shown that there are things that we can do in online classes to apply this effect as well. One of them is about the perception of time, so students notice the length of our comments or our feedback on an assignment, and if it seems like we were very brusque and abrupt, again, sort of a negative perception is formed, but if they perceive… because we have included just a few more words in our message… if they perceive that we spent a little bit more time with them, it boosts their motivation and engagement, both of which are precursors to learning. So in my opinion, how do we do this when we’re relying on text, it is faster. I think that typing comments is faster than recording video. I certainly encourage people to use more video, but when I’m teaching online, taking just a mindful moment to add a few more words of encouragement, maybe even to acknowledge, “hey, this is challenging, but I know you can do this.” Typing words like that makes a difference.

Rebecca: One of the things that we mentioned just briefly a little bit ago was that in online, asynchronous classes, there’s higher attrition rates than in-person classes. What are some other strategies we can use to encourage students to persist?

Flower: Yeah, so I’m thinking of a 2024 research paper that came out and I love when articles have a catchy phrase. This one, the first part of the title is, “It Helped Push Me Through the Class,” and it’s the things that we have been talking about. It is relational online teaching. It is teaching with rapport. And as I mentioned at the very beginning here, a little goes a long way. Having that photo of the instructor, writing opening materials in an online course in a way that makes it very clear for students to understand what they need to do to get started, maybe trying to break up our written materials in the online classes with a little more white space, with a little bit more use of headings, keeping everything accessible, so that we are meeting digital accessibility requirements, absolutely, but we can bring in more of that relational kind of online teaching. That’s the way I think about it. Again, Michelle Pacansky-Brock is doing great work in this area. She talks about humanized online teaching. It’s the same thing, it is about cheering our students on, pulling for their success, maybe reaching out. Attrition rates are higher, they have consistently been for decades. Maybe what we do is we’re intentional to take 15 minutes on a Monday morning and check and see who has not really been active in the class in a few days, send a little message to that individual and say, “Hey, I noticed you haven’t been here. Are you okay? Is there anything I can do to help?” That kind of a strategy doesn’t take very long. It can make a huge difference for students, because it communicates that you noticed, that you saw that they were not there, and you took action to reach out in a supportive way. That’s the kind of thing that can and does make a difference with helping students persist and complete the online class.

John: Just a few minutes ago, you suggested that one of the ways we can help connect to students and create a better relationship with the instructor is by finding out more about the students and asking them some questions so that we get to know our students a bit better. But if they share that information with other students, could that help build community in some way, if we can bring some of those things into discussion forums or some class activities where they’re revealing something that they’re comfortable revealing about themselves and why they’re taking the course, perhaps. Might that help forge better connections among the students in the class?

Flower: Yeah, it’s all about, as you said, helping students find some common interests. And the way I think about this is to structure social interactions throughout the class, not just in the first week in the introductions forum. I mean, that’s standard, and I do recommend that we should do that, have an introduction forum in week one, but in many online classes, that’s it. There’s no further attempt to build connections and relationships among the students. When we are intentional to do that, what happens is, again, that more naturally warm environment, a more trusting environment, which will help students engage. So for example, I think it can be helpful to have maybe a weekly social post only. I was speaking with one instructor recently who changes the prompt every week, and if this aligns with your grading philosophy, I recommend assigning points. Make it worth points, because online students are busy, they don’t do things that aren’t required. I understand that, but maybe one week, the topic of discussion is, “what series are you binging right now?” Maybe the next week, “what is one favorite hot beverage, given the icy temperatures,” right? Things that don’t have much to do with class, encourage students to post photos or memes. If they want to do that, it will be amazing. And I think people will really see the benefit of investing time and part of the grading scheme and module space in structuring ways for students to connect and engage with each other in ways that are not necessarily about the material in the class, just person to person.

Rebecca: In a lot of ways, that’s very similar to the small talk or small interactions that happen before or after an in-person class. And you have to be more intentional design those opportunities when an online environment is kind of a drop in, drop out, as you need or as it makes sense for you on your schedule. So you have to kind of make those spaces for that to occur.

Flower: That’s exactly right, and I actually want to qualify some of what I said, I get very carried away with myself. But to your point, social interactions can happen spontaneously and naturally, whether it’s turning to your neighbor and saying, “Hey, do you have an extra piece of paper,” whatever it might be, and the research has found that that’s actually really important to help students be successful. So that’s why I say “Yes, it doesn’t happen by accident in online classes. Let us structure those opportunities.” But, [LAUGHTER] I want to qualify that. I have learned over time that in some courses that may not be as necessary in some disciplines, maybe students don’t have time for the social stuff as much. So two points here, for example, once a number of years ago, I was speaking with a professor in an MBA program. He’s like, “My students are motivated, they are busy, they are professionals, they know what they need to do, they want to get in and out, they don’t have time for all that fluff.” And at the time, I wrestled with that, but I think he has a point. So instructor preference, discipline, the nature of the program, the kinds of students that you have, these are all factors that we want to take into consideration. I still would argue that some social support is more beneficial than not having that much, but every recommendation like this, I think individual instructors need to filter it through their own wisdom and experience, and make those informed decisions based on what they think will be best for their students, their discipline and such.

Rebecca: I can imagine some of those could be a little more spontaneous feeling if you have students that have some similar interests that you learn as you’re interacting with them, and you connect them to one another because they do have some shared goals or interests or pursuits.

Flower: Yeah, one of my favorite recommendations, again, people who are familiar with my work may have heard me talk about this before,[LAUGHTER] but it’s because it’s so good. This idea originally came from Dr. Courtney Plotts. What I like to do is to provide a slide, or it could be a Canvas page, for example, with some images that represent kind of a wide range of emotional and mental states. And then make this a discussion forum, and it would be “which picture best,” and then you can finish that sentence however you want to, in terms of the prompt, right? “Which picture best represents how you’re feeling about your weekend,” or “this upcoming project that we have due,” or “your college classes in general for this semester,” and then again, if it’s in a discussion forum, students can connect with each other over the pictures that they choose. And so the slide that I tend to use a lot has a happy looking dog. It has the nervous slash playful looking cat. It has a dark mountain scape with heavy clouds and snow. It has a humming bird drinking nectar from a flower. And when students see that somebody else picked the dog, “Oh, yeah, tell me about your dog!” There are ways to structure with some degree of spontaneity as well. And like I said earlier, my personal sense is that in asynchronous classes, assigning points is more necessary because we know students don’t do things if they’re not worth points. That is not my overall grading philosophy, but regarding asynchronous online classes, I would say that when students see that you’re assigning points for some of those things, it conveys that it’s important. It conveys the value that you place on those activities.

John: For many years, one of my colleagues and I have been using this metacognitive cafe, low-stakes discussion forum where students reflect on their learning process, and at the end of the semester, they always said that that was one of the things they valued the most, because it helped them see that other people were struggling with some of the same issues, that they weren’t alone. Besides the benefits from just the metacognitive reflection on their learning, it helped them to see that the things they were struggling with were experienced by other students as well, and they would often bring up things saying, “I have to take care of a two-year old, and it’s really difficult to do these things.” And then other people would respond about some of their challenges, and it just helped form much more of a community where they got to know each other much better than they would have if the focus was just on the content directly.

Flower: That is a wonderful example. I love that so much, that empathy building, that sense that we’re not in this alone. That’s exactly what online students tell us, [LAUGHTER] they feel like they’re in this alone. So I love that opportunity to, if nothing else, vent or commiserate [LAUGHTER] and share that experience to build that trusting community. I love it.

Rebecca: One of the things that we talked about a little bit earlier was how some students may think that we’re just a bunch of bots teaching these online classes, and obviously the proliferation of generative AI generally can really feel like it sucks the joy out of some teaching. How do we prevent some of that from happening and maintain this joy and online instruction in the presence of AI?

Flower: Yeah, a really important and very timely topic. In the forthcoming book, there is a subtitle that basically says, “don’t let AI steal your joy.” That sums it up for me. There are people who are calling for the end of asynchronous online education because it’s impossible to prevent students from using AI to outsource their learning. I don’t agree with those calls. We know, again, that this modality makes it possible for people to pursue a degree when they wouldn’t otherwise be able to, not to mention, it’s a business model that is well established [LAUGHTER] in higher education. Student demand for this format is growing. What we need to do is to figure out how we double down on the human connections we’ve been talking about, and motivate students to not outsource their learning to AI. So, and I do want to be very clear, I’m not talking about agentic AI. It is horrifyingly possible now for a student to use an agent browser to go in and complete online class tasks. That, I’m gobsmacked. [LAUGHTER] I still think that the human connection will help students choose not to do that, but I’m not talking about agentic, I’m only talking about generative AI. And again, I do firmly believe that cultivating trust, that building the social connection among students and instructors, that we can help students choose not to use AI in inappropriate ways. I also think all of the recommendations that people are making for how to teach and facilitate meaningful learning with AI, in in-person classes, we can apply those same ideas online: give students transparent guidance on exactly what you’re asking them to do, exactly what you don’t want them to do with AI, invite students to… not invite… I would say, actually assign students to disclose where and how they used AI, structure a reflection that gets students to think, to John’s point, about the metacognitive aspect, “did my use of AI help me, or did it hold back my learning? Or was it more trouble than it’s worth?” All of those kinds of recommendations where we are talking to students about AI, building critical literacy, awareness of the ethical concerns, responsible AI use, I think all of those same ideas can totally happen in asynchronous online classes. And I would argue that we would double down again on that human connection. Now what I am seeing, I’ll just add briefly, many asynchronous instructors are needing to shake things up a little bit. So we have always relied on discussion forums. Some instructors are moving towards social annotation using tools like Perusal or Hypothesis. Some folks are kind of rediscovering tools that we’ve had for a while, like Voice Thread because, yeah, let’s face it, those often tired and uninspiring discussion forums that we’ve relied on for a long time, that have been ripe for change for a long time, some of those existing or traditional ways of doing things just make it too easy for students to outsource their learning with AI. So changing things up in ways that are long overdue, I would argue, these are some of the ways that we can address the threat that AI poses. Last thing I would say on this is I know for a fact that there are hard working people who want the learning and they want the degree legitimately, they’re going to do the work. We have an opportunity to think more creatively, to inspire and motivate our students by giving them meaningful, relevant activities and tasks online.

Rebecca: This feels like the flat tire part of the road trip where you actually successfully get a new tire. [LAUGHTER]

Flower: You know, this isn’t a surprise to you. When we were in the pandemic, when we were coming out of the pandemic, many of us were going,”Great! We can change some things that have needed changing!” It feels that way to me again. There have been many aspects of asynchronous online classes that needed refreshing, maybe now we’ll actually do this.

John: And these issues, these challenges from AI, are not unique to asynchronous instruction. It’s basically with any type of work that students are doing outside of the classroom. And there’s a lot of people exploring this, both in face-to- face classes as well as in online classes, and we do have to think more carefully about the assignments we’re giving and how they might work, and how we can incentivize students to focus on the learning rather than outsourcing that.

Flower: I would like to add, there are really wonderful smart scholars like Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant and her co-author, Dr. David Rettinger, there’s a global community of folks working on academic integrity, and these folks are rightfully [LAUGHTER] inviting some conversation about how valid our assessment of student learning can be on any work that happens outside of a physical classroom. To your point, this does not just apply to online classes, but anything we ask students to do that does not take place under our watchful eyes and without any technology, which introduces some inclusivity concerns. This is a concern. So in the context of asynchronous online, especially, because I don’t think it’s going away, I don’t think it can or should go away. I do wonder if we might see a return or a resurgence of in-person testing centers. And I’m kind of speaking that in that voice, because it’s not ideal in some ways, but proctored tests are a thing that still happen. For example, the NCLEX exam in nursing, that is a supervised in person experience. It has to be. I would like my nurse to adequately give me the medication that is prescribed. So I’m wondering, for asynchronous online classes, if we might see more in-person assessment. And I’ll share one model from my former institution, Northern Arizona University. In Arizona, there’s a wide rural population, and I love this model. Basically, agreements were made with local libraries, community colleges, other such gathering places around the state, and students would just make an appointment and go to their local place to do an in-person assessment. So, I just wonder if we can, and maybe even should, begin to explore that option more fully than is currently the case.

John: And when we talked to the authors of The Opposite of Cheating, we’ll share a link to that as well, one of the things they talked about was the possibility of consortiums of schools or state university systems, perhaps, agreeing to do some joint proctoring to provide capabilities for that throughout the state, and that might be an option, but it would be hard for smaller private schools, perhaps, to join in these types of things, but it is something that I think we should explore because of these challenges.

Flower: And that’s why I love the model at NAU, where a local library or a community college or other offices that already exist, they just entered into an arrangement and had a system and had a system and a process.

Rebecca: All right, so we always wrap up by asking, what’s next?

Flower: Well, I have to tell you, what’s next for me is finishing my PhD! [LAUGHTER] This is something that I have been quietly pursuing in the background for a number of years now. My program is fully online, asynchronous, I have been walking a mile in the online students’ shoes, and I am not undertaking any other big projects until I finish this PhD. My experience has informed the book. When I said earlier that I talk with a lot of online students, it’s because they’re my classmates. [LAUGHTER] So that is next for me. I want to finish this. It’s a PhD in psychology. How do we learn, and therefore, how do we teach more effectively? So it completely aligns with my work. It finally became time to pursue this, but it’s hard, just like for our online students to be a working professional with many pursuits in life and try to juggle that as well. So that’s next for me, is finishing that program.

Rebecca: You got this, Flower! [LAUGHTER]

Flower: Thank you! But I tell you what, no more books until it’s done. That I know for sure. [LAUGHTER]

John: Yes and keep the fizz going through the dissertation process.

Flower: Yes, absolutely.

John: Well, thank you. It’s always great talking to you, and we’re looking forward to hearing more about your research on your dissertation.

Flower: Yes, thank you so much again for having me. As you know, these conversations bring me fizz, and I hope your listeners feel a little bit more uplifted and fizzy as a result.

Rebecca: I think they will. Thank you, Flower.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing assistance provided by Madison Lee.

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434. TUnE Bio

Posted in engagement, equity, feedback, first-generation students, higher education, inclusion, learning, motivation, pedagogy, STEM education, teaching
February 25, 2026

Students planning to major in STEM fields, especially students from groups historically underrepresented in these fields, are often deterred by their experiences in introductory courses. In this episode, Sarah Rose Cavanagh joins us to discuss an NSF-funded initiative designed to enhance student success in introductory Biology classes.

Sarah is a psychologist and the author of four books related to teaching and learning. She is the senior associate director for teaching and learning and associate professor of practice at Simmons University and also is a regular contributor to The Chronicle and many other publications. Sarah often serves as a keynote speaker and we were very fortunate to have her join us for a keynote address at a recent Academic Affairs Retreat on our  campus.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Students planning to major in STEM fields, especially students from groups historically underrepresented in these fields, are often deterred by their experiences in introductory courses. In this episode, we explore an NSF-funded initiative designed to enhance student success in introductory Biology classes.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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John: Our guest today is Sarah Rose Cavanagh. Sarah is a psychologist and the author of four books related to teaching and learning. She is the senior associate director for teaching and learning and associate professor of practice at Simmons University and also is a regular contributor to The Chronicle and many other publications. Sarah often serves as a keynote speaker and we were very fortunate to have her join us for a keynote address at a recent Academic Affairs Retreat on our campus. We’re also looking forward to her upcoming keynote address at the SUNY Conference on Instruction and Technology later this year in May. Welcome back, Sarah.

Sarah: Thanks for having me.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Sarah, are you drinking tea with us today?

Sarah: Ah… I never am. I actually have a confession. I’m actually drinking a Celsius energy drink. [LAUGHTER] I’ve graduated from even coffee, but I only do this. I’m like, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but Zoran Mamdani, he has a Red Bull once a week, and so, like Mamdani, I have a Celsius once a week. Gives me a real boost.

Rebecca: Right now is the time. We’re catching you at this moment this week?

Sarah: Well, yes, and we also ran out of coffee filters, so… [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: That’ll do it. How about you, John?

John: I am drinking an Irish Breakfast tea today.

Rebecca: Oh, seems to be like a new favorite, John.

John: Actually, it’s because we’re snowed in and most of my other teas are up at the office.

Rebecca: I have an English afternoon today.

Sarah: What time of day is it? This seems to be a conflict. One of you is doing breakfast? One of you is afternoon.

John: It is afternoon, isn’t it?

Rebecca: yeah, I don’t know. Yesterday we recorded at 5pm and we both had breakfast teas, so… [LAUGHTER]

John: We did.

Rebecca: It might just be an indicator of how much caffeine we needed at a given time. [LAUGHTER]

Sarah: Gotcha.

John: We’ve invited you here today to discuss the TUnE-Bio project, an NSF-funded academic initiative, for which you are a principal investigator and network leader. Can you give our listeners an overview of this project?

Sarah: Sure. So the focus of the project’s right in our title. So it’s Transforming Learning and Equity in Undergraduate Biology Education by Cultivating an Ecosystem of Feedback, which is a big mouthful, so we call it TUnE-Bio. So we’re tuning biology education. And the focus of the project is really on tackling the problem of high attrition and weed out in undergraduate biology education, and by extension, STEM fields in general, the fact that so many students come to the study of biology and the study of STEM fields in general and want to be doctors and surgeons and scientists, and then they encounter difficulties in their introductory courses and leave for other majors. There’s something that is known as the STEM grading penalty, which is when students get really low course grades in STEM courses, but then they get high grades in their other courses, then that in particular seems to kind of lure them out of the field. And we want to change that, in general, because we need more scientists and we need more nurses and surgeons, but we also want to change that, because there’s also a lot of inequities in terms of who is weeded out, and disproportionately women, students of various races and ethnicities, first-generation status. All these things tend to increase the chances that you will leave STEM fields, and we want a really educated, diverse STEM workforce, and so we’re really trying to do something about that by improving pedagogy.

Rebecca: Sounds like a good initiative… [LAUGHTER]

Sarah: We think so.

Rebecca: …right up our alley around here, right? [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: At the beginning of the project, you first gathered information on the current landscape of biology education using surveys and focus groups. Can you tell us a little bit about the process of data collection?

Sarah: Yeah, sure. So we started this grant with what’s called an incubator. So NSF has two versions of this particular mechanism, and the incubator is meant to, just like it sounds, to give you a little bit of money to start building a network, start showing the NSF that you can do what you are promising to do. And then we got a full version of the grant a few years later. So this really goes all the way back to, I think, 2020, and we were unsuccessful a few times before we were successful. [LAUGHTER] So it actually goes back to more like 2018, I think, but we got the incubator grant, and one of the things reviewers said to us is, all right, you’re saying you want to innovate in pedagogy in biology, but before you can innovate, don’t you need to know the current state of play, like, what are people doing in their classrooms currently, before you start asking them to do something different, like, maybe they’re already innovating. So we took that charge, and in the incubator year or two, we did a really large survey of people who were teaching introductory biology, all sorts of different institutions all over the country, about 300 of them, and then did qualitative interviews of 27, I think, of them… took a deeper dive. And we’re really asking people about their practices and philosophies in teaching intro bio. What were they doing in terms of assessment, in terms of feedback, in terms of grading? We asked about what they perceived as barriers to innovation. In the early phases, we’re a little more focused on alternative grading. And so we asked a lot of questions about: had they heard of it? had they tried it? Questions about that. And so that was our attempt to figure out the landscape before we started innovating with the full proposal.

John: And what did the data collection tell you about the landscape?

Sarah: Well, first, I have to say that I do think we got a bit of an unusual sample. It’s always the case in research, because we tried to keep the survey under 15 minutes. But still, who has 15 minutes to do something completely optional, and then the people who spoke with us in the qualitative interview study, that was a significant investment of time. And so I do think we got a sample of people who were really interested in pedagogy already, but, that said, we saw a lot of innovation already. So the old school model of two exams and a final in intro courses, we really didn’t see a lot of that. People were using a lot of quizzes, a lot of clickers. They were really thinking deeply, especially in the interviews. They had thought deeply about equity. A lot of the folks we talked to, they really felt the pull of doing more like differentiated instruction and really changing their pedagogy, student by student. And had a lot of frustrations with not being able to find the time to really do that better. And we also asked about barriers to innovation. And shockingly, the top three barriers were time, time, and time, I think the top was no time to implement. The second was the perception that some of these innovations would take more time. And then the third was no time to even like, figure it out, do the reading, restructure the course ahead of time, do those things. So we saw a lot of innovation, but a lot of desire for more, I think.

Rebecca: So that kind of sets the ground for the pedagogical side of the landscape. Can you go into a little bit more detail about attrition rates and the equity gaps that the project is meant to overcome?

Sarah: Yeah, sure. So a pretty significant number of students leave early STEM education for other majors, and it does seem like investigations that have probed the why of that and the motivation has really found it tying to these early low grades in these introductory courses, and I think, in particular, students who are drawn to health sciences, just the way everything set up in secondary education, tend to be students who are quite used to getting high grades, [LAUGHTER] and so having this experience of just getting As and As and As and then you hit college, and you take Intro bio, and then all of a sudden you have a C for the first time in your life. And that being very alarming. There’s also, and certainly we heard this in the survey and the interviews, in terms of the equity, something that people really thought a lot about and felt very deeply about, was the fact that, especially courses that are introductory courses, like intro bio, students would be coming to them with very different backgrounds. Some students had taken AP Bio with a tutor and all these extra meetings and already knew half the material that they were going to be taught. And other students from lower-resourced high schools did not have that experience, and faculty really struggled with that. Starting out from the gate, these students were on paths to differential outcomes, and then that would shape whether they stayed with the STEM study or not. And none of them had really easy solutions, and one of our goals in going forward is trying to give faculty tools to improve pedagogy in ways that equitize that landscape a little bit more. I mean, that basic problem is still always going to be there. It’s a societal structural problem. But if we can nudge faculty to improve how much feedback they’re giving, how motivational that feedback is, how timely it is, all of these things that maybe we can bring those students on those two paths a little closer together.

John: This issue of disparate gender outcomes in STEM fields is something we addressed a little bit on an earlier podcast with Peter Arcidiacono. This seems to be common in many disciplines, so addressing these issues, I think, could be really helpful. And one of the things that really impressed me was looking at the people in the network, or the people who are involved in this program. I’m not a biologist, but I recognize an awful lot of the names there. How was the TUnE-Bio network assembled?

Sarah: Dialing it back to those incubator years, and before our unsuccessful to successful outcomes, originally, Jim Lang and I were co-PIs, so we were both still at Assumption, and were both in the same center, and so we were working together on this, and I was actually really new to the field of teaching and learning, and didn’t know a lot of people. I started out as a psychology, emotion science, person, and only in the last 8 to 10 years moved into teaching and learning. So a lot of them Jim recommended, and then it was like a snowball. So we recommended them and some of those people said, “No, but have you thought about asking this person?” And so we kind of snowballed out, and we had our steering committee, we asked them for recommendations, and they went out from that. And then Jim retired. Then that’s when Michele Lemons my co PI who is a neuroscientist, biologist at Assumption, that’s when she joined. Jim’s still on our steering committee, but now Michele and I are co-PIs on the full proposal, and then we did a big webinar, we did a big launch meeting, and we just actively recruited. So it’s really kind of a snowball method. Also, Bryan Dewsbury is on our steering committee, and he has a beautiful essay, I think, called the soul of my pedagogy in Scientific American, and I had read that, and I was like, “Let’s invite that guy,” [LAUGHTER] and Jim was like, “Great suggestion.”

Rebecca: It’s always fun to see all of those folks assembled in the same place, virtually or otherwise. [LAUGHTER] How does this project connect to the concept of compassionate challenge that you focused on in Mind over Monsters?

Sarah: Well, since we’re focused on feedback, and I think we’ll talk about that in a little bit more, I see feedback at the heart of compassionate challenge. So my framing of compassionate challenge is that students, to be motivated and to learn effectively, they need both compassion and challenge, kind of that false dichotomy that we get into and dueling Chronicle op eds between like, “oh academic rigor” and “oh student focusedness.” Like we need all of it. And I think that we respond best and are motivated when we both are in a place where we feel psychological safety and where we feel understood and seen as people, but then where we also are challenged to rise to expectations. And feedback, I think, is just so critical for student learning, because what feedback is, is you’re giving students information about “okay, where are you at in your current learning journey, and where could you go, and how can you get there?” In that way, it’s stretching them saying, like, “Great job at the learning so far, but here’s all the other places we could go.” [LAUGHTER] But then we’re really focused in the project, on how can we give better feedback, and better feedback being compassionate, growth mindset, motivational, offered in time that they can use it, including more revisions of work, so that there’s a reason for them to read the feedback. If they assess them on a learning outcome, you give them feedback on how they did, and then they’re never assessed on that learning outcome again, I wouldn’t read that feedback. [LAUGHTER] And so I think feedback is really at the heart of compassionate challenge.

John: So right now, it sounds like much of the work of the group is done in working groups, and you have five working groups which are focused around different ways of providing that feedback. Could you talk a little bit about some of the work of these working groups?

Sarah: Absolutely, in the grant, what we’re doing currently is we’re developing tool kits, so we want to give faculty really practical ways that they could improve their feedback. And one of the other aspects of the grant is that it intentionally puts in the same room, often the same Zoom room, that we are gathering in person this May, educational developers and people from the scholarship of teaching and learning, and then biologists. And so we’re putting these minds together so that the biologists can provide the context of teaching biology, and then educational developers can provide the scholarship on teaching and learning. And we want to put them all together in a room, develop these toolkits that will help biology faculty teach in ways that improve feedback. And so one of the first things we did is we assembled these toolkit working groups, as you’re referencing John, and we just today decided to call them twigs. We keep saying T, W, G, and that’s very difficult to say out loud. And then we were on a meeting with one of our steering committee members, Linda Fergusson-Kolmes, and she was like, I keep wanting to call it twig. And I was like, “Let’s do it. Let’s do it.” So these twigs, [LAUGHTER] these each have co-leaders, and then they have members who are also amazing folks, and they’re focused on five different themes. So those themes are, first, how do we get students motivated to actually use feedback and actually read it? Because there’s some data that suggests that, especially when feedback is paired with a poor grade, students won’t even read it. So one group is developing tools to help faculty motivate students to uptake and use that feedback. Another is focused on peer feedback. Some of the tools in that toolkit will relate to LAs, learning assistants and teaching assistants, but then also ways that you can provide peer feedback in class. So motivation, peer feedback. One group’s all focused on classroom assessment techniques like clicker questions and other ways to quickly assess and get feedback on student learning. One of the groups is developing a toolkit on the seven principles of good feedback, asset-based feedback. And then finally, my favorite topic in the world, but we have some lovely volunteers who are willing to go there, AI. [LAUGHTER] if we’re doing something on feedback, they have a challenge ahead of them.

John: I don’t think we’ve had a podcast in the last couple of years that have not at least mentioned AI in some way.

Rebecca: This was yours, Sarah. [LAUGHTER] Now you can move on. [LAUGHTER]

Sarah: Yes, we’re done. Check the box. Check the box.

Rebecca: One of the things that we often hear is like feedback and grading are intermingled or tangled up together. Can you talk a little bit about decoupling of the two?

Sarah: Yeah, sure. We definitely saw this, especially in the qualitative interview. We tried to ask faculty separately about assessment, feedback, and grading, and we defined those for them ahead of time and in the process of the interview. And we defined feedback as information that’s given to students about the current state of learning or their performance on the assessment, other than grading. And then we wanted grading to be grading. Faculty found that very difficult to respond to those three things separately, because they’re all so integrated, and grading is one form of feedback, of course. We really tried to get them to focus more on things like written feedback on short-answer questions, and we have a subcommittee working on the qualitative interview coding. That’s Brian Dewsbury and Lindsay Wheeler and Michele and I, and we have a conceptual model of feedback that we’re building, and we really are thinking of feedback even as things like body language in response to students’ questions, like really expansively about feedback. And I think that the more we can decouple feedback from grading the better. And there’s actually studies showing that if you give feedback before you give the grade, if you like, kind of withhold the grade and you give the feedback, students are more likely to use it and implement it, because I think that the emotional power of the grade just blows everything else out.

Rebecca: As in, like the grade feels too final?

Sarah: Yeah, and if the grade is lower than you expected or desired, especially if it’s significantly lower, I think a lot of students get very anxious, and it can be very difficult to think really logically when your body’s all kind of in a disarray.

John: For many years, when I gave back exams, the students who did well would sit there and they’d be really happy and really not focused that much on going over it and answering questions, and the students that did badly just look kind of unhappy and just kind of set their scowling, which is one of the reasons why I switched to two-stage exams, where they took it first individually, and then it was such a different experience. I remember the time I took a short video clip of the students in the second stage, and I shared it with Rebecca, because it was just so impressive to see them actively discussing things and working through it, because it was so different than earlier experiences going over exams in class.

Sarah: Yeah, I love two stage exams.

John: And I’m reinstituting them after moving away during COVID [LAUGHTER] in one of the classes that I’m teaching. I’m looking forward to that again. You mentioned before that one of the main barriers that faculty face in trying to implement things was time, and certainly that’s a major factor. But are those the only barriers that faculty face when they try to change their teaching techniques, especially if they’re younger faculty, junior faculty in departments which may not all be using these types of techniques.

Sarah: Right off the bat, you identified one of the major ones that we heard is, does your department support innovation, and is there that support? And another thing that came up a lot, and I see this a lot across all my work in different institutions, is students [LAUGHTER] often resist innovations. And I think health science students tend to be disproportionately this type of student who is used to a certain level of grades and a certain level of positive feedback from their secondary education, and then they hit college and they want to do that same thing. And this has always worked for them, you know, these big exams, memorizing stuff, putting out the answer, like that’s worked for them in the past. And so I find when I’m working with faculty who are innovating, especially in the arena of grading, they get the most resistance from the students, who probably are going to get an A at the end of the day, because of that resistance. But those two things can combine, and I saw this at my previous institution, in the biology department actually, and there were some faculty who were really doing innovative stuff, both with grading, but also with active learning and kind of flipped classroom sorts of things. But then most of the department was not doing that, and they experienced more student resistance, I think, because they were in this setting where students would have that reassuring kind of traditional experience in other faculty at that institution, and then they would hit this one course with all this innovation and dislike it more than if more the department were innovating. So that’s another big one. There’s also, and I think this was in your question as well, but precarity of position, and that was one thing that we asked about on the survey so that we could contextualize the responses. Contract faculty and pre-tenure faculty, sometimes they innovate somehow, and it goes not so well, and then they really get burned on their course evaluations at the end of the semester, that that could put their livelihood at risk or their tenure trajectory. So that’s another big barrier, time, time, time, departments, really large classes, that it being difficult to increase the amount of feedback you’re giving students, especially things like written feedback or in person, audio feedback. If you have 500 students, that’s very difficult. So large class sizes.

Rebecca: One of the innovations you mentioned at the top was about alternative grading practices. And given that low grades are discouraging, and certainly one of the barriers for students succeeding in STEM fields, how does alternative grading sit with some of the recommendations coming out of your network?

Sarah: Interestingly, we were more focused on alternative grading in the early stages of the grant, we actually thought that was going to be a major focus of the grant, so the incubator was not honed in on feedback. It was more broadly assessment, feedback, and grading, and we asked all those questions about alternative grading. We moved toward feedback for a couple of different reasons, one being our sense that there was already amazing work being done on alternative grading by other networks and other authors, an entire ungrading conference, and feeling like that need was already being filled a little bit in the world of teaching and learning. But then also, we observed two things in the surveys and the interviews. One of the questions we asked is, How aware of these alternative grading methods? And then we asked about a bunch of critiques of traditional grading, and the extent to which people agreed or disagreed with them, and whether they had tried them, if they hadn’t tried them, why? And there were a lot of folks kind of innovating at the margins. So they weren’t going full ungrading, but they were including pieces of that, and there was some resistance to it. We heard from some people that they were not interested in it because of a variety of reasons, and so we didn’t see as high interest as we might have expected on alternative grading. But then we also saw that people were most dissatisfied with their feedback practices. So when we asked people to rate how satisfied they were with their current assessment feedback and grading practices, we saw overall, a fair degree of satisfaction, but much lower for feedback, significantly lower than for assessment or grading. And this came up on the interviews as well, that we heard a lot of dissatisfaction. People would often wince, [LAUGHTER] when we’re like, “What about your feedback? How satisfied are you with how often and the types of feedback you give?” And they would be like, “Oh, I should do better.” [LAUGHTER] So we saw that, both on the survey and the interviews, with such a high degree of interest in improving feedback compared to assessment and grading. And then also, we felt like all the alternative grading folks were already doing a great job working on that, and we thought we could maybe contribute more and have more of a novel contribution if we honed in on feedback instead.

John: So this project has been going on for quite a while now. What are the next stages?

Sarah: The next stage is very exciting. So the twigs, the toolkit working groups with the five focuses, have been working really hard, and we’re so grateful to them developing a draft of their toolkits. And then in May, we’re going to gather at Simmons University in Boston, although it’s going to be a hybrid meeting. So some folks will be joining virtually, but a lot of us will be in person, and the toolkit working groups are going to present their toolkits to the rest of the network, so not just people on twigs and the steering committee, but also people involved in the network more generally, and we’re going to give them, wait for it, feedback, [LAUGHTER] feedback on their toolkits, and then they will have a whole another year to refine the toolkits based on the network’s feedback on the toolkits, what people would see is useful to include or ways they could shape or tune the toolkits. And then there’s a last stage of the grant. The last two years of the grant is actually, and this is one of the reasons why I’m really happy to be talking with you today, maybe it can spark some interest out there. We also are going to offer some money from the grant to form regional hubs to apply for some funding to use the toolkits in local events. And so we imagine maybe there’d be like New England, Midwest, West Coast, and a couple different institutions can gather together. There’s a few stipulations. There has to be at least one community college or minority-serving institution involved from a non-deficit framework. There has to be multiple institutions interested, someone willing to host, but they can apply for these kind of vouchers to use, to bring in a speaker, or pay for some food or something in these regional events, to use some part of the toolkit in an event regionally.

Rebecca: It’s an exciting new development.

Sarah: Yeah. I like the idea of it. You just give people money to improve pedagogy and gather together. It’s like rare. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: It’s a nice luxury. [LAUGHTER]

Sarah: Yeah.

Rebecca: Weeding out is not just a biology thing. [LAUGHTER] It’s common in a lot of different STEM departments. Do you see that the recommendations from the TUnE-Bio project to be applied and expand maybe to these other disciplines as well?

Sarah: Absolutely, and we know it’s not just STEM but certainly feedbacks everybody. And we’re focused on undergraduate biology because that’s what the money’s for, [LAUGHTER] but a lot of us have at the heart, we just want to improve pedagogy across the board, and a lot of the toolkits, as they’re being developed, because we’ve been meeting with the twig co-chairs regularly… I think the classroom assessment technique twig is a little more biology focused. I think they’re developing actual biology modules that people can use in intro bio, but a lot of the other ones, certainly the seven principles of asset-based feedback and how to get students be motivated to implement feedback are not going to be biology specific, and are going to be useful to anyone teaching anything, I think. And the toolkits will be distributed through the regional hubs, but they’re also going to be just downloadable. We’re going to put them on our Qubes site. Qubes is a open website run by the NSF, and we have a membership. So all of these toolkits, people and teaching centers can download a workshop in a box. People who are teaching in their individual class can download the peer feedback, how to train students to give better peer feedback, so they’ll be widely open to everyone, and a lot of them are not going to be biology specific or stem specific.

John: When we were talking about the AI groups, you didn’t seem quite as enthused about the AI twig. Could you talk a little bit about some of your concerns about the increasing reliance on AI in higher ed?

Sarah: Yeah, we could have a whole thing about AI. I don’t want to have a whole [LAUGHTER] conversation about AI, but Pooja Agarwal, I don’t know if you know her, she does retrieval practice, is a widely known speaker in higher ed, but we had a bunch of meetings. We were going to do an edited collection called F-A-I, and it was all going to be just critical AI. So I’m not a fan of AI. I do think there are roles for AI in feedback, in particular, and I’m not completely resistant to that. And I think that if a student were studying alone in their dorm anyway, but there was some kind of responsive tutoring type of program that instead of doing flash cards or just underlining their notes again, they had this experience that was differentiated to them and where they were at in their learning journey, that could be very effective. My concern is that we’re going to instead replace not the studying alone in the dorm with AI, but a student coming to office hours and sitting across from an instructor and having this one-on-one conversation and developing a relationship and, oh, you just happen to also talk about an internship that the student could apply to, or students working together in small groups and giving each other feedback. So if AI is like, on top of all the other stuff we’re doing, like, I think it could be powerful and interesting.

John: Those are really good points. On the other hand, just to bring up one counter argument, we do know that first-generation students and students from historically minoritized groups are less likely to go to office hours and ask questions, and also maybe less likely to ask questions in class because of imposter syndrome or some concern that they don’t want to reveal that they don’t understand something. If they have a Socratic tutor, which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they can ask it anything without fear of embarrassment, which may help them build up more confidence, so that they can then approach the instructor with questions, without being as concerned about not being able to phrase things well or revealing that they don’t understand things.

Sarah: That is a good counter argument. I would still go with the additive one, though, like, okay, let’s make that available to them, but let’s not stop all of the efforts that we do to try to draw them into office hours and into the work, into the relationships in the class, as long as we don’t, then be like, “Oh, it’s fine. I don’t have to do any of that inclusive teaching stuff anymore, because we have this chatbot,” additive, not subtractive, um hmm. [LAUGHTER]

John: And a great reference on some ways of creating a safer environment for students, a more comfortable environment where they feel more comfortable talking to their instructors is this book, I think, Mind Over Monsters is the title. [LAUGHTER]

Sarah: I may have heard of that one.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking: “What’s next?”

Sarah: For the grant, the May meeting. This is definitely for me and my co-PI, Michele Lemons, and a lot of my steering committee and the twig co-leaders. This is going to be an intense four months I guess, now. So that’s the big thing, meeting together. I’m hoping it’s also gonna be really fun. I think that the network’s supposed to be a network, and I want everyone to feel like they belong to this, like community. But so far, you know, the twigs have been working kind of on their own, and the subcommittees of the steering committee. And I’m really looking forward to having everyone working together and playing together a little bit in the evenings, probably. So that’s what’s next for the grant. In terms of what’s next for me, I just signed a new book contract.

Rebecca: That’s exciting.

Sarah: So it’s called Where are all the Happy People? So it’s a psychology book, not a teaching book, and it’s about the fact that no one is happy, and how can we be happier? And so I go to different spots to try to find happy people and then build a model of happiness. So some of those spots are the nunnery. So I interviewed some nuns. Nude beaches is another. The college classroom, actually is one, and I interview Bryan Dewsbury for that. Burning Man is another. So I’m Lithuanian in part and there’s a burgeoning pagan revival there. So I’m hoping to get over to Lithuania with my sib kid who has been learning Lithuanian.

John: A somewhat different sort of research. That sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

Sarah: I’m hoping so. I just wanted to spend the next three years thinking about happiness.

John: Happiness has been a little sparse for academics, especially for the last year.

Rebecca: Well, I hope we find out where all the happy people are, and we can join them.

Sarah: Meet at a nude beach. [LAUGHTER]

John: It is 15 degrees right here today…

Sarah: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] maybe not. [LAUGHTER]

John: …or that’s the projected high later today. It would have to be one of those polar bear ones.

Sarah: Mmm, doesn’t sound safe.

Rebecca: …or happy. [LAUGHTER]

Sarah: No. Safe or happy. Shall be tucked in around a fireplace about now, I think.

John: Well, thank you. This is a wonderful project, and we’re looking forward to seeing those final toolkits. And I’m wondering if maybe there might be some TUnE math and some TUnE chemistry and TUnE economics and other projects in the future coming out of this.

Rebecca: Perhaps we’ll just tune the academy.

John: That would be much better.

Sarah: Oh, thank you both so much.

Rebecca: It’s always a pleasure.

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing Assistance provided by Fred Llerena.

[MUSIC]

423. Using AI for Project-Based Learning

Posted in active learning, authentic learning, community based learning, edtech, educational technology, engagement, higher education, learning, motivation, teaching
December 10, 2025

Students are motivated to learn when they have autonomy and see the purpose in what they are learning. In this episode, Tara Chklovski joins us to discuss a curriculum in which students use AI tools to solve challenging problems in their communities. Tara is the founder and CEO of Technovation, a nonprofit developer of a curriculum used in over 160 countries and reaching over 400,000 students, to prepare young women for careers in technology.

Transcript

John: Students are motivated to learn when they have autonomy and see the purpose in what they are learning. In this episode, we examine a curriculum in which students use AI tools to solve challenging problems in their communities.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

Rebecca: Our guest today is Tara Chklovski, the founder and CEO of Technovation, a nonprofit developer of a curriculum used in over 160 countries and reaching over 400,000 students, to prepare young women for careers in technology. The current focus of Technovation is on teaching students to use AI to solve real-world problems in their communities. Welcome, Tara.

Tara: Thank you, Rebecca, thank you for having me.

John: Our teas today are… Tara, are you drinking tea?

Tara: Yes, I am. [LAUGHTER]

John: What kind of tea are you drinking?

Tara: It’s Costco’s green tea. I love it.

John: Very good.

Rebecca: Excellent. I have a Twinings English breakfast that I actually got when I was in London.

John: I have Twinings English breakfast that I got delivered to my house by Amazon. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Actually, I made a whole pot this time, John, like it’s the good stuff. So we’ve invited you here today to discuss Technovation. But before we start with that, can you tell us a little bit about your journey to this position.

Tara: Yeah, I grew up in India, and I always wanted to be an aerospace engineer, and I came to the U.S. to do my Masters, and then my PhD. And it was just interesting to me that I did an internship in India at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, and I was one of the only women on the research and development team, and then when I came to the US, and I was doing an internship at a drone company, I was also one of the only women on the research and development team. And it was just very surprising to me that the most powerful country in the world had a similar kind of talent makeup and distribution as a very low-income country. India was much lower income than it is now, and it made me kind of think about it, and it was just surprising to me to run into people in the U.S. where, especially women, thought it was okay to say, “I’m just so bad at math,” and that is almost like such a shameful thing to say in India, because it’s kind of saying like, “Oh, I’m not intelligent or I’m not a good person.” And it was just kind of interesting to me to see the culture of even people in a wealthy country just assuming that certain paths are not open to certain people based on their gender or socio-economic status, and in the richest, most innovative country in the world, that’s also the most entrepreneurial, that was just such a shock to me that that is okay for us to say. And so I stepped out of my PhD program and actually started a nonprofit 20 years ago, and the goal was to bring cutting-edge technologies and an innovator’s mindset to groups that are not typically thought of as innovators, and that was the sort of path. And we were funded by the U.S. Navy in the early years, and we were very, very data driven, trying to figure out what type of model makes the most impact on students and their mindset as a innovator. And one model really rose to the front that had a durable impact on students’ identity as a problem solver, and that was a three-month long experience where you work in a team, find a problem in your community, and actually build a technology solution and present it to your community. And that experience is unforgettable. And 10 years after that experience, students would choose STEM careers because of that very, very formative, collaborative learning experience. And when we saw that, it was like, “Okay, this is it, and we need to scale this up.” And we brought it to 120 countries, and it has run primarily as an after-school program, and now we have adapted a new version of the same curriculum, but making it easier for educators to use in the classroom. And that’s the AI in Action curriculum.

John: Can you tell us about this program?

Tara: Yeah, as I was sort of mapping out the journey, it is really our Technovation curriculum and our Technovation model of supporting students to go out into their community, talk to nonprofit organizations, actually any organization, find out what are some big problems that are impacting people, and then developing a technology solution and testing it with those users. So we started doing AI nine years ago, before anybody was talking about AI. Nvidia and Google and the Patrick J McGowan foundation were the three sort of leaders who recognized what was coming and wanted to make sure that there was a lot of education support built in when AI really became mainstream. And guess what? It took about nine years for it to become what it is today. And so we are entering the space with a lot of evidence-based curriculum, a lot of incredible stories of students actually using and building AI solutions for good. And so, as I had mentioned, this curriculum has run primarily in after school, and so we adapted it to be a shorter version that educators can adapt for in school, and you go through the same sequence of how do you find a problem that’s a meaningful problem, impacts a lot of people, and you need to have no prior technical background. How do you actually build an AI prototype? How do you build your own data set? How do you train a model? How do you make sure that it is not going to hurt anyone? And then actually test it with users, iterate, and then present it to the broader community on kind of like a demo day.

Rebecca: You mentioned that it was after school, now you’ve shortened it so it can be embedded into curriculum at schools. How do educators come about the program and actually bring it to their classrooms?

Tara: Yeah, so it’s completely free. Just go to technovation.org, and you can go onto the curriculum. And so there are two tracks. Basically, one is a competition track, and that is primarily for girls, and so that has typically been what we’ve been running after school. And then we have the AI in Action track, which is for educators, for use in the classroom, again, completely free, and you can access it from our website. You can also sign up for our educator guide that will provide you. Again, you know, you need no prior AI background, and the exciting thing is, we want you to become part of our global educator community and get connected to other communities of practice, learn from one another, and especially for students, its super inspiring to see what other students around the world are using and building to improve the world.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about the competition track, why the focus has been historically on young women?

Tara: Yeah, we don’t have, like, I started like, the problem statement. I think every one of the 190 countries legally discriminates against women. They have a very big ladder to climb. And I just think that a country really loses out on innovation when you just have one type of person that is in the leadership role or in the sort of innovator’s seat. And, I think, if a country is really to make progress, you want everybody to have these kind of future-ready skills and these future-ready mindsets. And so I don’t see this as from an equity lens, I really see it as this is what a country needs to innovate and to stay thriving. So that, especially in the age of AI, where so many of your traditional white-collar prestigious jobs are being automated, there’s a real question of like, what are the big problems that are left for humans to solve? And these are these very complex human-related problems where so many people don’t have access to healthcare, education, there’s hunger across the US. And so who’s solving these problems? These are very, very difficult problems, and we are not empowering students to tackle these very complex problems. And so I think that this kind of future-ready skilling and mindset is really important to bring, especially to groups that have not been part of that.

John: Can you tell us a little bit more about the competition track? How is it structured?

Tara: Yeah, absolutely. So there’s just so much evidence to show that having a deadline motivates humans to try doing big things in a short amount of time. And so, yeah, it is a challenge and the challenge is find a problem in your community with a team. And so we invite girls to form teams sometime around now, anyone can go onto our website and register and start basically going through all the steps. As an educator, you can think about if you want to invite or do a club, or an after school club, or bring some students together, and then have the students self select into teams… anywhere between one to five… and then the most exciting part is for them to find a problem that they all care about, that they want to solve. And this is the highest learning opportunity, because they have to sort of think about their own value systems, who they are as people, what do they care about, and then they have to compromise as a team. And so the collaboration that happens there is very, very deep, and the conflicts that happen and the negotiation that happens. Once you register on the Technovation platform, we try to connect every team with mentors from industry, depending on your zip code or whether you’re virtual, and so educators are always connected to more help, so that the teams are not on their own. And then the team of girls and mentors walk through the 12-week curriculum. There are three subtracts divided by age. So beginners, eight to 12, junior is 13 to 15, senior is 16 to 18. And now we have an advanced accelerator track for 19 to 24. And so the curriculum is appropriately scaffolded for these age groups. And then, yeah, you spend 12 weeks actually prototyping, testing your product with users, and then doing that final demo day. And depending on how effective your solution is and how big your problem is, you may make it to the different rankings, so quarter final, final, and then we have the big world summit, where we apply the finalists from around the world. Last year we had it at Nvidia, and that experience is absolutely life changing for these girls, because they make friends with other innovators from around the world, and they stay in touch with them, and that’s their cohort of fellow inventors. So yeah, that’s the whole journey. This past year, we had about 33,000 girls compete.

Rebecca: That’s wonderful. I’m thinking, as an educator, it sounds really enticing and really exciting, but also maybe a little overwhelming to like, take a group of students on a journey like this. You mentioned that maybe the educators don’t necessarily have to have a background in AI, but what are some things that they would need to be prepared to do to lead a project? And is there training for the educators?

Tara: Absolutely, there’s a training for educators, and you can sign up, and now is the time, and you get connected with my incredible team of colleagues who absolutely love to support educators on this professional development journey and this journey of sort of bringing a sense of purpose to their students. It’s so, so fulfilling, because it’s not like your average class project, because you’re actually going out into the community. You have students listen to people and hear about their problems and then frame a solution. And students are very self motivated, because when you sort of promise somebody else that I’m going to make a solution for you, the students have an increased sense of accountability and responsibility, which grades can never do. And so you really unlock this deep sense of purpose and a problem solver’s identity in students, and that’s very fulfilling for educators. So Rebecca, you’re absolutely right. It feels overwhelming, but I think the thing to remember is like, there’s no right or wrong, because even a very lightweight experience for students is very powerful, and like with FIRST Robotics or any kind of competition framework that lasts for a long period of time, every year you do it, you get more students, you understand things a bit better, things become familiar, and you just get better at facilitating. But you’re not alone, and I think if you keep in mind that you don’t need to be the expert, but you can basically use AI to solve so many of these questions that you may have, it’s not going to be that overwhelming, because if there’s something that you don’t know, you just say, “I don’t know, let’s go find out.” And that part is just fun. I find that it’s so exhilarating to work with young people, because they’re so unafraid, like I’m afraid to try new things and break things, they just go bang at the keys, break things, and nothing happens. And it’s very inspiring to me, and that kind of reverse mentoring is something I’m like, “Yeah, I’m a facilitator, but I’m learning so much here too.”

John: You mentioned that the AI in Action curriculum was free. Who bears the costs of this? I know you’re a nonprofit organization.

Tara: Yeah, that’s a great question, John. So technology companies and our corporate partners who are really interested in building a talent pipeline, a talent network, because if we are to increase resilience in the United States, there is a real question of, where are the people coming from? And so the industry is very, very interested in addressing the skilling problem. AI skilling is a very important part of the full AI supply chain, and that’s what they have been supporting, the development the build out of the curriculum, as well as engaging their employees as mentors.

Rebecca: I want to pick up on something you were just talking about, which is there’s a lot of opportunity for educators to learn from students about lack of fear. A lot of college students, for example, are more comfortable with AI than maybe some of the faculty. Is this also true in elementary and secondary education, and if we’re going to venture into an AI space that we might be unfamiliar with, what are some basic things to get started?

Tara: I honestly think the Technovation curriculum and experience is a very powerful one, because it actually unlocks and opens up the black box of how a large language model works. I’ll give you one example of what a student builds, because it’ll help you immediately understand what it means to build a dedicated AI solution for a problem. So a girl was looking to clean a local lake. This was in India, and bringing volunteers together, and she wanted to sort of give some data back to the volunteers about how the lake was getting better, and she didn’t have access to a water sensor and her idea was she would train an AI model to detect the sounds of birds, and more birds would come as the water became cleaner. And so when she was looking online for an AI model that would automatically detect bird song, she only came across North American models. And so she built her own data set of Indian birds so that it could actually recognize the Indian bird songs. And these are examples of students around the world building new data sets that don’t exist currently for problems that are not being addressed by the AI models and solutions out there. And so educators can really be on the forefront of that if they were to partner with young people and students. And that’s where the innovation lies, and the only thing holding us back is fear. And I think we’re all super busy, and so the other thing holding us back is that we probably feel too overwhelmed and uncomfortable to make time and to prioritize this. But here’s the thing like, this is unlike previous technologies. This is unlike the internet. This is unlike mobile. This is unlike a lot of the other kind of technology waves, because it’s never threatened what humans did so closely. And the kinds of conversations we are having today are very different from what we used to have before, because sort of what it means to be human is being questioned when an AI, sort of chatbot responds sympathetically to you, and what if you didn’t know it was an AI chatbot, like, what if your friend was not a true friend and responded in a similar sort of robotic way? It still makes us feel the same way, right? And so that is a very scary piece, because that means that I don’t know what it means to be uniquely human. And so I think that over the next five years, people, especially our age, adults, if we are not fully grasping our hands around this crazy, scary thing, we’ll just get more and more buried by our own fears. And so the most we can do is to really embrace it and experiment and young people do it the best. So I think the Technovation model of adults co-learning with young people is such a powerful and a fun way. Otherwise, online learning is so boring. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: One thing that you’re highlighting is having a goal, [LAUGHTER] or like a problem that you’re interested in and connected to and that you want to solve. And I think that’s always a motivating way to pick up some new skills.

Tara: Absolutely, and I think grounding it in your community, whatever your community would be, it could be physical, geographical, online.

John: Now, I know at the college level, students are often racing a bit ahead of their professors in terms of adopting AI tools, and in terms of that willingness, as you said, students are much more willing to try things and not be too worried about the risks of things breaking, but I know a lot of college professors are a little reluctant to try it. Are you seeing the same sort of things in K-12 education? The response of many school districts initially was to try to ban the use of any AI, but that broke down pretty quickly, but are you still seeing that same sort of resistance to introducing AI tools in K-12 education?

Tara: Absolutely, you can see it everywhere. It’s the same kind of percentage of adoption, fear, hesitation, almost in every workplace, and especially so in the education space, because it takes so many years to build curriculum, build evaluation methodologies, set those systems in place, align teacher… like all the incentives and performance around that. And so I think we’re going to have this period of intense chaos where the evaluation methods have not caught up with the tools that students are using. And so I think the place is really to have open conversations with your students, because this is such an interesting time. You can bury your head in the sand and say, “This is above my pay grade,” or “This is not my job,” or you can really engage your students in some fascinating questions about how they are using AI tools to do their homework at home, and how do they see their brains changing as they are using AI for a lot of their assignments. And I think that will be very, very interesting. I don’t know if schools can quickly adapt and ask these questions, of like, what are the skills that are important to teach? Because I think we’re all grappling with that question. I think when people talk about empathy, being uniquely human, I was just kind of saying, I don’t know what that means when a chatbot can mimic empathy much better than even a human could. So I think that this is a time for parents and educators to really open their minds and actually ask young people and their children, no matter how young, because guess what? They’re all using AI. What do you think is happening in your brain? I have two daughters, and my older one was saying that she can feel her brain going soft in some places, but being exercised in different ways. And so that’s very interesting. Like, I totally feel my brain going soft in some ways and stretching in other ways. And so, yeah, what is happening here?

John: People who already have become experts or have developed some expertise in an area are able to critically evaluate the output of AI systems. But there’s a lot of concerns that beginners might do some cognitive offloading and not develop those critical thinking skills needed to critically evaluate the output. And we know those hallucinations do occur because of the nature of these models. What can teachers do, at all levels, to help develop the critical thinking skills needed to be able to critically evaluate the output?

Tara: I think that’s such a great question, John. And I’ll come back to really encouraging students to tackle the big problems, because complex systems thinking is not a linear problem, like where you follow a bunch of steps. I’ll give you an example. A very common problem that students try to tackle is hunger, especially in the United States. And the problem is so complex, because many people in the middle class families see the amount of food being wasted in restaurants, at your home, and so you immediately think, “Oh, what if it was a better food distribution method that would bring this food that’s being wasted to the people that are hungry?” And many people will just stop at that solution, and that is not a solution. The hard part is, really, this is perishable, these are perishable items. They’re dependent on preferences. It’s dependent on where you are, and the cost of logistics and transportations are enormous. And how would you do that at scale? Everything can be done for one little thing, but you’ll break down when you do it at scale. And so that’s a complex system, and that kind of mental mapping and problem solving is completely different from the little project that you would outline to a student. And so those are the kinds of skills that are really the ones that are what we need. And I think teachers have… there is time in the classroom. And if you align a lot of, I think, reading, literacy, math standards, into a rich project like this, I think you are preparing students very well for the future. And then they’re completely understanding they’re using AI at every step of the game, at every step of that way, and they’re seeing exactly what you were mentioning because they’re so invested in the end outcome that they’re checking and they’re like, “Wait, that doesn’t line up.” And so they’re motivated, they’re invested in their learning journey. I see students short cutting when they don’t care. We’ve traditionally sidestepped that question when students ask, “why should I care about this? Why does this matter to me?” And we typically say, “This is important for your brain, this is important for your future.” And I think we can’t hide behind that for much longer.

Rebecca: You’ve mentioned that the competition track at least is 12 weeks and I know the one for the AI in Action is a little bit shorter, but there’s a structure to it, because it goes week by week. Can you talk a little bit about what that structure looks like?

Tara: Yeah, absolutely. And so the very first part is problem identification, kind of like what we were talking about, and not very broadly, like, “Oh, I’m going to solve hunger,” but really narrow it down into what exactly is the problem, and then how can AI technologies actually address it? And so if you were to go back to our hunger example, it could literally be, how do we use AI to predict supply and demand? And how could we make the distribution of unused food as efficient as possible with minimal use of gas and energy and things like that? And so that problem identification, a meaningful problem, takes a few weeks, and we provide a lot of exercises, worksheets, for students to be able to do this, and for educators to facilitate that. The next phase would be prototyping, where you actually prototype on paper, and then you go out into the community and get feedback from actual people on would this actually help you? Where are you getting stuck? And then kind of building out the user interface for that. Third stage would be to actually start to code it, and this is where they’re learning whether they’re going to build it as a mobile app, or have it as a website or whatever. And then you start to think about, once it’s actually working, you test it again with people, and then you actually think about, how can you bring it to a lot of people? And so there’s a marketing element to it. There’s a business element to it. You look at competitors, you look at how much money is needed to actually scale it. And so that’s where that entrepreneurial learning happens a lot. And then the last phase is again, after iterating your solution a bunch of times, you actually develop a pitch video or a pitch where you tell your story and you practice explaining your solution to a larger audience so that more people adopt it and give you feedback. So that’s the full spectrum, and it’s a spectrum of starting a startup. I think for educators, and Rebecca, you were talking about like it’s a very real thing, like when you’re busy on your day to day, it feels overwhelming to try something new, to learn something new, and to restructure your life to make room for that. And I think that, as I was saying, that this is a very unusual time, and you may think that, “Oh, I’ll be fine,” but the option is, there’s a very real risk of jobs being completely eradicated. I think educators are not going anywhere, because we learn best from humans, but you can really be a superstar if you learn how to leverage these tools to support you, rather than have that be pushed down on you when you’re not ready. And so I think taking ownership of your own learning journey and your career and your professional development, I think it’s a very exciting sort of juncture for adults today where you can choose to really be a world class superstar because you have the world class superstar tools at your disposal, and the only thing holding you back is your mindset.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking, what’s next?

Tara: Yeah, I think for us, it’s really about trying to support and get educators to help their students get ready to solve these big problems. Because I sort of see an extreme case where corporations are making so much money with AI automation, maybe, like, I don’t know whether universal basic income is a real thing, but what if it is? Then the big problems that corporations will not be solving are the ones that still cause human suffering, healthcare for all, high quality education for all, no hunger, and those are not incentivized by industry. And so whose job is it to solve those? It’s our job. And I think that really encouraging students to have that sense of empathy and empathize with another human’s suffering and to try to do something about it. I think that’s the core of what makes us human. And so that’s why we want to bring this and work with educators to bring this to many, many more students.

John: So if people would like to find out more about the program, we’ll include links to your website so that people can learn about the AI in Action Program and the other programs that you run. And thank you for all of your work on this.

Tara: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Rebecca: Yeah, thank you for sharing this exciting work. And it’s even better that it’s free.

Tara: Yes, absolutely!

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

[MUSIC]

421. Why the Magic Matters

Posted in authentic learning, critical thinking, diversity, engagement, higher education, learning, motivation, pedagogy, teaching
November 26, 2025

Disney is a common shared cultural experience. In this episode, Jill Peterfeso joins us to discuss how Disney’s pixie dust can hook students and provide opportunities for critical examination in a variety of disciplines. Jill is the Eli Franklin Craven and Minnie Phipps Craven Professor of Religious Studies at Guilford College. She is the author of Womanpriest: Tradition and Transgression in the Contemporary Roman Catholic Church and a co-editor of Why the Magic Matters: Discovering Disney as a Laboratory for Learning.

Show Notes

  • Peterfeso, J. (2020). Womanpriest: Tradition and Transgression in the Contemporary Roman Catholic Church (p. 285). Fordham University Press.
  • Franzese, A., & Peterfeso, J. (Eds.). (2025). Why the Magic Matters: Discovering Disney as a Laboratory for Learning. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
  • Twinings Tea Caddy at EPCOT.
  • Jill Peterfeso (2021). Leveraging Disney Magic. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 207. September 29.
  • The Disney Dish podcast
  • Steele, Bruce (2019). One Day at Disney: Meet the People Who Make the Magic Across the Globe. Disney.
  • Giroux, H. A., & Pollock, G. (2010). The mouse that roared: Disney and the end of innocence. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
  • C, Eric Lincoln and (0awrence H. Mamiya (1990). The Black Church in the African American Experience. Duke University Press.
  • Snyder, T. (2021). On tyranny graphic edition: Twenty lessons from the twentieth century. Ten Speed Graphic.

Transcript

John: Disney is a common shared cultural experience. In this episode we discuss how Disney’s pixie dust can hook students and provide opportunities for critical examination in a variety of disciplines.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

John: Our guest today Jill Peterfeso. Jill is the Eli Franklin Craven and Minnie Phipps Craven Professor of Religious Studies at Guilford College. She is the author of Womanpriest: Tradition and Transgression in the Contemporary Roman Catholic Church and a co-editor of Why the Magic Matters: Discovering Disney as a Laboratory for Learning. Welcome back, Jill.

Jill: Thank you. It’s so good to be back. I’m really happy to see you guys again.

John: It’s really nice to talk to you. It’s been too long

Jill: It has. How are you, Rebecca?

Rebecca: I’m doing well. It’s been far too long for sure. Today’s teas are:… Jill, are you drinking some tea with us today?

Jill: I am. I just got it ready. This is an apricot tea. It is a light black tea by Harney and Sons. It’s really delicious. What about you guys?

John: I’m drinking a black raspberry green tea today.

Rebecca: And I have English tea time today. Very good… from England again?

Rebecca: No, it’s not my super fancy stuff, it’s grocery store, too. Sorry.

John: Recently she’s been bringing you these tea she’s picked up at Scotland or in England and other places during her travels. My travels are usually to Wegmans or to Amazon.

Rebecca: …those far, far away places.

John: …although very soon I will be stopping at the Twinings Tea Caddy in Epcot.

Jill: I’m so excited.

John: …which brings us to the theme of today’s podcast, which is your work on Why the Magic Matters. In an earlier podcast, you had described how you had incorporated Disney into several of your classes, including a travel component, but this new book extends this work in some new directions. First, though, before we talk about the book, could you tell us a little bit about how you developed an interest in Disney as an area of academic interest.

Jill: I came to Disney as an area of academic interest through teaching. It was 2014-2015 and I was asked to develop a first-year seminar, which is this class that all first- year students take, introduces them to college, introduces them to the liberal arts. But sort of the catch is, we don’t want it to be too clearly in your area of expertise. So it couldn’t be about American religious history, which is my area of expertise. It couldn’t be about Catholicism and women, which I’ve written a book on. It needed to be something that was going to be an area of discovery for me, as well as my students. And as a lifelong Disney fan, I thought Disney would be a really fun class to teach to first years, and I think it would be a good hook. I think they’d want to take that class. I developed that class. I taught it for the first time in fall 2015, and it really was an amazing opportunity to discover something in a back- door way. It wasn’t like, “Okay, I have this whole huge foundation that I developed through grad school and years of research and training from the experts. This is really like me doing a deep dive into something that I’ve always been curious about, and inviting students in on the journey.” That’s how I came about it. I taught that first class, and I taught that FYS, gosh, I think four or five times since then, I’ve also gone on to teach a couple other classes. I taught a class on Disney narrative magic that was a cross-listed English religion class. And then I’ve taught two study away classes on Disney that involved a trip component. I’ve gotten to do a lot of things with Disney, which is really exciting. What I didn’t expect when I first started teaching Disney was that it was going to turn into an area of academic interest and research. And I really happened, probably, I think about my second time teaching that first-year seminar, I found that we were having conversations in the classroom about these issues that I talk about in my American religious history classes and other things that I research and study and share with students. And so it was becoming clear to me that there was an alignment of Disney with my other research on Americanness and what people believe and why and how American history gives rise to culture. And so really, since about 2019 as I was finishing up Womanpriest, my first book, I’ve been thinking about ways to turn Disney into something academic. Teaching blended in with a lot of my own personal biography, like I was one of those kids who had The VHS tapes as a kid. We had the records, the little mini records in the books, and they were Disney stories. And I got to go to Disney World when I was eight, and it changed my life, like that that place existed was really mind blowing to me. So it’s been just like a really happy accident of all these things coming together, and it really makes sense as an area of academic focus. I don’t think many of us who do Disney studies do that in grad school. I think a lot of our grad advisors would be like, “Really?” but it’s something that we find once we’re a little more established and trying to find cool things that grab student attention. Disney works for that really well.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about the origins of this particular book project, Why the Magic Matters?

Jill: Credit goes to a podcast, [LAUGHTER] actually. I was listening to a podcast I listen to religiously. It’s called the Disney Dish with Jim Hill and Len Testa. And I was driving home, I have quite a commute to and from school, and I was driving home from school and listening to the weekly podcast. And they were talking about this class at Elon University on Te aching Disney, and it involved a trip to Walt Disney World. The class was called, like, The Science of Happiness. And I’m like, That’s Elon University. I’m literally driving by Elon University on my way back home. So Elon is very close to Guilford College, where I teach. I did some research. I’m like, I got to figure out who teaches this class. I did some diving into their website, and found that the teacher of this class is a sociologist at Elon named Alexis Franzese. I reached out to her over email. We met up, and I was thinking at the time, this was early 2023 and I was prepping to teach a Disney away class later that spring. And I was like, let’s team up. We could write an article about teaching Disney, especially in difficult political times, because this was when Disney was in a very public fight with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis about the don’t say gay bill, etc. And Alexis said, well, let’s do an edited volume. And so that was sort of the birth of the edited volume piece of this.

John: So how did you select the contributors for this book?

Jill: Once we had agreed on a premise, which is like educators of Disney courses and content sharing their research with a wider audience, we wanted to be sure that we had a range of academic disciplines represented. We wanted to surprise and delight the reader, the reader of Disney fans and also students, to find how many ways that Disney speaks to academic disciplines, and how many academic disciplines can speak to Disney. So early on, I will admit to some fan girling. I’m like, okay, who’s doing the scholarship on Disney that I really love? And I reached out to them. Thankfully, they were in agreement and they wanted to participate. Alexis did some of the same. We talked to people who we’d gotten in and said, “Who else can you recommend?” So we really reached out to people, and then got people sort of through that snowball approach. We didn’t do a call for papers. We didn’t need to. We were thinking we might need to, but it was exciting how quickly professors, faculty, researchers doing this work, wanted to be involved. And I think that speaks to the energy and enthusiasm around Disney and teaching and sharing Disney. I think for almost everyone… I can’t speak for everybody… but I think there’s, like a passion piece to scholarship on Disney and sharing that with students and wider audiences. We really wanted it to be widely represented. I wish we had the hard sciences in the book. It’s one of the only areas that I feel is lacking. But, I have a list, so if you’ll allow me, this is our very impressive array of disciplines: we have curriculum studies, art history, business and marketing, data science, film history, indigenous studies, Asian studies, literature, education studies, leadership studies, history, media studies, religious studies, psychology, sociology and disability studies. We’re really happy and really proud of that array of voices.

Rebecca: So one of the things that you mentioned earlier was that Disney is a good hook to get students involved. And in your first chapter, you talk about how Disney can relate to any academic subject, [LAUGHTER] and you’ve just outlined the wide array of those that are in your book. Can you talk about some examples of how Disney can be relevant in these multiple disciplines?

Jill: There is this Disney+ show, and it is also a book that is produced by like Disney Publishing. It’s called One Day at Disney, and it looks at a huge range of careers that are available through the Disney company, like what is happening 24/7 around the globe with Disney, and I talk about that a little bit in the introduction. With that as an example, it starts to open your eyes to all the ways Disney demands investment and involvement from all these different… we could call them academic disciplines… but areas of expertise for their cast members and their employees. In the book, some examples like we have two people in our book talking about data science. So we have Len Testa, who wrote our forward, he of The Disney Dish, and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan. They talk about data science at Disney. A day in a Disney park is full of data, and what Lucy does in her chapter is to look at all this data for one ride at Epcot, Spaceship Earth, and looks at what Disney can do with that data, and also what she does in the classroom with that data and teaching her students how data analysis works, what Disney can do, this is how Disney decides where to place cast members, how Disney obtains and posts these up to minute wait times for rides and attractions, and then what guests can do with that data if they use an app that sort of is tracking wait times and busyness et cetera. Looking at data helps to understand how one plans out a day at a Disney park. That’s one chapter, another chapter that’s rooted in American history and film studies is from historian Sarah Nilsen, and she looks at Walt Disney’s biography and focuses on his love for animals, and how his love for animals got baked into what he was creating in his films, and the characters and the lives that film goers were invited to see, and she makes an argument that Walt became one of America’s first 20th century environmentalists because his passion for animals was then put into films, and later into parks, and that inspired Americans to think differently about the environment. Then one other example is my co-editor, Alexis, teamed up with one of her former students who had taken one of her Disney travel courses, which I think is awesome that that partnership even exists in the book, and they use sociology and psychology tools and frameworks to analyze what Disney expects and demands from parkgoers to enjoy their time at Disney. You don’t just show up at Disney… anybody who’s gone to a Disney park knows you don’t just show up and everything happens seamlessly. You have to do a lot of labor. And in this chapter, where they’re using psychology and sociology, they look at concepts like emotional labor, emotion work, impression management to look at how Disney recruits people, especially parents, to help create happiness, to make magic happen on Disney trips. As I think of it, all of our authors are peeling back the curtain of how Disney works and inviting them to see what Disney is doing that is not just surface fun entertainment, but there’s a lot to it, and how that works, and how we can think about it as critical educated thinkers.

John: One of the things that we’ve talked about quite a bit in the past year or so on the podcast is that there’s a lot of evidence that students feel less connected than in past decades to what they’re learning in college, that they feel that it doesn’t really connect to their own lives or their own experiences. Given Disney’s large role and very long-term role in our culture, does that help provide that sort of shared connection to students, getting them more engaged? You’ve already alluded to this a little bit, but how has this worked in terms of students making connections and becoming engaged with the course.

Jill: Definitely Disney is a common shared cultural experience. And even international students know of Disney, and that is a great foundation for students in a first-year seminar, for instance, because they’re already going to be connected in some personal way to the material. We have a shared recognition, if not a shared love of Disney, certainly not every student who takes the Disney class loves Disney. Honestly, a lot of them think this is going to be really easy, [LAUGHTER] and that’s why they take it. I’ve had them admit that to me, they’re often surprised by how deeply you can go into Disney, but they are hooked by the familiarity. I’m a big believer in Disney content, especially for early students, or discovering students, because Disney is something that they know well enough that they can feel smart about it, like a lot of my students are first generation, and Disney is not intimidating subject matter. So I like to think that students comfort with knowing some parts of Disney means that I can really push them on their critical thinking because they’re grounded, or they’re rooted in something familiar: magic, happy endings, characters, positive stories about the world, histories of America, like they’re grounded in something. Now, all of this said, I have had a couple students who take my Disney classes who complain like, this doesn’t mean anything to my life, and that’s where I really try to drive home the liberal arts-ness, like, “Okay, but this is like a training ground for your academic and intellectual muscles.” Like, when you read the introduction of Why the Magic Matters, you see a lot of my views on this creeping into that introduction where I’m like, “Okay, it’s not that you need to know how Disney works. Like, I think you should, because it’s a huge cultural artifact, but you need to know how to think deeply about these cultural artifacts.” The only other thing I’ll say as I think about the shared cultural understanding, I am going to be curious to see what happens with Disney and the shared culture in the next 5 to 10 to 20 years, because Disney is becoming prohibitively expensive… at least visits to the park are. This has been well tracked. Disney seems to aim for an income bracket of like in the top 10, top 5% and most of us are not in that. So I increasingly now see students who have never been to Disney parks, like that middle class pilgrimage idea that I know I grew up with is increasingly unreachable. So I’m going to be curious to see what that does to those of us who try to teach this content in a range of different academic settings. Some people teach Disney classes in very affluent schools with very affluent students, and then some of us don’t. I wonder what Disney’s shifting economics are going to mean for lower SES students. Yes, shared culture now, I don’t know if that’s always going to be the case, so that’s something for us to watch.

Rebecca: You mentioned earlier that Disney’s biography kind of finds its way in your book. Can you talk a little bit about how Disney argued that animation and film would be useful for educational tools, and there’s certainly evidence of this in the theme parks and other things. However, it’s a very curated approach. How does that impact our understanding of history, or the way that we might continue to perpetuate a version of history in our culture?

Jill: This is where I get really excited as a cultural historian. This is where I really like to hang out with my students, because culture, as we know ,is not just a mirror that we hold up to ourselves, and it reflects our values and our interests and our history. Culture is an actor. Culture creates and upholds and strengthens those values and histories and interests. A challenge I really have in teaching Disney classes… it’s a challenge I embrace… is to help students see that Disney is not just something they consume. It’s not just fun, simple entertainment for kids. Rather, Disney is doing consumptive work on us. Disney is commanding our attention. It is directing our attention towards certain narratives and stories while obscuring others. Disney’s upholding certain norms about gender and sexuality and body size and attractiveness and ethnohistories and race-based stories, et cetera. And of course, Disney loves to gobble up all our money while doing that. [LAUGHTER] Any college-level exploration of Disney must look critically at all of that. And this is not to say that Disney is bad. I don’t subscribe to any simple villainization of Disney, any more than I subscribe to a simple villainization of religion and religious systems as a religious study scholar. Nothing is all bad and just brainwashing. When we learn about humans and human culture and relationships, what can we learn about the appeal of Disney or the appeal of religion? There’s something there that’s worth looking at. We shouldn’t just dismiss it. I was teaching this FYS first-year seminar on Disney in 2016 when Trump’s Make America Great again slogan was becoming ubiquitous, and I remember talking to students at that time like, what does MAGA mean? What time and place does it refer to, do you think? And wasn’t hard for them to connect what they thought MAGA meant to some of the simple and sanitized and incomplete histories that Disney puts forward, that you might find walking down Disney’s Main Street USA, or in Frontierland, or in some of Disney films. Walt Disney was a patriot, no question. He loved America. He was desperate to serve in World War One, and he lied about his age in order to do so. He was fixated on Abraham Lincoln. The studio made anti-Nazi, pro-allies propaganda during World War Two. So he was really very much a patriot, and he was really concerned about telling an American story, but as scholars and as students, we get to question those stories as perhaps being more complicated than what’s been presented to us. And so the book, Why the Magic Matters, looks at this very question. So we have a couple of chapters that explore this. We have a historian named Alex Hoffman in the book. He’s out of U of Chicago. He teaches a course and his chapter, they’re both titled “Theme Park America,” and in Why the Magic Matters, he sort of takes readers on a walking tour of 1955 Disneyland, when Disneyland first opened. And he looks at some of these historical sections of the park, Main Street, Adventure Land, Frontier land, and he explains the choices Disney made in designing those lands, as Disney did. But he also looks at the American history beneath Disney’s depiction, and in so doing, he unearths racism, the Cold War, and like anti communist anxieties in the country in the 1950s the impact of settler-colonialism, and all of this as he helps us to read Disneyland in a historically authentic way, as opposed to the Disney sanitized way. A couple other chapters deal with this, but another one that springs to mind is one by Lucy Buck, who is an indigenous man. And in his chapter, which is called “Urban Indians in the House of Mouse,” he walks readers through his emotional development and his intellectual awakening as an indigenous person who grew up in Southern California, really close to Disneyland. And he talks about how his time in college, studying ethnomusicology and indigenous studies led him to see Disney’s films really differently, and more optimistically, it allowed him to try to envision a world where native creativity and culture could be represented and celebrated. iI my classes, there’s always a point where students are like, “You are ruining our childhood.” I have heard that so many times in so many forms, but thankfully, it’s a whole semester, and not just like a lecture, which would leave them kind of defeated, but they have a whole semester to gnaw on this material. And my goal is really to help them feel empowered in developing richer analyses of the world around them, because I really believe that once you can critically examine something, we can enjoy it without guilt or without fear of manipulation or without threat of loss of critical thought. I really hope that the class is an invitation to see Disney differently, but in so doing, these things in the world that we take for granted as being one way but can actually be something else, and the book tries to model that in a number of its chapters.

John: So the version of the world that Disney was creating was one that was very similar to the type of world that was presented in other forms of media in the 1950s and 60s, but it’s been moving towards a much more inclusive depiction of the world in recent years, but that’s led to quite a bit of controversy, as you mentioned, with the governor and also with our President. Was this type of culture war, perhaps inevitable for Disney to go through as we move towards a more diverse population and moving towards a white minority population?

Jill: This is such an important question. We talk about this in my classes. Here’s a mess of thoughts. I don’t think that conflict was inevitable because of changing demographics. I think Disney was always going to, of course, try to include more types of people as the American demographic shifted because, well, the money motive is obvious. It’s somewhat cynical, but it’s obvious. If Disney can create more fans and more people invested in its stories, that’s great for Disney as a company. But another thing that I like to think about is who creates Disney films and characters and rides and attractions and merchandise, like complex, interesting, rich identity, human people. Many of these creative types have a really wide range of identities. So it goes beyond this Disney’s bottom line to include consideration of the artists, the animators, the Imagineers who want to see themselves and their loved ones in Disney stories. So I think that was going to happen. Was the conflict inevitable? And perhaps I’m too naive, but I don’t think including more people in the story is going to lead to automatic resentment without certain cultural forces and political forces stoking those fires. The anger directed at Disney has to be put into a context of social media algorithms [LAUGHTER] and exploiting politicians. As soon as anyone with any sort of power and authority start to draw lines in the sand, companies like Disney are going to fall on one part of that line or the other, and whoever’s not on the side with Disney is going to be angry at Disney. They’re going to take it really personally. An obvious recent example is ABC Disney’s indefinite cancelation of Jimmy Kimmel Live, which at the time of taping, because we’re taping this, it is back on, It has been on back on for a few weeks, but Disney was in a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation there. I’m in no way defending what Disney did, but in the minds of the public, Disney was going to infuriate huge groups of people no matter what they did. I don’t know, as a Disney scholar and professor, I’m always more interested in thinking about what the fights that Disney get embroiled in say about Disney as a cultural powerhouse, because Disney is shared American culture. Americans do believe they have some sort of stake in the ownership of Disney, even if they’re not really fans or consumers. They think that Disney is American, and thus Disney is theirs, because Disney is so intertwined with American culture and American values and American’s perception of history, if Disney does something somebody doesn’t like, many critics aren’t going to just see that as this huge corporation making a business decision. They’re going to be like, “this is an assault on my values and America’s story.” It’s going to hit emotionally, because Disney is all about emotion. It generates emotion. We do have some chapters in the book that try to look at this complicated question. So there’s one chapter called “Only Correct,” which is a play on Ian Forrester’s line, “Only Connect.” This is by Bonnie Rudner, who teaches literature up in Boston, and she’s looking at what she calls the corrections that Disney makes to its popular IP to its popular intellectual property. So specifically, she’s looking at Disney Renaissance films: Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas. And she looks at first, how did Disney change it from its original form of a folk tale or a historic story to put it on the screen? But then, how is Disney changing it again, as it becomes live action or staged on Broadway? And she’s offering us a way to think about these corrections that goes beyond like a knee jerk “I don’t like the black mermaid because the mermaid should be white.” We know that that’s simplistic. What other opportunities are there for analysis that are rich but not just reactive. So we have other chapters like that. We have a chapter by a museum specialist, Bethanee Bemis, who is looking at Main Street, just an experience walking down Main Street USA as something that is deeply rooted to our senses and to embodiment. And what does that bake into us, in some ways about the American experience, even though it’s completely ahistorical like the actual Main Street USA, would probably have been filthy and a little bit scary, stinky, [LAUGHTER] what would have actually been in the street of a Main Street USA. Also, some of main streets by the turn of the 20th century were struggling economically. But what she looks at is how Disney’s creation of this main street imprints on us sensorily. And then she starts to look at some of the changes Disney has made to add more inclusion into its parks, and the implications of that, both in shifting our histories, but also inviting more people into the American story. You all are asking really good questions, and it’s things that our experts in the book are thinking about as well.

Rebecca: Giroux’s book, The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence, argues that Disney’s influence on the culture was dangerous. Do the authors of Why the Magic Matters share this concern.

Jill: The contributors don’t speak with one voice. There are 22 contributors in the book, but I think some of our contributors would say that there are elements of Disney that could be considered, quote, unquote, dangerous. Some of Disney’s stories, its depictions of race or ethnicity or body type, just capitalism, like all of these could be read as dangerous or potentially dangerous if misused. But we also have contributors who, I think, kind of unabashedly love Disney, and in fact, their careers have centered around celebrating the company and its history for what it can offer. Two chapters that come to mind here: we have this delightful chapter by Christopher Tremblay. Was a scholar and a teacher, and every summer, he takes students on this experiential travel course called “Walt’s pilgrimage.” He takes students basically along Walt Disney’s biography. So like Chicago, Illinois to Marceline, Missouri to Kansas City, out to California, ending at Disneyland and Forest Lawn Cemetery, where Walt is interred. They learn Walt’s life story as well as all these inevitable lessons about business and pushing through hardship, about hope in the face of adversity, and also about placed-based learning and ethnographic discovery. And so that chapter treats some of Walt’s complexity, but it’s more like, what can Walt teach us? Another chapter that’s like that is Jeff Barnes has a chapter, a class that he teaches at Disneyland. So in the chapter, he’s like walking us through Disneyland, and stops at these landmarks to talk about what students can learn, about leadership, about how to treat people in a working environment, about collaboration, all of that. So there are really a range of perspectives in the book, some that are more critical and sort of begging Disney to do and be better. And then we have some chapters that are like, Disney is what it is. It’s hugely influential. This is how it can make sense for you, and how you can sort of deploy some of its techniques. Like Disney’s been a remarkably successful company for much of its 100 years. What are they doing well, and what can we learn? So there’s a real range of voices in the book, and this is a nice moment to be doing Disney studies. I would say Disney studies, like when I was first reading it, like Disney studies in the 1990s and the early 2000s tended to be more critical and even angry. It was sort of fun to tear down Disney, and not entirely difficult to do[LAUGHTER] if you came at it from a certain perspective. But I have never found like a complete dangerous tear down as something that students respond well to. It also lacks the kind of nuanced thinking that I want students to practice directed at any subject. I think there are things about Disney that could be dangerous, like if speaking for myself, anything that is as culturally prominent as Disney must be critically examined and understood. We can’t just take it at face value, because doing so, that could become dangerous, in a way that ignorance in the face of power is always dangerous. So I wouldn’t say Disney’s dangerous. I’d say ignorance and uncritical reflection about Disney can be dangerous. So that’s one of my big motives in teaching the class.

John: Speaking of a nuanced approach, the book is organized into sections that represent dialectical pairs. Can you explain this approach and describe the sections that you’ve included in the book? I thought that was a really interesting way of organizing the structure of this.

Jill: Yeah, thanks. So the book is organized into these four sections with a pairing of terms that may seem contradictory, but in fact, like when we look deeply at Disney, we see that these ideas that seem contradictory actually go hand in hand. I describe it this way, like the book is organized around tensions, and thinking about Disney holding in tension a range of ideas, helps to negate any sort of black and white thinking about Disney, it’s not pure celebration, it’s not pure criticism. It’s about this nuance. For instance, one of these dialectical pairings in the first section is magic and strategy. I wrote the intro to that first section, and in that introduction, I lay out how magic is like one of those go to buzzwords that everybody associates with Disney nowadays, Disney equals magic, and yet, so much of what Disney does is meant to look magical and feel magical, but it is, in fact, deeply strategic. It is done by very talented artists and business people and cast members who are creating magic. Disney’s a multi-billion dollar company that knows how to press on your motions and win your brand loyalty. The chapters in that magic and strategy section look at how Disney does both things. It creates magic and operates strategically to create magic. The dialectic approaches, it’s a great one for teaching. I love to use dialectic in the theory portions of my courses, because they really push students out of black and white thinking. When I teach, for instance, African American religion, there’s this great book that explores the dialectical model of the black church, that’s Lincoln and Mamiya have developed that theory, and it’s great, because it’s like nothing is just one thing. It is a mess, a beautiful mess of contradictory things. My first book was called Womanpriest: Tradition and Transgression in the Contemporary Roman Catholic Church. So even there, I was playing with tension with these two concepts that seem contradictory, but are, in fact, essential to the thing itself. I know Alexis has experience with dialectics in a therapeutic form, because she also has a background in psychology, and I use them in some of my teaching as well. And so the humanities professor in me and the social scientist and her like, both resonated with this dialectic approach, this theory of tensions. So we have magic and strategy. We have leisure and labor. We have authenticity and simulation, and we have nostalgia and innovation. Those are our four sets of pairs, and each of those words seems like that they want to fight each other, but in Disney, they coexist and create what Disney is.

Rebecca: Who is the intended audience of your book? You’ve kind of hinted at some potential audiences. Can you talk a little bit about who your intended audience is and maybe who might also benefit from your book?

Jill: We would love the book to find wide readership among Disney fans who are interested in a more academic, dare I say, nerdy, take on Disney. And we also envision this as a book for college students taking college courses on Disney. We learned in the process of doing this book that there are a whole lot of Disney courses out there taught from a range of disciplinary perspectives. It was one of the things that got the publisher’s attention that this book, targeted at undergrads, could actually find a home in courses. xc, who I mentioned earlier, has written an academic article… it was probably like seven or eight years ago now… but he looked at all of these Disney courses that he could find, like on college websites and things, and he found 70 happening in various colleges and universities. And I know there are more. So we definitely think the book could be for college students, but I’ve been recommending the book to like friends who have teenagers who love Disney, like, “hey, if they love this, they’re going to love getting to learn about this, and they may actually find some interesting academic disciplines that they hadn’t thought about via Disney.” I think the book could be really for a wide range of people. We made sure that it was accessible, that the language was not something that would be too intimidating. This is not like just aimed at a very small number of academics. We want this to be something that people might pick up and read a chapter here and there. It should be something that is Invitational to educated readers who are curious.

John: So given all those courses out there, have you considered coming up with a second edition or an expanded edition of this?

Jill: We were told by the publisher, it depends how well this one does. So if you all like this book, buy it for your friends. It’s great for Christmas gifts. Yeah, they said there’s, I forget the number, but there’s a number of books that they like to see published before they talk about another edition. That’s what they told us. Hopefully it will go over really well, and that there will be a demand for more, because I know there are many more scholars out there doing really awesome things in the classroom around Disney, and I think the more we share that, the more we can think about Disney in fun ways, and also the more we can make a case for higher ed and education being something that really can operate in one sort of day to day life, or one’s experience of life, if Disney is just entertainment, we can think about those things richly. We’ll see John, hopefully.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking, as you know, what’s next?

Jill: So research wise, I’m hoping to get back to my solo Disney book project. I sort of tabled that when Why the Magic Matters started to take off about two and a half, three years ago. So I’m hoping to get back to it. That project is called Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust: Enchanting and Evangelizing America. That’s currently the title, and it looks at Disney alongside American religious history. I don’t want to say it’s Disney is a religion, but how the ways we can analyze Disney can intertwine with the ways we can understand religion, and in so doing, understand religion more richly and how it operates in the world, and understand Disney more richly and how it operates in the world. So I’m eager to get back to that. In addition, even though my Womanpriest book came out five years ago, now I’m still writing and talking a lot about women’s ordination and the Catholic Church. I’m, in fact, headed to Venice, Italy in a couple of weeks for a conference at the end of October where I’m going to talk about women’s ordination and different types of Catholic feminisms, like comparing North American Catholic feminisms in European. So I’m grateful that there’s still a lot for me to talk about with that. In terms of teaching. I’m not sure when I’m going to teach Disney again, maybe next fall. We’ll see how scheduling works out, but I would love to use this book in the classroom to see how that works. I am designing currently a new course for spring 2026 which is called The Holocaust and Contemporary Issues. It was Holocaust studies that got me into academia, that got me into religious studies in the first place. It was transformative to me as a 19-year old to understand the magnitude of what happened with the Holocaust and the implications of that. I’ve often taught an upper-level Holocaust course, but I’m developing a class that’s for first years or sophomore, students who haven’t a lot of experience in religious studies. And we’re going to spend about a month on Holocaust history, and then we’re going to look at what’s emerged since that’s related. So we’re going to do a unit on the Rwandan genocide. We’re going to look at some of Timothy Snyder’s work on rising authoritarianism in the 21st Century. We’re going to look at the situation in Gaza, nothing controversial at all. So basically, we’re going to ask what faith-filled resistance looks like. What does it mean to stand up against oppression and injustice in today’s world? I don’t know what will happen with that, but I’m really excited. I feel a call. I feel an obligation to dive into those hard issues. So that’s what I’m working on in the classroom.

John: Well, those are challenging issues, but very much needed, I think, in terms of education today, but it’s kind of nice also to take a break and reflect on magic and bringing some magic into lives where so much of the news that we see is much less magical right now.

Jill: I’ve had students joke that I’m the Holocaust professor and the Disney professor and like that… [LAUGHTER] I don’t know… is that a dialectic tension?

Rebecca: Is that a way to balance it all out?

Jill: Exactly. So I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right, those seem antithetical, and yet they coexist in my teaching and my research interest.”

Rebecca: Super comfortable in that gray zone, that’s for sure.

Jill: Yes.

Rebecca: Well, thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to talking to you in the future about some of your other projects that you’re working on.

Jill: Thank you both so much. You all do so much good work with this podcast. I’m happy to be part of it.

John: Well, thanks, Jill, and I hope I’ll see you one of these days back in Durham, I’m still coming down there in the summers, or at least I have been so far.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing Assistance provided by Madison Lee.

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410. A Summer to Learn

Posted in active learning, engagement, higher education, learning, motivation, pedagogy, professional development, reflective practice, teaching
September 10, 2025

Imagine exploring alternative teaching methods in a classroom focused on learning and not grades. In this episode, Russell Marcus joins us to discuss how this occurs in a two-week philosophy summer program. He is the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Philosophy at Hamilton College. Russell specializes in the philosophy of mathematics and the pedagogy of philosophy. He is a Past-President of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. Since 2018, Russell has been running a philosophy summer camp at Hamilton College designed to help faculty develop more effective teaching practices while also benefiting students.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Imagine exploring alternative teaching methods in a classroom focused on learning and not grades. In this episode, we discuss how this occurs in a two-week philosophy summer program.

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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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Rebecca: Our guest today is Russell Marcus. He is the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Philosophy at Hamilton College. Russell specializes in the philosophy of mathematics and the pedagogy of philosophy. He is a Past-President of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. Since 2018, Russell has been running a philosophy summer camp at Hamilton College designed to help faculty develop more effective teaching practices while also benefiting students. Welcome Russell.

Russell: Thanks for having me.

John: We’re very happy to talk to you today. Our teas today are:… Russell, are you drinking any tea?

Russell: I have peppermint tea. I don’t do caffeine, so I’m all on herbal tea, and I have a box of peppermint tea in my office… constantly.

Rebecca: You can’t go wrong with mint. I have English afternoon today, relying back on an old favorite, John.

John: And I am trying to cut back on caffeine, but not today. [LAUGHTER] It’s a busy time getting ready for workshops next week, so I am drinking a black currant green tea from the Republic of Tea.

Rebecca: Nice.

Russell: Lovely.

Rebecca: So we’ve invited you here today to discuss the Hamilton College summer program in philosophy, which we read about in the July 21st, 2025, article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Can you tell us how you became interested in philosophy pedagogy?

Russell: Sure. So I started my career after college as a math teacher. I was a high school math teacher, and then I did that in New York City for a couple of years, and I worked also in a high school in Costa Rica. I taught there, and what I discovered in my first years of teaching was a real love of curriculum design. I taught something like 24 different classes in my five years between college and graduate school. After about four or five years, I started feeling both the pull of philosophy. I wanted to go back to graduate school, and I knew that I wanted to. I wasn’t quite ready for it when I came out of college. I also saw a kind of waning ability for me to be creative as a high school teacher. My first love in philosophy was mathematics, but I found the community in philosophy of mathematics to be kind of disappointing and frustrating as I started to develop as a scholar. And in 2008, I went to a meeting, this biennial workshop conference of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers, and there I found my people. So, after I got tenure, which was like 2016, I really turned my attention more fully to the scholarship of teaching and learning. I was kind of looking to teach some topics that students found naturally interesting, which was not the case with philosophy of mathematics. I kind of had to convince students that those topics are interesting, but when I turned more to teaching… I started teaching a philosophy of education class… I was connecting with students where they were a little more closely.

John: My experience was somewhat similar. I started teaching, and I was disappointed, though, with how much students were learning. So I started reading more about what other people were doing, and attending sessions at conferences related to pedagogy. And those are really great things for people to start getting involved in, and I’m still very much involved in all of that. As noted before, you began the summer camp at Hamilton. Could you tell us a little bit about how that came about?

Russell: Well, I’m going to start by telling you that we have kind of a running joke at the HCSPiP (That’s our acronym. It’s a terrible acronym, but anyway, we’ve embraced it.) It’s a summer program, not a summer camp. And so every time people call it a camp, I wince. I have to make a face, and this is around leadership, because I think of this as a serious academic program, but the students discovered very quickly the first year, they’re like, “Oh, it’s philosophy camp.” So yes, it is a summer camp, and they called it a summer camp at The Chronicle, but I’m calling it the summer program in philosophy. When I started working with the American Association of Philosophy Teachers and just getting involved in that organization very actively, I recognized that I had a lot of creative people around who had really interesting ideas about teaching and what they kind of wanted to do with their teaching. I also recognized that a lot of them were in places that were not as welcoming of pedagogical creativity as Hamilton was for me. I loved hanging out and talking, teaching with thoughtful and creative teachers, and when I talked with them, a lot of times, they’re like, “We can’t really do this because my students are like in these certain ways, and I’m not sure it would work,” or “my expectations of my department,” or “I’m not really allowed to do the kinds of things I would like to do.” Of course, I worked with lots of contingent faculty in the organization who are really concerned about their abilities to be creative in the classroom, and what happens if it doesn’t work out, and what does that mean for them in their attempts to get jobs or to get tenure, and so I thought, “wouldn’t it be great to have a space where people could just experiment, innovate in ways, and not ever have to worry about who’s looking over their shoulder and who might be skeptical of the kinds of innovations that they’re developing.” So I wanted to find a way to encourage more creativity, and also to just bring folks to me, so I could just sit here where I am and have folks bring creative pedagogy into my orbit. So that’s really how it got started. We have a fund for philosophy at Hamilton College that supports the program, and when I brought it to the department as an idea, they were enthusiastic to let me take it and run with it.

Rebecca: Sounds like some sneaky moves there to bring everyone to you?

Russell: Yeah, well, we have this money in the department, and I wanted to see how could I use it to support the community that had been so sustaining for me in my career.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about who the students and faculty are that participate in the program?

Russell: The way the money works is such that we need to have a certain complement of Hamilton College students in the program, and our current dean has been a little more liberal than the previous Dean about that. The previous team was like, “you must have half the students be Hamilton College students.” This year, we had eight of the 20 students were Hamilton College students, and then the other students, the other half, or more than half of the students, are from anywhere and everywhere. So we have an application, we send out calls for students to come to the program, and we get applications from all over the country and world. Most of the students are thinking of themselves as potential graduate students. They’re all undergrads, of course, for the program. So they apply. We get quite a few applications from students… again, all over the country and world… and our HR department has been just wonderfully supportive in granting visas. So we usually have three or four international students. We’re able to get visas to come in and do the program, so we really have a global population. That’s very exciting. But we actually start with the faculty. So the first thing we do is send out a call for proposals from faculty to teach in the program, and that just goes through regular like philosophy calls for papers or calls for conference presentations or something like that and we just send it out on the listservs and post it on the websites that are useful to get philosophy teachers. And then some years we only have, let’s say, 10 or 12 applications to teach in the program. Some years, we’ve had as many as 50 applications from faculty all over the world to come and teach here. We offer three classes a year, so we’re really looking for three creative, interesting class proposals from folks who want to come here and how they fit together. We have a committee that evaluates them, and so we get the three courses, and then once we have the three courses down, then we advertise for student applicants. Usually in the fall, we get the courses settled, and then over the winter, we get the students coming in.

John: How large are the classes? And when students sign up, do they sign up for just one course for the entire two-week session, or do they move from one course to another?

Russell: I’ll just say a little more about the overall structure of the program. So the three courses run simultaneously every day for the two weeks, Monday through Friday. So there’ll be 10 class sessions for each of the three courses. All 20 student participants will be in each of the three classes. So those classes are typically 90 minutes, sometimes we run them two hours. So the students are in class a lot during the day. The program is not graded. They’re not for credit, these classes. They’re really just for the love of philosophy. The students, they’re working hard, but they are not typically doing a lot of outside work. There’s not a lot of assessment of their work during the program. So we exhaust them, but they kind of like it. They come here because they love philosophy, they love trying to do it here. We warn them about it, “you’re going to be exhausted, you gotta be careful.” But they’re so excited to be with each other, to just be in a community of people who want to do philosophy together. They push through.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about the support available for faculty? Because you mentioned that this is an opportunity for faculty to experiment. So, can you talk about that aspect of the program?

Russell: Absolutely. When I was designing this program, my fantasy was having three excited instructors coming in here, and we would all talk about philosophy teaching all the time, and I would be in all the classes, and we would go to each other’s classes, and in the evenings, we would talk about them and think about and work collaboratively on that. And then I discovered very quickly, as we started to run the program, that directing the program meant that I just had to be wandering around with buckets of water putting out fires all the time, so I didn’t have a lot of time to sit and talk with the instructors about what they were doing. I got to go to some of the classes and see what they were doing a little bit, but then we had a student bit by a bat one time, and then I had a run around Utica trying to find how to get her rabies shots. This year we had a power outage, we had two tornadoes touched down locally, and then Hamilton College was out of power for the first two days. It was 96 degrees, 98 degrees. There were no fans, let alone air conditioners, and so we had to move everybody to a hotel for a couple of days. And these things happen when you bring these people together. And I thought we would just be sitting around talking teaching. In terms of running the program, it’s me, and I’ve always had an assistant director working with me. That has changed over the years. It started as an undergraduate who I thought would just help me, I don’t know, make photocopies or something, and then that turned into a real leadership role as well. This year, I had three assistant directors, an assistant director and two student assistant directors. So there’s a lot of work running the program, just making sure people can get to where they’re going. And we’re also ambitious about developing the program, putting in extracurriculars and other kinds of activities that build community, activities that expand on the work done in the classroom. We do field trips and have visiting speakers here, and there’s all sorts of stuff that we have to arrange. So a few years ago, my assistant director at the time said maybe we should hire someone to do that job. And so we put together a grant, and we got a grant from the American Philosophical Association to hire what we call a pedagogy resident, and that’s someone who works with the instructors and the tutors. We haven’t talked about the tutors yet, I should mention them, to develop the courses over the years. So by November, we really have the courses picked, and we have a pedagogy resident who’s an expert in philosophical pedagogy. And this year and last year, we were very lucky to have Emily Esch, who is a professor of philosophy at The College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Minnesota, and she’s been working with instructors and tutors in preparing the classes and thinking about what kinds of classroom activities would be useful in this context, and refining them, and just thinking about teaching in general. This year also, we sent around a new book on teaching philosophy called The Art of Teaching Philosophy, and we sent that to all our leadership, our instructors and tutors and assistant directors and the pedagogy resident had conversations about that, rooted in that book, just having them think more about pedagogy. So it’s been a real learning experience for everybody now that we’ve included the pedagogy resident every year. We had the grant for just the first year, and then we got to include it in our budget. So on the run up, the time preparing for the program, as the instructors are refining their plans, they’re working with the pedagogy resident, as the tutors are preparing together with the instructors, they’re working with the pedagogy resident and some use the pedagogy resident more and some less. Once we get to campus, the pedagogy resident is sitting in on classes and working with the instructors just to process what’s happening and to think about how to take it back to their home institution.

John: When I saw a report on this, it reminded me of a couple of programs I’ve been working in. I taught at the Duke Talent Identification Program for gifted high school students from 1987 up until 2020, and then I’ve been teaching in the Duke Pre-College program, and one of the things that I’ve done in both of those programs is I’d often experiment with things before I tried them in my regular classes and it sounds like this is a great opportunity to do that, where the students aren’t really put at much risk, and they often appreciate the variety in the instruction, because they often don’t see that in their regular classes. Are faculty in this program often then taking what they’ve experimented with here and then going back and using it in the classes and perhaps sharing it with other professors after this experience?

Russell: John, you get us. That’s exactly what we’re hoping will happen, and it seems like it’s happening. Yeah, we have immodest aims. We want to change the world of philosophy instruction, and we’re hoping that people are going back to their home institutions and working, not only teaching their classes, but talking to other people about the work that they’ve done here. We’ve also been encouraging our faculty to disseminate the work that they do here and we’ve been successful in a couple of ways. We’ve had some people publish the work that they’ve done at the HCSPiP in journals, teaching philosophy journals. I’ve had a piece coming out in December that I co-authored with one of the instructors here, and one of the students who was here, who is now going on to graduate school at TC at Columbia. So that’s been very satisfying to see the work start to filter out from here. We also have been pretty successful because our student population is pretty ambitious, some of them do go to graduate schools, and we have one student who was in the first year of the program in 2018, she’s just finishing up her PhD now, and she’s got a position at Harvard, and she was at Wesleyan last year, and I think she’s at Harvard now, and bringing that kind of interest in pedagogical innovation to what is often… you know, philosophy classrooms tend to be kind of staid and stiff a lot, and we’re trying to really make them student centered and active learning experiences. So I think it’s happening, I don’t really have good measures of how much it’s happening, except that I know that I’m in touch with a lot of the people who’ve come through the HCSPiP and I hear from them about what they’re doing, and I know that I’m doing it myself. So this article that I just mentioned that we’re publishing, Ashley Pryor from University of Toledo came here, I think it was summer of ‘22, and she taught a class on philosophy of comedy. So the class was, in the first place, some philosophical theories of comedy. There was some dry stuff, but then she’s also an improv artist, and she brought improv activities into the philosophy classroom. She had the students outside just doing all sorts of activities. And I thought this was fun, the students loved it, and it did have some philosophical content to it. And then the next year, I was teaching a philosophy of education class, and I had as a course mentor for that class, one of the students who had gone to the HCSPiP, and now she was a senior at Hamilton, and she was working with me with the first- year students. And she was like, “why don’t we bring some of that improv into the classroom?” And I was like, “Well, I’ll try some!” And so she and I worked together on some activities that were useful philosophically in the classroom, partly to build community in the classroom and partly to enable some quick thinking. In philosophy, we’re often thinking very carefully and slowly, but there are moments when it’s useful to think more quickly. And so that was really great. I noticed it was working just as I wanted it. Yeah, bring people in with ideas, and then I would steal them. I’ll say this, every good teacher is a thief. We see other people doing like, “I’m gonna steal that and make that mine.” So that’s what I did. I started taking some of these improv activities and making them my own, turning them into productive exercises that I think helped to build trust in the classroom. And I think this is something that we’ve been thinking about a lot over the past few instances of the HCSPiP is, how do you help students to dialog across disagreement? I know we’re all thinking about this these days. How do we help students really engage each other despite the worries they have about how they might be judged for what they say, and how do we get them to speak honestly and really work out honestly their views? And I think that it’s important to build trust in the classroom, and so sometimes you have to build trust in various ways. So I found that the improv activities sort of helped to build a little trust in community that then we could take advantage of that in having conversations that are more difficult. So anyway, I do know that I’m not the only one who’s learning from the program, but I don’t know that I have good ways of talking about how much that stuff gets used after they leave here.

John: One of the things I really like about that is the fact that some of these students do go on, and one of the things we talked about a lot on our podcast is how so many faculty come into teaching, emulating the people they’ve just observed. And often in graduate school, in particular, there’s not always a lot of innovative teaching or very student-centered teaching approaches, at least in many disciplines. So it’s really nice that there’s this opportunity for students to see this before they go on to grad school, and it sounds like it provides a wonderful experience, which could be used as a basis for them getting started later.

Russell: So I like to say the first error of teaching is “I learned it this way, that’s the way I’m going to teach it.” And I think we all have to recognize as instructors that we were typically exceptional learners, and our students won’t always be exceptional learners. So how do we reach our students in the most effective ways possible? And that requires thinking in ways that we were not trained. And of course, in philosophy, I’m sure this is true in other disciplines as well, there’s very little incentive in graduate school and in the early stages of one’s career to be creative and innovative about our teaching, especially coming out of R1s. Most of us come out of R1s at graduate school by definition, and then our student body isn’t the ones that we’ve been trained to teach. So we have to look in other ways. Let me say this more about the structure of the program. For every class we hire not just an instructor, but a teaching assistant or a resident assistant. These we call tutors, and they play both a role in the classroom and outside of the classroom. All of the tutors are graduate students in philosophy. Some of them are alums of the program. Some of them are alums of Hamilton College. We try to use that tutor position as a way of helping continue with our network of folks. They get a lot out of the program. Part of it is just working with more experienced instructors in the classroom. Part of it is just being around people who care about teaching, which is not necessarily what they’re getting in graduate school. And part of it is just being in that context. Two years ago, we had an instructor pull out of the program at what was pretty close to the last minute. Maybe we had a month to go, and it was a personal problem, a family issue, and it was perfectly understandable, but it left us sort of struggling, “what are we going to do with this third class?” And the tutors said, “Why don’t we teach the class! And we’ll reconfigure the class in a way that’ll be useful for all the tutors,” and they were all so eager to take that on. I have, as a research interest of my own, team-based learning. I’ve been working a lot on team-based learning in philosophy, and so we decided to run a team-based learning class in philosophy. I kind of structured the class, and then the tutors took it over and taught the class, and they learned how to design team-based learning activities. In team-based learning, there are specific ways in which activities are constructed, and so I taught them all about how to do TBL activities, and they just took it and ran with it, and that turned out to be one of the most successful classes we’ve ever had. The students loved it. In part, I think the instructors were a little younger, a little closer to their age. They’re very excited about philosophy, they’re in graduate school. So the students were looking at these folks who are like in these positions that they were imagining themselves going to be in soon. They were hoping to go to graduate school, just like these folks. And then everybody was in there being a little vulnerable, learning together, and it was a great context and one of the most successful classes we’ve had.

Rebecca: I’m glad you picked up on talking about the tutors, because you had mentioned them earlier, and I was finding that really interesting and it seems like that’s actually an integral piece to the project, because it’s a conduit between the instructors, graduate school, and undergrads who are looking toward graduate school. So they’re kind of right in the middle [LAUGHTER] like a linchpin to the whole thing.

Russell: Exactly. And as I said, they have roles in the classroom, and different instructors use the tutors in different ways, sometimes their role in the classroom isn’t as robust as it is in others. It depends on the class and each of these classes is different. It’s the brainchild of an instructor, and they may not have thought about this in terms of how to use a tutor. And these are 20- person classes, so it’s not like we need TAs to be managing the classroom. So they have classroom roles, but they also have community roles, let’s say, outside the classroom, in helping the students to prepare for classes, to manage some questions the students might have about the readings or how to prepare, or what’s expected. But also, this year it was very hot, and this year the tutors wanted to do a water balloon… they called it a water balloon fight, I said, “I’m not going to endorse a fight, we’ll do a water balloon festival.” So this is a running joke this year, that they were having a festival. So I got a hose and a bunch of water balloons, and they were out there just trying to beat the heat on campus, and the tutors played a big role in that. So there’s some community building and some classroom work. And also, one other thing we do with the tutors is, on the middle weekend, we have the tutors run a session on philosophy after college and what it’s like to apply to graduate school, and how you might find philosophy in your lives other than graduate school, and we don’t have any instructors or leadership go to that, that’s just the tutors and the students. They have some open conversation and some hard conversations about how difficult graduate school can be and how difficult it can be to find an academic career. And sometimes students come away a little dispirited, but I think they’ve gotten an honest view from some people who are in the middle of it.

John: In a program like this, there are some costs for the support, for feeding the students, for providing housing, for providing air conditioning when it works, or water balloons when it doesn’t. How is this program funded?

Russell: So the Truax Fund for Philosophy. It was created in the 1950s by some Hamilton alums. It was an Hamilton alum from class, I think, of 1907 in honor of his father, who had been class of 1875 and there’s an endowed fund. And we are very grateful for the largesse of our forebears to have given us this money. It’s not easy to spend money in philosophy, [LAUGHTER] and the fund is quite robust, and so this is where the program started. We were just very lucky to have this money that we can support people. So let me say, not only is it feeding them and buying water balloons, but we also pay for all travel for all participants, and every participant gets a stipend, which we call a fellowship scholarship for the student participants, because we want to make sure that the program is open to anybody, no matter their financial situation. We pay for all transportation from anywhere in the world and back, and we pay everybody a fellowship scholarship for being here. So it’s quite an attractive thing for students if they have i nterest in philosophy, and they are very grateful, especially some of the international students. That money, which is not a lot of money, the students get $750 for the two weeks of participation here. We see that money as salary replacement for the time that they’re here. But for some of the students, that’s quite a lot of money for them and we heard from one student that it really funded his studies for the next two years. So that was so exciting for us, that he could be here and be such a great participant and also benefit, not just intellectually and pedagogically, but also financially from the program. I wish there were a better recipe for other people to do it, because it is quite expensive, and finding the money to run a program like this would be a little bit of a challenge, I know, for others. But I will say I think we could run a great program without all the money. I mean, we need to feed them still, obviously, but we’re glad that we are able to be as inclusive and diverse as that money allows us to be.

Rebecca: It’s nice when you have the kind of funding that will let all that stress to go away and you can focus really on the subject matter of the program. I really love all the layers of mentorship that you’ve described in the program, the mentorship from the pedagogy expert, the mentorship from the faculty, the mentorship from the tutors [LAUGHTER] right to the students. There’s so many layers there. Can you talk a little bit about some of the reactions students have had from the opportunity to interact with so many folks in the discipline?

Russell: I also hope that I have some mentorship role as well. [LAUGHTER]

Rebecca: Yeah, I didn’t mean to not include you. [LAUGHTER]

Russell: No, it’s very funny, because I really do, and sometimes the program, it feels like I’m just working behind the scenes and I don’t have an active role. But last year, not this past summer, the summer before this, I got COVID in the middle of the program, and I had to work remotely for the second half of the program. And I think I have some role in trying to foster a kind of supportive atmosphere that I think that’s very helpful. But yeah, okay, this wasn’t about me, this question. This was about students and how they find their mentorship. Look, one of the tutors said to me this year, this was his second year in the program, and he said he learned more in his two weeks with the program… the first time he was with it… about teaching, then he had his whole life all put together. And that was such a rewarding comment for me to hear how useful we’ve been. But Hamilton College, we typically send about three quarters of a student to graduate school every year, in other words, less than one a year. And this past year, we had four students who were thinking about doing graduate school and are looking at it. We’ve never had those kinds of numbers. And what happened was at the HCSPiP, they started seeing how exciting philosophy could be, especially when taught creatively and thoughtfully, and it just really was inspiring for them. So I see that in the increased interest in their classes when they come out of the HCSPiP and they come back. We had a rising sophomore a few years ago who was interested in philosophy, but kind of not going anywhere. He wasn’t the greatest student, he had, the interest in philosophy, but not quite the skills. And we saw coming out of the HCSPiP, how motivated he became and how sophisticated he became, especially being around some of the older students, not even the tutors and the faculty, but just some of the older students. And that’s one way in which we sell to our administration that we should use this money for this summer program is because it really does benefit the Hamilton students who participate. We can see the academic sophistication just grow by leaps and bounds in some of these students after they come back after the HCSPiP. We also had six students from last year’s program in the fall, they did their senior theses, and then they presented them at the APA at the eastern divisional meeting of the American Philosophical Association in January. And we’ve never had that kind of interest in professional philosophy and real academic scholarship. So we see it with the Hamilton students. For other students who come from wherever they’re coming from, this year, we had two students from Poland, we had a student from China, and we’ve had students from Indonesia recently, Colombia. We certainly hear from them that this was an amazing experience. We do some assessment. We have a robust survey at the end of the program, and we ask some questions. We’re looking at these results longitudinally and thinking about the program and how to improve it. But often we see them briefly, and off they go, and we hope to hear from them later, I will say, at the APA this past January where we had all the Hamilton students there, I noticed that there were like a dozen, maybe 14, HCSPiP alums who were on the program at the eastern divisional meeting of the APA, and so I found money to take them all out to lunch, and we had a little HCSPiP reunion there. And we started hearing from people. where they were going and how they were using it and how they were carrying in the hearts, the ideas about innovative, student-centered pedagogies.

John: Now you’ve talked about a number of specific methods, team-based learning, improv and so forth. What are some of the other interesting strategies that faculty have tried exploring in this program?

Russell: We’ve had some great classes. Not every class is super successful, but we learn from every class. A couple of years ago, we had a class on Hobbes and Minecraft. So this is Hobbes’s political theory. All the students got Minecraft accounts, and the class days basically took place on the Minecraft platform, and the instructor, Rebeccah Lieby, was asking the students to test out Hobbes’s claims about the state of nature. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase that “life in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” So she was like, “well, let’s see what happens in the Minecraft environment, and test Hobbes’ claims about that.” And so that was super fun. And really, the students really rose to the nasty, brutish, and short aspect of Hobbesian political theory. So I think there was some confirmation there. Last year we had an instructor, Sara Uckelman, from Durham in the UK. She was testing fiction writing as a philosophical method. They read a little philosophy, but what they were really doing in the class was writing fiction as a way of exploring philosophical themes, so that was pretty cool. It’s not a standard pedagogical tool to have students writing fiction in philosophy classes. One of our early very successful classes had students doing a lot of metacognition, so they were reading some really difficult work. They were reading George Yancy’s Backlash book, I don’t know if you know George’s “Dear White America” letter, that he ended up getting a lot of backlash, and he came to the program and visited with us and participated, and also Susan Brison’s account of her rape and assault. So they’re really, really heavy, difficult material. And when you’re reading that kind of heavy, difficult material on racism and sexual violence, you have to be careful about what you say in class, and students have to be careful. So the instructor was Ann Cahill from Elon University in North Carolina, she had developed these both hand signals and little note cards that allowed students to signal what kind of conversational move they were about to make before they made it, and just helped students to process what they were saying and to help other people see, are you presenting an illustration of what someone else said? Are you presenting more supporting arguments? Are you presenting a counter argument? Are you raising a question? There are all these different kinds of moves that can be made in a philosophical conversation, and sometimes it takes a while for students to understand what someone else is saying, because they don’t understand what kind of conversational move they’re going to make. So they had signals for what kind of conversational move that was going to be. That was really an exciting class, one of our most successful, not that I’m playing favorites or comparing, I’ll say one more. The first year we had someone who was a philosopher as well as an artist. Her name is Juli Thorson, she’s emeritus at Ball State University, now she is, and she had drawing activities that were related to questions about personal identity. So they were reading philosophy of personal identity and then doing these drawing activities for students to use the other side of their brain in processing these kinds of questions about themselves. I can tell you about more, but those are pretty good examples of really exciting stuff that is not your typical philosophy lecture.

Rebecca: One of the things that was mentioned in The Chronicle article was that a professor who had been participating in the program noted that in her regular classes, she was struggling with students submitting AI-generated work, as we all are.

Russell: Yeah.

Rebecca: Do you have any ideas of some strategies that philosophy faculty have been using to discourage the use of AI as a substitute of learning? With all this experimentation going around you, we’re eager for ideas.

Russell: Look, I wish I had a secret key that would fix things, but here’s the way I’m thinking about it, and I think this is what I bring to my own classes, and that I’m trying to do at the HCSPiP: learning is change, it’s changing the way you’re thinking, and change is hard, and so we have to start by acknowledging that real learning, real honest learning, done with real integrity, is not easy. I mean, some things are easy, but philosophy, not so much,[LAUGHTER] because we’re asking students to really dig into their core beliefs and examine them, and that can be scary for people. On the other hand, philosophy, when done well, is a lot of fun. It’s a social activity, it’s communicative. We have this image of philosophy as like the lone, great man speaking words of wisdom, but that’s not really how philosophy is done. Philosophy is done in community, in dialog, hearing various perspectives and listening to them and allowing your own preconceptions to be challenged. And if it’s done in a threatening way, or one in which there’s not trust in the community, then students will shut down, and then they’re going to go on and they’re just going to do whatever they can to get their grades. And of course, they’re going to turn to whatever resources are rational, like these AIs. In some ways. I understand why students do this. They’re overworked and anxious, and it seems like a rational thing to do, but what we’re trying to do is make philosophy classes more interesting, more engaging, more student centered, and more fun. And if we do that, we’re hoping that students are going to respond by saying, “Oh, yeah, this is fun stuff to do, and if I trust my community, I could really like grow” and look, students are skeptical about received wisdom. I mean, we see this all over. They’re skeptical about being told what to do. And so if they’re empowered to really think for themselves, maybe they’re really gonna actually try to think for themselves. So that’s what we’re trying to do in this program, is to change the way people think about philosophy and humanities more generally, from like, learning the received wisdom and regurgitating it to like, “Oh, here’s a chance for me to really think about these questions and to think about what people are telling me, and to develop my own views about it.” And that’s what student-centered pedagogy is all about. So it’s not a way of policing against the AIs, it’s a way of undermining the motivation that students have for turning to the AIs. We are very lucky at Hamilton College to have an open curriculum, and what that means is that students do not have to take any classes they don’t want to take. We don’t have a gen ed program. We don’t have required classes. So on the first day of class, almost all students there are a few exceptions, but almost all students are in classes they want to be in, and so that’s an opportunity for us to say, “Okay, you want to learn about this stuff, let’s do it in a way that is going to be useful and productive for you, so that when we give you assignments, these are assignments about things that you want to learn, that you’ve committed to trying to learn about, and they’re going to help you, rather than just be assessments of did you file away enough information and regurgitate it back to me.” It’s about assignment design. Can you make assignments in such a way that students see that they are for this student’s benefits, rather than just ways of policing and testing them.

John: That’s a challenge we’re all working with, we’re all facing, and that’s in general, the sort of approach we encourage people to use, giving students more autonomy and being transparent about the benefits they get by engaging in this themselves, rather than just outsourcing their assignments to some external tool.

Russell: Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking, what’s next?

Russell: So this year, we broadened our program by having early arrival and orientation for our international participants, and that was really productive. And every year we’re thinking about ways in which we can improve the program with trying not to extend ourselves financially or too much personally. There are some sustainability questions, both the money and my own ability [LAUGHTER] to work over the summer on this project. It’s a lot of work, so we’re moving to an every other year approach for sustainability reasons, but mostly the big project that we’re going to work on this year, while we’re taking a year off, is to develop more courses led by graduate student tutors, with help from the experienced faculty because I think that was the place where we realized that, and you caught this, which was great, that that kind of mentorship of the graduate students was something that we’ve done quite effectively, I think. And so we’re going to be writing some grants and thinking about, how do we expand the program in such a way that we can give a little more space for graduate students to be developing their work? But I think the core of the program is really very good. We had a great year again this year, and we’re just going to gather our strength and do it again. I wish we could expand it to more people. And it’s not even the money that is the big barrier, It’s just It would be so much more work and not sustainable.

John: It would be really nice if more disciplines had this. I’d love to see something like this in economics.

Russell: I would love to talk to people, if they’re thinking about developing these kinds of classes. I have a lot of resources. I’ve developed this stuff ground up and anybody who wants to try something like this out, I’ll say this, several of our alums, that is, people who were students in the program have gone on to graduate school and started summer programs in philosophy for high school students, and what a wonderful testament that is to our success. They’ve taken from what we’ve done here, and they’ve sort of applied it in different contexts. So I think the way in which we create a context for learning that’s not tied to grades and credits and just for the love of learning, that’s been a real joy.

Rebecca: Well, thanks for sharing your program with us. It’s always nice to hear about these opportunities for learners to be excited about their discipline.

Russell: I really appreciate you inviting me on, and I’m always happy to talk about the HCSPiP, so thanks for the time.

John: Well, thank you. We really enjoyed this conversation, and we look forward to talking to you at some point in the future as well.

Russell: Great. I’d be happy to come back and talk about team-based learning or something. I’m writing a book on team-based learning this fall as I’m on leave, and that’s my plan.

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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407. Covering or Teaching

Posted in active learning, attention, classroom community, cognitive science, engagement, evidence-based teaching, feedback, higher education, instructional communication, interleaved practice, learning, motivation, pedagogy, retrieval practice, spaced practice, teaching
August 20, 2025

New faculty often begin their teaching careers by emulating the teaching methods that they have observed, but these practices are often not consistent with evidence on how students learn. In this episode, Chris Hakala joins us to discuss the role that educational developers can play in shifting faculty focus from presenting to teaching.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: New faculty often begin their teaching careers by emulating the teaching methods that they have observed, but these practices are often not consistent with evidence on how students learn. In this episode, we discuss the role that educational developers can play in shifting faculty focus from presenting to teaching.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

John: Our guest today is Chris Hakala. Chris is a professor of psychology and is the Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship at Springfield College. He is the author or co-author of numerous books and articles on the science of learning, assessing learning, large-class instruction, and on teaching centers. His most recent work, co-authored with Leslie D. Cramblet Alvarez is Understanding Educational Developers: Tales from the Center, released in late December 2024. Welcome Chris.

Chris: Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here and have this conversation with the two of you. So I appreciate it.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are: … Chris, are you drinking tea?

Chris: So this is an interesting thing. I’m routinely a coffee drinker. However, my wife and I every morning get up in the morning and we share time together. We actually have a station in our bedroom where we make coffee and tea. And so in honor of my wife and the tea, I’m drinking her tea, which is a Zen green tea, which I will sometimes drink as well. So yes, I’m having Zen green tea this afternoon.

Rebecca: Excellent. Thanks for ditching the coffee for us.

Chris: Happy to do so, happy to do so. I’ve had enough of it already today.

John: And I am drinking a spring cherry green tea, even though it’s late summer here in Oswego.

Rebecca: It does feel more like a spring day today, though, after being so hot for so many days. I have a weird mix of random black teas because I was cleaning out my tea cupboard, [LAUGHTER] so it’s an eclectic mix.

Chris: Whatever gets you through the day, right?

John: I imagine no cherry teas, though.

Rebecca: No, they are black teas without any weird flavors, John.

John: We’ve invited you here today to discuss the relationship between pedagogical practice and what research tells us about how students learn. First, though, could you tell us a little bit about your path to becoming an educational developer.

Chris: Sure, it’s an interesting path that actually we talk about a little bit in the book, but one of the things that is fascinating to me about this field of educational development is it’s not a field people often go directly into out of college. And so I went to college in Vermont, at a small school in Vermont, went to grad school, and in grad school, I earned a PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of New Hampshire. And I know we’re going to talk about this a little bit more later, but I just want to point out that during that time, we had a course in a seminar in practicum and teaching of psychology, and that course was taught by a faculty member named Victor Banassi, who was doing teaching center work at that time. So it was the first time I began to hear about educational development. It was back in the mid 90s, and so I thought it was kind of interesting, but I went on, I became a faculty member, I received tenure, and then as I was working through my career, I began to notice that many schools had teaching centers. Many schools had the opportunity for faculty to talk to other faculty about what they’re doing and to share ideas. And so I approached our Provost and asked him if we could start a teaching center. And he said, “No, there’s not enough money.” And so I approached him again, and he said, “No, we don’t have enough money.” And finally, I was able to steal an idea from Todd Zakrajsek, who is a name you are probably aware, and Todd recommended me just buying coffee mugs that said Center on it. So I did. I bought coffee mugs that said Center for Teaching and Learning, and I had them branded, and then I handed them out and gave one to the President, and the President said, “Do we have a teaching center?” And the Provost said, “Well, I guess so.” And so they gave me a little bit of money, and so I had this very small teaching center. I would do a little bit for faculty orientation, I’d run some workshops, and it became really interesting for me to see how sharing ideas with faculty about teaching and hearing what they’re saying and what they’re doing and what they’re experiencing with their students was a really wonderful way to engage with my colleagues, to go across disciplines and to really sort of work to improve our students’ learning. So I left there and became a full-time center director in 2014, and I’ve have been doing that ever since. It’s been an interesting process, because as we were speaking off-mic, in 2020 our world changed dramatically, and teaching centers became very important. And it was a really interesting time to see all that work ramp up. And I think now we’re in a different sort of era of teaching centers, as people began to realize the value of educational development when they needed us. Yeah, so it’s been an interesting journey.

Rebecca: I see some sales of teaching center mugs going up [LAUGHTER] with the sneaky strategies for starting teaching centers, moving forward. [LAUGHTER]

Chris: That’s all Todd. It’s all Todd.

Rebecca: He’s always good for a good idea.

Chris: He is good for a good idea.

Rebecca: Most faculty begin their teaching careers without the kind of training that you mentioned that you had as part of your graduate program in evidence-based teaching practices and kind of rely on what they experienced with their own instructors. What are some of the disconnects between learning science and pedagogical practices?

Chris: So it’s a great question. It was really interesting. I’m gonna go back to go back to my experience and sort of talk through that, because I think it’s a great question. I went into my first experience teaching in 1992… by the way, I still have a video of it. I had spectacular hair. It was wavy and flowy… and I went in with this idea that I was now the disseminator of knowledge. I was going to share what I knew with these students, and I did what I had experienced the faculty that I admired do. I lectured. I had an overhead projector, I wrote on the board, and my students were doing the tasks I was asking them to do. They were studying. They were doing well on quizzes and all of that. But what became really apparent to me over time was student learning is not as simple as they just remember things, because there’s more value in students taking what we teach them and expanding that out to other concepts. And so I began to think about it in lots of different ways, and my teaching now looks very different. One of the things that becomes problematic, though, is, as you brought up, Rebecca, many faculty end up in a teaching experience without having any kind of guidance or support. They have very little in the way of reflective teaching, and they think their job is to just share what they know with their students. I hear “covering content” so much from faculty with this idea that they have to make sure they say everything. And I think that helping faculty understand that the magic words coming out of your mouth doesn’t mean a student learns it is a really important thing. And one of the distinctions I draw up with my faculty all the time is this distinction between presenting and teaching. And so I think a lot of faculty are good at presenting, but they haven’t really thought through teaching. And so a lot of times I spend time working with our faculty to talk to them about who they are and what they bring to the table as an instructor, who their students are and how they can begin to find what is going to leverage what we know about student learning in the classroom in the context of who they are and who their students are. So for example, I tend to be pretty expressive in class. I tend to move around a lot. I tend to do lots of interactive things, but that’s also part of who I am. You don’t have to be that to be successful. You can be lots of ways in the classroom, but it’s a matter of understanding that the processes I’m engaged in are to help students focus attention, to help engage them, to draw them in with different anecdotes and stories, to try to tie those things together, and then have them reflect it back to me so we can work through that. People have different approaches, but you have to sort of to be aware of that and know that the student learning is essential. The key to student learning is that they do the work. It’s not that you’re doing all of the work. They’re doing the work. And so you have to help faculty sort of navigate that. And it is fortunate for me. I’m at a small college where teaching is really emphasized and faculty care about it, that I get to work with wonderful people and help them understand some of the things that we know about human learning, and help them sort of integrate that into their classes.

John: And we have lots of faculty who are very interested in improving their teaching, and we also are a teaching focused institution, but there are some faculty who are a little reluctant to change their practices, or consider changing their practices. What are some strategies that you’ve used to help reach out to those faculty who may not see the benefits of changing the way in which they’re teaching.

Chris: Yeah, the recalcitrant faculty problem. It’s a big one. I have had a mixed success. When I arrived on campus, I was fortunate to have someone here who handed me a list of people. On one side was “these people will come to everything you offer. Don’t worry about it. You could roll out a boring thing, they’ll show up.” “These people would come if it’s interesting.” “These people will never darken your door.” And so I went right after the people who would never darken my door and went and had a conversation with them about their teaching. Now, this doesn’t scale up to a big institution because there’s too many people, but in a small institution, it was really effective for me to go talk to faculty, find out what it was they were doing in the classroom, ask them if they were happy with it, and start to look at things in their classes they might want to work on. Now, again, you scale it up to a big institution, you start with departments and ask the department, “what would you like support with?” But one of the things that’s been really helpful for me as a center director is showing faculty things that they can implement, that they can see the impact on, and it’s been simple things. One of the things that our faculty in our health science really like is that I taught them about retrieval practice. They had not really thought about retrieval practice, and so now they’re using tools, including some AI, to build out many little quizzes the students can take on their own that seem to be benefiting the students’ ability to do well on these very high-stakes exams. So it’s a matter of finding the niche where the faculty member’s issue and your expertise can come together. I also strongly, strongly encourage faculty to watch each other teach, which is a really interesting thing. I have an open-door policy. Faculty can show up in my class anytime. It doesn’t matter when, they don’t have to tell me, they can just come. And I have 5 to 10 faculty a semester show up in my class and they just are there, and we talk, and then I go to lots of other faculty members’ classes, and we have an open-door week where we open up classes for faculty to go to each other’s classes. I think that’s really helpful for people to see lots of different ways of doing things. I have a line that my associate director always gets annoyed with when I say, but I believe this. I have faculty who say to me, “Chris, I’ve heard that if you’re funny, students really like it.” And I say “that’s true, but only if you’re really funny. If you’re not funny, it’s terrible.” And I’ve seen faculty try to be funny and they’re not and it fails. So one of the big messages is, “lean into who you are.” It’s okay if you’re a bit of a dork. I love statistics. My students, I get them on board eventually, but I come in with the enthusiasm of someone who loves statistics. So it’s a challenge, and we’re humans. So John, you know, humans don’t always respond well, when you say, “we can help you do something better.” So there’s a lot of nuance to it. I will say teaching centers should never be where bad teachers are sent. I push back against it.

John: We do too.

Rebecca: I think one of the things that’s interesting about teaching centers, and what you said about faculty not having support, is that actually a lot of institutions have teaching centers, so there is the availability of support, but getting said support is not built into requirements or time is not necessarily allocated by the institution to participate in teaching center things. It’s voluntary. It feels extra sometimes. So you talked about your list and individually reaching out to folks. But what are some other strategies to get over this hurdle of helping folks realize that this is a good investment of their time.

Chris: We have some events that are campus wide, and we use these events as a way to try to promote options of how you can interact with the center. So to just give you a couple of examples. Our President is incredibly supportive of the center, so twice a year, we host an evening event at the president’s house, it has wine, that goes over well, and we bring in speakers, and we try to get speakers who will hit a variety of different areas of interest for faculty. And we often will get faculty at those events that don’t come to anything else, but then may come to other events, as they’ve seen the value in those events. So that’s been a good one. Diversity of programming has been really helpful, and I’m super proud of this. We run a summer conference. It’s a week after commencement, all faculty are off contract, and we will get roughly 40 to 50% of the full-time faculty showing up at our Summer Conference off-contract because we structure it in such a way that faculty are talking to each other. We’ve been very fortunate having some really, really amazing outside speakers, and then we give faculty the opportunity to do some chatting with their colleagues, get to see people that they don’t normally see, and that’s been another way. Part of it is having a big footprint on campus, Rebecca, and being involved in lots of things. I go to department meetings once a year. My associate director goes to department meetings. But I will say this, our office also has this footprint, because we not only oversee educational development, we oversee all of instructional design, we oversee all online course builds. We also oversee all student research. We also oversee the IRB. We also oversee sponsored research with our staff of two. So it’s hard to have something on campus that doesn’t involve reaching out to one of us once in a while, and that’s been really helpful. But it is, it’s challenging, because those resources are there and they’re often not used as much as they could be.

Rebecca: I think it’s important to ask how you went from a mug to overseeing that many things.

Chris: I switched schools, that helped, and then… I said this to John… this is 33 years of me being in higher ed, and you learn a lot when you’re just around in higher ed. And I’ve been tenured full professor for a long time, and I still teach, and that actually buys me credibility among the faculty, but I also manage budgets, that buys me credibility among the administrators. So that’s all been really helpful. It’s a needle you have to thread sometimes, and teaching centers are interesting because if you look at it, I mentioned before how we were able to show the utility of teaching centers. But as budgets get tighter and things begin to change across the landscape of higher ed, you’re starting to see teaching centers get shrunk and cut again. I know of at least two teaching centers at major institutions that were simply cut and all the people were fired because of budgetary crises. And I’m actually down four staff members right now, which I may or may not get back. So it is a very difficult time financially, and you work for a state system, so you know what that’s like. You look at the state budget. We were private. Stuff just happens in a private institution. It just happens. It’s not easy.

John: One of the things we found has been helpful to reaching out to more faculty is getting faculty who were in that wave of people who were interested in attending more workshops, having them do things and then present on it to other faculty, because the more faculty hear from their peers about how things have worked and made their classes more enjoyable, the more likely they are to show up and to try these things as well. There’s still some areas, though, that it’s difficult to reach and we keep trying.

Chris: Yeah, John, it’s a great concept you’re talking about, and that’s the Summer Conference. I do nothing at the summer conference but serve food. I simply show up and all my colleagues talk to each other. And that’s really the joy of it, because they see other people, and we have a SOTL fellowship program, and so they’ll present their scholarship of teaching and learning work, and the opportunity to do that is often gonna draw people in. It really is a grassroots thing. And one of the interesting things that Leslie and I saw when we were working on this book is that there’s no one way to run a center. It’s deeply contextualized into the context of the institution and the structure and culture of the institution. And some places have had a long culture and a long history. I was the first full time director at my place here, and by the way. I didn’t say this before, but we’re Springfield, Massachusetts. I know there’s Springfields in every state, and I feel like I’m contractually obliged to say, if you know anything about Springfield College in Massachusetts, we are the home of basketball. Kansas wants to claim it, but we are where basketball was invented, so I just have to say that. My president will be proud if she hears this.

Rebecca: These are important details.

Chris: These are important details.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit more about how teaching centers can continue to help faculty align their practices so that we’re really teaching students how to learn and building that into the work that we’re doing, and help faculty see value in spending some time or allocating time in their classes to that kind of work.

Chris: Sure, the change in teaching practices over the last 30, 40, years has been pretty remarkable, and a lot of it has to do with the changing demographics of students entering college and the changing demographics of people teaching them. And what we’ve learned as we’ve looked at the science of learning is that human learning hasn’t shifted as much, but there are other outside variables. And I like to talk about, with faculty as we discuss these things, the notion that a student is going to walk into your class, any given student with a number of variables that are impacting what they’re doing in the classroom. Some of them you have some control over. Many of them you don’t. One of the things that you can help them with is a simple concept, such as attention. And I always start with attention, because it’s the one that faculty can begin to sort of wrap their head around. And I say you can help by using the classroom space in a way that is not going to cause them to have other distracting variables pull them away. And then I get the same comment, “well, students’ attention spans have changed.” And my response always is, “Nope, hasn’t. Hasn’t changed at all. What has changed is how many things they can be distracted by.” So you have some control over that. What are you going to do about that? And so it’s a way in, and then I can talk to them about… and because I’m a practitioner who does this research too… I can talk about data. Now, by the way, the data always get the bench scientists. They love that, because I’m talking about we have results that show this. Here’s the data, here’s the results, here’s the interpretation of the results. And things like I mentioned, retrieval practice, things like interleaving, or worked problems, the data are pretty strong that these kinds of procedures are effective. Now what is really, for me, the joy is working with a faculty member to see how that particular process works within their class, with their content, with what they’re trying to do, and try to really personalize it to their approach. One of the ones that my faculty seem to really like is this notion of interteaching. It’s a way to help students sort of structure their reading and so students get questions before they read, and they answer the questions, but they come in with two copies. One copy goes to you, one they sit and they discuss with a partner, and they look at where they answered the questions the same way, they answered them differently. They talk about it, and then everyone comes back together and talks about it. It seems like they’re going to not say much to each other, but they actually get pretty competitive about who said what on these things. But the real joy is not that they get it right or wrong, but it’s rather that they’ve thought through these things and now they’re engaging with the concepts in a different context. And I always talk to faculty about the key is to get the students to not just hear it, but to do something with it, to engage with it. And so how you structure that is the most important piece in terms of that they’re doing it, but how you do it is going to vary. So I think that that’s where I get some buy in. But I will say, Rebecca, it causes people to have to change their classes and they don’t like it, because you have your slides and you have your presentation, and you know what you’re going to do, and this opens up the probability, and I say, probability, not possibility, that class is going to be derailed sometimes. That’s okay. I love to tell faculty I teach two sections of intro sometimes back to back, one at eight and one at nine. I might be two chapters apart in those two classes because they’re going at different rates, and I’m okay with that.

John: So you encourage faculty to build in some forms of retrieval practice and interleaved practice, spaced practice and so forth. But sometimes students react poorly when you build that into your courses. Do you have any strategies you share with faculty in terms of getting buy-in from students? Because students, in general, in a number of studies, prefer to be lectured at, but we do know they learn more when they use evidence-based strategies. How can we get students to buy into that?

Chris: I’m going to tell a story while I talk about this. Part of it is being incredibly transparent about why students should be doing these kinds of things. And I think that’s pretty obvious, but I’m gonna tell you a story. I did this study at a different institution, and we never published it. We had two sections of neuroscience, and they both had 60 students. So we had 120 students total. And for the students, for exam one, the students were told in class A, we’re going to teach you how to concept map for studying. So we taught them how to concept map. Class B, study however you want. For exam two, we flipped it and we flipped it all the way through, and what the students found was when they concept mapped, they tended to do better than the other class, and then on their next exam, they did better when they concept mapped then when they didn’t concept map and we showed them the data. We showed them students tend to do better. For the final exam, we told the students, “Pick whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. You study however you want. We’re done with the study. Just study however you want.” They took the exams, and then we just asked them, “What approach did you take?” And the idea was, many of these students would adopt concept mapping, because it worked. Well, much to our chagrin, the number was so low that it was actually zero. None of them concept mapped. They all said, “I know it looked like it worked there, but my way is better.” So you’re absolutely right, John, it’s really difficult sometimes to convince people of these things. The approach I tell faculty to do is to introduce these things slowly into your classes, to build up and get small gains. So I’m a firm believer in formative assessment at various times throughout the semester, including my intro psych class, we do an assessment every class. It’s simple. It takes a minute or two, but it’s a way for me to gauge where they are. And I share the results with the students, and I talk to them about why the results might look the way they look, and I talk to my fellow colleagues about how to try to incorporate that in terms of how they’re doing it. The students, they do not like when you do retrieval practice in class, yet, if you give them the opportunity to build a Quizlet outside of class, they’re all over it, which is really retrieval practice. And so it’s a matter of trying to have that conversation. And it’s one of those things about human behavior, and you’re an economist, you know this. It’s so frustrating. People don’t do things that are good for them sometimes, and it’s frustrating, but you just keep working at it in a variety of ways. I know we’ve had success by hosting student faculty conversations, where the students and the faculty will talk to each other about what is going on in class, and it helps the students understand why the faculty members do things. It helps the faculty understand why students do things. But at the end of the day, it’s incredibly challenging, and I think it’s one of the things that makes this work. We’re going to be around for a while, because we really need to continue to work. And I will say one more thing, it also doesn’t help that faculty are incredibly resistant. And they’re resistant because you try something, the students don’t like it, you back off of it because the students don’t like it, even though it might take two or three iterations for them to like it. So there’s a lot of challenges there.

John: And we’re also coming up against students who’ve had 12 to 13 years of practice before entering college without using those techniques with high stakes exams and so forth. So there’s a lot to overcome there.

Chris: Yeah, and the high-stakes exam thing, we have a large group of physical therapists, physicians assistants, and OTs (occupational therapists), and they all have this national exam they have to sit for. And so they just want the stuff. They just want to know stuff. And I always try to tell them, you could know a lot, but you have a patient in front of you, and this is the example I give. I say, “If a patient comes to you and says, ‘My arm hurts when I bend it up’ and you say, ‘Okay, here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna do this.’ And then the patient comes back says, ‘I did that and it doesn’t help.’ You can’t look at the patient and say, ‘Well, boy, that’s terrible.’” You have to have another approach. You have to have something else to try. And I try to help them sort of work through that. Again, we’re fortunate here. I do go in and talk to almost all the grad students when they go from undergrad to grad, to talk about the application of knowledge. I also talk to all the undergraduates when they show up on campus to talk about some of these things too, with the idea that if we repeatedly talk to students about it and try to help show them, we may get more buy-in. There’s no panacea to this.

Rebecca: I think what you’ve both highlighted is that there’s resistance on both sides. There’s resistance from students and resistance from faculty, because change requires effort, and establishing new habits takes time and effort. But I like the idea of the dialoguing so that you’re working on change from both directions.

Chris: Yeah, and it’s interesting, I always ask faculty, especially like, if they give an assignment and say, “Why did you give that assignment?” And I’ll sometimes hear, “Well, it was time.” Well, that’s not a good enough answer. If you can’t relate that back to what you’re trying to get students to learn, then the students don’t know why they’re doing it, and they’re just doing it, which is the big issue with AI right now, is faculty are like, “Why are students AI-ing my assignments?” They see zero value. You work towards things that you value. You create value in education, students are more likely to work. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s more likely they’re going to do the work.

John: Earlier you suggested that one strategy you encourage is transparency, so that students understand why you’re asking them to do these things. Might that help in getting students to break the habits they’re developing of using AI for so many assignments now.

Chris: Yeah, I feel pretty strongly about this. I’ve done quite a bit of work in the AI field, working with AAC&U as well as with the American Psychological Association. And I think that the transparency with AI, we just have to do it at this point. What we need to do is lean into teaching AI literacy, teaching students about what AI can do, the limits of AI, showing them some of the limits of AI, and allowing them to see this as a tool, not as learning, but as a tool to help them learn more effectively. John, you were teaching at the time. I remember in 1995 we got essentially a graphic browser called Mosaic, and I could actually see the internet versus just typing things into gopher. And I thought my life has just gotten better. It’s just gotten better, and I was able to do things I couldn’t do before. Well, AI has done the same thing. I can’t tell you how many times n ow, when I’m generating a data set for statistics, I give it the parameters, and it just generates the data for me and it comes out the way I want it to. I used to calculate those numbers, and it was terribly difficult to do. Now it just does it, and that takes the time from that for me to give students feedback or do other things. Well, the students, just like with the calculator, can use it in a way, and I’m not saying it’s a calculator. It’s much different than that. I’m not saying that, but it’s a tool that we can use, if we can figure out how to leverage it. But transparency is key. We are talking right now about creating a guidance document through the center that’s going to be shared with faculty and students about how the center and how academic affairs views AI and the value of it, as well as some of the pitfalls and concerns and some of the caveats that need to be around it. Because I think, even if you hate it, and we have faculty who truly hate it, they truly hate it, it’s not going anywhere, and the students have access to it on their phones. It’s there, so we have to figure out what to do with it.

Rebecca: One of the things I want to underscore about what you just said is that you’re going to develop a guide for faculty and students and that you’re going to share it to both parties. And I think that’s a practice that institutions could just do more generally, so that both sets of individuals are getting the same information, because especially around AI like literacy is necessary for all members of the campus community, not just students.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. We have a task force right now we’re running with my associate director, which involves five staff members and five faculty, and we’re going to cycle in some students so that we can sort of figure out what we need to be talking to people about. Our staff, many of them are afraid to use it because they’re afraid that it’s going to work them out of a job. But we say “No, this is gonna make your lives better if you use this.” So we’re trying to work through some of that. But the transparency is really key. I would argue that for everything, Rebecca. I’m a firm believer in being incredibly transparent with my students about all sorts of things that I think help move the learning process along, and that’s been really valuable for me as an educator and with my colleagues as a faculty member, as an educational developer.

John: And one of the things we’ve been advocating is that faculty have these conversations at the start of the semester with their students about what uses of AI are appropriate to see if they can get some degree of buy in. Do you think that might be helpful in convincing students that they should use it in ways that support their learning, rather than ways that serve as shortcuts to their learning?

Chris: Yeah, my associate director, Matt Citron, developed a system for one of our majors because the faculty really wanted it. And it’s not a new system, people are using it, but they just have a system built into Brightspace where an assignment will have either red or green or yellow light saying: red, don’t use AI; yellow, use it with caution; green, do what you want with it. But even before they see that, there’s a whole conversation about what “use it with caution” or “go crazy with it” means, how you’re going to involve that, and what you’re going to do with it, and how you’re going to report what you got out of it to the instructor, so they know exactly where this is coming from and how it looks. Again, It’s a transparency. But, you know, I’ll say this, I am continuously amazed when faculty are trying to sneak things in and trick students, because learning is not about being tricked, man, it’s about being able to do things more effectively. And I even do this, and faculty don’t love this. But when I give multiple choice… I’d really moved away from it…but a few years back, when I gave multiple choice, I told students, look, if you don’t like my answers, give me your own. If I like it, I’ll give you points for it. Or if you think my answers aren’t good enough, and you could write it better, fine. Write it underneath the multiple choice, I’ll read it. I mean, students don’t often do it, but every once in a while they do. It’s not like I have the magic knowledge, that’s the thing. I just know more about this than you do. I’ve learned more, I can think about it differently than you can, but let’s talk about it. And I have conversations with students after exams. I have conversations with students about their papers. I’ve taken to shooting video feedback to all my students on assignments and their responsibility is to give me video feedback, telling me how they understood my feedback and what they intended to do with it. So it becomes this virtual conversation. I talked to my faculty about that. Teaching and learning is an innately humane relational process, and the more we can continue to build that in, the better off our students and our faculty are going to be. But Rebecca, it’s work. It’s work.

Rebecca: It is work.

Chris: It is. I have two classes. I have 67 students this upcoming semester, as well as running a teaching center. It’s a lot of work. I grew up as a first kid to go to college, first one to graduate. I feel pretty lucky to do this job. I’ve worked other jobs, man, I built fences. This is way better than building fences. This is way better than building fences.

Rebecca: Sounds like we’re trying to take them down, actually.

Chris: Yeah.

Rebecca: One of the things that we’re seeing with budget crises across higher ed is sometimes increases in class sizes, and you just talked about how deeply humane and relational [LAUGHTER] teaching and learning is. Do you have some strategies for student engagement and some of that relation building in those larger classes.

Chris: Yeah, it’s a great question, and it’s interesting because at Springfield, and I’m not sure about the size of Oswego, but for us, a big class is like 60 students. Faculty freak out when they hit 60. And the fact is, I think that relational piece is going to look different depending on the size of your class and how you’re able to navigate that. I think part of it is understanding a variety of ways to give feedback. So I tell faculty, in particular with large classes that I would encourage them to do small assignments and give feedback to percentages of students every class to ensure that every student gets written feedback across time, but they don’t have to get all the same written feedback every time. You would never not read a student’s work, but you would give more substantive written feedback to a percentage of your students, but work in ways to develop those kinds of touch points. It’s not always easy. Sometimes it involves using the LMS, sometimes it involves getting there early, but being aware that your students, if they identify you as a human, they’re much more likely to be kind to you. So it’s really a matter of trying to figure out a way to allow yourself to be perceived as a human in students’ eyes. That’s idiosyncratic to the instructor. My students know a lot about my life. Part of it was I was a single dad for six years. I taught with my kid in a Snuggie. There was no way for my students to not be aware of what I was doing. I had a child strapped to my chest. She fell asleep. I told my students, come closer. She’s sleeping. I can’t wake her up. So I’ve always been pretty transparent with my students about lots of things. It makes me human, and I think part of it is allowing the students to see that you’re human too at whatever level you’re comfortable, whatever level people are comfortable, some people are more private. I get that, but I think you have to allow that humanity to kind of show through. I’ll say one more thing about that. If nothing else, you went and got a degree in this discipline. Show your passion for your discipline. Let your passion for your discipline come through however it does for you. I can’t talk about some psych topics without being jazzed. I’m a psycholinguist by training. I can’t talk about language without being super excited about language. It’s fun. I was just in Europe. I was looking at things written 1000 years ago. My camera is filled with pictures of stone tablets. My wife’s like, “What is this?” I said, trust me, “That’s linear B, man, that’s good stuff, right there.”

John: One of the issues that we do hear a lot of concerns from, especially since the pandemic, although it seems to be a little bit less last year than in the previous years, is students seem a little bit less engaged with some of their classwork, that students are more likely just to blow off some assignments and not complete them. And also, many faculty complain about having lower attendance in their classes. You mentioned using polling as a strategy. Are there other strategies that faculty can use to help increase that connection, or to get students a bit more engaged so they don’t disappear on us.

Chris: Yeah. I mean, the mental health crisis has really had its fingers in lots of this, and students’ anxiety has led them to be less willing to chat in class, less willing to engage in class, and with the devices they get to class, and they used to talk to each other, they sort of look at their phones, and so that’s an issue. I am pretty transparent about what I expect my students to do, and I talk to faculty about stating your expectations clearly and being open to knowing that students are going to sometimes struggle with this. I’ve got a couple of simple little tips. So for example, I give this tip to faculty. Have students answer questions and just write them down on a note card without their name, and then they take their note card and they stand up and they walk around the room, they hand it to someone, they take theirs, and then they take that note that note card and hand it to someone else, and then they take that, and then they just pass them around. And then I can call on any student, and all they’re doing is reading the note card, and so that helps them sort of see that it’s okay. I’ll tell you another secret… my students, whenever they find out about this… they get really mad, but I do this. I collect note cards at the beginning of the semester with all my students’ names on it, and I tell them, sometimes I’m going to randomly call on them to see if they know an answer. And they’re always softball, simple, very easy questions. So I’ll shuffle the cards and call someone. I will almost always call a name that is not on the card. I’ll call the name of the student who I know hasn’t said much, but knows what’s going on. So they have a chance to do something in class, be successful, and shine, and then they’re more likely to talk. And students don’t know what name I draw off the card. It doesn’t matter to me. It could be blank cards for all they know, but it’s a way to get the students… and again, as a psychologist, I look for ways to sort of shape that behavior up. Also, I tell faculty: “Get the class early, greet students when they come in, just talk to them.” I don’t know if this happens at Oswego, but this is a Springfield College thing. Our students thank us. At the end of every class, I get fist bumps as my students are walking by after every class. And I’m not unique. Lots of our students do that, and part of it is a culture that has built up over campus, over time, this is before my time. This is sort of who our students are. And so you work with that culture, okay, if the students are gonna do that, then I know they’re polite. Okay, good. Then I can work with that. Your students might be different. You know what they are. You try to work with that. It’s like I say to people all the time when faculty say, “Well, what can I do to be a better teacher?” I can’t pull a book off the shelf and say, “Here, do this.” I have to know who you are, who your students are, and all of that. And so it’s why the field is so much fun. I get to know lots of faculty, and I get to work with lots of faculty.

Rebecca: One of the things that we’ve been talking a little bit about, are some budget cuts in higher ed and teaching centers being on the chopping block? What are some of the things that you’re concerned about in this space?

Chris: So you don’t want to open that door too much. I really appreciate this in part, because I think there is a sense with teaching centers right now that if we let them go, we’re going to be okay. And I think faculty need the resource, even if it’s a perceived resource. My wife and I talk about it all the time. Perceived help is often as useful as the help you get, and so us existing is really important, and I worry that teaching centers are going to start to shrink, and it’s going to make faculty struggle in their teaching. So I hope that we continue to talk about these things and I appreciate having the opportunity to talk about it.

Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking, what’s next?

Chris: So what’s next for me? I have an idea for another writing project. I want to look at intentional teaching. I want to talk about barriers that make it difficult for faculty to be as effective as they can be in the classroom, starting with things like lack of pedagogical understanding and going through variables such as student variables, classroom size, physical space, etc. Because I think we need to take a harder look at what we are doing, knowing the stakes are higher than ever at being able to be effective at what we do. We need to be incredibly intentional about creating really strong learning environments for our students to succeed. And I think our livelihood depends on it. Listen, I teach at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast, and have either you ever been to Springfield, Massachusetts?

Rebecca: Yeah.

Chris: So from my office, if there were no trees, I could see two other colleges less than a mile away from me. So there’s lots of schools and fewer students. We just need to be really good at what we do. So I’m thinking about that. The other thing is, I am excited to be building out some additional resources for our faculty that I think are going to support them with short burst sort of faculty development that we’re building with our media team, which has been really fun. So we’ve got lots of stuff coming. We’re excited to get the year started and to do these things and to share them out. I’ve lots of ideas.

John: Well, thank you for talking to us. We very much appreciate the conversation and look forward to future conversations.

Chris: Yeah, thank you both so much, and I appreciate having this conversation. I know that you folks talk to lots of people. I went through, and I just have you know I run every day. You’ve gotten me through many runs, because your times is just about right, so I really appreciate that, and you’ve talked to some people that I have deep affection for. So I really appreciate being part of this, and thank you for all the work that you’re doing for teaching and learning. I think it’s super important for people to hear from these other people, so thanks.

Rebecca: Yeah, thank you. We’re looking forward to sharing out this episode with our audience, and we’re grateful for all the people that we’ve gotten to have on the show, you included.

John: And that’s why we keep doing it. [LAUGHTER]

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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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