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 week, can I recommend you listen to my appearance on another podcast?

Can AI Avatars Make Class Time More Human?

Jeff Young has been a higher education reporter for a long while now. I think he and I first connected when he was covering educational technology at the Chronicle of Higher Education, sometime around the time my first book came out. Since then, he's covered many different aspects of higher education, but recently he's returned to the edtech beat with a new podcast called Learning Curve. Jeff is bringing his formidable journalism skills to explore the ways that generative AI is changing higher education.

In his first episode, "What Kind of Intelligence Is AI?", he interviewed Mutlu Cukurova, an AI researcher who offered a take on AI that I hadn't quite heard before. Cukurova suggested we think of AI not as "artificial intelligence" but as a kind of "alternative intelligence," drawing some very loose comparisons to different kinds of intelligences seen in the animal kingdom. If we don't think of AI as an approximation of human intelligence but as a different intelligence, it might help us better appreciate its affordances and limitations.

Cukurova also pointed out that when automobiles were first produced, they were designed so that they could still work with a horse since they were functioning as replacements for the horse-and-carriage. Eventually, folks realized that automobiles were a different kind of conveyance so they were designed to be their own thing. Cukurova suggested that we might be in the "still needs to work with a horse" phase of generative AI, and that what AI looks like in 5 to 10 years could be very different than what it looks like now.

I wrote to Jeff Young to tell him I could understand why he wanted to open his podcast with this interview. I also mentioned to him that something mentioned in passing during the interview--the use of AI-generated video avatars of professors--was something that some of my UVA colleagues were experimenting with. I pointed him to Sarah Cochran, senior director of learning experience and digital innovation, who talked with Josh Kim about AI's new roles in online course design for Josh's Learning Innovation blog.

Jeff reached out to Sarah about this and ended up interviewing both her and me for his podcast. You can hear those interviews in his latest episode, "Can AI Avatars Make Class Time More Human?" I think the three of us do a good job exploring when this kind of technology might be useful and when it might be problematic. Sarah points out that it's a lot cheaper and faster to produce an educational video with AI than it is to do so through a traditional video shoot. The AI videos are also much easier to edit and update. But she also shares concerns about how such videos might impact instructor-student relationships, as well as concerns about institutions using instructor likenesses long after the instructor has left the institution.

There's also a funny moment where Jeff is listening so intently to Sarah that she can't see him move on the Zoom call they used to record the interview. She thinks that perhaps his connection has failed and he's frozen, but, no, he's just a very still person when he listens! Social presence mediated by video is complicated.

In my part of the episode, I talk about the importance of instructors "showing up" for students in their on-site and online courses and the fact that "showing up" can mean lots of different things. If the primary way an instructor shows up for students is through online videos, then switching to an AI-generated avatar of the professor is probably a bad thing. But if those videos are just one of many ways an instructor connects with students, some use of AI avatars could be just fine, even a little playful. And, as I blogged about this spring, using AI-generated avatars for simulations, where the avatar isn't meant to represent any real person, is a whole different use case that seems to have some potential.

Thanks to Jeff Young for having Sarah and me on his podcast! You can listen to the latest Learning Curve episode here, or search "Learning Curve" in your podcast app.

Upcoming OneHE Webinar on Teaching Applications of AI Chatbots

I mentioned this in the newsletter last week, but I wanted to remind readers that I'll be leading a 30-minute webinar next month for OneHE. It's called "Not Your Default Chatbot: Teaching Applications of Custom AI Agents," and it's scheduled for Wednesday, November 19th, from 3:10 to 3:40pm Central. Here's the description:

Yes, it's only 30 minutes! And it's free! If you'd like to attend, you can register for "Not Your Default Chabot" on the OneHE website.

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