In 2025, I listened more than I spoke. And since my blog is kind of in a frozen state because I need to overhaul it completely, I used LinkedIn (yuck, I know) to reflect on some things I liked reading and listening to this year: www.linkedin.com/pulse/some-t...

Ted's thread brings up so many tremendous points about the erosion of instructor agency as the LMS perniciously adopts a bunch of AI. The LMS is a fascinating piece of edtech. It's simultaneously so mediocre and yet so powerful for organizing instructional logic. Essential, but inadequate. (1/7)

Introducing COYOTE Media Collective!! The Bay Area’s first journalist-owned newsroom — modeled after the smart, sassy, fun alt-weeklies of yore — is launching later this summer. Help us get this rad project off the ground! @coyotemedia.org givebutter.com/coyotemedia

#NoKings El Cerrito!! Probably 300-500 people here at least in our small East Bay suburb. 💛

Rhet & comp pals: I'm trying to find a free online resource w/ foundational advice abt giving students feedback, but was finding a lot of things are feeling very dated (I used to rely on WAC Clearinghouse). What are the resources you're liking most for advice on response to student writing?

Worried about getting students to do the reading this semester? I've curated some resources for the UVA Teaching Hub just in time for the start of Spring. Gratitude to @derekbruff.bsky.social for curating these excellent collections!

"We must recognize the harms that will result when writing is primarily treated as a tool to transcribe answers, including its implications for critical thinking, democratic decision-making, and linguistic variation and expression.” 🔥 refusinggenai.wordpress.com (1/5)

I recommend reading these 2 articles side-by-side on how higher ed instructors can protect their value in the face of threats to substitute valuable teaching labor with AI: 1. @biblioracle.bsky.social's take on getting faculty ready for "botification" www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blog... and (1/8)

Delighted to chat with Joshua Kim about my chapter in "Recentering Learning!" I give a teaser on my chapter, reflect on the value of re-centering "joy" when you re-center learning at a research university, and tackle the big, bad "what about AI" question. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blog...

Delighted to receive my copy of "Recentering Learning!" My chapter, "Beyond Zoom University" makes the case that we need to think flexibly about the future of where and how learning happens with a nifty heuristic for designing digital pedagogy from a student-first perspective. #edusky

👋🏻 Hi, new followers! I'm delighted you've found me here! I'm still slowly re-building my engagement with my beloved pedagogy network (partially due to Twitter migration, primarily due to being a new parent to an infant and figuring out where blogging fits into my professional praxis)! (1/5)

Honestly, the student use cases for skimming and finding summaries of readings described here all make perfect sense to me! If you are assigning reading simply as a content delivery mechanism, then it shouldn't matter if students take "shortcuts." www.insidehighered.com/news/student...

Finally listened to this episode and it breaks down why the narrative about smartphones destroying teens' mental health is over-simplified and reductive. Haidt's book joins an incredibly long list of books that reproduce the same, boring thesis, which is important to note because... (1/x)

The biggest ick factor here is not actually the AI, but the assumption that "good" reading somehow requires expert interpretation to "get it." Sure, classics can be hard to read, but you don't need AI versions of scholars to explain them to you. What you need is a book group!

My feed is full of discussion around NaNoWriMo's AI sponsorship and their justification that rejecting AI is "classist and ableist." I'm interested in the classroom implications of this; to what extent are AI bans "ableist?" To what extent are required AI assignments similarly "ableist?"

Rebuilding teaching and learning community online is going to take time (and I'll admit I've been slow to contribute), but I'm delighted to see so many excellent folks make their way here to Bluesky!

The AI rhetoric in education just feels like endless deja vu. Remember how giving all students access to iPads would also "liberate" their capacity for human connectedness? When "personalized learning tools" (AKA automated quizzes with various learning paths) would "humanize education?" Sigh.

I appreciate this take from @marcwatkins.bsky.social on the impacts of AI reading assistants. I agree that not enough people are talking about this! I'm sympathetic to interest in using these tools, and this should be a HUGE wake-up call to educators. marcwatkins.substack.com/p/no-one-is-...

@bethmcmurtrie.bsky.social expertly navigated the complex reading convo. This insight strikes me as one of the most valuable: "Students will read... If they know why they are doing it and time is taken to help them begin to develop an approach that is effective.” www.chronicle.com/article/is-t...

I only have three weeks left of maternity leave, and I know I am basically just yelling into the void here, but 4 months of leave is really, truly not enough time (and I know that is considered generous leave in the US).

This is a great response from Liz in response to some unfortunately common faculty complaints about managing student accommodations. I'd still love to see more about faculty partnership with staff to support students. Faculty and staff often have adversarial interactions. They needn't! 🧵

I've been following this since the article originally published, and while I agree it's a fraught and complicated set of issues, I wish people realized that there's actually been some really thoughtful work done here, beyond just vibes. Like @jenaecohn.bsky.social's book, for example:

This topic has been my professional obsession for over a decade now. I think what I keep returning to is what we actually care about when we ask students to read. What are the purposes of that reading task? Because we need to exercise very different skills for reading in different contexts.

Something I struggle with in the CTL is how to reflect diverse faculty in campus teaching decisions without exploiting NTT women, the group most likely to be tapped or to volunteer deliberately. CTLs function at the intersection of teaching and service, a tricky space! kifinfo.no/en/2024/03/w...

This is how you organize an online event to improve conference access! Well done!!

It's fun to dunk on Haidt, AND I'm especially glad to see so much skepticism around his recent book about smartphones inducing anxiety (i.e. www.wired.com/story/pete-e... & www.nature.com/articles/d41...). Tech just isn't that deterministic and it's destructive to keep making arguments to that end!

After Claudine Gay's resignation, Rufo learned that plagiarism was a smear that he could use to attack scholars of race, no matter how flimsy the evidence. New, from me. Please share if you want people to understand the machinery behind these attacks. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/open-seaso...

Soooo is there no online conference option for #pod24? I'm admittedly more offline than usual right now, but was surprised to see a CFP for an in-person POD conference, but not an online one. Seems like kind of a step backwards on the inclusion front! 🤔

New out of office message just dropped! 🐣 I'm excited to spend a few months focused on caring for our new little one, who is already teaching me a whole lot about what it means to truly be a learner. I'll be more online again in the summer, so thanks for your patience in hearing from me!

What distinguishes an online from an on-site learning environment? And how can the language & principles from UX design help make online learning environments better? Eric Mazur and I discuss these questions & more in the latest Social Learning Amplified podcast. www.perusall.com/SocialLearni...

Want to have four dedicated weeks to read about user experience in online learning design with a group of supportive colleagues? Check out the asynchronous community book event organized by Perusall to read my book, "Design for Learning!" More here: www.perusall.com/engage

Absolutely stellar statement on ChatGPT/AI and writing instruction from Jonathan Alexander at UCI. This is a must-read for a take that explores writing instruction and AI with deserving humanity and depth: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

there's still time to register for the Book Launch for Higher Education for Good: Teaching & Learning Futures (2 sessions: Mon & Wed) > link to the book (open access!) www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116... > link to register for Book Launch myfest.equityunbound.org/uncategorize... #HE4Good

See you later, Pittsburgh, and #pod23! I enjoyed meeting new folks and reuniting with old friends. I'm coming home with many new ideas and inspiration!

I guess I feel worried that we focus too fully on the moment of real-time instruction, which really is the tip of the iceberg in terms of teaching work. I know that the real-time interactions, while important, are a sliver of what I use to assess whether my own teaching is "working." #pod23

Something I'm thinking about in this session on peer observation: the observation is so minutely focused on what is happening in the "seat time" moment in the classroom, but so much of good teaching design is done asynchronously (I.e. through the development of assignments, materials, etc). #pod23

I really like the idea of weaving reflection into all three parts of the class observation process: as pre-work, as prompts you can do during the observation, & as post-work to process and reflect on how what you see in the classroom connects with literature. #pod23

Really full house for the session on farmeworks that facilitate peer conversations. I suspect that there's some hunger to leverage faculty peer community in strategic ways. That's certainly why I'm here! #pod23

One other reflection here while I'm in this evocative mobile experience session: what would it look like for ed/fac developers to provide colleagues w/ training on how to engage w/ some basic usability fixes (e.g. with screen size, text-to-speech, etc.)? Big digital literacy gaps out there! #pod23

I think some of the conservatism w/ tech in this space has to do with how CTLs are structured (a theme I can't seem to get away from at this conference) & the artificial separation often enough between learning enviro (and the many forms those enviros take) and learning design. #pod23

OK, spicy take time: I'm surprised by how conservative POD can be when it comes down to reflecting on tech & learning innovation work. There still seems to be a lot of surprise about just how much we can do online beyond video conferencing (and in ways that are tool flexible). #pod23

I think there are skills we take for granted in fac dev work, and one of those is considering how we, as educators, continue to be responsive and attentive to changes in how information gets consumed & distributed in our work. (cc @thomasjtobin.bsky.social & @christinamoore.bsky.social #pod23

In the session on mobile-mindful professional development with @thomasjtobin.bsky.social & @christinamoore.bsky.social and appreciate their modeling of how professional development can be designed mobile-first. I'm struck that this requires a lot of unspoken skills in fac dev! #pod23

This ref to indigenous evaluation looks useful (Nan Wehipeihana). Framework includes understanding who change happens to? What does change happen for? How can change happen with stakeholders? How can change be done by & AS individual stakeholders? www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3... #pod23

Soooo, this article looks great: "Contexts for agency: a framework for managing educational development work." (in To Improve the Academy, 2022): journals.publishing.umich.edu/tia/article/... #pod23

Great question about whether those impacted by institutional change are ever educated about how change is being managed. Lots of folks sharing, and the answer across most institutions is basically "no." Changes are often "frantic" (words of a participant). Lots of nods & affirmations. #pod23

Probably everyone in CTL spaces should be familiar with change management models, even if not in a leadership role. Higher ed institutions are going to continue to change (dramatically!) in future years; we need tools for addressing these changes thoughtfully & humanistically. #pod23

Tons of synergy b/w the concept of "managing up" (from @lindsaymasland.bsky.social's session yesterday) to impact institutional change while recognizing and understanding the full power of reporting structures for affecting change. H/T @carolynives.bsky.social & @pwmartin.bsky.social #pod23

In the beautifully titled "You Probably Think this Reorg's about You," I'm appreciating the candor & pragmatism of recognizing where CTLs are situated impact exactly how/what/where faculty developers can do impactful work. We don't talk about this enough!! #pod23

Bryan Dewsbury's article on deep teaching pedagogy in STEM courses looks like a helpful resource for those unfamiliar. A core theme: instructor self-awareness can yield to empathy for the student experience. qubeshub.org/app/site/col... #POD23