EP 39 - The Higher Ed AI Solution: Good Pedagogy with Lance Eaton

In EP 39, John and Jason discuss with Lance Eaton the threat that AI-driven "agentic browsers" pose to continue industrialized online learning models, the necessity of clear institutional policies to support instructors, and why good pedagogy remains the best solution to the “AI problem” and faculty exhaustion.

See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com

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Guest Bio:

Lance Eaton, Ph.D. is a writer, educator, faculty developer, instructional designer, and educational consultant based in Providence, Rhode Island. He holds degrees in History, Criminal Justice, American Studies, Public Administration, Instructional Design, and Higher Education. His writing has appeared in newspapers, trade publications, academic journals, books, and encyclopedias. With more than 15 years of experience creating online content—including blogs, a YouTube channel, and other digital projects—his work spans education, technology, and learning design. He has extensive experience working with youth, nonprofit organizations, higher education, and online communities. Connect with Lance at his website here: https://www.lanceeaton.com/ , his substack here https://aiedusimplified.substack.com/, and LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leaton01/

Resources:

• Post: Looking for ChatGPT Teaching Advice? Good Pedagogy is Nothing New, July 19, 2023 by Autumm Caines
• Lance’s appearance on AI Diatribe Podcast.
• NCFDD Workshop “The AIs Go Marching On: Finding Our Way with AI in Education” - https://members.ncfdd.org/finding-way-ai-education-webinar?submissionGuid=b1228e61-a304-42ca-a174-83c92a56a7e5

Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Transcript

We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections!

Cold Open

[00:00:00] Jason: Lance you had brought up AOL - don't know if either one of you knew, but just recently, September 30th, they actually finally stopped servicing their dial up. Just September 30th, 2025.

[00:00:14] John Nash: I heard about that there were some people That were still dialing up.

[00:00:19] Jason: Yeah.

for a lot of our listeners, they don't even realize that, that we use the dial up sound in the beginning of our podcast very intentionally because we were talking about online learning in the second half, and that was an artifact of.

The first half of online learning, we would call it where people had kind of sketchy internet connections weren't able to do a lot, but it was the beginning, you know, as, as we kind of talked about, you talked about Lance starting in online education even in the early two thousands. So, so I wondered if maybe because I, I thought you guys would understand, maybe we take a moment of silence for the, the AOL dial up service.

[00:01:01] Lance Eaton: I feel like there should be a digital bugle.

[00:01:05] Jason: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Playing some digital taps.

[00:01:09] John Nash: Alright.

[00:01:09] Jason: Yep.

Intro

[00:01:10] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason

[00:01:11] Jason: Hey John. Hey everyone. And this is Online Learning in the second half the Online Learning Podcast.

[00:01:17] John Nash: Yeah, we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the last three years about online education. Look, online learning has had its chance to be great, and some of it is, but some still has a way to go. So how can we get to the next stage, Jason?

[00:01:33] Jason: that is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?

[00:01:38] John Nash: I think that's a fabulous idea. What do you want to talk about today?

[00:01:40] Jason: Well, first I want to say it has been three years for the podcast, I think now. Right? But you and I have been having this conversation a lot longer than that now, John.

[00:01:49] John Nash: We have. We have, we

[00:01:51] Jason: We probably first met in 2016 now, so we're coming up on like almost a decade, I think at University of Kentucky when I was there.

[00:01:59] John Nash: Yeah.

[00:02:00] Jason: You were

[00:02:01] John Nash: Yep.

[00:02:02] Jason: 2016, a potential professor as I was thinking about the PhD program and then became my professor and chair of my dissertation study.

[00:02:10] John Nash: Well, I was a, I was a professor. I wasn't a potential professor, but I

[00:02:14] Jason: That's right.

[00:02:15] John Nash: I was a, I was a potential dissertation advisor.

[00:02:19] Jason: You know, don't lock yourself down. I think you have a lot of potential, John.

[00:02:23] John Nash: Yeah. And we were teaching online in that department since 2012. So, with the days of Adobe Connect, oh my God. And Moodle and yeah, all the fun things.

[00:02:36] Jason: Yeah, yeah. And we have with us today, sorry, I don't want to ignore our guests. We have with us Lance Eaton. You know, the bottom line is this is just an opportunity for John and I to talk. Hope you don't mind just stepping in here and listen to us jabber.

[00:02:49] Lance Eaton: To pull some popcorn. Like I, I'm interested why I'm into this hook. Where's the season going? I want to know.

[00:02:55] Jason: You could probably even riff off of like you've been at online learning for a long time, Lance, so we'll get into a formal introduction in a second. But what are some of your earliest memories of doing online learning and technologies and

[00:03:07] Lance Eaton: I, I often talk about, like, I took my first online course in 2000

[00:03:11] Jason: wow.

[00:03:11] Lance Eaton: then I taught my first online course, I want to say around 2009,

[00:03:16] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:17] Lance Eaton: And then started doing instructional design with faculty around online learning in like 2011.

So, it's definitely been, been around the block and, and have been at different institutions from community colleges up to like Ivy League institutions doing this, this kind of work.

[00:03:33] Jason: Yeah, that's good. Well, tell us a little bit more about yourself where you are located, what your current role, what, what you do with yourself.

[00:03:40] Lance Eaton: Gosh. That's a loaded question. So yeah, I'm Lance Eaton. Full-time, I’m senior Associate Director of AI and teaching and learning at Northeastern. And then outside of that I've been teaching part-time at different places like North Shore Community College and College Un Bound for years now, and then I've been doing a whole lot of like, talks and workshops and consulting around AI in higher ed since pretty much like March, 2023. I think I have hit the hundred mark in terms of like talks and workshops that I've been doing.

Just helping and, and thinking and, and working with folks to. Help figure this out. And it's been quite the trip. I'm located in Providence, Rhode Island, just for geographical sense.

[00:04:27] Jason: Yeah.

[00:04:28] John Nash: Yeah. That's excellent. So, so Lance, what are you noticing right now seem to be the experiences that faculty are having on what's working and what's not working with generative AI?

[00:04:38] Lance Eaton: I mean, what is working is what has been working, and I go back to Autumm Caines of like, if you want to figure out how to navigate ai, good pedagogy. And like that, that there's a post she wrote back in 2023, the post is like, you know, the solution to Chat GPT is, is good pedagogy. So, I think that that's one thing is just recognizing good pedagogy is adaptable. It is, it is often thinking relationally with the students. In a lot of what I have been seeing is where there's the most success is also where it's often. And, and this is hard, but it's, its often where like faculty are engaged with students thoughtfully about how to navigate this, these new set of tools that are familiar to some things in the past and also new in certain ways and, and building that trust and that rapport. So I've seen that work really well. Also, like that can, like trying to find, you know, there's real struggle there because there's some spaces that doesn't work as well or it needs something else to move it along. So large enrolled classes, you've got 200 students. That becomes harder.

Asynchronous courses also become more challenging in this.

So, I think I've like, I've seen movement in that space. I think a lot of it is like what assignments are and what they should be, what they're assessing, how that, that gets structured is a lot of the discussion and a lot of the good discussion and, and things that I see people coming up with that get me excited. We're also in this cool moment where we get to figure out what it looks like next.

I know that's hard to like hold onto because we're on this exhaustion wheel. Not just like, not just with AI, but like AI coming after the pandemic, the attack on higher ed and all of

[00:06:26] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:27] Lance Eaton: You know, government being shut down for a month at this point and like the impacts that's starting to have, so like there's, there's real hard things that are settled on our minds, but there is also, there's a way of looking at AI as a, oh, this means we, we are going to have to change and we get to change because we're realizing what I think a lot of what we've done certainly hasn't worked for everybody and at times relied

elements of convenience

that weren't necessarily great demonstrations of learning for, for different courses in different environments. So those are some things just kind of percolating in my, my head at the moment about like where my, where I want to put my attention.

[00:07:09] John Nash: Something hit me because I caught you on the AI Diatribe podcast, which was on recently, and it was your take on how the tools keep changing in these last three years. Tools keep changing the fraught environment around faculty is changing and then AI is changing also, and there's this cognitive demand. This is what struck me that you said was sort of, that's the thing that hit me, that faculty who have already been, and I think you said, I'm, I grabbed a quote here.

"You've already been hamstrung by so many other demands. Having to once again, think about their curriculum, think about how they teach, how they engage with students for like the third or fourth time in five years."

No wonder this is a challenge. How do you work inside that environment?

As we try to help faculty think about good learning design, good teaching and learning.

[00:08:00] Lance Eaton: I think that's a great question, and I don't mean to pat myself on the back, but that, like, that is a really important, that is a

[00:08:05] John Nash: You know,

[00:08:05] Lance Eaton: point of like

[00:08:07] John Nash: it was great.

[00:08:08] Lance Eaton: on faculty and the absence of, of recognizing that. So that's, I mean, when I step into spaces with faculty around this kind of work, that's one of the first things I, I look towards is just validating: this is a lot. We haven't closed loops or come back to do any kind of, like any opportunity to reflect on like what do we want to take out of the deep lessons we learned in the pandemic? And so much of that got thrown away. As a first step, just naming, like, and this is often a slide I'll have where I'm like, here's all the things going on. It's like AI as it is now and then having to think about what AI is going to be in six months. And then it's thinking about, you know, the higher the, the, the larger landscape of the world, all these existential crises.

So that validation, it doesn't cure anything. But it also, lets, lets faculty know they're in a space that gets that. And I think from there it; it's often doing a couple different. Moves that I think are really valuable. One is also helping them connect, you know, its learning, right? So, help them connect prior learning to what they're going to do next.

So, you know, I will jokingly or not, like, make mention of Wikipedia in the Wikipedia war that we were all fighting 15 years ago, right?

[00:09:26] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:27] Lance Eaton: You know, and then do callbacks to like. And we had so many of the same or similar conversations about the internet and what that would mean for teaching and learning. And so, this rightful tension we have with emerging technology and how it impacts our learning, you know, we can always go back to, like, all the way back to Socrates and, and you know, the whole writing thing was, was meh. So, like that is a, that is a perennial thing that we encounter. if they've been teaching for a while, they know that they've found solutions.

And so that's one thing I try to look towards is like, you know, you found solutions, you know, and, you know, you've been able to figure it out. Then I move into like one of the final moves, which is, and we figure this out together. Like you figure this out by trying things and sharing things so much. And again, this is a, this is a byproduct of the time in the world that we're living in is like the isolationist experience of like, you know, more and more, more just on your own, but like sharing with colleagues and finding platforms and spaces to share. And then I'll use that space to also move into. talking with your students, like, I can't, like, we can't figure this out without them. This is one way where I think the technology is different is that it it's potential to be to be helpful or hurtful in the learning space and do so in, like me, you know, many, many different ways does require us to be in better conversation with students because time and again. Like I learned from students new things that help me better use ai, but also how they use it. Like of course we're going to have the folks that are using it inappropriately, if you dig down and build that trust and you help students build a curiosity about how can I use this to support my learning and not bypass it, like. They're going to, they just come up with great stuff, and that's the stuff I want to take and curate and put into my course as like, Hey, here's, like, it's out there, it's ubiquitous. You can't open a browser without finding ai, just like jumping out at you. But here's some useful ways to engage with it. Here's some useful things to do that can help you as opposed to hinder.

[00:11:45] Jason: Mm-hmm. I wanted to say we thought the Wikipedia wars were bad. Wait for the Grokipedia wars.

[00:11:50] Lance Eaton: Oh,

[00:11:51] Jason: That's going to be something.

[00:11:53] Lance Eaton: Oh. That is, I don't, I, that, that, that worries me. Yes. AI and, and, and can feel like very extreme ideology.

[00:12:05] Jason: Yeah. Well, and it just points to the fact that there is always going to be something, right? I think that teachers have not only had this job, within the digital age here of, of re-identifying, recreating their content teaching a different generation of people. I mean, this is, I think this is the job of the teacher ongoing, right?

And I know it's exhausting. And maybe Some of the difference is what feel like grand cultural sweeps are happening pretty quickly in the last five years, right?

[00:12:41] Lance Eaton: I, I think there's, I think there's that, and I think there's, just because of the nature of this tool, and again, I understand why it's happening, but this is, this is what's contributing to it, is a lot of institutions just not responding quickly enough to give faculty and students something. You know, I, I go back to like giving a policy, even if it's the most barest bones policy,

[00:13:11] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:11] Lance Eaton: Gives the faculty clarity. About how they're going to be supported, gives the students clarity or a bit more clarity about like what the institution's stance on it is, and allows the faculty member to still have full academic freedom, but to know that like now that there's a policy, that policy at least frames what the institution's disposition is that they better structure how they're going to work with that within their courses.

[00:13:39] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:40] Lance Eaton: There's still, I, I have not done the count, but I would guess there's still thousands of, in institutions that have no formal policy or have given very limited guidelines that are either like. Just in the Center for Teaching and Learning or the instructional design team's website like distributed once a year ago via email.

And I think to me there's like, that's part of where faculty struggle a lot is like, much do they want to invest? How much time can they give to something? A time in which they don't even know, like they can do, because you can have policy and, you know, you can have policy not interfere with academic freedom and cover things that we know should be covered. Like, you know, stuff around FERPA. You know, those types of things or, or appropriate and, you know, that level of appropriate, inappropriate use. But without that there's a lot of like, I guess this is my policy, but I don't know if my institution's going to back me on, like the decisions I'm making. so, I think that plays into it as well as the, like looking for some leadership and there's, there's a, there's some vacuum there. And again, I said there's a reason for that because again, a lot of the leadership is also dealing with all the political stuff that's going on, all of the now economic stuff that, that's

going on.

So, like there, there's real demand to try to figure out, you know, all these different things.

But I think that's where there, that's what I've seen a lot of faculty

struggling

with.

[00:15:17] John Nash: I wanted to, I have sort of two other things to talk about and then Jason, you've probably got some ideas. One Lance is a little more sort of philosophical and prognostications and the other's kind of practical around faculty development.

So, but let me go philosophical first, because in this, such as learning designers and teachers and faculty have moments, we're in this moment now where there's some discussion about what the presence of ag agentic browsers means for student work inside LMSs and things like that, and there's instructional design implications for that. There's also sort of policy implications for that, and I don't think there's a shortage of discussion in LinkedIn and other circles on Substack about what that means and what happens transactionally.

I wanted to go one step further, if you'll go with me in that if this doesn't get addressed smartly. What do you think the cost is of agentic browsers to higher ed graduates who move into the workforce? I mean, I think, I think about the fact that if a, if a Silicon Valley or a San Francisco company wants to release an agentic browser, this is a company that has coders and product managers and other marketing and salespeople who got degrees somewhere to do that work, and now they're putting a tool in place that may actually undermine the kinds of learning that has to happen so that those people can get those jobs.

Do you buy into that idea and what's, what are your think, what's your thought here?

[00:16:47] Lance Eaton: So, this is a, this is a post that I am, I'm working my way through so I can engage with a bit here. I think like I, I have no have no trust of Silicon Valley to like, they can see it as making a buck, they're going to make it, you know, there's, there's, there's self-justification and we've seen that with the AI of just how easy they want to sell us, all these threats, which is why they need this money to figure out ai.

And so, we don't have the singularity, even though there's a lot more harms directly being done. So, there's like. That piece of it that I, yeah, I have no, I have no doubt. You know, you have folks like Peter Thiel and the like who are investing money to do things that will undermine not just higher education, but like public education.

So, there's like that piece of it. I mean, to me, the thing that I'm, I'm grappling with or, or trying to sketch out in my mind is to, to articulate this, this argument and this concern. So, as I said, I've, I've been, I've been, I took my first online course in, in 2000. You know, worked at, at a variety of places and engaged with lots of different folks and like it is fascinating to me that the discussion board for the majority of courses has not changed in 25 years. The online asynchronous discussion: post once reply twice. You know, and that's not just, it's not all faculty, it's not all courses, but like that still is, a major mechanism of, of interaction and is a very limited method of, of interaction.

So. When I think about that, one of the things that I have seen most institutions, they've been playing this game of, you know, we're offering online learning for access to improve access and learning on one side, and then on the other side, framing it as their money maker. They are framing it as this is the thing we are doing to make income to support other things. And they have made intentional decisions, very business-oriented decisions to cut out all the fluff or whatever they want to, like, everything they to consider is not about the bottom line. And education is not supposed to be a business. It is supposed to be a nonprofit. It is supposed to be an endeavor that not run as a business because it's supposed to be a public good. Unfortunately, because of like neoliberal practices over the last 50 years of in continuingly to dismiss or undervalue this idea of a public good, a thing that we share together, we increasingly lose public services.

We increasingly lose a public center higher ed has, is trapped in this and has seen. It's online learning as that mechanism to make money, and so it has not actually thoughtfully engaged with what. Dynamic deep online learning can be, instead of like how quickly and easy can we do it? And we can see that in the majority of the courses, like, I'm not saying there isn't thoughtful pedagogy.

I'm not saying like people aren't caring about it, but you know, the cookie cutter templated course that dominates the vast majority of online learning. Like there is a way in which we are about to pay, like we are about to pay the tax of privatizing and emphasizing the individual, value versus the communal value as agentic AI emerges.

Because I do really think if we looked at the last 25 years and we really pushed ourselves to not just make it about saving money, but to think about. In this new space, in this cyber space, in all of the tools that have continued to emerge over the last 25 years in this space, like what could dynamic learning look like?

And all we've come up with by and large is, oh, you go into an LMS, right?

You go into a closed environment, then you go into your course, which is its own closed environment. have no real control over that space. It is basically just like you follow all the things that are laid out to you, hopefully. Effectively in a very linear way, and you just complete these assignments and like the same kind of meaning making that happens in face-to-face classes but also happens in other online communities.

I mean, you can go to places online where there is rich meaning making and learning and exchange happening. We forego almost all of that. I think that's what we're about to pay the price for is like we have; we have made it into assembly line. So, when a tool comes along that knows how to maximize the assembly line, I really do wonder how some of the big, massive online institutions are going to navigate it, because I can't imagine.

Just as they've been gaining over the last 15 years. Legitimacy, like every student now that graduates in the last year through the next few years, is going to have to somehow articulate to a degree, like they had to do back in the early two thousands. That, "No, no, no, I really did this work. AI didn't do this work."

Right? Like there was a period certainly in, you know, late two thousands early in, in through the 2010s where it was becoming more legitimate. And I feel like this is the moment where, unless there's a really good solve for that, like we're paying the cost of kind of shortchanging that space as a learning space.

[00:22:41] Jason: Yeah. Great historian, Otto Peters said, even though he was positive towards online learning, said it was probably the most industrialized form of learning.

And I, I think that there's always that temptation because it is such a fantastic platform for just delivering content to people, creating a structure that people can't escape from, and then just delivering them,

[00:23:12] John Nash: Yeah

[00:23:12] Jason: content in this close structure. So, I think that I think that temptation is always going to be there.

[00:23:18] John Nash: You touched on it, Lance. I think I was thinking the same thing. I would hate for my public land grant institution, flagship of my commonwealth to decide that they will just sort of with a wink and a nod, say, "yeah, we'll take the tuition thank you." Because actually this will get the, maybe we'll even, oh my God, I just thought of this, but it's it know I, now I kind of shudder. " We will make our graduation goals now. We'll hit now four years. Instead of a five year, we'll actually get four-year graduation rates."

[00:23:51] Lance Eaton: That, that's a scary scenario. And, and I think that, you know, it's that dynamic of, I've just seen so much of you know that, to your point, Jason, of the industrialized version, like I've kept thinking about over the years, what does the parity of experience online look like? And people, you know, there's, there's a reasonable discourse of like, well, they don't need the same experience because many of them are, are fully involved in their own context and lives and things like that. And there's a part of that I get. But there's a piece of this that is still, I think they're still missing a lot of possibility and exploration. And again, there's, there's reason, there's some good reasons for that. Like accessibility is also about consistency. So, but I feel like that becomes a hammer to then mute out or to just like, not allow for any real creativity in these spaces to occur.

And so, yeah, that I, I do worry about agent browsers in this in the next few years. Because even if they come up with, think, I guess my concern is even if the browsers themselves or the LMSs themselves come up with workarounds, like, I don't know, 10 minutes on TikTok, I'm sure you'll find, you know, using the right hashtag, you will find all the workarounds.

[00:25:16] John Nash: Yeah, definitely.

Cheater's going to cheat.

Yeah. Well, so let's, we'll step away from the doom and gloom for a second and go to the practical, because there are bright spots out there. I saw your National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development webinar. That was so cool. And we will put a link to it in the show notes, What I loved about your webinar is that with several hundred in the room, you still kicked off by saying, I'm going to give you voice and choice and here's three things we could do today, you guys pick which one we're going to do. So, what are your go-tos right now in faculty development around generative AI?

Jason and I are in circles now where we're also kind of supporting our local units. We want to be helpful. What are you recommending now? What are you doing? What are you liking?

[00:26:03] Lance Eaton: I mean it's, I appreciate the, the mentioning of that workshop. 'cause that's something I've started to do regularly. I also did it in a workshop this week where it's basically, I have like three different approaches and I try to think about those approaches of highly engaged, middle engaged and less engaged. And that to me is like part of the larger process of like trying to meet people where they're at. Because again, people are coming in its year three, and for some folks they're just starting to, to think about it. Other folks are much further along like where they are stepping into any workshop, it's good pedagogy to, to allow them agency in that space. also like. It's, it's also me trying to reflect the idea of, we want to be engaged with, with our students. And when we do that, we can surface stuff. So, a lot of the stuff I do now is usually trying to do activities where they're surfacing ideas and information and like helping clarify with one another. I certainly step in and add my, you know, my insights the points that like I've been able to figure out or the things that like I can speak more directly to. But it is often, like get faculty in a room with opportunities to either share their ideas, their questions, or their discoveries. Because, especially where we are now, I think there that just needs to keep happening till there's a critical mass.

I think this is the thing. I worry about it, you know, three years. in there still doesn't feel like there's a critical mass at most institutions of faculty who. Are thinking about it, thoughtfully engaged with it in a way that isn't just, I'm banning it because I'm hypercritical of it, and I understand there's places for that, but I don't know.

I think constraints as opposed to abstinence is a better strategy. And so, I'm not, I I'm still not seeing institutions that have a critical mass of faculty doing that. And it, I Whenever I step into these spaces, that's what I try to make my goal. It's like how to surface the things that are happening to help others feel like they can do something. Because often as an outsider coming in, like I'm an outsider. Like I can, I can give ideas and stuff like that, but it's really their peers that I think are going to be most helpful in, in figuring it out.

[00:28:25] John Nash: Yeah, Jason.

[00:28:27] Jason: Yeah, other than the solution, obviously, to get you to come in and talk to our faculty and meet them exactly where they're at, why do you think this is? Because I, I think I see this at my own institution as well. There's obviously, you know, we're, we've all studied the diffusion of innovation and how, you know, we're going to have those early adopters and so on.

And I'm seeing that for sure. But I really do feel like that I expected us to be further along three years into this and, I am surprised by the number of beginning conversations we're having about AI. Partly because, you know, it feels like the moment this came out, John was texting me about it, you know, and we were, right in there figuring out what this new technology was and thinking about it. Implications for education and then it seems to filled at least part of the content of almost every one of our podcasts since. February 20 So, what do you think from an outsider's perspective or even at your own institution's, what is keeping us from moving forward?

[00:29:35] Lance Eaton: I mean, it goes back to, it's a couple moves I've seen of like, it's the policy piece and then the tool piece. So, like having a policy, gives people a sense of like boundaries, but also a policy without an actual tool to say like, here's our institutional tool, in that it's a legitimate institutional tool.

And so, when I say that like a lot of institutions have turned on like the basic Copilot, and I often, for those of us that are of a certain age, I'll, I'll use the framework of. Saying you're an institution that has turned on AI and you have that basic version of Copilot is like talking to somebody in 2005 who's really excited that they're on the web, you just come to find out that they're on AOL. This idea of like, eh, that's, that's like, again, it's this little cordoned off, quaint piece of, of the internet. So, I do think that that's, the challenge we're navigating is this tool came out, in some ways it's ubiquitous and it's everywhere in three short years, unlike a lot of other technology, which was a longer span of time. But it's still not affordable for institutions to solve the equity piece of they're either working with a version that they know some students are going to be able to buy the paid version and be working with a very different set of tools. And I think until that gets solved, it, it just does, doesn't feel quite as useful. Identifying a tool, but also like having to, to plan for it.

And this is where like I think looking back is there's really good points of comparison. We know all institutions. You know, were, were had computer labs and the internet on their campus instantly. It was a gradual layout. It required, you know, figuring out the funding pipelines. And we know also that like lots of things became more affordable.

So, at one point the idea of giving every student access to like the Microsoft Office Suite was unheard of. nowadays, like you're either getting that or you're getting your Google suite. This robust set of tools, and that's because the price points have like figured themselves out. So, we're stuck in this place where it's, the technology has like become hyper fast and not everybody has access to it, but there's an expectation of access.

So, of that turns into like what does it mean to be in the classroom and trying to figure this out? And I do think it is they,

where they can. Get the most out of this is just having honest conversations in general, but really just looking about and figuring out how is this showing up and being used in the industry, in the fields. Because again, if we look at the internet as a point of comparison, the internet it's changed how every discipline operated. It's changed how every industry operated and changed in different ways. You know, we can be historians without ever having to go now to locations to go into archives 'cause those are archives are made available. And how we engage in archival research is different and understood differently.

So, I think there's, there's something there of like continuing to, to surveil the horizons within their disciplines about what are the real ways this is going to be integrated or going to impact them and using that as a basis of discussion. Like it doesn't have to be just about AI in general. It can just be focused on what does AI mean for history, for nursing, for take your pick.

[00:33:22] John Nash: And kind of seeing that in here we are, as we say, we sort of keep talking about how we're about almost three years in and in the last 45 days in my academic department, we've had the most substantive conversations about what it means to have gen AI in our classes and what we believe about it. And the tenor of the conversations are people who are just now starting to grapple with it along with people like me in the room who've been grappling for 36 months and thinking, and we have some institutional policies, but my colleagues sort of asked like, what should I put in my syllabus and what should I do?

They almost wanted institutional direction, so they could, I don't, I don't want to say that they wanted to stop thinking about it, but it, but they wanted something kind of hard and fast. Like, what do I say and do? And I was maybe to some chagrin, you know, on their part sort of shrugging my shoulders because it's, it's not. it's not that exactly that simple. I can point you to our university's sort of stoplight protocol of a green, yellow, red, and you decide how you want that. But when it comes to, say, doctoral work or in dissertation work, or if you're a mentor to a dissertation student, then what will be your own personal ethos around this?

And the, and then we go, "oh, well that's a bigger issue, isn't it?" " Yes, it is."

And so, part of me wants to ask you what would you say, do these two things on Monday? But also, it's, it's also not always that simple, but you know. Yeah.

[00:34:50] Lance Eaton: I agree, like, it is a deeply personal question of their own teaching ethos, their, their, pedagogical philosophy. and I think that can and should be the grounding. And also, like double checking of is there anything about that that needs to be updated. I was in a conversation recently with a faculty who was still insistent on, like, was drawing this, if they don't know how to do the citations properly and perfectly, like they're not going to be prepared for the boardroom. And I was just like; I haven't been in a lot of boardrooms. But I'm pretty sure nobody is worrying about APA.

So, I think the first thing, Monday morning is recognizing. There may be things they care deeply about that may not be as important, and we're still trying to figure that out.

So, it's not “throw everything out,” but have your own critical eye about what are things you're deeply connected to, 'cause they were meaningful for you, but they're not necessarily as useful in the world we are today. You know, I think about that with, with writing, like physical writing. Some people are, you know, really stuck on that going back to Blue Books and as somebody who writes horribly in my educational experience, right. But my educational experience...

[00:36:10] Jason: there with you? Yes, absolutely. So bad.

[00:36:13] Lance Eaton: my educational experience changed how I was perceived as a student changed when I went from handwriting to the computer. My thoughts are still the same, but how it was perceived, so, you know. Wanting folks to just recognize there's going to be things they may have to let go. And that's hard. That sucks. If you hold to it even tighter some things, you're going to lose more students. So, I think that's one thing. And then the other is like, play with ai. Until it does something that surprises you, that you find is really useful, that just like, huh, and it's not that then you have to go and use it that way, but like that experience and hold that in your head to just understand like why it would be powerful and appealing to others and to help you think about what are, you know, what. If it can do something meaningful and helpful to you, like where else might you be able to transfer that into the teaching and learning that you're doing?

[00:37:16] John Nash: Yes, yes.

[00:37:18] Jason: That's great. Yeah. And we're going to start to kind land this plane here, the. Some of the themes that I'm hearing from today that I'm hearing from you, and you can add anything you want to this, but, you know, we were talking about really, again, coming back to good pedagogy in the classroom.

[00:37:39] John Nash: Yah

[00:37:39] Jason: Just like, you know, we've been talking about this book, the opposite of cheating is learning. The opposite of AI is not. No ai, it's also learning, right? It's good pedagogy. It's, it's not just banning it, although policy could be part of that, but it's also, making sure that we are engaging with our instructors and our teachers on the design side and the teaching side Be having the conversation to talk about how to integrate it and like you were saying here, your example of just getting into it, letting it surprise you, learning about it. Whether, and I was talking to a, a group at Kentucky State Department just a week ago. And I was like, you know, I'm not saying you have to use ai. I'm not even here as an advocate necessarily of you using AI in your job. However, I do think that every one of you needs to understand ai, at least what it can do, what it's doing in the populations that you're serving, understanding sense of. Of not either overestimating or underestimating where it's at in the world right now, so that you can make your own decision on this and maybe something that you just leave behind and don't use, but at least you'll understand, right?

[00:38:49] Lance Eaton: Yep, that's it. Exactly.

[00:38:51] Jason: Well, Lance, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a great conversation. Yeah, we've really enjoyed this and hope to continue to connect with you. I think we all connected with you on LinkedIn was kind of a main place. And what's the best way Is LinkedIn probably the best way for our listeners to keep up on the, the happenings of Lance Eaton?

[00:39:11] Lance Eaton: It would probably be my Substack, the AI+EDU=Simplified Substack that I'm often sharing recent talks, workshops, any materials that I'm building, just I like to put out there for others to draw upon, adapt. It's usually all, all of it is published with Creative Commons License so that other folks can, can build upon and like we can help. This out. So, thank you so

[00:39:36] John Nash: Beautiful. Love that.

[00:39:38] Lance Eaton: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:39:38] Jason: Great. Yeah. Thank you. We'll put those links in the show notes. And for those listening, you can always find our show notes@onlinelearningpodcast.com. That's online learning podcast.com. Always put our show notes in transcript. John usually draws a funny cartoon and puts it in there.

Just joking.

[00:39:57] John Nash: No.

[00:39:58] Jason: in there and

[00:39:59] John Nash: well, now I have to start. Now I have to start.

[00:40:02] Jason: See a sampling of my bad handwriting. We'll just put it all in there for everybody to see.

Yeah. Thank you

[00:40:08] John Nash: Cool. Yeah, Lance, thanks a ton.

[00:40:10] Lance Eaton: Have a great day.