One of my favorite ways to double time on professional development is to listen to podcasts while I commute to work. There are quite a few podcasts in the education space at all levels, from kindergarten through graduate school. I’ve been listening to episodes on AI in higher education, and here are a few that I thought were worth a listen.

General Thoughts about the Intersection of AI and Higher Education 

Higher Ed Spotlight. This podcast is sponsored by Chegg and hosted by Ben Wildavsky, who has been both a journalist and a professor. In season 3, episode 5 from May of this year, he interviews Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor who wrote Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. Mollick talks about several implications of Ai in instruction including noting that the rise of AI may explain some of student disengagement that faculty have noticed. He suggests that students may feel that they don’t have to expose their ignorance to ask they can ask AI for answer. He also suggests that since newer AI models like GPT 4.0 make fewer errors than undergraduates, evaluating for error-free work may not be asking enough. Generally, he thinks AI has brought “Too much discussion and policy debate and not enough demos.”

Tea for Teaching. This podcast from the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at SUNY Oswego features center heads John Caine and Rebecca Mushtare, who interview guests. They cover a wide range of Higher Ed topics, but I found episode 311, Upskilling in AI, particularly engaging. The guest is Mark Watkins, who directs the University of Mississippi’s AI Institute for Teachers. Watkins goes through several food-for-thought topics including the challenges that embedded-AI tools like writing assistants in Google Docs and Microsoft Word present for instructors who want to have a “no AI” policy. Watkins also talks about AI detection, both in terms of tools and in assignment design. He also notes that academics are not the only ones challenged by what AI integration means. For example, what does using AI to complete police reports mean for justice in society. Watkins goes into some helpful specifics about the differences in AI tools and provides references to resources, some of which are free.

Changing Higher Ed This podcast is created by a higher education consultant and targeted more at university administrators. As a rank-and-file faculty member myself, it was interesting to hear some of the ideas in Episode 211, where host Drumm McNaughton interviewed Bruce Dahlgren, the CEO of an EdTech company called Anthology and a trustee at Stetson University. Dahlgren talked about developing AI institutional policies for the academic side as well as for functions like enrollment management. He encouraged higher education stakeholders to see AI as providing options for tasks, rather than replacing them. He suggested that time saved by AI can become more time interacting directly with students.

How AI Might Affect Learners

EdSurge. This organization, co-sponsored by the International Society for Technology in Education and ASCD is a digital magazine that covers education, and also produces this podcast, which is a regular in my listening line-up.  In a recent episode, Khan Academy co-founder Sal Khan sets up his very optimistic vision of the potential for AI as an equalizer in higher education. Khan Academy has been experimenting with custom AI tutoring through a product they call Khanmigo. Khan is bullish on teaching as a profession, but also bullish on the potential (not yet fully realized) for AI to offer customized lessons and practice, offering an interactivity that can possibly be more engaging for students. 

Limed: Teaching with a Twist. This podcast, from right here at the Center for Engaged Learning at Elon, features interviews with faculty doing interesting things around teaching. In season 2, episode 1, host Matt Wittstein interviews Elon strategic communications professor Jessica Gisclair, who talks about some positive uses for AI in teaching, stating “I want to be proactive.” She discusses dense upper-level courses she teaches and how AI might help students get an understanding of the material and to use it as a spark for thought and focus on a topic. She talks about how the AI support might affect student confidence, which could lead to better work.  A subsequent panel included Derek Bruff (Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, University of Mississippi), Jill McSweeney (Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, Elon University), and Gianna Smurrro (an Elon student and Center for Engaged Learning student scholar). Bruff noted that while policies can be helpful, since the technology is rapidly changing, a more dialogue-based approach could work better, particularly when it comes to integrated AI tools. Sweeney talked about several cautionary issues including equity and costs issues and the fact that AI for its own sake may not be productive. Smurro’s student perspective shines in this episode, noting students may encounter AI in internships, which can affect their views and practices when they return to school. Propriety matters to students, who want clear understanding of where AI is and isn’t appropriate. She also noted students are concerned that AI is being used for assessment, and that this practice may be unfair to students.  

How AI Might Affect Instructors

The Cult of Pedagogy. This podcast from former K-12 teacher Jennifer Gonzalez is another one on my regular podcast rotation. In a recent episode, guests Chris Mah and Sarah Levine from Stanford talk about the relevance of examples and counter examples in the learning process and then talk about how ChatGPT (and, I presume, other generative tools) can be used to create hypotheticals with much less work for instructors. Levine notes that an argumentation assignment can be better by giving learners something to argue against. Mah discusses the social aspect of learning. The ability of some AI tools to chat can, perhaps, fake some of that interactive, social aspect. The tools can also be used to differentiate examples for different learners. I like Gonzalez’s podcasts because they often give me good ideas for my own teaching. I was also to see the potential of generative AI to create things like case studies for students to work through before they go into the community for internships, service-learning or global learning.

Truth for Teachers. This is another K-12 focused podcast, in this case heavily focused on managing teacher workload. In an episode from earlier this year, host Angela Watson interviews Dr. Monica Watson, who runs classtechtips.com, about how to use AI to reduce/accelerate your workload. I thought it was really interesting that Monica Watson started with a meal planning example, pointing out that even side uses of the technology that can help with work-life balance. This made me think about last fall when I was teaching first-year students and I brought in several AI “life hack” posts targeted at students; we tested them out to see which ones helped learning. The two Watsons had an interesting discussion about if teachers need to credit AI support they use in creating in assignments and other learning materials and about using the tools for side tasks like correspondence. If you’d like to know more about AI in K-12 workload management, Watson has a new blog post reporting on a survey she did that is pretty interesting. 

About the Author

Amanda Sturgill, Associate Professor of Journalism at Elon University, is the 2024-2026 CEL Scholar, focusing on the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and engaged learning in higher education. Connect with her at asturgil@elon.edu.

How to Cite this Post

Sturgill, Amanda. 2024. “Podcast Episodes with Interesting Ideas about AI and Education.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog), Elon University. August 27, 2024. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/podcast-episodes-with-interesting-ideas-about-ai-and-education/.