The Opposite of Cheating Podcast (Season 2) Episode 31: Lance Eaton

“Abstinence doesn’t work. Not for drugs, not for alcohol, and not for AI.”

“There’s something deeply dehumanizing about massive lecture halls. If we want human-to-human learning, we need to rethink the model.”

In this Episode 31 of The Opposite of Cheating, Tricia talks with Lance Eaton, Senior Associate Director of AI in Teaching and Learning at Northeastern University and a prominent voice in the ethical use of AI in education. Lance shares his journey from being an open education advocate and adjunct instructor, to one of the first educators to co-develop institutional AI policies with students.

The conversation weaves together personal stories (chicken nuggets, Blockbuster, and fairness), reflections on power and pedagogy, and a deep dive into what it means to “start with trust” in a tech-saturated world. Together, we explore AI literacy, course design, relational learning, institutional policy development, and the hard truths about equity, workload, and educational culture.

You can follow Lance on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/leaton01/

For more on the AI Course Policies he's been crowdsourcing, go to https://aiedusimplified.substack.com/p/ai-syllabi-policies-a-look-at-the

And subscribe to Lance's Substack (AI + Education = Simplified) at https://aiedusimplified.substack.com/

(Disclaimer: episode quotes and summary were created using Youtube's Transcript and ChatGPT and edited by a human. Any errors are the responsibility of the human).