Ways We Learn

Eric Hudson is serious about creating meaningful learning, and his recent work has focused on AI in education. He says:

“How we frame AI for ourselves as educators will affect how we frame it for our students, and I believe strongly that how we talk to students about AI will have a lasting impact on how they see its role in their own lives.”

A few of our conversation topics:

• Students want to produce authentic and meaningful work (not just use ChatGPT for cheating).
• AI can serve as a tool for sparking ideas and offering 'positive friction' in the thinking process, ultimately enhancing the quality of student work.
• We should reimagine AI technologies as academic assistants rather than solely cheating mechanisms.
• AI has potential to empower students and enhance their work.

Eric is a facilitator and strategic advisor who supports schools in making sense of what’s changing in education. He specializes in learner-centered assessment, human-centered leadership, and strategic program design. Most recently, Eric spent a decade at Global Online Academy (GOA), first as an instructional coach and ultimately as Chief Program Officer, working with schools around the world to rethink where, when, and how learning happens. Prior to GOA, he spent 12 years in the classroom, where he developed his passion for designing learning experiences. Eric serves on the board of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools (ATLIS) and writes the newsletter "Learning on Purpose" on Substack.

Highlights:

• 02:17 Eric’s Journey in Education and AI
• 03:43 Defining AI and Its Impact on Education
• 05:10 Exploring the Spectrum of AI in Education: From Skepticism to Empowerment
• 09:24 Navigating Academic Integrity and the Power of Productive Struggle with AI
• 12:30 Benefits of AI
• 18:42 Redefining Assistance: AI as a Tool for Enhancing Learning
• 21:39 Assessment in the Age of AI: Rethinking Educational Goals
• 23:16 Exploring AI in Education: A Model for Learning
• 24:01 Positive Uses of AI in Classroom Settings
• 24:13 AI as a Catalyst for Inquiry-Based Learning
• 25:23 AI in Language Learning: Bridging Gaps and Building Tools
• 26:35 Integrating AI into Academic Content
• 27:46 The SAMR Model: Revisiting Educational Technology Frameworks
• 28:29 AI and Creativity: Enhancing the Brainstorming Process
• 33:39 Addressing Concerns: AI, Copyright, and Equity
• 37:24 Strategic AI Integration: Policies and Flexibility for School Leaders
• 39:48 Concluding Thoughts on AI's Role in Future Learning

Links and further reading

Everyone’s talking about AI these days, but it’s not that often that you get to speak with someone who can really pull back the curtain on how the future of AI is taking shape.

But that’s why you listen to Ways We Learn, isn’t it!

Claire Zau is a Vice President at GSV Ventures, an early stage edtech Venture Capital firm at the forefront of transformative technologies that are shaping the future of education and work. Some notable early investments from GSV are Coursera, Classdojo, Degreed, Guild Education and many more that you’d recognize if you’re in the education space. Claire spends a lot of her time at the intersection of AI & education startups, and writes a weekly newsletter on Substack that you should check out (it’s linked below). She has a B.A. from Stanford and an Masters of Education from UPenn’s Graduate School of Education.

We discussed the dynamics between incumbents and new ventures in the field of AI, the potential of AI deployment in educational spaces, retention and adoption rates of AI-enabled tools, the importance of user experience in AI applications, emerging trends in AI such as multimodality and personalized AI models and ethical considerations, and a lot more!

• 00:54 Introduction
• 02:15 Claire's Background and Interest in AI
• 03:35 AI in the Education Space: Current Trends
• 08:20 AI Tutors and the Challenges of Differentiation
• 10:42 AI and Privacy Concerns in Education
• 13:36 The Future of AI in Education: Predictions and Opportunities
• 19:25 AI and the Transformation of Video Content Creation
• 24:21 Navigating Privacy and IP Rules in AI
• 28:11 Adapting to New Educational Technology
• 28:24 The Rise of EdTech and AI in Schools
• 28:48 Differentiating Effective EdTech Tools
• 29:07 The Importance of Product Retention and Stickiness
• 29:49 The Role of AI in Lesson Planning
• 30:42 The Trend of Premium AI Products
• 31:11 Understanding Good Retention Numbers
• 32:54 The Future of Corporate Learning and Development
• 33:17 The Advantage of Incumbents in EdTech
• 34:00 The Emergence of Knowledge Search Platforms
• 35:23 The Potential of Personal AI Assistants
• 40:40 The Future of AI in Education

Links and further reading

In our latest episode, Joe, Sean, and Brian welcome James Genone, former Head of Innovation at Minerva Project and now Head of Product and Operations at Atypical AI.

James shares his perspective on integrating AI into education. He discusses Minerva University's approach to adopting AI, highlighting its potential to take on the labor-intensive parts of education such as grading and providing consistent formative feedback, and emphasizing that the role of human guidance will still be important. He forecasts the future of AI in education, applauds its potential advantages, and shares his views on the challenges the industry may face. The conversation also explores how AI can help improve a student's learning and overall educational experience, and discusses the importance of familiarizing oneself with AI. And along the way we learn more about the unusual and innovative Minerva University.

From 2015 to 2023 James led product strategy for Minerva's academic partnerships, overseeing general education and curriculum development. He was formerly a philosophy professor, teaching and conducting research in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

00:54 Introduction and Background

01:46 James' Journey into Education

03:05 Transition from Academia to Minerva

04:39 Understanding Minerva's Vision and Approach

06:49 Exploring AI and its Potential in Education

09:42 The Impact of Generative AI on Education

10:15 The Role of AI in Higher Education Strategy

13:05 The Future of AI in Education

15:57 The Role of AI in Minerva's Education Approach

19:32 The Challenges and Opportunities of AI in Education

31:18 Getting Started with AI in Education

32:55 The Speed of Learning Generative AI

34:41 The Power of AI in Education

36:14 The Limitations of AI as a Tutor

43:27 The Future of AI in Education

55:11 The Role of AI in Writing and Thinking

58:30 Wrap-up

01:01:30 Bloopers!

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Yusuf Ahmed is a former MIT Media Lab researcher, and for education geeks like Sean, who taught kids to code, he was part of the group that invented both Scratch and LEGO Robotics. And if you're not an education geek, both of those platforms are used by millions of kids as accessible ways into computer science.

He was also part of the founding team of ALU, a pan African network of universities and bootcamps, and Yusuf is currently the VP of New Products at the Reinvention Lab at Teach for America, an accelerator where he supports the work of innovators, new school models, and startups. And so today we're going to get a retro on African Leadership University from Yusuf: the thesis behind it and how it grew from one campus to a huge presence across Africa.

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🧠 Students' brain waves synchronize with their teacher's when they're learning. 🧠

🤗 Feelings of belonging and connection are essential in a safe and productive classroom. For students who feel out of place, a 😊 from the teacher reads like a 😏 and can set off their fight or flight response!

Mark Williams, a neuroscientist, professor, and author of the just-published book “The Connected Species,” joins us to speak about these and other thoughts about human connection and its implications.

Links and further reading

Did you know there’s a degree-granting university system for our armed services that’s separate from our traditional colleges and universities? Today we have the good fortune to learn about our military’s higher education system by speaking with a professor who teaches “lawfare,” or the use of law as a weapon, to our up-and-coming military leadership.

As an experienced mother of two young adults, Sue Groner knows how stressful and overwhelming parenting can be at times. She founded The Parenting Mentor to provide an ally for parents in their quest to raise confident and resilient children. In today’s Ways We Learn, Sue shares her approach to mentoring parents and some of her strategies for producing great kids.

Sue is the author of Parenting with Sanity and Joy: 101 Simple Strategies, the host of The Parenting Mentor Sessions Podcast, and a certified Positive Discipline parent educator. She is also the creator of the CLEARR™ method of parenting, developed through years of trial (and, as she says, her fair share of errors!) with her own family.

Links and further reading

Caleb Hicks was the Co-Founder and President of Lambda School, where he designed and oversaw the entire academics process including admissions and student onboarding, learning experience design and delivery, as well as student services and community. In this retro he shares his learnings from building and running a well-known bootcamp.

Prior to Lambda School he was a Senior Manager of Instructional Design in the Worldwide Education Department at Apple, and he's now the Founder and CEO of SchoolAI (https://schoolai.com/), where he's building AI powered tools for schools such as a digital assistant called Coteacher that saves teachers 10 hours or more of planning time each week.

Links and further reading

In this episode we’re going to play. Or at least talk about play.

Play is usually not seen as serious work (it’d be called work if it was!), but today we’re speaking with someone about the importance of play in adult learning and work.

Mary Hendra is an executive leader and entrepreneur who brings curiosity, creativity, and compassion back into the workplace and into our spaces of adult learning. Redefining “play,” she engages equally with moments of serious reflection and playfully letting go of assumptions about ourselves and others. She embraces kinesthetic and visual processing along with the verbal. This creates space for teams and individuals to grow in curiosity and innovation, to open dialogue, and to turn vision into action.

Research has shown that most children who have ADHD have received more than 20,000 negative and corrective messages by the time they turn 10. “Try harder.” “Don’t be lazy.” As a child with not-yet-diagnosed ADHD, Dr. Kristen C. Eccleston heard these herself. After being underserved by traditional education, and after becoming a Special Education teacher, she built a alternative special education program where kids with ADHD and other neurodiversity could thrive.

Dr. Eccleston, also known as The NeuroDiverse Teacher, is an award-winning education consultant, keynote speaker, published author, and mental health thought leader currently living and working in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area. Her areas of focus as an education consultant are K-12 and corporate mental health and neurodiversity engagement. She has worked with thousands of students and families in addition to some of the major global management consulting firms. After more than 15 years in the school setting, Dr. Eccleston left classroom teaching to significantly amplify her impact on mental health and neurodiversity approaches in schools and workplace settings.

Links and further reading

It's Autism Awareness Month. What better way to learn how to support autistic and neurodiverse people than to speak with someone from those communities?

Nate Shalev is a speaker, author, and inclusivity expert who helps to create workplaces where businesses and people thrive. Their expertise has been highlighted in the Harvard Business Review, NY Times, the Wall Street Journal and more. Nate earned a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University and an MA from New York University, and is the founder of Revel Impact, a consultancy that specializes in social impact and diversity, equity, & inclusion.

Nate is someone who has a compelling way of drawing on their personal life and experiences and using those to lead others by example. You should do yourself a favor after listening and check out Nate’s writing on LinkedIn (link is below) because it really will give you a view into their mind ... and give you some valuable information to put in yours.

Nate joined us to talk about building inclusive learning environments that benefit all learners, and we’ll look at that through a lens of autism. Let's go learn something!

Links and further reading

Motivation is a key predictor of student success in any type of class, but as the teacher/student ratio increases motivation becomes even more of a requirement for success. MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) and other online learning experiences are perfect for examining student motivation and self-directed learning because of the low-touch nature of these courses. In this episode, Joe and Sean discuss the research paper "Fostering self-directed learning in MOOCs: Motivation, learning strategies, and instruction" by Meina Zhu, Curtis Bonk, and Sara Berri, which examines intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, self-directed learning, and the instructional elements that support them.

Links and further reading

Societies of our past were frightened by creativity. Did they understand something we don't? 

Today, creativity is prized in all fields. Education is no exception. Schools of all varieties, from Pre-K through adult learning, strive to produce creative thinkers, through exercises in divergent thinking and ideation or even through assessment of their volume of creative ideas. The revised edition of Bloom's Taxonomy lists "Create" as its highest order thinking skill, and teacher education promotes cultivating higher order thinking in students. Students with unique ideas are praised while those who recycle old ideas might even be punished.

Historically, however, creativity has been controversial. Creative writing like Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" brings joy to some but simultaneously creates controversy and even strife with others. Creative breakthroughs in science like Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity help us understand the world but can simultaneously teach us the tools of its destruction. Creative inventions like the automobile revolutionize transportation but simultaneously produce pollution that threatens our future. 

In this episode, Sean and Brian talk with Dr. Michael Hanchett Hanson about the history of creativity, how it should and shouldn't be taught, and why, in his words, "creativity is a dangerous idea."

Michael Hanchett Hanson is a developmental psychologist; leader of the Participatory Creativity Lab (www.participatorycreativitylab.org), a founding board member and Secretary of the International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation (ISSCI); Director of the Masters Concentration in Creativity and Cognition at Teachers College, Columbia University; and President of Contexts R+D, a research and consulting practice.   

He is one of the leading advocates for the participatory framework of creativity. Working with colleagues internationally, he has helped developed the framework, which emphasizes the diversity of roles people take up as participants in change and the limits of earlier views of creativity as decontextualized individualism. He has written on the history of the construct of creativity within psychology; the ideological uses of the construct; creative practices in the construction of the self, and the pros and cons of educators’ use of the idea of creativity.

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The educational term “transfer” refers to a scenario in which the learner is able to apply their learning in a novel context — for example, learning a geometry concept in class and then applying it in a construction project. Transfer is a highly sought-after outcome in many schools and adult learning scenarios, and yet the conditions that make transfer possible are not always present. In this episode, Sean, Joe, and Brian discuss Elizabeth Roumell’s research paper “Priming Adult Learners for Learning Transfer: Beyond Content and Delivery,” which discusses “three practices to support mindful learning transfer” as well as the distinction between information transfer and transformative learning.

Links and further reading

We’ve got another fascinating guest for you today! Garrett Smiley is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sora Schools, an online accredited private school whose aim is to disrupt traditional education by creating student agency and deeply meaningful learning experiences. Garrett has a really interesting educational philosophy and approach to classroom learning and is someone we can all learn from.

Links and further reading

Today we’re lucky to have Darrell Silver, a founder of the very successful online school Thinkful, who gives us a retro of an ed tech startup from launch through its growth through its very successful acquisition. It’s a rare inside look at what worked and what didn’t as a educational startup grew, and a valuable conversation about building an educational organization.

Links and further reading

Storytelling is perhaps the oldest art form, dating back to prehistoric times and likely as far back as the beginning of speech, and has long been a way that people pass on morals and lessons down through the generations. Which is to say, passing on learning.

Come learn about storytelling from master storyteller Rebecca Sheir, host of the wildly popular storytelling podcast Circle Round and a new book called The Great Ballgame. We’ll talk about why storytelling is such an effective learning experience, how stories transcend cultural boundaries, and what Rebecca has learned from telling stories.

Links and further reading

Does cheating matter? Of course it does. But with the assistance of AI tools like ChatGPT, humans can now supplement their own ability to think and write by having a computer think and write for them. Is this good for humanity? How should the educational world adapt? Come learn with Sean, Joe, and Brian about ChatGPT, its implications for education and intellectual growth, and ways it can be meaningfully applied in learning and in life.

Links and further reading

Welcome to “Ways We Learn”! This podcast will be an investigation of the ways people learn across all modalities: through storytelling, through experience, or through games; learning techniques like spaced-repetition; educational technology and computer-assisted learning; learning at scale; adult and career-change education; effective classroom practices and traditional learning approaches; intentionally non-technical educational approaches; educational research and theory; and much more. This episode kicks things off with our thoughts on what we want to examine and gives a little of our backgrounds.

Links and further reading

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