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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
The technology is disruptive enough and persuasive enough that we can't just put our heads in the sand and say, I'm not going to focus on technology, I'm just going to do my teaching. I do think that the tools have enough utility in a variety of contexts that it makes sense to start being AI aware in one's teaching.
Jared:Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. My name is Ryan Lymey, and in today's episode, Doctor. Rob McDowell and Doctor. Jared Piles chat with Derek Bruff. You might remember that in our last episode, they reviewed his book Intentional Tech, and today they get a chance to talk to him about the book and all things teaching and learning six years later.
Ryan:Thanks for joining us.
Jared:I'm Doctor. Jared Piles. That's Doctor. Rob McDowell.
Derek Bruff:Nice to meet you both.
Jared:We're thankful that you're willing to come on. A bit of a backstory before we start. I just finished my doctorate, and one of our early assignments was to read literature and practice doing scholarly writing by doing a book review. And I was interested, still interested in educational technology and tech integration, but all the stuff that I found was K-twelve. Almost everything was K-twelve tech integration.
Jared:But then I stumbled upon your book and thought, finally, someone realizes that people need to learn how to integrate tech in higher education as well. So very thankful for your book and it kind of is a great starting point, I think, for professors and instructors in higher education to start using technology in their classroom.
Derek Bruff:Thanks. Yeah. I'm not the only book in that space, you're right, there's lot more K-twelve.
Jared:I mean, there's so much it's just overrun with
Rob:k 12. A time in his his fledgling research abilities. And, you know, fortunately, yours was just the one that popped up to the top, and he's like, yeah. That's good for me.
Jared:I had I mean, I was pouring through the research. But again, like you said, I was didn't quite know all the, you know, hints and tricks
Derek Bruff:Mhmm.
Jared:To get the results that I needed.
Rob:Well, and to be fair to you, sir, just so you know, we've already done a review of your book in 2019 that you that you published in 2019. And we we enjoyed it. We liked it, but we were curious, you know, how is this going to play out now in 2025? We were really curious to to hear, you know, your insights and that's why we had Ryan reach out to you and we don't know unless you ask. Yeah.
Rob:Yeah. Somebody be willing to come on and I
Derek Bruff:mean, I had fun thinking about the questions you sent. So I'm I'm excited about this conversation.
Rob:Let's dive into that then. It's been six years since Intentional Tech was published. When you look at today's higher education landscape, what still feels most relevant from the principles you shared?
Derek Bruff:What's still relevant six years on? I can't believe it's been six years since the book came out. I know we're gonna talk about AI, generative artificial intelligence today. So that's a kind of contextual factor that I think we have to address. I think the other thing that I think a lot about is the kind of the blend of the disengagement we saw from students post COVID and the kind of continuing effects the pandemic has had on student engagement and how they think about college.
Derek Bruff:And so that shows up both in how they participate in class, how they participate in assignments, but also how they value college. So I think we're also in this time where kind of the the importance of college, the value of college is being questioned more. And so I was thinking about those situational factors and how they apply to some of the principles that I talk about in the book. Because in theory, these principles kind of always apply in teaching. Right?
Derek Bruff:But I do think that the idea of creating times for telling with students is now perhaps a little more important than it was in 2019. That students don't necessarily walk into our classrooms at the same rate saying, please teach me, I'm ready. Might need a little more help seeing why this is important, why this is interesting. Right? And so the idea with time foretelling is that you're using technology to create some type of experience or problem where students essentially kind of reach the limits of their their current understanding, And you show that to them in a way that motivates them to push a little further.
Derek Bruff:And so in the book, talk about using polling questions to do this, where students kind of getting the wrong answer to an interesting question and seeing that most of your peers have the same wrong answer is motivational. But I also talk about simulations and games, other ways to use technology that puts students in these positions to say, the world is kind of more complicated than I thought it was, and now I'm ready to learn more about some of those complications. And so I think that's still I think that's important and maybe more important than it was six years ago. So the other two principles that come to mind is as perhaps kind of more relevant now than they were even in 2019, are the two that involve using technology to connect students with other people. So the idea of learning communities, using technology to help students learn from and with each other, but then also authentic audiences using technology to help students kind of share their work with some meaningful audience out there.
Derek Bruff:Because I think in both cases they speak to this, the questions of engagement and the questions of meaning. Right? I think students are asking, why am I taking this course? Why am I going to college? They're also looking at generative AI and saying, it can do all these things.
Derek Bruff:So why do I need to learn this stuff? And so leaning into more authentic and social learning seems to be a useful response for the moment. And so that's another way I would look for technology now to try to help connect more with students.
Jared:So you mentioned time for telling. I do want to focus on that a bit. It's your first principle in your book. You talk about, like you said, priming curiosity in students, priming the pump before you deliver information as an instructor. I know that you talked about polling, just a way of getting them thinking about it.
Jared:So with generative AI, how do you see the two working together? Do you see it fitting? Do you see it not fitting? Can it help create those times for telling moments or might it kind of short circuit the discovery process?
Derek Bruff:So I guess I think about times for telling about AI as maybe a little distinct from times for telling with AI. I think our students are asking for our help in navigating AI and knowing how to learn with it, what role it plays in their learning and their careers. And so a lot of faculty are drawn right now to helping students grapple with AI and understand what it's good for, what it's not good for, how to use it effectively and ethically. And so there's lots of opportunities there to create times for telling moments. So I'm thinking about my colleague here at the University of Virginia, Rich Ross in statistics.
Derek Bruff:And he told us about a recent class activity where he was having his students he's a statistician, and he was having his students create a certain type of data visualization. It's one of these nested donut pie charts that is probably more complicated than it needs to be. But he showed them like, here's your goal, here's what your nested donut pie chart should look like. And he said, go to chat GPT or whatever tool you want, see if it can help you write the code to generate this particular data visualization. He was using R, the statistical package.
Derek Bruff:The students kind of sweated this for fifteen or twenty minutes. Their pie charts were terrible. They were like, none of them were right. They were dramatically wrong. And so Rich was able to say, well, here's a couple of core concepts that you need to know in R to write the code to do this.
Derek Bruff:And he gave a lecture for like five minutes, and then all the students made the right pie charts. Right? And so it was a nice moment to help the students realize, this is what we call the well, tell them realize that like, just because ChatGPT can write computer code doesn't mean that it's good at writing all kinds of computer code. Right? That these tools have limitations.
Derek Bruff:They're not a 100% accurate. There's the thing they call the jagged frontier where sometimes they're surprisingly good and sometimes they're surprisingly bad. And so that was a really great time for telling moment for students to say, oh, actually, I probably need to know some coding skill because the AI is not gonna help me out in every single case. I will often share with faculty who are maybe skeptical of AI's capabilities. I'll share with them an example or two of things that kind of knock your socks off with AI.
Derek Bruff:And so that's another kind of time for telling moment where we're a lot of the idea with time for telling is kind of figuring out what misconceptions or preconceptions or naive conceptions do our learners have, and how can we kind of shine a light on that in a productive way? And there's so many misconceptions about AI right now, it's just fertile ground for that. I think the other kind of categories of use I'm seeing that connect times for telling and generative AI are when the use of AI is designed to create that experience where students are kind of confronted with the limits of their understanding. And so there's a couple of kind of assignments. There's an assignment category I like to call, there's human critique the chatbot and chatbot critique the human.
Derek Bruff:Where in the first case you have chat GPT or Gemini or whatever, produce something, some kind of output, and the student's job is to critique that output. Because it's a great way to teach kind of AI literacy, but it's also a way for students to hone their skills. And so they might have I talked to a professor at Yale a couple years ago, Tisa Winger, and she was having her students, it was a kind of was a course on the history of Christianity in The Americas. And the idea was to have the chatbots create like a sermon told, given by a particular person or with a particular point of view at a particular point of time. And the chatbot would create a sermon that would kind of create a a nice logical argument, but it didn't understand the historical context well enough to get the details right.
Derek Bruff:And so the student's job was to then critique that AI generated sermon to get at the historical parts that it missed. And so I think that's a nice way to kind of create a time for telling where especially if you have this chatbot that seems to know what it's doing, but you give the students a chance to realize, actually, no, it doesn't. And I know better than the chatbot. I think that's a useful move that we can use to create this. I think there's also some faculty that are doing some fun things with AI for simulations, where you're having students practice a kind of a particular consulting skill.
Derek Bruff:Or this happens in education a lot where students have to talk to a parent or in nursing where you're having to have a conversation with a patient. And you have the chatbot play the role of the client in that. Or in kind of legal settings too, right? I saw a really good example of that. There it's a simulation, right?
Derek Bruff:It's acting in some ways that are authentic to the actual consulting situation. Students have to kind of navigate that and see how they would play the parent asked this weird question or the patient like freaks out about something. There was one example I saw where the ChatGPT was prompted to in text describe its own body language in one of these consultation environments. And so because the instructor wanted students to pay attention to body language and she didn't have time to build a whole AI avatar. So she did the kind of low fidelity version, but it gave students a chance to kind of see, oh, this fake client is telling me one thing, but their body language is saying something different.
Derek Bruff:How am I gonna respond to that in the moment when I'm trying to practice these? In this case, it was like a diet nutrition course. So they were they were giving counseling around diet nutrition. And so I think that the kind of AI simulation is is a place to go. And there the fact that the AI is a little unpredictable and not always accurate is is actually a strength because the clients, the patients are a little unpredictable and not always accurate either.
Derek Bruff:And so it gives students a chance to practice navigating some ambiguous situations and realize, oh, I do need to know how to handle a situation like this or like that.
Rob:That's an excellent form, I think, of being able to work through problems as well. So not just those kinds of simulations, but simulating, you know, real world problems that might be more than just dealing with interpersonal relationships. It could be design problems. I know I've simulated through some of those things, at least from an instructional design side. When you bring all the variables to bear, you say, okay, here's the variables I've got.
Rob:Here are the design considerations I'm thinking about. And here are the challenges. You know, you can play the strict role, produce something, say, in an Addy format, which is old school. Yep. I think we would all agree.
Rob:But still, I think it's still relevant. I think there's still some things there that are very relevant. And then you could have it now, give me something that's really out of the box and you can work with that as well and simulate particular designs. And it's really good on that side of being able to compare between things and also see where it gets it wrong. Right.
Rob:And I think that goes to the point of needing to know what you're talking about. Mhmm. First and foremost, like you were talking about times for telling for students. Like, here is that reason just like you were saying just a minute ago. In terms of of AI, let's let's stay on that path.
Rob:So in your book, you really talk about pedagogy driving technology. At least that's what I took away from some of my reading in your book. How do you see generative AI tools either making that easier for instructors or harder? You know, where do you see that going?
Derek Bruff:So I think there's kind of a forcing function here that it's I have issues with the analogy to calculators and mathematics. But if you look at math instruction, pre calculator and post calculator, there are some necessary differences. Right? There are teaching choices that have to be made in light of this new technology. And so I think it's Annette V is someone who's in kind of the rhetoric and composition world who talks about AI aware teaching.
Derek Bruff:And so I don't think we need to like say, oh, look, AI, shiny object. Let's see what we can do with it. Although plenty of people are doing that. And I'm glad some people are because we learn from them. Right.
Derek Bruff:But I do think there's a requirement for all faculty and all instructors to be AI aware and to think about the implications of these new tools for what and how they teach. Now they may land on a kind of red light policy, and there's some really good reasons for doing that. I'm not saying everyone has to start teaching about and with AI. The technology is disruptive enough and persuasive enough that we can't just put our heads in the sand and say, I'm not gonna focus on technology. I'm just gonna do my teaching.
Derek Bruff:I think it's changing the nature of academic disciplines. It's changing the nature of professions. And some of those changes get a lot of hyperbole thrown at them. So I'm not saying that everything's gonna change and it will all be different. But I do think that the the tools have enough utility in a variety of contexts that it makes sense to start being AI aware in one's teaching.
Derek Bruff:And so if you're kind of low in that learning curve, it's hard to think about how you're gonna use it effectively as a teaching tool.
Jared:I've heard you say it a couple times now and I wanna ask you because I haven't heard of this the the modifier being used for usage. You keep saying thoughtful usage of technology, which is something I've never heard before, but I immediately love. Could you explain thoughtful usage versus innovative usage or methodological usage or whatever? Or have you even thought of that before?
Derek Bruff:No. Well, and it gets at the name of the book, right? Intentional tech. Mhmm. So let me give a counter example.
Derek Bruff:I worked with a faculty member, in an English department years ago. And for years, I was trying to get him to articulate his learning objectives. And he would not or could not. So he would walk in and he would say, you know, he walks into his class, he leads discussion, and the magic happens. And he was not wrong.
Derek Bruff:Right? Like, was great discussions. It happened all the time. He consistently had great engagement from students, but he couldn't articulate what and why he was doing it. He eventually went on to teach one of those MOOCs, one of those massive open online courses with 10,000 students.
Derek Bruff:And the magic doesn't happen with 10,000 students. You actually have to, like, plan stuff. Uh-huh. And so it forced him to actually define his learning objectives and build assignments that were around those learning objectives. And he he went public with this later.
Derek Bruff:He's like, Derek's been trying to teach me about learning objectives for years, and I finally had to actually figure out what that meant and do it. Right? So so it's a good story. A good story, but it's like when he was in his magic happens phase, I wouldn't wanna put him on a podcast or tell us like, he didn't he couldn't share anything that other faculty could learn from. But once he knew what he was trying to accomplish in the classroom and what methods he was using and why he was using those methods, that conceptual framework is something that other faculty can learn from.
Derek Bruff:Mhmm. Right? Their actual implementation is gonna be different because they have different courses and different students. But that's what I'm looking for in terms of thoughtful or intentional technology use, is that you're saying to yourself, there's a lot of technology I could use in this class, but I really want my students to learn from each other and to surface the different backgrounds and experiences and interests that my students have, what are some technology that can help do that particular thing? Because that would be really valuable for my course.
Derek Bruff:And some tech is gonna help with that, and some tech is not. Right? So it guides your use of the technology because you know what learning function you're trying to trying to make make happen with it.
Rob:It sounds like purposeful technology. Like technology with the purpose, it always has to be aimed at a a goal or purpose that you've defined.
Derek Bruff:Yeah. And, you know, there's a flip side that's also helpful, which is look at AI. What can it do? I don't know. Let's try some stuff.
Derek Bruff:Right? Like, we also need some faculty who are willing to, like, not really know in advance what they're hoping to get out of it, but to kind of play around with it in the right context. Mhmm. Because you learned a lot from that. I just don't want everyone doing that.
Derek Bruff:That's not helpful. I want most faculty to be pretty intentional in their tech use and learn from the faculty who are throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Jared:Yeah,
Rob:it's definitely I mean, you have some that create and then those who refine what's been created. Right?
Jared:We have to have those early adopters or innovators that are willing to get out there and try stuff.
Rob:Yeah. Because they're gonna fail more than you're gonna succeed.
Jared:Yeah. And they have to be comfortable with that.
Rob:And they just have to those kinds of folks just keep going.
Derek Bruff:Mhmm.
Rob:Because they live for the trying. Live And for
Derek Bruff:there are courses where that's more appropriate, right? You've got upper level students who have more autonomy, they have more metacognition. They can be almost conversational or experimental partners in that. Right? Like Mhmm.
Derek Bruff:You don't wanna like, you know, guinea pig all of your students, but there are some courses where it's easier to engage students and like, okay, here's AI. What are we gonna do with this? Let's put our heads together and figure this out.
Jared:So many faculty may feel a bit excited and overwhelmed by the generative AI or the pace of change and where it seems to be rapidly evolving. What advice would you give them for staying intentional in this current tech moment?
Derek Bruff:So, I would say one, small teaching changes over time are the way to go in most cases. So don't feel like you have to change everything you're doing right at once. Do think about what are some small changes I can make this semester to one or two of my courses to continue to experiment. One of the stories I tell in the book is another English professor, Umberto Garcia, And he came to me wanting to know how to this was, you know, ten or fifteen years ago. He wanted to know how to use blogs in his teaching.
Derek Bruff:Mhmm. And he said, look. I have I'm I'm on the research track. I don't have a lot of time. I I wanna try, like, two or three things out this semester.
Derek Bruff:What are two or three things I could chain I I could try with blogs? But he did that every semester for several years to the point where I eventually called him the blog father of the English department. He was using this technology to support lots of different kinds of learning from his students, but it it was slow change over time. So I think having that kind of long term I know AI says, oh, we have to, like, adapt or die. But that's not the thing that's requiring us to adapt or die in higher ed right now.
Derek Bruff:We we do have some time to kind of figure that out. And so but thinking thinking about slow change over time. The other thing is that I do think it's important to talk to our students about this. There's a lot of technology. There's a lot of changes.
Derek Bruff:There's a lot of problems to solve. Figure out what the ones your students are passionate about. Right? If you're having the dialogue with your students, it's gonna help you prioritize among all the different things you could explore. Right?
Derek Bruff:What parts of this course are working well? What parts of this course aren't working well? That's gonna narrow my scope quickly as to what new things I need to learn about or changes I need to learn about. So I think having that dialogue with your students is important. And the other is, I was thinking about I'm of the right age to have played the original Legend of Zelda back in the eighties.
Jared:We just you and I just became best friends. Alright. Sorry. Let's keep it together.
Derek Bruff:So many hours. But when you start that game, one of the first things you do if you start poking around is you character goes in a cave and there's some weird old wizard there. And he says he's gonna give you a sword. And he says, it is dangerous to go alone. Mhmm.
Derek Bruff:And I'm like, okay. Why aren't you coming with me? Why did you give me a sword? I don't understand the logic. But the line is great.
Derek Bruff:Right? It is dangerous to go alone. And I think as we're navigating these big changes in higher ed and technology and the intersection of the two, find your people. Right? Find a group that you can be a part of and have conversations.
Derek Bruff:Maybe it's the instructors down the hall in your office. Right? Maybe it's a group you connect with online around a book club or something. Right? There's lots of spaces for this.
Derek Bruff:But especially with AI, there's so much to figure out. No one of us is gonna have all the answers. But if you find a good community, you know, like, you're gonna get a lot of great ideas from folks who are maybe a little ahead of you in this direction and a little behind you in that direction. We're we're much better together than we are alone figuring this out.
Jared:What I'm hearing is find your wooden sword in a cave. That's what I'm hearing.
Rob:Doctor. Bruff, if you were writing intentional tech today, what new chapters or principles would you include given tools like AI, writing assistance, adaptive learning platforms, or maybe even something like VRAR?
Derek Bruff:So one, I would go back to all seven chapters and have lots of new examples of different technology. Right? Because in some ways, the principles haven't changed. We're still using technology to give students a chance to get practice and feedback. We're still using technology to help students explore multimodal learning.
Derek Bruff:Right? It's just now we have a different tool set to for doing some of that. Mhmm. I have thought for a while I needed a chapter on embodied learning. This really came out in 2020 when we started to realize our students were not just like brains on sticks in our classrooms, but like the physical environment they're in matters a lot for how they encounter the world and how they they learn.
Derek Bruff:And so it's not technology per se, but it's the context in which technology, exists that I think would be fun to explore. I think also what I said about teaching about AI is distinct from teaching with AI. I do wonder if I'd like to think about a chapter that is about teaching about tech, not just teaching with tech. What happens when tech is on the syllabus? Because I feel like, you know, that was true in a lot of disciplines already.
Derek Bruff:Right? Like if you're teaching engineering, you're gonna be teaching a lot of different programs and coding and things like that. But Yep. But I think generative AI has broadened that so that if you teach anything with words or pictures, tech is on the menu. Right?
Derek Bruff:Which didn't used to be the case. So some principles of kind of doing that would be great. And then the other thing that and I'm seeing this challenge particularly with AI is making choices around technology, not just at the course level, but at the program or curriculum level. How do we navigate those choice points? How do we design an entire major or a certificate or a program so that you're using you're teaching technology in the ways the students need it, but you're also teaching with technology intentionally throughout the student lifespan in that program?
Derek Bruff:Because what I'm finding is with faculty in AI is that individual faculty are making very smart choices about AI often in their own courses, but there's no coherence across the major or the program. And so students were kind of like and I'm taking two sociology classes, and they have completely different AI policies. How am I supposed to live my life? Right? And so I think how do how do we make those choices as an organization and not just as an individual, I think, is also an important thing that we're having to kind of struggle with right now.
Rob:Yeah, because it becomes very difficult for the student. I mean, and frustrating, if not somewhat defeating, because they're allowed to use AI in a particular person's class and it may be in the same program. And the assumption would be you go into a class and maybe they don't say anything in the syllabus about their tech, which also happens. Yep. And they continue to practice the same, you know, methodologies that they had in the class before, which were where it was okay.
Rob:And now all a sudden, they get called into a review board. They get a conversation with the professor who says, you violated the academic integrity policy. And the student immediately feels like a criminal. And then you have those students who, you know, they're like, they're just gaming the system. And I've seen this as well where they're not really there to get an education.
Rob:They're trying to see how far they can get away with not doing anything and still getting a grade that'll pass and give them a degree.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:I mean, I hate to say that, but I have met those kinds of students. I'm like, why are you doing this? And their answer to me, it's not a good one, but it it's it's an answer because I can.
Derek Bruff:Yeah. And, you know, those students have always been with us. Think they have a they have a more robust tool set now. Thanks to AI. Yeah.
Derek Bruff:That's the truth. But I don't you know, it used to be you had to be independently wealthy so you could pay someone to write your paper for you. Now you don't have to be. You just need $20 a month to pay check GPT to write. So it's it's it's it's leveling the playing field.
Derek Bruff:I think also though about like, if we are gonna teach our students AI literacy, AI know how, AI competencies. Right? Let's say the student take away the academic integrity. Right? I've learned how to do this skill really well with the help of AI in this first course.
Derek Bruff:Mhmm. And now in the second course, my instructor is saying, don't get to use AI anymore. But I'm like, I know I can do a better job with AI. Oh, yeah. And I'm not using it as a crutch.
Derek Bruff:I'm actually using it effectively. Mhmm. Right? Like, that's gotta be frustrating for students as well.
Jared:Yeah. Yeah. Stuff. Thank you so much, doctor Bruff, for being willing to come on with us and talk this through.
Rob:It has been a true pleasure.
Jared:Yeah. Absolutely.
Derek Bruff:Well, thanks for having me on.
Ryan:Thanks for joining this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments about our episode with Derek Bruff, feel free to reach out to us. You can also find Derek Bruff's website, Agile Learning, as well as his podcast, Intentional Teaching, in our show notes and description. If you have any questions about our show or about our guests, can email us at CTLPodcastcederville dot edu, or you can connect with us on LinkedIn. Finally, don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog.
Ryan:Thanks for listening.