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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.
This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Doctor. Rob McDole and Doctor. Jared Pyles continue our series on AI resilient course design by talking about content and resources. Thanks for joining us.
Jared:Rob, it's time for another episode on the Transform Your Teaching podcast, as Ryan already articulated in our intro, but I thought it was important to say it again. Just reaffirm. To reaffirm that we are on this podcast. And we are continuing our series on AI resilience, which I'm sure Ryan also put in the intro as well. Yeah.
Jared:But again, just need to reemphasize that just like you would in teaching, Your students aren't going to remember something as soon as you say it. And if I were to give a formative assessment on this, and I would be like, what is the name of this podcast?
Rob:You tell them.
Jared:If I don't tell you Yeah. If I don't present the information, and I can't believe this is going to work as a perfect segue for this episode. If I don't present the content or the resources or provide students with the information they need to do well in the assessment, how do I expect them to do well?
Rob:Right. Because we talked about objectives. Yep. We've talked about assessment. Yep.
Rob:What we haven't talked about are the things that you need to support both the objectives, the content, not only the content, but also the materials and resources that you're going to need to, affect your assessments. So I think it's a great segue.
Jared:Yeah. Because the objective names what it is you want them to do.
Rob:Starting with the end in mind, the goal.
Jared:Start with the end in mind. Yep. The assessment is a measurement of the objective. Mhmm. Right?
Jared:Mhmm. But the in between is where your content and resources. What do the students need to be able to do or know in order to get them to be able to take the assessment that measures the objective?
Rob:So
Jared:that's the in between.
Rob:Correct. And, today it's AI resilient resources. Yes. So some of these resources, you know, our listeners may be thinking, okay. This seems a little redundant.
Rob:I mean, obviously, you're probably just gonna say, use Mhmm. You could. You could. But I think there's some very interesting ways that you could use it, but I get ahead of myself. Before we do that, let's let's really just talk about what makes a resource AI resilient.
Jared:Yes.
Rob:Let's. Because, I mean, here's the reality. AI can generate a summary, explanations, study guides. You know, we use it to help us create question banks.
Jared:Yeah. Like, let me give you an example of that with question banks. Yeah. Sometimes, profs will give us texts and then want us to make quizzes. You know, Ryan, who, you know, he serves as our producer and coordinator here on the podcast, but he's also the project manager of the CTLP.
Jared:And so he and I often will work together on building courses and sometimes we'll, we'll get a book and to be frank with you, neither of us have time to read said book.
Rob:Well, and you're not a content expert in it either.
Jared:Correct. So what we've done recently is take the text, legal, I should say, legal text, and fed it to a bot and said, read through this and create, you know, assessment or create formative level, like comprehension level questions in this and it'll do it for us. So the question banks, that's an example of how we would use generative AI for that. But, yeah.
Rob:And that goes to also one of the things that I was gonna say too, and that is when you make those examples, I know for a fact that you all review them.
Jared:Oh, totally.
Rob:And then you also...
Jared:I... I'm thankful that we do it because sometimes you look at it.
Rob:Yeah. You're like, oh. Yeah. That's not a good one. And then you also have the SME review it, obviously, for content.
Jared:Oh, yeah.
Rob:And so it I know our... And for those of our listeners wondering what SME, it's a subject matter expert. And our subject matter experts are really good at their content area, but they don't have the time to sit there and make formative quiz banks. So we can get it done pretty quickly, evaluate it, and the things that we need to throw out, we throw out. Things that we need to change, we change.
Rob:But there's an awful lot that we don't have to, and that just speeds up the process for our our SMEs as we're creating these courses. Because they're busy too. And that basically under... Underscores my last part of of of our opening here, and that is you can use AI for all these different things and the examples that we just gave, but it also... You also need to understand that you've got to evaluate these things.
Rob:Just like you would evaluate, hopefully, sources that come from a textbook because, I mean, we've been doing that for quite some time. Right?
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:I know I have in my area where you get a textbook and you'll have lots... And one of the resources that'll oftentimes come with those textbooks are, you know, exam questions or unit questions that you can use in an exam.
Jared:Integrate with your LMS.
Rob:Yeah. You can do that. But even before that, you would come with, like, get teacher workbooks. You
Jared:remember what? Transparencies?
Rob:Oh, man. Yeah. That's old. Yeah. That's going Making copies Transparencies.
Rob:Back.
Jared:I I got those from when I taught Shakespeare for... In high school.
Rob:But those are just examples of resources. Yep. So now it's, you know, thinking about this from an AI perspective. How has AI changed the game? Right?
Rob:So we've talked about objectives, and we've talked about assessments. And I think the best place for us to start in our conversation about AI resources is the objective. We start with the verb. Yep. That could be also a modular objective.
Rob:So Mhmm. I mean, this is where you Yeah. You shine.
Jared:I do. I tend to rant.
Rob:So let's let's not rant. Okay. Let's truncate. Let's truncate. No.
Rob:But seriously
Jared:By the end of this, Jared will be able to truncate his lecture about objectives. Alright. So if you start with a verb like evaluate, something higher up in that magical Bloom's taxonomy. Based on where your students come from, if this is a 4,000 level course like we're building with Doctor. Rogers, or if it's a thousand level, you need to consider the steps to get them along the way.
Jared:The reason I say based on where they come from is we talk about activating prior knowledge or prerequisites or whatever it is that the students know coming into the course. So you can start at that level, it blooms. But if you expect students to be able to evaluate something by the end of a unit or a module or whatever it is, but they don't know those steps along the way to get to evaluate because there is a sequence and a taxonomy to that. They're not gonna do well because they don't have that base knowledge. So this is where your module objectives come in.
Jared:So then the content is those steps along the way, along with the assessments. Because you're not gonna be able to... You should be assessing the steps along the way as well, using formative assessment like we've talked about. Low stakes, making sure they hit those markers. So that when they get to the evaluate section, they've done all the steps to lead up to evaluate, to identify, define, and analyze, compare and contrast, whatever it is, apply, whatever it is, to get to the evaluate or create level, those higher levels of it.
Jared:So then the content, obviously then, is going to hit those markers, hit those verbs along the way. If you want them to be able to evaluate, you've got to teach them, surprisingly, how to evaluate. But it's more than just that. It's those small tiers along the way that you're also presenting the content that gets there. So what resources teach about criteria or evidence or analysis or whatever it is that you're having them do.
Jared:What do they need before they get to that assessment to make that type of judgment independently without you helping them? Like when they're able to step out and do it on their own. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
Rob:I I have a little bit of an aside here. Sure. Because you and I have had this conversation before our recording of this. And one of the things that you you said to me was, you know, content should follow the verb Yes. Only.
Rob:Yes. Don't teach things that don't move you Yes. Onto those objectives or onto those verbs that don't facilitate that. And, you know, you made a bold statement. You're like...
Rob:I sure did. You wanna tell our audience what your bold statement was or shall I?
Jared:I mean, you can... You say it, and I'll respond to
Rob:my own statement. Basically say whether I'm I'm repeating it accurately. Yeah. Anything not taught that doesn't lead to that assessment of the outcome that you've already established is a waste of time.
Jared:Oh, I didn't say waste of time, good sir. But I did say... Oh, you... I saw that. For those...
Jared:This is an audio podcast. Rob winked at Ryan. This is all an elaborate setup. They're gonna say the f one movie is great next. No.
Jared:Here's the accurate statement because you you make me sound worse than I
Rob:am. Or maybe I purposely said it
Jared:that You You did say it that way on purpose. Anything you present to your students should be working towards an objective slash assessment. Yeah. Anything else that's not serving either the objective or the assessment because they're basically the same thing. However you wanna say it, you should not be teaching it even if you really like it.
Jared:And the reason I brought it up today is because I had to make a hard decision in my intro to literature class. We are starting Macbeth on Wednesday.
Rob:One of your faves.
Jared:Love... Number one, I love Shakespeare. Number two, I love Macbeth. And there are certain things that I had to leave on the cutting room floor of my lecture because I didn't have time and it didn't serve the objective. And that hurt.
Jared:Oh, it hurt because I could have spent all week on it. But there are certain things I want them to be able to do, boom, this. I want them to be able to apply the foster chapters we are using to these specific moments in Shakespeare's Macbeth so they can see those connective tissue that flows all the way through literature that Foster is bringing to light. That means I had to leave stuff out, like, you know, Shakespeare wrote this way, or he he wrote in iambic pentameter, but he didn't use iambic pentameter as much, and this because of this, this, this, and this. He actually wrote in a different type of rhyme scheme and rhythm for this purpose, and I had to leave that stuff out, which means then I can't talk about it when we get to it.
Jared:But it's a choice that I I made, and I have to refrain myself. I have to miss that entire three pages of notes I have on that and why it's so important. Mhmm. Because it doesn't fit the objective. And that's hard.
Jared:And I've honestly thought about... This is how how much I wanna teach it. I've thought about recording, like, a podcast of just me talking about it and putting it on Canvas and say, if you wanna watch this, sure. It has it has nothing to do with the test, the assessment, the essay that you're going to do. I just need to get it out of my head because I love teaching it.
Jared:And if you like Macbeth like I do, maybe you'll like this too. If not, I don't care. That's fine.
Rob:Ancillary material.
Jared:Yeah. Supplementary stuff. Yeah. You know? You don't get bonus points for listening to it.
Rob:But you might find it helpful.
Jared:You might find it helpful. It may it may help with the enjoyment of the literature. You know? So...
Rob:Well, and I think that kinda leads us to another another part in this, which is when we talk about AI resilience, you know, you talk about working from... I think you mentioned Foster. You know, I think we both would agree that's a fairly good authoritative base Yeah. To be working from
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:To accomplish the goals that you have.
Jared:I should... We should say with Foster. We keep saying Foster. I get in trouble with this with my students too. It's the...
Jared:It's a textbook. It's called How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Right. The author is Foster. Anyway.
Rob:We'll have a link to this in the show notes for
Jared:those who
Rob:are interested.
Jared:Great book.
Rob:Yeah. But I think that goes back to this whole idea of AI resilient resources though is that you could use AI to help students who come into the class because we talked about those verbs like evaluate Yep. Who are supposed to have certain things when they come in. You can use authoritative sources and create chatbots that can act as tutors for them Mhmm. That will only answer in questions socratically.
Rob:So this is be an AI resilient way that you could approach a resource for students where instead of you having to feel like you've got to stand up when you find out from one of your assessments early on that, oh my goodness. Mhmm. They don't know what they should have known before they got in here.
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:And maybe that's just a good practice in general is don't assume or assume that they know nothing. Yeah. Mhmm. And in that case, create these kinds of tutors where it could potentially fill the gap for them. But I think it goes back to making sure that you have authoritative material that one students can access and see for themselves, but then you can also use that in any kind of AI tool that that you might give.
Rob:So that also then asks the question, then what should you do? I mean, when you think about it, because I know you use AI. Mhmm. Like, when you think about writing a tutor, what do you do in terms of, okay, what what do I need to make sure that I relate to students? Mhmm.
Rob:Yeah. And what what needs to land, say, in this tutor bot that I create for him?
Jared:I would say for me, the AI, if I were to create a bot like a tutor for example, I would treat it like a TA. So I'm the one that presents the material first. There's nothing new that the bot should be teaching. It just reinforces. So, like, example, we do...
Jared:I teach them through Niebuhr's Christ and Culture. We do, ways to respond to literature through a biblical worldview. So affirm, reject, and transform. And I am the one that we have that discussion in class together. I've introduced the model to them first, the framework, and then we reinforce it in class.
Jared:And then if I were to create a bot, I've and tried, I tried to do this in the past, it would help them get to the conclusion themselves. What can they accept? What can they reject? What can they transform from a certain text or whatever it is? And it's just providing the connective tissue.
Jared:Cause sometimes, you know, especially with... I I think there's value in using a bot like this, especially in my case when a student's like, there's a passage somewhere that says this. And they can plug it into the bot and say, okay, this is my text. This is, for example, this is... We're reading To Build a Fire by Jack London.
Jared:And I know there's some scripture in there about man having dominion over creation, but I can't remember where it is. Can you point to where it is? And the bot can go, oh yeah, try this or this or this.
Rob:Mhmm.
Jared:Just as a resource. So that's why I think that's why I would use it because I still want to, remind me of Barb Oakley where we talked about... She mentioned guardians of knowledge. Mhmm. Where we're the ones that present or hold fast to presenting knowledge to students, and they're the ones that are the...
Jared:Need the ones that hold fast and capture it. And using a bot as the guardian of knowledge or presenting new information is not something I'm a fan of. It should serve as a supplementary role and be a support or resource or reinforcer like a TA would. So that's my thoughts on it.
Rob:No. And I think that's fair. I think folks are gonna have different different approaches to this. And ultimately, what you have to do is validate. Yep.
Rob:And I think that's what, you know, doctor Oakley was also referring to when she said we're guardians of knowledge is that the bot doesn't think validation. Now you can send it through some validation loops and I... We don't have the time today for me to talk about how to use validation loops with with AI. But if you want to go out and do some research on that, you most certainly can. I would highly recommend it.
Rob:This is one of those things I have to lay aside, like you said earlier. Love to talk about this one. Mhmm. But ultimately, we have to, one, show this for our students. We have to model this for our students, and then also help them to utilize it as well.
Rob:And this is where I think using AI in that way and forcing them to validate through through resources that you have said and evaluated yourself because you're a professional in that area. Right. You can't put a price tag on that. Yep. We have to be doing this as teachers.
Rob:So I think it's not really changed, to be honest. No. I mean, if you really think about it, it hasn't changed, but we've got to get back to judgment, having accurate judgment, one of our resources, and not be one in terms of just trying to fend off the wiki the wiki world or or whatever's new and coming around the bend where we just find ourselves trying to insulate ourselves from what our students use. But instead of saying don't use that, we need to say, how can you validate your usage of it? Right.
Rob:And so we need to model that in the resources that we choose, and I think that also lends itself to AI resilience. Mhmm. So, you know, it goes back to modeling the decision. Let students try a related decision based on the resources that you give them, and then you you need to give feedback. Mhmm.
Rob:There needs to be some point in this process where you're giving them feedback, not just the bot, but you.
Jared:Yeah. Something that's interesting about this whole thing is part of that as well is considering what AI replaces. Part of the discussions we're having at the... As part of a board at a STEM school here in the area is we're developing an AI strategy as far as what students can do and what they can't do. We have like an AI restricted, AI scaffolded category and stuff like that.
Jared:One of the terms that showed up is degenerative offloading, which is a term in the literature where we delegate core intellectual tasks to AI instead of us doing it ourselves. Whereas degenerative offloading, where we're just like, I don't wanna think about this. Let's have something else do it for us. And what are the things instead that are... The other term was productive cognitive offloading, where we use AI as a thinking partner instead of it just being like, I don't wanna write this paper.
Jared:I'll just I'll just push it off, and it's called degenerative offloading. We're just like, meh. I don't need to think. You know what I mean?
Rob:So yeah, it sounds like most of society.
Jared:Yeah. It does feel that way. Doesn't it? But so we're, I mean, let's think about that when we talk about usage of generative AI, when it comes to, and this goes for assessments too, but like, especially when we're talking about content now. What is it about AI that we can add to our content that is productive, cognitive, and it's not necessarily degenerative of using the term?
Rob:AKA making us dumber. Yeah.
Jared:In other words. I mean,
Rob:when did the term come about? Degenerative cognitive offloading.
Jared:The degenerative offloading is in 2026 and 2025 based on the literature that I have. I'm too short
Rob:to that you should go back further. I mean, because Oh, yeah. There are plenty of there are plenty of examples of this even way before AI. Mhmm. Like, I remember some of the issues that were around video games Yep.
Rob:Way back when when I was growing up. But I never heard that term.
Jared:Like, I
Rob:was too young probably to hear that term. But gen... Genuinely speaking, having reviewed a lot of educational literature over the years, I I have not run into that term until you just
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:You know, mentioned it here live on the podcast. It seems it seems a loaded a loaded term. And I think assumptions there too of... Because I I would say there are lots of things that could actually fall into that category. Mhmm.
Rob:Like mindlessly scrolling. Yep. You don't you don't need AI to degenerate your brain that way.
Jared:Don't. Although AI is using that for scrolling.
Rob:Right. Right. And making sure that you're scrolling. You wouldn't say you need to make sure you're scrolling the right things. You know, doom scrolling where you just...
Rob:You don't know why you're doing it, but you just keep doing it. And then you, like, wait a minute. I shouldn't do this. And you you stop and you flip your phone over and then you're sitting there and you don't know what to do with yourself and you pick it up and you
Jared:Do it again.
Rob:You do it again. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting term. I think we'll...
Rob:We should get back to that one at some point. Yeah. But I do agree with the fact that you should be using it. Well, any tool that you use should... It either is going to build up or it's going to tear down.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:I don't disagree with that. Right. And any use that we employ AI in in terms of being resilient, that's what's in mind for me anyway. Like, you need to be able to identify those things and identifying core competencies, like what we're doing here at CU is extremely important Mhmm. There as well.
Rob:So, you know, what are those? I wouldn't put all my eggs in the AI resource basket. So I wanna make sure that I'm being even handed here. Do I use it? Most certainly.
Rob:But it's going to depend on what I'm actually trying to get accomplished, and that's gets right back to what we've been talking about. And if you go back to that verb Mhmm. You figure out what is it you want the student to do, not what you want AI to do.
Jared:Yeah. That's important.
Rob:That's extremely important. And here's the here's the hard million dollar question that I think faculty really have to wrestle with. Let's just be honest. Some of the things that we put out there that we say people need to do don't need to be done. Yeah.
Rob:And that is a hard conversation to have sometimes, especially when it comes to, you know, Shakespeare's not using iambic pentameter
Jared:Yeah.
Rob:I know. In Macbeth.
Jared:There is room for that somewhere, just not
Rob:There is.
Jared:Intro to lit class on
Rob:my end
Jared:because there are certain things.
Rob:But an intro to lit... Right. If you were actually doing a course on Shakespeare, exploring Shakespeare
Jared:That would be amazing.
Rob:Then you would most certainly need to have that conversation. Yeah. Students would most certainly need to know that information.
Jared:Yes.
Rob:And I think it's just making sure that you're keeping things bound. So, you know, I always go back to it, objective and assessments and what you said earlier. This can help us where we can use AI in our resources, whether they be, you know, tutors to help students get to where they should be at that point in your class, but not offloading, as you said, the degenerative cognitive offloading in terms of, especially, the key issues that you're dealing with in your course. And we're gonna be bringing this to the lab We are. Next time.
Jared:We are indeed.
Rob:Very excited. Doctor Trent Rogers. So I'm I'm, like, looking forward to seeing how he responds, what he's already done because I think he kinda tipped his hat in his hand in in the last lab episode that we had in terms of assessment as to how he gets that done.
Jared:I'm looking forward to having Doctor. Trent Rogers with us back in the lab in our next episode.
Ryan:Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If have you any questions or comments about our conversation on resources today, feel free to reach out to us at CTLPodcastcedarville dot edu. You can also connect with us on LinkedIn. And finally, don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.