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.
Avoiding AI
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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 matter to you! But I thought I would explain the changing format of this newsletter. I'll keep this week's newsletter short because (a) I'm not 100% convinced Kit will work and (b) I'm busy writing and editing The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching with my co-authors Annette Vee and Marc Watkins. I am really enjoying the writing process with Annette and Marc and our Norton editors, but it's definitely taking a bit out of newsletter prep time. We're aiming for a 2026 publication of The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching, hopefully this summer. You can sign up for updates on the Norton website. Avoiding AIIn the book we have a lot of advice for instructors who decide to engage with generative AI in their teaching and a lot of advice for those who want to resist AI in their teaching. The latter approach was the topic of a virtual lunch-and-learn I led back in November for the University of Virginia Center for Teaching Excellence. The session was titled "Avoiding AI: Strategies for Keeping AI (Mostly) Out of Your Course," and it featured two fantastic faculty panelists, James Wyckoff (education) and Ethan King (English). They shared their experiences directing students away from unhelpful AI use in their courses, and I added a few thoughts of my own on the subject. On the UVA CTE website, you can find my recap of the November session. The recap discusses both why and how you might help your students avoid AI, and it features my current taxonomy of AI resistance strategies:
See the recap for details and some very concrete examples from our two panelists. Educational Advice for Academic LeadersAbout a year ago, I appeared on the Ed Up Provost podcast hosted by Gregor Thuswaldner to share some educational technology advice for academic leaders. Topics included strategic planning around edtech adoption to managing innovation and organizational change to investing in faculty and staff, and I think my advice holds up well. Since I didn't want to feature a guest on the Intentional Teaching podcast over winter break, last week I shared my EdUp Provost interview on my podcast feed. Whether your job title includes the word provost or not, I hope you find the conversation useful. You can listen to it here, or search for "Intentional Teaching" in your podcast app. By the way, if you listen via Apple Podcasts, would you do me a favor and follow the show there? I've learned that follows help the podcast show up higher in search results, so a follow actually does help spread the word about the podcast. Putting Academic Freedom on the SyllabusThanks to a post from John Warner, I learned that the AAUP's Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom has developed some very useful resources for talking with students about the importance of academic freedom and what it means for discussion and dialogue in a college course. Here's an excerpt of the sample syllabus statement the Center developed: Higher education is predicated on the exchange, vetting, and deliberation of often controversial and unsettled ideas. In this particular class, for example, we explore how ...[philosophers address questions of justice, sociologists engage questions of race, etc.]. We are not here to simply express personal opinions or repeat talking points, but rather to engage a set of ideas and research findings that have a long and complicated history and are therefore subject to ongoing debate. Committed students and scholars can, and do, disagree on the topics we will be discussing. For the full statement, along with several other thoughtful resources, see "Your Syllabus and Academic Freedom" by center director Isaac Kamola and John Warner. Thanks for reading!If you found this newsletter useful, please forward it to a colleague who might like it! That's one of the best ways you can support the work I'm doing here at Intentional Teaching. Or consider subscribing to the Intentional Teaching podcast. For just $3 US per month, you can help defray production costs for the podcast |
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.
This week included a quick trip to New York City to share a few thoughts on AI-aware teaching with the editors at W. W. Norton. During their annual editors retreat, they spent some time thinking about AI, how its changing higher education, and what that means for a textbook publisher like Norton. All the editors had read The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching, and it was really fun to hear their thoughts on the book. These are folks who interact regularly with faculty around their teaching, as...
I'm back from my birthday trip to Costa Rica! I visited the Sarapiqui region on the Caribbean side of the country, and I spent the whole time birdwatching. The birding was amazing, and I picked up 71 lifers while I was there! I saw hummingbirds, herons, trogons, kingfishers, toucans, parrots, manakins, flycatchers, and more. I had a couple of really fantastic guides who helped me find a lot of those birds, and I visited some really fantastic nature preserves while I was there. You can see the...
As I type this, I'm on a plane to Costa Rica for a long weekend of birdwatching as a treat to myself for turning 50. I'm going to keep this edition of the newsletter short and sweet, but you should plan on some photos of colorful birds in next week's edition! It's Publication Week! My new book, The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching, co-authored with Annette Vee and Marc Watkins, is now available as a paperback! I received my author copy last week, and I've already heard reports from...