Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: Teaching with AI Tools with Rebecca Fordon

Rebecca Fordon unpacks vibe coding and the eight AI teaching tools she built in a single semester on episode 623 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode Vibe coding, I think of being able to describe the kind of application or website that you want in just words, a narrative, rather than having to code it, knowing coding language. -Rebecca Fordon I think the easiest place to start is in ChatGPT, or Gemini, or Claude Code. -Rebecca Fordon Many of my students have not used it for anything related to law school. Until they get into my class, and then they see there actually are some good, legitimate uses. -Rebecca Fordon If you want to mess with things on your own, you can really just ask AI: How do I do that? Where should I look? -Rebecca Fordon Resources Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: One Semester, Eight Vibe-Coded Teaching Tools AI Law Librarians TokenExplorer NPR’s Driveway Moments David Colarusso Lovable Replit Video: Bonni Shows Jon Ippolito’s Connect Random Things Exercise Jon Ippolito’s Connect Random Things Exercise SongLink (Odesli.co) Wolf Worm, by T. Kingfisher Snipd Artificial Intelligence and Human Legal Reasoning, by Bednar, Cleveland, Erbsen, and Schwarcz

Jennifer Wallace shares about her book, Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose on episode 622 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode Mattering says you belong at the table, but it goes even further, and it says you would be missed if you weren’t here. You are adding value, and we would notice if you weren’t here. -Jennifer Wallace We have so much input and so much output being demanded of us today that often we go through life on autopilot. -Jennifer Wallace Mattering is not another thing to add to your to-do list. Mattering is a way of looking at your to-do list. -Jennifer Wallace When you look at the data on what drives performance, it is engagement. And what drives engagement is mattering. -Jennifer Wallace Resources Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose, by Jennifer Wallace Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—and What We Can Do About It, by Jennifer Wallace Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert D. Putnam Jennifer Wallace’s Website Mattering Movement Gallup-Purdue Index Report Nancy Schlossberg’s Transition Theory World Spins Madly On WeRateDogs – This is Sadie. Sign up to be a Mattering Ambassador

David Perry shares about his new book, The Public Scholar, on episode 621 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode Teaching is the most important form of public engagement that any of us do. -David Perry If we are really practiced at teaching, and as we develop our skills as teachers, those are the skills that can also take us into other spaces outside of the classroom. -David Perry Academia is structured around all kinds of failure. Once you recognize that, and then bring yourself into another context where you’re going to experience rejection, you already have the skills to cope with it. -David Perry I think all writers, and certainly in academia, worry a lot about our worst faith readers. How do we not get ripped apart? You have to write for your best faith reader. You have to really shift your focus. -David Perry Resources The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook by David M. Perry Tressie McMillan Cottom Kevin Gannon — The Tattooed Professor Irene Maweu Higher Love Pluribus The Drop Kick Murphys ‘Streets of Minneapolis’: 32 protest songs inspired by the Twin Cities’ ICE resistance The Neighborhood Kids, “Breaking News”

Flower Darby shares about being a joyful online teacher on episode 620 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode Higher education doesn’t do a great job of preparing faculty to teach, generally speaking, that’s not new, but especially online teaching. -Flower Darby If you’re not a meme person, don’t do that. Something that isn’t authentic to your personality is not going to be effective. -Flower Darby Sometimes you don’t need all the latest bells and whistles; you don’t need the latest iPhone. We can be effective with simpler tools. -Flower Darby We can’t be joyful if we’re always working. -Flower Darby Resources The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes by Flower Darby Michelle Pacansky-Brock The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion, by Sarah Rose Cavanagh Dave Ghidiu Denise Maduli-Williams TextExpander Thor: God of Thunder gets a library card A Starting Point for Seth Godin’s Blog Feel Good Inc., by Gorillaz Muddiest Point Handout from Purdue Revitalizing the Muddiest Point for Formative Assessment and Student Engagement in a Large Class, by Amy Mackos, Kelly Casler, Joni Tornwall, and Tara O’Brien Poll Everywhere

Lew Ludwig + Todd Zakrajsek uncover themes from The Science of Learning Meets AI on episode 619 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode We could actually create an educational system. Not so that it deals with the problems we have with AI, but so that those problems are no longer relevant. -Todd Zakrajsek If you don’t have students attention, they can’t learn because if you don’t attend to something, you can’t learn it. -Todd Zakrajsek Keep in mind that you’re the expert. This is your assignment. You know what you’re doing, you know the content, so then you can judge what AI gives you, what works, and what still may need some work. -Lew Ludwig What this gets down to is backward design; we start with the learning goals. We should figure out how to assess them, and then decide if AI fits in that or not. -Lew Ludwig Resources The Science of Learning Meets AI: A Practical Faculty Guide to Purposeful Integration, Student Engagement, and Ethical Practice, by Lewis D. Ludwig & Todd D. Zakrajsek Lilly Conferences: Evidence-Based Teaching & Learning Mary-Ann Winkelmes Transparency in Learning & Teaching (TILT) Higher Education Backward Design The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI, by Tricia Bertram Gallant and David A. Rettinger Caraway Cookware Joy Comes Back, by Donna Ashworth, read by Harry Baker TripIt The Other Side of the Door, by Jeff Moss

Norma Montague shares of her experiences going from awareness to action, interrupting bias in the classroom on episode 618 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode One thing that my work on inclusive teaching focuses on, is really being able to understand your learner’s motivations. -Norma Montague One of the ideas that I learned from a colleague who had recommended a book was the idea of rebranding office hours as student hours. -Norma Montague I think it’s important to help students understand what those student hours are for and how they can get the most out of them. -Norma Montague When students feel safe in the classroom, then they’re going to contribute, invest. That’s when I find that I can really increase their rigor and challenge them more. -Norma Montague Resources Norma Montague at Wake Forrest University Episode 425: Inclusive Teaching with Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom, by Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain Mind over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge, by Sarah Rose Cavanagh Tiny Desk Concert: Mumford and Sons Crucial Tracks Alan Levine’s Cool Tech RSS Feed Mix It Up Scratch Off Date Nights

Teddy Svoronos describes how today’s agentic AI changes what and how we teach on episode 617 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode An AI agent is an LLM that runs tools in a loop to achieve a goal. -Teddy quoting Simon Willison’s definition The process of having a task, write a report, use a tool, web search, and do it over and over again until you feel like you’ve gotten the full sort of spectrum of things—that I think is what an agent really is. -Teddy Svoronos These LLMs are now becoming like this intermediary between me and the actual content. And so I’m optimizing in a different way than I used to. -Teddy Svoronos I think there’s an analogy with these tools that I’ve been thinking of as cognitive debt, which is that as you offload to them, there are things that they’ll do that you won’t quite understand. -Teddy Svoronos Resources Agentic Everything: How the latest set of models changes things, by Teddy Svoronos Course Corrections: Redesigning my course for AI, by Teddy Svoronos Pray, Mr. Babbage, by Teddy Svoronos Episode 590: Deep Background – Using AI as a Co-Reasoning Partner with Mike Caulfield Episode 234: A New Lens for Learning Outcomes with Maria Andersen José Antonio Bowen’s AI Detector False Positive Calculator Episode 605: Teaching with AI – The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Future with José Bowen MacWhisper The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande

Nancy Chick, Peter Felten, and Katarina Mårtensson share about The SoTL Guide: (Re)Orienting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning on episode 616 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode We see SOTL as simply inquiry into teaching and learning for the purposes of improving teaching and learning in context and then contributing to what we know about teaching and learning in support of the broader aims of higher education. -Nancy Chick What I usually say when I speak to colleagues and academics who are sort of starting a SOTL journey is to start small, small steps, and whatever is a low threshold. -Katarina Mårtensson I can’t go through this book and say who wrote this sentence or this section or whose idea this part was, because it really is a product of the three of us. -Peter Felten Resources The SoTL Guide: (Re)Orienting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, by Nancy L. Chick, Peter Felten, and Katarina Mårtensson Human Synergistics Dan Bernstein, Nancy Chick, Pat Hutchings, and Gary Poole Share Strategies for “Going Public” with SoTL Book Resources (Including a Reading Guide) I Lost My Job, by Robin DeRosa Harold Jarche’s PKM Posts A Systematic Literature Review of Students as Partners in Higher Education Drawing Digital: The Complete Guide for Learning to Draw & Paint on Your iPad, by Lisa Bardot The Illustrator’s Guide to Procreate: How to Make Digital Art on Your iPad, by Ruth Burrows The Correspondent: A Novel, by Virginia Evans The Academic Imperfectionist Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students’ Networks, by Janice M. McCabe Poll Everywhere

Matthew Mahavongtrakul and Bonni Stachowiak have a conversation about being kind to our future selves on episode 615 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode Not everything that comes your way is an emergency. Not everything that comes your way has to demand your immediate attention. -Matthew Mahavongtrakul Once you are comfortable with your system and you’re iterating, it actually starts to become second nature, not only to professional life, but to personal life as well. -Matthew Mahavongtrakul An exercise that I did with my supervisor once was to actually go through each of these tasks and to see what I thought was high priority, was it actually high priority for the job that I was in? -Matthew Mahavongtrakul   Resources Karen Costa’s LinkedIn Post About the Ink & Volt Planning Dashboard Notsu Eisenhower Matrix Episode 407: Unpacking Resilience and Grief with Chinasa Elue, Laura Howard, and Este Jordan (they share about each of their “pandemic dirty words” on this episode) Goblin Tools – Magic ToDo Ink and Volt Dashboard Deskpad Gettin’ Air: The Open Education Network with Robin DeRosa and David Ernst, by Terry Greene Asana

Bonni Stachowiak shares how to keep your Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) real simple with RSS on episode 614 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast. Quotes from the episode Rather than get that overwhelmed feeling of how hard it’s going to be to keep up, I don’t have to, and neither do you. Enter RSS, Real Simple Syndication. -Bonni Stachowiak It’s pretty spectacular how, if somebody knows about RSS, and they’ve subscribed to a blog or a website, how you can find people that you have a lot in common with, and get going with your curiosity. -Bonni Stachowiak It’s amazing what happens when, before we start trying to lecture or share information,  we ask people to predict something. Even if they end up predicting incorrectly, there still is that connection where we’ve piqued their curiosity. -Bonni Stachowiak Resources Why Isn’t RSS More Popular By Now, by Bonni Stachowiak Real Simple Syndication, by Harold Jarche Inoreader Unread App The Indispensable Digital Research Tool I can Say, Without Lying, Saves Time, by Alan Levine (aka CogDog) RSS in Plain English, by Common Craft MiniRoll This Cozy Reading Life with Katie Linder The Transformers: Imagining the Future of the Teaching of Writing NASA Image of the Day McSweeney’s Internet Tendency Poll Everywhere