Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Lucy Appert, Senior Director of Teaching Excellence & Innovation at NYU Arts & Science, and host of the new NYU Office of Teaching Excellence and Innovation’s podcast, What Learning Looks Like. As an academic with 25+ years of teaching experience and a deep commitment to student-centered practices, Lucy shared with us her insights on what learning truly means in an age of AI-driven "efficiency."Together, we discuss a key problem in higher education: while educators may accept the messy, developmental nature of learning, students are being marketed an idealized reality where AI-supplemented education is frictionless and instantaneous. The What Learning Looks Like podcast offers a counter-messaging to this misleading EdTech and AI marketing. Instead, true learning involves struggle, synthesis, and personal transformation. Lucy also challenges one of higher education's most persistent “Dead Ideas”: that we cannot change. From pandemic pivots to new faculty communities exploring AI in the classroom, it is clear that higher education is very capable of fluctuation and change. Explore the What Learning Looks Like podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-learning-looks-like/id1839490516 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-learning-looks-like/id1839490516) Other materials referenced in this episode: Learning Objectives & Bloom’s Taxonomy (https://business.columbia.edu/samberg/teaching-strategies/learning-objectives-blooms-taxonomy)

In this episode, we talk with Mike Whitenton, Director of Academic Initiatives at Interfaith America (IA). Mike works at the intersection of rhetoric, religious narrative, and cognitive sc...

Welcome to Season 11! In our opening episode, we sit down with Karen Costa, a faculty development facilitator specializing in online pedagogy, trauma awareness, and course/community design. Our conversation focused on her forthcoming book, An Educator's Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success, to be published in January 2026. In this conversation, Karen challenges educators to rethink how we frame ADHD in the classroom. In reframing ADHD as a normal variant of the human experience rather than a disorder to be corrected, we can avoid ableist language that undermines our pedagogical aims in the classroom. Karen also shared practical strategies for supporting ADHD students, including offering multiple assignment formats and providing clear task lists and deadlines. Both of these approaches strike a delicate balance between creative freedom and helpful constraints in course design. Throughout our discussion, Karen reminds us that reducing shame in the classroom and celebrating students' diverse strengths may be the most powerful tools we have as educators.Learn more about Karen Costa’s work in her forthcoming book:Costa, K. (2026). An Educator's Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success (https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/53916/educators-guide-adhd). Johns Hopkins University Press.Other materials referenced in this episode include:Costa, K. (2020). 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos: A Guide for Online Teachers and Flipped Classes (https://www.routledge.com/99-Tips-for-Creating-Simple-and-Sustainable-Educational-Videos-A-Guide-for-Online-Teachers-and-Flipped-Classes/Costa/p/book/9781642670851). Routledge. Karen Costa’s website: https://www.100faculty.com/ (https://www.100faculty.com/)

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Robert Gray, Associate Professor of University Pedagogy at the University of Bergen in Norway, to explore a fundamental question about the purpose of higher education: should learning be an act of consumption or production? Maybe the best learning experiences don't simply ask students to absorb information—they invite students to actively re-write and co-create knowledge with the teacher.Dr. Gray's research draws on Roland Barthes' concepts of "readerly" and "writerly" texts, arguing that valuable learning happens when students are encouraged to "re-write" their classroom materials and become active producers of meaning. We discuss how students bring diverse perspectives and contexts to shared texts and lectures, creating something new and innovative from the materials we provide. As educators, we are challenged to foster an active, collaborative campus culture where learning becomes genuinely additive and co-creative.Learn more about Dr. Gray’s research in his article: “Learning Is [Like] an Act of Writing: The Writerly Turn in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391383875_Learning_Is_Like_an_Act_of_Writing_The_Writerly_Turn_in_Teaching_and_Learning_in_Higher_Education)”Other materials referenced in this episode include:Barthes, R. (1975). The pleasure of the text (https://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Text-Roland-Barthes/dp/0374521603)(R. Miller, Trans.). Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1973).

This week, we have two guests on the podcast. We’re joined by Gene Flenady, Lecturer in Philosophy at Monash University, whose research concerns the structure and social conditions of human rational agency, including the implications of new technologies for meaningful work and tertiary pedagogy. Our second guest is Robert Sparrow, Professor of Philosophy at Monash University. His research interests include political philosophy and the ethics of science and technology with an eye towards real-world applications. Flenady and Sparrow argue that GenAI systems are "constitutively irresponsible" because their algorithms are designed to predict what "sounds good" - not necessarily what is true or contextually appropriate. Our guests suggest that it's unfair to expect learners themselves to determine when AI is wrong or misleading. Doing so puts students in an impossible position and gets in the way of building meaningful relationships with their human teachers and the pursuit of lifelong learning. Learn more about Drs. Flenady and Sparrow’s work in their article: “Cut the bullshit: why GenAI systems are neither collaborators nor tutors (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13562517.2025.2497263)”Other materials referenced in this episode include:Frankfurt, H. G. (2005). On bullshit (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691276786/on-bullshit). Princeton University Press.