Tag: Faculty

ACUE and ACE Deepen Alliance, Marking Nearly a Decade of Transforming Faculty Development and Advancing Excellence in Higher Education

ACE and the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) have reaffirmed our long-standing collaboration to continue driving transformative change in faculty development and elevate teaching excellence across higher education. For more information about the updates to this nearly decade-long alliance, click here.

To learn more and register for an Oct. 29 webinar that will feature ACE President Ted Mitchell and ACUE Chairman and CEO Andrew Hermalyn, click here.

If you have any questions or comments about this blog post, please contact us.

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October 16, 2025
Game On: Competitive Gamification in Diverse ESL Classrooms – Faculty Focus

In many diverse English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms, sustaining student motivation can be difficult, especially when it comes to vocabulary learning. Traditional drills often fail to spark excitement, and learners sometimes hesitate to participate because they fear making mistakes or being judged. However, when competition enters the scene, particularly in the form of digital games or classroom missions, everything changes.

As an ESL instructor in Kuwait, I have seen how structured and respectful competition can shift classroom dynamics. Whether learners are battling a “final boss” in a vocabulary game or racing another team to answer grammar questions, their focus sharpens, and their energy rises. Competitive gamification may sound intimidating at first, but when approached with care and purpose, it can help learners take ownership of their progress, laugh a little more in class, and gain the confidence they need to use the language effectively.

This approach is especially helpful in diverse learning environments, where many students experience anxiety from past experiences with English. Classroom games that incorporate competition give students a safe space to try, fail, laugh, and try again. Below are five practical ways teachers can use competitive gamification to increase motivation, engagement, and participation without needing expensive tools or advanced technology.

1. Build Team Identity and Roles

Instead of dividing students into random groups, they can be allowed to form “game squads” with their own team names, mascots, or colors. Encourage them to assign rotating roles, such as speaker, scribe, timer, or cheerleader. This small step transforms teamwork into something more exciting and meaningful for the students.

Tools to try:

• Printed team badges
• Canva-designed team flags
• Whiteboards or Quizizz Team Mode

Why it works:

Many diverse learners place a strong value on group identity and cooperation. Giving students the freedom to name themselves “The Grammar Falcons” or “Team Lightning” adds emotional investment and a sense of fun to the class. I have noticed that when students feel like they belong to something, they participate more enthusiastically, even if they were shy at first. One class even created its own team chant and insisted on saying it before every challenge. This ownership made all the difference in their classroom engagement.

You can also level this up by awarding small points for creativity in team names, collaboration, and encouragement, in addition to correct answers. This shows students that being kind and supportive is as valuable as winning.

2. Introduce Weekly “Boss Battles”

One of my favorite strategies is turning the end of each unit into a “boss battle.” This gamified twist allows students to review the content creatively and energetically. It can be anything from a vocabulary quiz to a speaking relay or even a storytelling competition based on the week’s topics.

In my classroom, students know that Thursday is Boss Battle Day. I would project a countdown timer, play suspenseful music (there are tons of royalty-free tracks on YouTube), and announce the challenge like a game master. Rewards were simple stickers, power cards, or three bonus XP points, but the emotional payoff was huge. Students began asking midweek, “What’s the boss challenge this time?” This anticipation helped them stay focused throughout the week.

Pro tip:

Rotate the type of boss battles you use. For example:
• Week 1: Timed vocabulary puzzles
• Week 2: Grammar challenge maze
• Week 3: “Beat the teacher” quiz
• Week 4: Creative speaking duel between teams

This variety keeps students curious and prevents routines from becoming monotonous.

3. Alternate Between Individual and Team Challenges

Not all learners are identical. Some love the spotlight, whereas others prefer to work quietly. One of the best things you can do as a teacher is to offer a mix of competition formats.

In my classes, I alternate between weeks. One activity might focus on individual competition, such as a speed-based vocabulary game. The next step might focus on team challenges, where groups build sentences together or solve a language mystery. This balance helps every student to find their moment to shine.

This flexible structure especially benefits quieter students. One of my shyest learners once topped a solo Quizizz game and afterward told me, “I finally feel like I’m good at English.” That comment stuck with me because it showed that gamification was not just fun; it gave students a sense of achievement that traditional methods often do not.

Students can also choose their preferred challenge mode. They are given a short form at the beginning of the semester to determine whether they enjoy team play, solo missions, or a mix of both. Then, use this data to design your games in a way that includes everyone is voice.

4. Use Leaderboards Mindfully

Leaderboards can be powerful motivators, but they must be used with care. In my classroom, I publicly display team progress but keep individual rankings private unless a student asks about them. I also avoid using the same leaderboard for the entire semester. Sometimes, I reset the scores halfway through the course to give new teams a chance to rise.

Another trick I use is “rotating rewards.” For example, I celebrate the team with the highest points for one week. Next, I reward the “most consistent,” “most improved,” or even the “kindest player.” This approach relieves pressure on students who may not win the top score but are still deeply engaged and helpful.

Gamified tip:

Instead of grades, an XP system should be used. Students earn points for completing activities, participating in discussions, and helping their teammates. As they reach certain XP levels, they unlock titles like “Word Warrior,” “Grammar Guardian,” or “Team Captain.” These ranks do not carry grades, but they create a game-like progression that students enjoy tracking.

Some of my students even began drawing avatars to represent their progress and decorating their XP sheets with custom designs. These small things can make English class feel like something they get to do instead of something they have to do.

5. Let Students Reflect and Choose

One of the most overlooked yet powerful tools in gamification is student reflection. After each gamified week, I dedicated five minutes to reflection. I ask simple, open-ended questions, such as:
• What did you enjoy the most this week?
• Which challenge helped you learn the most?
• Do you prefer to work alone or in a team?
• Which game would you like to try next time?

Students often provide useful feedback. One learner suggested turning the vocabulary quiz into a timed team relay using flashcards. Another asked if we could create a “mystery box” round where students randomly pull a game task from a box. These ideas helped me expand my toolkit and showed the students that their voices mattered.

Involving learners in the game design process also boosts their motivation. When they help shape their experience, they are more likely to feel invested in their learning.

Final Thoughts

Gamification does not require flashy technology or perfect lesson plans. In many classrooms, where traditional teacher-centered approaches still dominate, the introduction of respectful and playful competition can shift the paradigm. With a bit of structure, some creative energy, and genuine care for your learners, you can transform English lessons into memorable learning experiences.

When competition is used with purpose and flexibility, it becomes more than just a game. It allows students to take risks, build confidence, and feel proud of their progress. Ultimately, it is not about who wins the boss fight. It is about helping learners find their voice and feel that English and their learning belongs to them.

Fahad Ameen is a PhD researcher in Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham and an English language instructor at the College of Education, Kuwait University. His research explores competitive gamification, vocabulary retention, and learner motivation in Arab ESL classrooms. He has also designed gamified vocabulary books and classroom materials for A1–B1 learners.

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October 15, 2025
The Importance of Connection in the Age of AI – Faculty Focus

As educators, we must stay current. What could be more current than Artificial Intelligence? Our students are using this tool at an unprecedented rate, and every technological tool we have is guided by it. We are taking classes to learn how to use it in the classroom and how to teach our students to use it. Grammarly is editing this very article! You are not alone if you feel a bit reticent to jump on the bandwagon. Will it ultimately replace us as educators? As people?

“Artificial Intelligence”. The issue is embedded right in the name: Artificial means not real. Is it here to stay, and can we even fight it? One of our generation’s premier philosophers, Dr. Yuval Harari, said that if we hope to survive, we better fight it (2015). Technology has been hypothesized to be an evolutionary mismatch (Li & Colarelli, 2017). This term implies that behaviors that once supported a species have become injurious. An example of a mismatch is sugary foods. Our nomadic ancestors struggled to procure enough daily calories to sustain life. When they found sugary food, they filled up on it and stored it. In our modern day, too much sugar leads to issues related to early mortality.

Technology can be used as a tool to keep us connected. Unfortunately, it has also slowly evolved into a system that answers every question, educates, and can now act as a companion, moving us slowly away from one another, like the frog in the hot water who realizes too late it is boiling.

The Hidden Costs of Disconnection

What is the cost of this instant ‘answerer of all questions’ and constant companion? It is hard to quantify, but the loss of human interaction is vast and far-reaching. Humans, with their higher cognitive functioning, can live on their own and survive thanks to technology. But should they? The longest social science studies suggest that healthy aging is directly related to meaningful and supportive relationships (Bosworth, & Schaie, 1997; Waldinger, & Schulz, 2023).

Additionally, humans are creatures who are, to simplify, guided by neural stimulation. When we are stressed, or trying to manage life alone, the stress hormone cortisol increases (Doane, L. & Adam E. 2009). High cortisol levels are directly related to inflammation, aging, and many other ailments, and we know that loneliness leads to early mortality (Holt-Lunstead & Layton, 2010). The most efficient home-grown remedy to combat an increase in cortisol is face-to-face meaningful engagement, which will release oxytocin, called the ‘love drug’. Our bodies, meant to be social, will release oxytocin when we engage, which will help to mitigate the system that manages cortisol. Unfortunately, artificial intelligence does not release meaningful amounts of oxytocin, and no pills exist to take because they do not cross the blood-brain barrier (Young-Kuchenbecker, Pressman, Celniker, Grewen, Sumida, Jonathan, Everett, & Slavich, 2021). We are left with the innate and evolutionary need for connection.

If we are to believe Darwin, then the fittest will make it, and most of us know what fitness entails. Fitness is about the mind, the body, and the demands (either placed on you or by you) of your environment. Recent MIT findings suggest that AI has a deleterious impact on our memory and has a high cognitive cost. Participants in the study could not even quote their own work (Kosmyna, Hauptmann, Yuan, Situ, Liao, Beresnitzky, Braunstein, & Maes, 2025).). As we are living longer than any previous generation, our sophisticated society necessitates that we maintain our cognitive fitness for as long as possible. AI certainly appears to be a mismatch in healthy long-term aging.

Educators as Builders of Connection

As educators, our job is to teach the topic at hand along with the soft skills of connection, engagement, community, teamwork, and the power that can be harnessed by more than one mind. Our college-age students suffer the most from loneliness and all the physical and psychological challenges inherent in that experience (Caccioppo & Caccioppo, 2018). In a classroom study, my students investigated loneliness on our campus and found that out of 100 students, 99 of them reported feeling lonely, and it influenced their use of technology (2024).

Artificial Intelligence brings information to our fingertips that might otherwise be unobtainable. It can teach, educate, partner, and save us a lot of time, but we need to learn to use it as a tool and not have it use us. We used to ask questions of experts, older or wiser, which invited connection. Now we ask our device questions, which invites disconnection in that how we phrase our questions to AI will determine the breadth and depth of the answer. In our digital age, the user curates their information (Kjerstin & Wells, 2016). Without another person to offer insight and possible opposing views, the user will often be left with tremendous confirmation bias.

Evolution has taught us that an organism has the best chance of survival if it is connected to others. The Pando in Utah is an ideal example. In Fish Lake National Forest’s 106-acre area, almost 50,000 aspen trees are interconnected with one root system. What infects one tree infects them all. So, how can we help our students connect and use AI effectively while keeping the detrimental effects of AI at bay?

This educator has gone back to a bit of paper and pencil. In the classroom, the students work in small groups that vary weekly on a homework assignment. They can partner for a test and have several out-of-class projects that require a little time to have a conversation. One of the assignments is to record a video of their group talking over a sensitive topic, one that they might not have been comfortable discussing in class. Yes, it takes a bit more time to plan and to grade. However, most of us are teaching a topic that does not lead to a qualifying test or credential so we can afford to cut a bit of material in lieu of helping our lonely students. If the results of the MIT study are to be believed (Kosmyna, 2025), if we don’t do something different, those same students will leave without the knowledge we hoped they would gain or the comfort of connection a classroom can provide. We can do better and need to if we, as educators, are to stay relevant.

Jennifer Smith, PhD, CFLE, is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Kansas State University in the Department of Psychological Sciences. Jennifer received her bachelor’s degree in both psychology and human development from the University of Wisconsin and her master’s degree in counseling from Lakeland University. Additionally, she obtained her PhD in Lifespan Human Development from Kansas State University, with her dissertation focusing on the intersection of technology and relationships. Jennifer is also a CFLE (Certified Family Life Educator) from the National Council on Family Relations. She describes her perspective on all things as “contextual” and approaches her teaching through this lens. Jennifer loves teaching above all else. Her teaching philosophy is “empathic teaching engenders curious learners.”! When not with students, she enjoys traveling with her husband of 30 years, time with her two daughters, serving in her community and naps with her cats!

References

Bosworth, H. & Schaie, K. (1997). The Relationship of Social Environment, Social Networks, and Health Outcomes in The Seattle Longitudinal Study: Two Analytical Approaches. The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences. 52. P197-205. 10.1093/geronb/52B.5.P197.

Cacioppo, J. T., & Cacioppo, S. (2018). The growing problem of loneliness. The Lancet; the Lancet, 391(10119), 426. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30142-9

Doane, L. & Adam E.( 2009) Loneliness and cortisol: momentary, day-to-day, and trait associations. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2010 Apr;35(3):430-41. doi: 10.1016/j. PMID: 19744794; PMCID: PMC2841363.

Harari, Y. N. (2015). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. HarperCollins Publishers.

Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T., & Layton, J. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review (social relationships and mortality). PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316

Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I., & Maes, P. (2025). Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. ArXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

Li, N., van Vugt, M. & Colarelli, S. (2017) The evolutionary mismatch hypothesis: Implications for psychological science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 38-44. doi:10.1177/0963721417731378.

Kjerstin, T., Wells, C. (2016) Curated Flows: A Framework for Mapping Media Exposure in the Digital Age, Communication Theory, Vol. 26, (3), p. 309–328. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12087

Waldinger, R., & Schulz, M. (2023). The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. Simon & Schuster. 

Young Kuchenbecker, S., Pressman, S. D., Celniker, J., Grewen, K. M., Sumida, K. D., Jonathan, N., Everett, B., & Slavich, G. M. (2021). Oxytocin, cortisol, and cognitive control during acute and naturalistic stress. Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 24(4), 370–383. https://doi.org/10.1080/10253890.2021.1876658

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October 13, 2025
The Importance of Connection in the Age of AI – Faculty Focus

As educators, we must stay current. What could be more current than Artificial Intelligence? Our students are using this tool at an unprecedented rate, and every technological tool we have is guided by it. We are taking classes to learn how to use it in the classroom and how to teach our students to use it. Grammarly is editing this very article! You are not alone if you feel a bit reticent to jump on the bandwagon. Will it ultimately replace us as educators? As people?

“Artificial Intelligence”. The issue is embedded right in the name: Artificial means not real. Is it here to stay, and can we even fight it? One of our generation’s premier philosophers, Dr. Yuval Harari, said that if we hope to survive, we better fight it (2015). Technology has been hypothesized to be an evolutionary mismatch (Li & Colarelli, 2017). This term implies that behaviors that once supported a species have become injurious. An example of a mismatch is sugary foods. Our nomadic ancestors struggled to procure enough daily calories to sustain life. When they found sugary food, they filled up on it and stored it. In our modern day, too much sugar leads to issues related to early mortality.

Technology can be used as a tool to keep us connected. Unfortunately, it has also slowly evolved into a system that answers every question, educates, and can now act as a companion, moving us slowly away from one another, like the frog in the hot water who realizes too late it is boiling.

The Hidden Costs of Disconnection

What is the cost of this instant ‘answerer of all questions’ and constant companion? It is hard to quantify, but the loss of human interaction is vast and far-reaching. Humans, with their higher cognitive functioning, can live on their own and survive thanks to technology. But should they? The longest social science studies suggest that healthy aging is directly related to meaningful and supportive relationships (Bosworth, & Schaie, 1997; Waldinger, & Schulz, 2023).

Additionally, humans are creatures who are, to simplify, guided by neural stimulation. When we are stressed, or trying to manage life alone, the stress hormone cortisol increases (Doane, L. & Adam E. 2009). High cortisol levels are directly related to inflammation, aging, and many other ailments, and we know that loneliness leads to early mortality (Holt-Lunstead & Layton, 2010). The most efficient home-grown remedy to combat an increase in cortisol is face-to-face meaningful engagement, which will release oxytocin, called the ‘love drug’. Our bodies, meant to be social, will release oxytocin when we engage, which will help to mitigate the system that manages cortisol. Unfortunately, artificial intelligence does not release meaningful amounts of oxytocin, and no pills exist to take because they do not cross the blood-brain barrier (Young-Kuchenbecker, Pressman, Celniker, Grewen, Sumida, Jonathan, Everett, & Slavich, 2021). We are left with the innate and evolutionary need for connection.

If we are to believe Darwin, then the fittest will make it, and most of us know what fitness entails. Fitness is about the mind, the body, and the demands (either placed on you or by you) of your environment. Recent MIT findings suggest that AI has a deleterious impact on our memory and has a high cognitive cost. Participants in the study could not even quote their own work (Kosmyna, Hauptmann, Yuan, Situ, Liao, Beresnitzky, Braunstein, & Maes, 2025).). As we are living longer than any previous generation, our sophisticated society necessitates that we maintain our cognitive fitness for as long as possible. AI certainly appears to be a mismatch in healthy long-term aging.

Educators as Builders of Connection

As educators, our job is to teach the topic at hand along with the soft skills of connection, engagement, community, teamwork, and the power that can be harnessed by more than one mind. Our college-age students suffer the most from loneliness and all the physical and psychological challenges inherent in that experience (Caccioppo & Caccioppo, 2018). In a classroom study, my students investigated loneliness on our campus and found that out of 100 students, 99 of them reported feeling lonely, and it influenced their use of technology (2024).

Artificial Intelligence brings information to our fingertips that might otherwise be unobtainable. It can teach, educate, partner, and save us a lot of time, but we need to learn to use it as a tool and not have it use us. We used to ask questions of experts, older or wiser, which invited connection. Now we ask our device questions, which invites disconnection in that how we phrase our questions to AI will determine the breadth and depth of the answer. In our digital age, the user curates their information (Kjerstin & Wells, 2016). Without another person to offer insight and possible opposing views, the user will often be left with tremendous confirmation bias.

Evolution has taught us that an organism has the best chance of survival if it is connected to others. The Pando in Utah is an ideal example. In Fish Lake National Forest’s 106-acre area, almost 50,000 aspen trees are interconnected with one root system. What infects one tree infects them all. So, how can we help our students connect and use AI effectively while keeping the detrimental effects of AI at bay?

This educator has gone back to a bit of paper and pencil. In the classroom, the students work in small groups that vary weekly on a homework assignment. They can partner for a test and have several out-of-class projects that require a little time to have a conversation. One of the assignments is to record a video of their group talking over a sensitive topic, one that they might not have been comfortable discussing in class. Yes, it takes a bit more time to plan and to grade. However, most of us are teaching a topic that does not lead to a qualifying test or credential so we can afford to cut a bit of material in lieu of helping our lonely students. If the results of the MIT study are to be believed (Kosmyna, 2025), if we don’t do something different, those same students will leave without the knowledge we hoped they would gain or the comfort of connection a classroom can provide. We can do better and need to if we, as educators, are to stay relevant.

Jennifer Smith, PhD, CFLE, is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Kansas State University in the Department of Psychological Sciences. Jennifer received her bachelor’s degree in both psychology and human development from the University of Wisconsin and her master’s degree in counseling from Lakeland University. Additionally, she obtained her PhD in Lifespan Human Development from Kansas State University, with her dissertation focusing on the intersection of technology and relationships. Jennifer is also a CFLE (Certified Family Life Educator) from the National Council on Family Relations. She describes her perspective on all things as “contextual” and approaches her teaching through this lens. Jennifer loves teaching above all else. Her teaching philosophy is “empathic teaching engenders curious learners.”! When not with students, she enjoys traveling with her husband of 30 years, time with her two daughters, serving in her community and naps with her cats!

References

Bosworth, H. & Schaie, K. (1997). The Relationship of Social Environment, Social Networks, and Health Outcomes in The Seattle Longitudinal Study: Two Analytical Approaches. The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences. 52. P197-205. 10.1093/geronb/52B.5.P197.

Cacioppo, J. T., & Cacioppo, S. (2018). The growing problem of loneliness. The Lancet; the Lancet, 391(10119), 426. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30142-9

Doane, L. & Adam E.( 2009) Loneliness and cortisol: momentary, day-to-day, and trait associations. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2010 Apr;35(3):430-41. doi: 10.1016/j. PMID: 19744794; PMCID: PMC2841363.

Harari, Y. N. (2015). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. HarperCollins Publishers.

Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T., & Layton, J. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review (social relationships and mortality). PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316

Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I., & Maes, P. (2025). Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. ArXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

Li, N., van Vugt, M. & Colarelli, S. (2017) The evolutionary mismatch hypothesis: Implications for psychological science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 38-44. doi:10.1177/0963721417731378.

Kjerstin, T., Wells, C. (2016) Curated Flows: A Framework for Mapping Media Exposure in the Digital Age, Communication Theory, Vol. 26, (3), p. 309–328. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12087

Waldinger, R., & Schulz, M. (2023). The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. Simon & Schuster.

Young Kuchenbecker, S., Pressman, S. D., Celniker, J., Grewen, K. M., Sumida, K. D., Jonathan, N., Everett, B., & Slavich, G. M. (2021). Oxytocin, cortisol, and cognitive control during acute and naturalistic stress. Stress (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 24(4), 370–383. https://doi.org/10.1080/10253890.2021.1876658

Source link

October 13, 2025
The Possibility of Our Problems: Educating for the Futures Our Students Will Face – Faculty Focus
“Colleges are now closing at a pace of one per week. What happens to the students?” Jon Marcus asked in a recent Hechinger Report piece. It’s not a rhetorical question — and it doesn’t have an easy answer. As educators, we’ve read the headlines, seen the numbers, and felt the pressure. Undergraduate enrollment is down. Student confidence is eroding. The enrollment cliff looms.

But instead of asking when higher education will fail, we might ask: What if this is a market correction — not a collapse? What if the problem isn’t higher education itself, but how we’ve framed its value and how we’ve taught? What if this moment is less an ending and more a beginning?

In the face of uncertainty, it’s tempting to focus on control: measurable learning outcomes, career-ready skills, standardized assessments. But today’s students are entering a competitive job market — and a world defined by accelerating change, emerging technologies, and challenges we haven’t yet named. That means our teaching needs to prepare them what’s likely and for what’s possible — and even what’s unknowable.

Ronald Beghetto’s framework for “educating for unknowable futures” offers a helpful lens. He proposes three levels of preparation:
1. Educating for likely futures: equipping students with foundational skills and durable knowledge.
1. Educating for possible futures: helping students build agency, creativity, and adaptability.
1. Educating for unknowable futures: inviting students to grapple with uncertainty through reflection and imagination.
Each level requires a shift in how we think about learning and a new set of pedagogical commitments.

1. Educating for Likely Futures: Redesigning Assignments Around Students’ Real Lives

Career readiness remains a core concern. But often, our tools for building it are misaligned with students’ actual experiences. Take the classic business case method, for example: many cases center Fortune 500 CEOs or global crises, which can feel abstract or inaccessible to undergraduates, especially first-generation students.

That’s why I now write my own cases: short, specific, and grounded in contexts my students know. In one recent one, I explored a conflict between student-athletes and faculty at a nearby Division III college. For my mostly student-athlete class, this was familiar and therefore grounding. Their analysis shifted. So did their engagement.

Designing assignments that reflect students’ likely futures — their majors, their industries, their regions — signals that their lives are valid sites of learning. It builds relevance. And it reminds them that professional decision-making doesn’t start “out there.” It starts here.

2. Educating for Possible Futures: Using EdTech with Purpose

Students also need to develop adaptive skills: how to think critically, navigate ambiguity, and evaluate tools in evolving environments. EdTech is a perfect place to practice this.

Today’s education market is flooded with tools — over 370 vendors across over 40 market segments, according to Encoura. But quantity isn’t quality. Too often, we adopt tools based on novelty or institutional trends rather than instructional value.

To support students in building discernment, we must model it ourselves. That means asking: Does this tool solve a real problem in my class? Does it deliver on its promises? Does it support learning equitably and sustainably?

In other words, we must shift from passive adopters to intentional evaluators and invite students into that evaluative process. Helping them think about how technology shapes learning (and their own agency within it) equips them for any environment, not just the one we’ve built.

3. Educating for Unknowable Futures: Making Space for Reflection

Preparing students for the truly unknown requires something more radical: making space for performance, yes, but also for reflection.

In a recent MBA course on negotiation and conflict, I made a bold move: I assigned weekly reflection journals — raw, stream-of-consciousness entries that linked course themes to students’ lived experiences. Some students resisted at first. But by the end, many said it changed the way they approached class and life.

Reflection is often treated as an add-on, something optional or “soft.” But it’s essential. It helps students surface assumptions, interrogate choices, and practice metacognition. And in a world where knowledge and skills are constantly evolving, the ability to learn how to learn may be the most durable skill of all.

Possibility Thinking, in Practice

If our current moment is a reckoning, then our response must be one of responsibility. We cannot guarantee our students a particular future. But we can offer them the tools to shape one.

Beghetto calls this “agentic awareness” — a belief in one’s ability to influence outcomes. It’s a curriculum and a posture. And it’s something we can model by how we teach: with creativity, clarity, and curiosity.

So the next time you see another headline about higher ed’s collapse, ask yourself: What if we treated this as a moment to reimagine rather than as a crisis to survive?

That’s resilience, and it’s possibility thinking in action.

Three Small Shifts You Can Make This Semester

Now is the perfect time to start leaning into the possibility of our problems. To do so, try:
1. Redesigning one assignment to reflect your students’ actual career goals or lived experiences. Meeting students where they are will help them better envision where they’re headed.
1. Asking your classroom technology better questions. Push beyond features to real learning outcomes when you choose to invite EdTech into your classroom.
1. Making reflection part of the grade. Don’t treat it as busywork but as weighted, important meaning-making.
Higher education may be facing unprecedented disruption, but disruption doesn’t have to mean decline. In fact, the classroom may be one of the last places where we still have real influence over what comes next. Each lesson we design, each conversation we facilitate, each moment we create for reflection — these are acts of future-building.

Educating for unknowable futures doesn’t mean we need to predict what’s next. It means we help students learn to ask better questions, adapt with confidence, and recognize their own capacity to shape change. And it means we embrace that same mindset ourselves.

The future of higher education won’t be saved by sweeping reforms or silver-bullet technologies. It will be co-created — one thoughtful assignment, one intentional choice, one student at a time. And that work starts not in distant policy meetings, but right here, in our classrooms.

Laura Nicole Miller, DET, is an assistant professor in the Grenon School of Business at Assumption University, where she teaches organizational communication, marketing, and management. A first-generation college graduate and former EdTech executive, she studies how communication practices shape equity, trust, and student success in high-stakes environments.

References

Bauman, D. (2024, February 7). Colleges were already bracing for an ‘enrollment cliff.’ Now there might be a second one. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/colleges-were-already-bracing-for-an-enrollment-cliff-now-there-might-be-a-second-one

Beghetto, R. A. (2023). Broadening horizons of the possible in education. Possibility Studies & Society, 1(4), 414-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/27538699231182014

Binkley, C. (2023, March 10). Why more Americans are skipping college. PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/why-more-americans-are-skipping-college

Craft, A. (2015). Possibility thinking: From what is to what might be. In R. Wegerif, L. Li, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on teaching thinking (pp. 15–26). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315797021

Encoura. (2023). Higher education technology landscape research. https://www.encoura.org/eduventures-research/evolve-your-online-strategy/tech-landscape/

Fry, R., Braga, D., & Parker, K. (2024, May 23). Is college worth it? Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-college-worth-it-2/

Marcus, J. (2024, April 26). Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students? The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-are-now-closing-at-a-pace-of-one-a-week-what-happens-to-the-students/

Miller, L. N. (2025). “D-III students deserve better”: strategic communication with college stakeholders. The CASE Journal, 21(3), 493-516. https://doi.org/10.1108/TCJ-06-2024-0184

Miller, L.N. (2025). We need to ask smarter questions of ed tech. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/07/30/we-need-ask-smarter-questions-ed-tech-opinion
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October 10, 2025
The Possibility of Our Problems: Educating for the Futures Our Students Will Face – Faculty Focus
“Colleges are now closing at a pace of one per week. What happens to the students?” Jon Marcus asked in a recent Hechinger Report piece. It’s not a rhetorical question — and it doesn’t have an easy answer. As educators, we’ve read the headlines, seen the numbers, and felt the pressure. Undergraduate enrollment is down. Student confidence is eroding. The enrollment cliff looms.

But instead of asking when higher education will fail, we might ask: What if this is a market correction — not a collapse? What if the problem isn’t higher education itself, but how we’ve framed its value and how we’ve taught? What if this moment is less an ending and more a beginning?

In the face of uncertainty, it’s tempting to focus on control: measurable learning outcomes, career-ready skills, standardized assessments. But today’s students are entering a competitive job market — and a world defined by accelerating change, emerging technologies, and challenges we haven’t yet named. That means our teaching needs to prepare them what’s likely and for what’s possible — and even what’s unknowable.

Ronald Beghetto’s framework for “educating for unknowable futures” offers a helpful lens. He proposes three levels of preparation:
1. Educating for likely futures: equipping students with foundational skills and durable knowledge.
1. Educating for possible futures: helping students build agency, creativity, and adaptability.
1. Educating for unknowable futures: inviting students to grapple with uncertainty through reflection and imagination.
Each level requires a shift in how we think about learning and a new set of pedagogical commitments.

1. Educating for Likely Futures: Redesigning Assignments Around Students’ Real Lives

Career readiness remains a core concern. But often, our tools for building it are misaligned with students’ actual experiences. Take the classic business case method, for example: many cases center Fortune 500 CEOs or global crises, which can feel abstract or inaccessible to undergraduates, especially first-generation students.

That’s why I now write my own cases: short, specific, and grounded in contexts my students know. In one recent one, I explored a conflict between student-athletes and faculty at a nearby Division III college. For my mostly student-athlete class, this was familiar and therefore grounding. Their analysis shifted. So did their engagement.

Designing assignments that reflect students’ likely futures — their majors, their industries, their regions — signals that their lives are valid sites of learning. It builds relevance. And it reminds them that professional decision-making doesn’t start “out there.” It starts here.

2. Educating for Possible Futures: Using EdTech with Purpose

Students also need to develop adaptive skills: how to think critically, navigate ambiguity, and evaluate tools in evolving environments. EdTech is a perfect place to practice this.

Today’s education market is flooded with tools — over 370 vendors across over 40 market segments, according to Encoura. But quantity isn’t quality. Too often, we adopt tools based on novelty or institutional trends rather than instructional value.

To support students in building discernment, we must model it ourselves. That means asking: Does this tool solve a real problem in my class? Does it deliver on its promises? Does it support learning equitably and sustainably?

In other words, we must shift from passive adopters to intentional evaluators and invite students into that evaluative process. Helping them think about how technology shapes learning (and their own agency within it) equips them for any environment, not just the one we’ve built.

3. Educating for Unknowable Futures: Making Space for Reflection

Preparing students for the truly unknown requires something more radical: making space for performance, yes, but also for reflection.

In a recent MBA course on negotiation and conflict, I made a bold move: I assigned weekly reflection journals — raw, stream-of-consciousness entries that linked course themes to students’ lived experiences. Some students resisted at first. But by the end, many said it changed the way they approached class and life.

Reflection is often treated as an add-on, something optional or “soft.” But it’s essential. It helps students surface assumptions, interrogate choices, and practice metacognition. And in a world where knowledge and skills are constantly evolving, the ability to learn how to learn may be the most durable skill of all.

Possibility Thinking, in Practice

If our current moment is a reckoning, then our response must be one of responsibility. We cannot guarantee our students a particular future. But we can offer them the tools to shape one.

Beghetto calls this “agentic awareness” — a belief in one’s ability to influence outcomes. It’s a curriculum and a posture. And it’s something we can model by how we teach: with creativity, clarity, and curiosity.

So the next time you see another headline about higher ed’s collapse, ask yourself: What if we treated this as a moment to reimagine rather than as a crisis to survive?

That’s resilience, and it’s possibility thinking in action.

Three Small Shifts You Can Make This Semester

Now is the perfect time to start leaning into the possibility of our problems. To do so, try:
1. Redesigning one assignment to reflect your students’ actual career goals or lived experiences. Meeting students where they are will help them better envision where they’re headed.
1. Asking your classroom technology better questions. Push beyond features to real learning outcomes when you choose to invite EdTech into your classroom.
1. Making reflection part of the grade. Don’t treat it as busywork but as weighted, important meaning-making.
Higher education may be facing unprecedented disruption, but disruption doesn’t have to mean decline. In fact, the classroom may be one of the last places where we still have real influence over what comes next. Each lesson we design, each conversation we facilitate, each moment we create for reflection — these are acts of future-building.

Educating for unknowable futures doesn’t mean we need to predict what’s next. It means we help students learn to ask better questions, adapt with confidence, and recognize their own capacity to shape change. And it means we embrace that same mindset ourselves.

The future of higher education won’t be saved by sweeping reforms or silver-bullet technologies. It will be co-created — one thoughtful assignment, one intentional choice, one student at a time. And that work starts not in distant policy meetings, but right here, in our classrooms.

Laura Nicole Miller, DET, is an assistant professor in the Grenon School of Business at Assumption University, where she teaches organizational communication, marketing, and management. A first-generation college graduate and former EdTech executive, she studies how communication practices shape equity, trust, and student success in high-stakes environments.

References

Bauman, D. (2024, February 7). Colleges were already bracing for an ‘enrollment cliff.’ Now there might be a second one. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/colleges-were-already-bracing-for-an-enrollment-cliff-now-there-might-be-a-second-one

Beghetto, R. A. (2023). Broadening horizons of the possible in education. Possibility Studies & Society, 1(4), 414-426. https://doi.org/10.1177/27538699231182014

Binkley, C. (2023, March 10). Why more Americans are skipping college. PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/why-more-americans-are-skipping-college

Craft, A. (2015). Possibility thinking: From what is to what might be. In R. Wegerif, L. Li, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on teaching thinking (pp. 15–26). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315797021

Encoura. (2023). Higher education technology landscape research. https://www.encoura.org/eduventures-research/evolve-your-online-strategy/tech-landscape/

Fry, R., Braga, D., & Parker, K. (2024, May 23). Is college worth it? Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/05/23/is-college-worth-it-2/

Marcus, J. (2024, April 26). Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students? The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-are-now-closing-at-a-pace-of-one-a-week-what-happens-to-the-students/

Miller, L. N. (2025). “D-III students deserve better”: strategic communication with college stakeholders. The CASE Journal, 21(3), 493-516. https://doi.org/10.1108/TCJ-06-2024-0184

Miller, L.N. (2025). We need to ask smarter questions of ed tech. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/07/30/we-need-ask-smarter-questions-ed-tech-opinion
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October 10, 2025
Team Teaching Benefits Faculty and Students

Most students expect to see one professor at the front of the classroom throughout the semester. But for those attending Harvey Mudd College, a STEM-focused institution in California, it’s not unusual to have four or more faculty members teaching one course.

At Harvey Mudd, team teaching has been a distinguishing facet of the student experience for decades; most general education STEM courses for incoming students are taught by two or more professors.

“It’s the water we swim in,” said Kathy Van Heuvelen, associate dean of faculty. “It’s so embedded in our culture.”

Implementing team teaching as standard practice has helped the college train early-career faculty, establish more holistic courses and ensure students are aware of the various resources and experts available to them on campus.

What is team teaching? Also called collaborative teaching or co-teaching, team teaching involves multiple instructors leading a course, each with their own responsibilities.

Often, team teaching involves faculty of different disciplines covering a topic or issue from multiple perspectives. At Harvey Mudd, for example, a group of faculty taught a course on California wildfires, and the content included the history of forestry, atmospheric chemistry and air pollution, as well as the social implications of fires. Sometimes that means two professors teaching side by side, but often faculty split up lessons and take turns delivering content to students.

Team teaching is less common than solo teaching, in part because it requires more time to implement. Faculty sometimes face logistical barriers, such as aligning schedules and co-creating materials, as well as personal differences in assessment or classroom management. But when done well, the format can equip students with greater critical thinking skills and a richer understanding of content.

Prepped for success: To help professors navigate team teaching, Harvey Mudd offers them a variety of resources. New instructors participate in a weekly lunch led by college administrators where they gather, eat and engage in professional development, Van Heuvelen said. “Our sessions have included team-teaching strategies for communicating with your team and navigating this mode of teaching.”

Van Heuvelen also provides a team-teaching checklist for faculty each semester to help them prepare for the upcoming term, which includes items such as communication, timeline for developing materials, classroom management and other course policies.

“It has a list of questions for the team to discuss ahead of time to try to help teams get out In front of any challenges and establish their team norms,” she said.

The college is part of the Claremont Consortium—a group of seven higher education institutions in Claremont, Calif.—which has a Consortium Center for Teaching and Learning and provides workshops on team teaching, as well.

Most team-taught courses are designed to feature a junior and senior faculty member, allowing the early-career professional to learn from a more experienced instructor, Van Heuvelen said.

“For an early-career hire who maybe does not have extensive teaching experience, it is like attending a master class,” Van Heuvelen said. “There is tremendous mentoring that can go on there.”

Newer instructors also bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the classroom, which ensures content does not get stale over time.

Supporting student success: One of the benefits of the model is that students have a group of instructors to engage with and call on if they need academic support, Van Heuvelen said.

“For example, when we have a team that’s teaching, we all hold common office hours, so students can go to any office hours,” Van Heuvelen said.

Past research shows that students are often unaware of the full range of supports available to them on campus, but engaging with many professors can get students more plugged in to institutional services, or at least provide more touch points, Van Heuvelen said.

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October 9, 2025
Trump’s higher ed compact draws condemnation from faculty and college unions

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Faculty groups and employee unions are urging universities to reject a proposed compact from the Trump administration that would trade control over their policies for preferential access to federal research funding.

Of the nine colleges that received the offer, at least two faculty senates — the University of Virginia and the University of Arizona — voted to oppose the deal and pushed their institution’s leadership to reject it. Other instructors and employee groups have also decried the compact.

Leaders at the colleges have thus far issued mostly noncommittal responses, with none publicly announcing they would decline the deal as of Wednesday afternoon.

Along with UVA and the University of Arizona, the Trump administration sent the compact to Brown University, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University. It gave the institutions until Oct. 20 to respond with feedback and up to Nov. 21 to sign.

Faculty groups weigh in

At a Monday meeting, the University of Arizona’s faculty senate approved a resolution opposing the compact in a 40-8 vote, with one member abstaining.

The resolution called the compact a danger to “the independence, excellence, and integrity” of the institution and the constitutional rights of the campus community.

“Others wiser than I have called it recently a trap, a poisoned apple,” Faculty Chair Leila Hudson said before the vote. “Federal funds are not a drug that we need a quick fix of to be forever extortable.”

Hundreds of miles east, faculty at the University of Virginia similarly rebuked the Trump administration’s proposal.

The UVA faculty senate on Friday, in a 60-2 vote with 4 abstentions, approved a resolution whose preamble called the compact a danger to the university that runs antithetical to its mission and traditions. It also said the deal “likely violates state and federal law.”

At least one law firm, Ropes & Gray, has said the compact raises legal questions, adding that it “does not explain the statutory or other basis that authorizes the Administration to give preferential access to federal programs.”

The law firm also said the compact used vague and broad language and doesn’t explain key elements of the proposal. For instance, it threatens to strip federal funding from institutions that sign and then violate its terms — but it doesn’t explain which dollars could be revoked.

“Would all federal benefits — research dollars and beyond — be affected by an instance of non-compliance, or would only those additional or new federal benefits that have accrued as a result of the institution having signed onto this Compact (the scope of which is unclear as well) be affected?” it posited in a Wednesday analysis.

A second round of deals?

Two of the institutions that received the offer — Penn and Brown — have previously struck deals with the Trump administration.

Penn President J. Larry Jameson said Sunday that he would seek input on the compact from the campus community, including Penn’s trustees and faculty senate.

“The long-standing partnership with the federal government in both education and research has yielded tremendous benefits for our nation. Penn seeks no special consideration,” he said in a statement.

Jameson added that he would keep five factors front of mind: “freedom of inquiry and thought, free expression, non-discrimination, adherence to American laws and the Constitution of the United States, and our own governance.”

In March, the Trump administration suspended $175 million of Penn’s research funding over its prior policy permitting transgender women to compete in women’s sports. The U.S. Department of Education formally alleged in April that the university’s policies had violated Title IX, a law banning sex-based discrimination at federally funded institutions.

In July, Penn struck a deal with the Trump administration. The university agreed to follow the administration’s new interpretation of Title IX, revoke swimming titles and awards that had previously been won by transgender women, and write personalized apology letters to impacted cisgender athletes who were on the women’s swimming team.

Among other things, agreeing to this compact would restrict university employees from speaking out on political issues, limit the enrollment of foreign students, and once again require the university to essentially deny the existence of transgender students.

Steven Brown

Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island

Following Jameson’s response this week, a petition opposing the compact organized by two Penn employee unions garnered some 1,300 signatures as of Wednesday afternoon. The university’s American Association of University Professors chapter is also promoting an Oct. 17 campus rally to protest the compact.

Brown has thus far not issued a public statement on the proposed deal and did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. But the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island urged Brown President Christine Paxson to stand against the Trump administration.

“Among other things, agreeing to this compact would restrict university employees from speaking out on political issues, limit the enrollment of foreign students, and once again require the university to essentially deny the existence of transgender students,” Steven Brown, executive director of the group, said in an Oct. 3 letter. “The compact makes no serious attempt to hide its real intent.”

The civil rights organization drew parallels between the Trump administration’s latest proposal and Brown University’s settlement with the federal government in July. The university agreed to pay $50 million to state workforce development organizations and give the White House oversight of its admissions in exchange for a restoration of federal funding frozen over claims related to antisemitism and other civil rights violations.

“We believe that your university’s previous capitulation has simply empowered and emboldened the Trump administration to demand more,” it said. “It is only by sending a clear, strong, and visible message that these attacks on the mission of higher education will not be tolerated that one can ever hope to stop them.”

‘A devil’s bargain’

Dartmouth President Sian Beilock issued a short statement about the compact on Oct. 3.

“I am deeply committed to Dartmouth’s academic mission and values and will always defend our fierce independence,” she said. “You have often heard me say that higher education is not perfect and that we can do better. At the same time, we will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.”

In a joint op-ed, two faculty members from Dartmouth and Vanderbilt called the compact “a devil’s bargain.”

“Any institution that yields to these broad and intrusive demands would give up its legal rights and would forever be subservient to the whims of the government,” wrote Vanderbilt professor Lisa Fazio and Dartmouth professor Brendan Nyhan. “If the Justice Department decides that a signatory violated the vague terms of the agreement, that university would be forced to return all federal money it received in that year — along with any private donations at donor request.”

Vanderbilt has not commented on the compact publicly, but President Daniel Diermeier told the student newspaper that the university is reviewing the offer. Diermeier has also previously aligned with some of the Trump administration’s higher education positions, such as supporting institutional neutrality.

An anti-compact petition organized by Vanderbilt Graduate Workers United had over 920 signatures, including from students, active and former employees, alumni and community members, as of Wednesday afternoon.

“This compact represents nothing other than a fascist takeover of higher education in the United States,” the petition said. “And we will not allow it to happen.”

The graduate workers union said it intends to deliver the petition in-person to the administration.

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October 8, 2025
Chatbots in Higher Education: Benefits, Challenges, and Strategies to Prevent Misuse – Faculty Focus

Artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, especially chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, are influencing many areas of higher education. Students and instructors can interact with these tools to get real-time, personalized help with nearly any academic task at hand, including helping students study or revamping course content for instructors. There is no question that the educational potential is significant, but so too are the concerns about academic integrity and the consequences of students relying too heavily on these tools. While it’s important to weigh the pros and cons of chatbots, using the right strategies and technologies can help avoid those issues and still allow faculty and students to benefit from this burgeoning technology.

Use Cases for Chatbots in Higher Education Teaching

First, let’s consider uses among faculty. They can use chatbots to help improve most areas of teaching and learning while still saving time.

Chatbots can assist with different phases of course design, including writing learning objectives and developing and repurposing content. Chatbots can also be used in evaluating student performance data if your institution offers a secure chatbot (just be sure to anonymize the data). Instructors can also use chatbots to review the rules and instructions for their assignments and tests to identify vague or subjective text and suggest clearer, more objective wording. 

But one of the most impactful uses is adapting course content into formats that support students with different learning needs. Chatbots can adapt, simplify and organize text for students with learning or cognitive disabilities, generate alternative text for multimedia content, and they can even adjust their responses based on student emotions (for example, offering words of encouragement when a student is frustrated or discouraged).

Instructors may be tempted to use chatbots to grade written coursework as well, but for now, it is important to note that the technology still struggles with the nuances of grading and feedback. However, chatbots can still help by pulling out the main ideas and revealing whether a student’s essay meets basic criteria, which gives instructors a clearer starting point before reading.

You’ll see a lot of jargon and articles that make prompt writing seem complicated, but you don’t need to be an expert to write effective prompts. It’s a skill you can pick up quickly after a few tries, especially once you find what works for you and start creating your own templates to use in your courses.

Students and Chatbots: Finding a Balance

There are many ways that students can use chatbots to support learning while steering clear of misusing them for tests and assignments. Ensuring ethical and beneficial adoption of AI requires clear strategies and guidelines along with the right technology.

Improving Academic Performance

Recent research indicates that chatbots can improve learning and academic outcomes, but balance is key. When students rely on them too heavily, any benefits, like increased engagement, motivation and reflection are reduced or eliminated. When used appropriately, AI chatbots can tutor students to help them better understand and comprehend the information, which also increases engagement. Chatbots give students instant, personalized help with tasks such as summarizing content and checking grammar, and they also create a nonjudgmental space where students feel more comfortable asking questions.

Cognitive Load Reduction and Stress Management

Chatbots are ideal for offloading tasks such as summarizing a lecture transcript or highlighting key points in an assignment. With students under pressure to complete assignments, leaning on AI can also reduce stress and anxiety by giving them more time to focus on the important elements of an assignment. 

Similarly, chatbots can help students visualize information by generating charts, graphs or images to support their ideas. They can also provide adaptive support for students with disabilities or language barriers by reading, translating, simplifying or reformatting content to meet their needs. This reduces cognitive load, allows students to focus on the assignment itself and builds confidence in their ability to complete the work.

Strategies for Reducing Chatbot Misuse

Because of the speed and ease of use for chatbots, students may begin to use them as a shortcut to get work done instead of a supplemental learning tool. That’s a big issue. It bypasses critical thinking, contextual understanding and collaboration. This not only cheats the student out of learning but creates academic integrity issues for higher education institutions to address and stay ahead of.

Cheating is common in higher education, and with recent surveys indicating that more than 85% of students use AI daily to help with schoolwork, there’s a good chance of overlap. Students have mixed opinions when it comes to using AI for homework, with around 40% of students acknowledging that using AI for research and writing assistance should be acceptable, but there should also be limitations and ethical use.

Communicating with students about academic integrity codes of conduct, AI use, and cheating policies and ramifications are the first steps in setting expectations. But delivering assignments in ways that reduce opportunities for the use of chatbots or that lay out specific guardrails for chatbot use can also be helpful.

Reducing Chatbot Cheating

Cheating in higher education will never completely go away, and efforts to maintain and manage tools and channels used for cheating must be ongoing. As more students leverage chatbots for both approved and unapproved use, educational institutions can work to help students understand the appropriate way to leverage technology within the learning environment.

While educators struggle to detect AI use reliably, AI detection tools can identify unedited chatbot-generated content with reasonable accuracy. But their effectiveness drops when students edit or modify responses or use AI paraphrasing tools to rewrite the content. They’re more useful as a gut check, not definitive proof that the text was AI-generated.

Remote proctoring during assessments and written assignments adds another barrier to cheating. Ideally, the proctoring solution should leverage AI test monitoring together with live human proctors, which gives faculty the control to prevent AI use and the flexibility to allow approved resources. For example, instructors can proctor exams or essays by restricting access to all unauthorized websites and software, including chatbots, while still providing access to specific materials like case studies or tools like Word, Excel and Google Docs.

Another option is to use scaffolded, realistic assignments and assessments that focus on real-world application and requiring students to connect course content to their personal experiences or context. This makes it more difficult for chatbots to generate accurate or meaningful responses. For example, assessments could ask students to develop a scenario based on a local community issue, work on collaborative projects that include peer reviews or create video responses that reference specific class lectures or materials. This approach helps evaluate students’ true understanding of materials and that they are developing practical skills.

Set the Stage Now for an AI-Inclusive Future

AI chatbots are powerful tools that can make education more personalized, accessible and engaging. However, their misuse can undermine academic integrity and dilute learning. The solution, in most cases, isn’t to ban them outright, but to integrate them responsibly throughout teaching and learning processes. Striking this balance isn’t always easy, but it’s necessary to preserve the value of learning while preparing students for a future where AI will almost certainly be a part of their work.

Tyler Stike is the Director of Content at Honorlock and a doctoral student in educational technology at the University of Florida. In his role at Honorlock, he develops a wide range of content on online education, assessment, and accessibility. He is interested in how affective states influence learning and performance, and plans to research how AI can support adaptive learning experiences that help students manage those states.

References

W. Dai et al., “Can Large Language Models Provide Feedback to Students? A Case Study on ChatGPT,” 2023 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), Orem, UT, USA, 2023, pp. 323-325, doi: 10.1109/ICALT58122.2023.00100.

Strike, Tyler. “AI Prompting Examples, Templates, and Tips For Educators.” Resources for Education & Assessment, March 27, 2025, https://honorlock.com/blog/education-ai-prompt-writing/

Sánchez-Vera, Fulgencio. 2025. “Subject-Specialized Chatbot in Higher Education as a Tutor for Autonomous Exam Preparation: Analysis of the Impact on Academic Performance and Students’ Perception of Its Usefulness” Education Sciences 15, no. 1: 26. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15010026

Kelly, Rhea. “Survey: 86% of Students Already Use AI in Their Studies” Campus Technology, August 24, 2024 https://campustechnology.com/articles/2024/08/28/survey-86-of-students-already-use-ai-in-their-studies.aspx

McKearin, Cheryl. “Report on Student Attitudes Towards AI in Academia,” Learning Technology Solutions, April 5, 2024, https://learning.uic.edu/news-stories/report-on-student-attitudes-towards-ai-in-academia/

Kofinas, A. K., Tsay, C.-H., & Pike, D. (2025). The impact of generative AI on academic integrity of authentic assessments within a higher education context. British Journal of Educational Technology, 00, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet

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October 6, 2025
There Are No “Shy Students”, Only Poor Learning Environments – Faculty Focus
As we learn more about how to improve classrooms in higher education, the concept of the “shy student” is a recurring one that serves as a convenient shorthand for describing students who don’t speak up. As a result, some faculty members may be frustrated with students who are less vocal in group activities and conclude that it’s part of a student’s personality.

But what if the problem is not with the student but the classroom itself? Insights in educational sciences suggest that engagement in the classroom isn’t just about a student’s innate disposition. In fact, it’s more likely to be a result of poor instructional practices or a failure to understand differences in context or culture. We can create more equitable spaces that value a broader range of student voices by rethinking how we define engagement and redesigning our learning environments.

The Research on Participation and Personality

Popular writing on the topic of education styles sometimes reinforces the idea of a “shy student”. It’s common when referring to students who are more forthcoming with answers or discussion that we use the words “extroverted” or “introverted”. However, although these traits can sometimes be visible in the actions of students, research suggests that this isn’t in fact an obstacle for all students to participate in meaningful and mutually beneficial interactions. Traditional classroom settings have often rewarded more rapid and spontaneous verbal responses, but this can unintentionally privilege extroverted communication styles.

Susan Cain’s well-known work on introversion explains how, although some students seem reserved, their presence in the classroom can complement more outgoing students. This is particularly true when conversations between the two veer between the lighthearted and the serious. “Extroverts need to know that introverts…may be only too happy to be tugged along to a more lighthearted place,” Cain writes about the variety in classroom conversations, adding that quieter students “should know that they make it safe for others to get serious.”

Analyses in educational psychology suggest that classroom participation is less about innate personality and more about whether students feel psychologically safe and intellectually respected to speak out.

Research by scholars such as Mary-Ann Winkelmes on transparency in learning and teaching (known as the TILT framework) boosts students’ motivation by showing them the purpose behind their work. Students that understand the reason and method of a given task and connect it to their learning are more inclined to invest in it fully and participate more actively.

Similarly, the concept of “academic behavioral confidence” (or ABC), explored by researchers like Paul Sander suggests that confidence in higher education is malleable and responsive to classroom environments. Rather than assuming students are shy, we must ask whether we’ve fostered a learning environment in which students feel secure in sharing their thoughts.

The Role of the Classroom Environment

The design of a classroom plays a crucial role in shaping student participation. Lecture halls at traditional universities, with imposing tiered seating, can sometimes reinforce passivity. We all remember the time when lecturers would insist on the Socratic method and ask us questions point-blank as a means to illustrate knowledge! On the other hand, an active learning environment encourages dynamic learning spaces, smaller group discussions, and alternative forms of communication (through text or anonymous participation, for example).

The use of calling on students in the lecture room can inadvertently silence students who need more time to process. Inclusive teaching practices, such as think-pair-share, anonymous polling, or discussion boards, provide multiple modalities for students to contribute.

To this end, Cognitive Psychologist Stanislas Dehaene’s four pillars of learning—attention, active engagement, error feedback, and consolidation—can help articulate the design of a better higher education classroom. By fostering environments that capture students’ attention, be it through interactive or varied teaching methods, educators can cater to diverse learning styles.

Getting students to actively engage can be encouraged through collaborative activities or real-time responses. This ensures that all students participate and learn at their own pace. Providing immediate and constructive feedback on errors will additionally bolster students in their understanding of a topic.

Lastly, creating opportunities for consolidation, such as through spaced repetition or reflection sessions, allows all learners to reinforce and retain knowledge. This makes learning accessible and effective for everyone. Educators can scaffold this participation by providing low-risk entry points into discussion, validating diverse contributions, and offering constructive feedback that encourages further exploration.

Strategies for More Engaging Classrooms

Fostering participation among students who choose not to speak up requires careful planning and collaboration within higher education departments. As Head of Learning Innovation at Wooclap, here are several strategies that I’ve seen in action to help promote more engagement in the classroom:
1. Redefine Participation: Expand the definition of participation to include active listening, written reflections, online discussion posts, as well as creative endeavors. Make these forms of engagement visible and valued when grading a student.
1. Use Diverse Modalities: Offer students different ways to contribute. This can be done verbally, in writing, through technology, or in small groups. Digital Tools that allow for non-verbal or anonymous engagement can be leveraged to make quieter voices more audible.
1. Set Clear Expectations: Use transparent teaching methods to clarify what participation looks like and why it matters. Share examples and model respectful discourse to encourage more engaging discussions.
1. Create Psychological Safety: Cultivate an environment where students feel comfortable taking risks. This can include normalizing uncertainty, encouraging questions, and quickly intervening against microaggressions or dominance in discussions.
1. Solicit Feedback and Adapt: Regularly check in on students to see how classroom structures are working for them. Use anonymous surveys to gauge comfort levels and adjust practices accordingly.
Designing for All Voices

Higher education instructors shouldn’t be quick to judge students who are less vocal during class. In many cases, choosing not to speak up might be a rational response to a classroom design that is overbearing or limiting in its structure for more thoughtful and reflective judgment.

Designing great learning environments that adhere to the four pillars of education, as articulated by Stanislas Dehaene, can help educators support all students and not just those who are the quickest to speak. By doing so, we can shift the narrative away from having “shy students” to fixing the systems that fail to engage them. We can improve on these systems by reimagining participation, embracing diverse communication styles, and prioritizing inclusion in our pedagogy.

Arlène Botokro has a decade of experience at the crossroads of pedagogy and digital transformation, working internationally. She has played a pivotal role in shaping Wooclap’s impact in higher education since joining the company in 2020. As Senior Manager of Education Partnerships and Innovation Projects Lead, she built strategic collaborations with leading universities, ensuring Wooclap’s solutions align with research-driven best practices. Her international experience spans the U.S., France, and Ghana with projects across multiple countries, including previous roles at Sciences Po and consulting in innovation for the publishing sector. This diverse background has given her a deep understanding of how digital learning practices can be adapted across different educational and corporate environments. Arlène continues to expand her knowledge in neuroeducation through coursework at Harvard University, reinforcing her commitment to integrating cutting-edge research into EdTech solutions.

References

Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, (Penguin Books, 2012).
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October 3, 2025