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Intentional Teaching with Derek Bruff

Welcome to the Intentional Teaching newsletter! I'm Derek Bruff, educator and author. The name of this newsletter is a reminder that we should be intentional in how we teach, but also in how we develop as teachers over time. I hope this newsletter will be a valuable part of your professional development as an educator.

Headshots of guests Windy Frank and Sarah Gibson, with their names and the Intentional Teaching logo beneath
Featured Post

Student-designed chatbots, formative assessment for metacognition, and more

Student-Designed AI Chatbots I've heard a lot of different objections from students to bringing generative AI into the classroom, but there was one I hadn't heard until I talked to my friend Windy Frank, who teaches in the College of Bible at Lipscomb University here in Nashville. She asked her students to design custom AI chatbots based on figures in the Old Testament such as Jonah (with the whale) and Daniel (with the lions). Her goal was to motivate students to study relevant primary and...

Hi friends, Many of you know I'm based in Nashville, and we had an epic ice storm last weekend. My power went out Sunday morning and didn't come back on until Thursday afternoon. And I'm one of the lucky ones! There are still 80,000 households in Nashville without power. And other parts of the Southeast were hit at least as hard... I know my friends in Oxford, Mississippi, are struggling. Please send your warm thoughts our way! All that to say, there was no podcast episode this week, and I'm...

Upcoming Appearances I have a few speaking engagements coming up this spring that I thought I would share. One of them is a free webinar anyone can attend, while the other two are for particular audiences. February 6th - "Integrating AI into Assignments to Support Student Learning," a webinar for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System, 9:30am to 10:30am Central February 19th - "Thinking about Thinking: Using Formative Practice to Grow Metacognitive Learners," a panel webinar for...

Students and AI Literacy with Annette Vee How do students feel about generative AI and learning? What kind of guidance are they looking to their instructors for? How can we be understand our students so that we can together figure out how to adapt to a world with generative AI? This week on the podcast, I talk with Annette Vee, associate professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Annette and her colleagues have talked to a lot of students at Pittsburgh about AI, and she has a lot...

A brain diagram shows ChatGPT has replaced core functions of the brain, while a young girl in the bottom right covers her eyes in horror. Degraded imagery of screwdrivers and the words “Control of the Brain” frame the collage.

After switching newsletter providers last month, I'm back to using Kit for this week's newsletter. Kit recently increased the price for their paid plan, which is why I switched to a free WordPress newsletter tool last month. I had tried to downgrade my Kit account to their free option, but I didn't get help from their customer service department until last week. When they finally replied, they were very helpful, so I'm back on Kit to see if their free plan will work for me. None of that may...

AI's Role in Online Learning It was a few days before the event, and I was a little worried. I was hosting a virtual panel in October titled "Take It or Leave It: AI's Role in Online Learning" as part of my work at the University of Virginia Center for Teaching Excellence. The event was part of a series that the CTE was co-sponsoring on online education. We wanted to start the series off with a bang, so we decided to use the "take it or leave it" panel format that's worked well on my podcast....

I'm writing this while on the way home from a two-day visit to the University of Virginia. I'm on staff at the UVA Center for Teaching Excellence, and I was "on Grounds" (as they say) for a CTE retreat. The retreat focused on ways that our center might partner more with students in our work supporting teaching and learning at the university. Our special guest was Alison Cook-Sather, who is an international expert in faculty-student pedagogical partnerships. I only knew Alison from her...

Career Moves in Educational Development How does one move from faculty member to faculty developer? What are the pathways into professional roles at centers for teaching and learning? And why are educational developers so important to higher education with <waves hand> all this happening? This week on the Intentional Teaching podcast, I talk with Leslie Cramblet Alvarez and Chris Hakala about their book Understanding Educational Developers: Tales from the Center and about the state of the...

Highly digitized image of a white man with glasses and a beard apparently lecturing, with pixels spreading out from the central image almost like a cloud of dust around the man. The Learning Curve logo is visible in the lower right of the image.

Programming Note: You might have noticed that there wasn't a new episode of Intentional Teaching in your podcast player this week. I aim for a biweekly release schedule, posting new episodes every other Tuesday. That didn't happen this week, mainly because I'm still catching up on work after being away for a week of fall break. I have a couple of fantastic interviews recorded, however, so look for a new episode in your feed next Tuesday. And since I didn't post a new podcast episode this...

Logo for the Transform Your Teaching podcast featuring a graphic of a light bulb surrounded by head phones

Not Your Default Chatbot: Teaching Applications of Custom AI Agents As I've mentioned here, I've been working this fall with a number of faculty at the University of Virginia and elsewhere who are experimenting with custom AI chatbots in their teaching. So when OneHE reached out to ask me about doing an AI-related webinar next month, I thought it would be a great chance to share some of what my colleagues and I are learning about teaching applications of custom agents! Here's the abstract for...