Future Trends Forum community session July 2026

Greetings and welcome to the future transform, a weekly conversation about the future of higher education. In this recording, we held a community session where all the future transform folks compared our notes, ideas, anxieties, and hopes all for the coming fall semester. The discussion started off on AI with Mark Rush wondering about campus technology bands, Shauna Po introducing her PhD work, and Tom Hayes describing his cutting edge AI technology teaching practice. We went on to share our experiences with and expectations for institutional leadership transitions, difficulties connecting with students, campus closures, generational differences, the role of credentials, memory, and critical thinking. As always, the comment box stands ready for your thoughts and questions. >> Um, well, on that on that note of criminality and collaboration, uh, let me, uh, let me begin. Uh, welcome everybody. Welcome to the future trends forum. I'm really glad to see you all here. Uh, today is a special session. This is one of our community sessions. Uh, so we don't have a guest. Um, all of you are basically guests. Uh, and we'll be talking about what we expect from the oncoming fall semester. Um friends, the the typical future transform session involves one or a couple of guests and we put them on the spot to talk about their particular piece of the puzzle of higher education's future. So last week we had a great session talking about general education. We have sessions coming up on AI, but this is a community session. uh and if you're new to them, the idea is for all of us to sit down together around this virtual fire and to uh talk about what we expect from a particular topic. And this topic is the fall semester which is coming up super fast. Um and what I was hoping is that people could share what they're thinking about uh what they're hoping for, what they're expecting, what they're worried about. Um different projects too. if it's an administrative project, if it's a research project, a teaching project, uh what you anticipate from the next, you know, five months. Um and and we've done this before and it's often just a a great way to put our heads together to get to know each other too, but also to offer some support. Uh and it might be some practical support. So, Flower might be hiring somebody new, for example, hand um but um or it may just be um wanting to bounce ideas back and forth. Uh so I don't have an agenda. Um although um sometimes folks ask me to say a bit about what I'm working on um um which I'll be happy to do. Um but this this should follow uh pretty organically. Uh so if you're new to it um to one of our our community sessions uh that's how that goes. Mark Rush just raised his hand um like a formal person here. Mark, please go ahead sir. >> Hey there. Can you hear me? Okay. >> Perfectly. Oh, good. Sorry. [laughter] Do what to good to scramble my my voice. Funky new glasses there, too, Brian. Like them. >> You do? Okay. >> I mean, whatever. Hey guys, I'm Mark Rush. I'm at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Um, what I'd like to ask you all just what you're thinking about is I don't know if any of you saw University of Chicago Law School just released what seems to be the most recent definitive statement on what the hell we're all going to do with AI. It's nice. Honestly, it's a nice statement of principle. Um, but it really I don't know if any of you if any of you else have read it, then please ring in. It really hasn't told me anything. I mean, I have found I keep running into folks who tell me, "Well, we aren't going to set a university policy. We're sort of going to let it bubble up from the faculty, which for me is a prescription for doing nothing or going backwards." Um the real takeaway from the Chicago policy is on you've seen it one they're going to require at least in some of the schools um sorry first year law classes uh no handhelds I mean with very few exceptions perhaps uh survey tech or whatever but um second um they're going to uh essentially do u seated you know uh live uh quizzes quizzings of the students based on their substantive research papers in second year exams are going to be sit down, handwritten and whatnot. Uh I mean by my lights the prime takeaway from all of this is simply it's going to increase the cost of grading >> in terms of time. It's just simply going to make it all more expensive all in hopes of trying to ensure authenticity. And one last comment I'll throw in. Look, I like the great books. I had nuns teaching me how to write and do everything and all this other stuff way back when. I appreciate the need to demonstrate engagement at this level, but once I get to 1L, at this point, these kids, they're all going to be 22, 23, they all have been using AI for the better part of 15 years. So, isn't in some ways this strikes me as making all of us go and start writing with a feather, you know, and an inkwell. So, I'm just wondering what your thoughts are because I am very I remain concerned. Our model here at Wal is, you know, small college, the whole nine yards. I will labor over every word you write and give you my, you know, thoughts on it, hoping that your work is authentic. But, you know, I'll be damned if I'm going to do that if some AI for thing has written it, you know, right? What's the purpose? But I'm just wondering because this does concern me. I want to ensure this authenticity. I'm just not sure >> what the Chicago statement offers except really moral support. So there, I didn't mean to babble, but I'd love to hear. >> Well, you're great. But just two quick questions, Mark, before before everyone. One is uh Jennifer Culver asks, "Didn't Berkeley Law come up with something like this?" Yeah, they did a little while ago. Yeah. Okay. >> And and uh and Mark, uh teaching a liberal arts college, you teach pre-law, right? >> We don't have an official We have a called Law, Justice, and Society program. It's not known officially as pre-law, and frankly, it's a gigantic menu of courses, but yeah, we have one course called the introduction to law, justice, and society, and I teach the constit undergraduate constitutional law course. Um, so we I get it, you know, and I get the challenge right there. I see what the kids are doing. And look, my own kids, both of whom to constitutional law and they had their dad was a conlaw prop, were telling me long ago, if you don't think we're going on to just and getting the cliffnotes versions of these cases, you're out of your mind, >> right? And we all use cliffotes, but the point is still, I mean, the need for authenticity of work remains. And that to me strikes me as the great challenge. >> Authenticity. Um, you you Mark, this is a great prompt. I mean, you got all kinds of comments here. Uh, Andrea Sax says, "Is it time to stick our heads in the AI sand?" Uh, [laughter] even Crawford mentioned something I've been thinking about. Um, he says, "I think we're a couple of years away from where a small institution like Washington will differentiate itself as a no or low tech school, both due to faculty demand and student demand." Um Mike Wilker shares something which I hadn't seen a potmpan understanding of uh of uh AI which thank you for the link uh Mike I'll I'll keep an eye on it and Caroline Crawford um you know forwarded with a summary of it or an understanding of it. Thanks for that Caroline. Um Ellie by the way is after is after you. She says that she learned her diagram sentences from a Jesuit-based education. She can relate. Uh, Bren Presley shares your concerns. And >> I still have PTSD. Post whatever it would be of sentence diagramming. [laughter] >> Uh, Tom Hayes shares a AI generated image. Um, which I'm looking forward to pouring over. And Vahid Mazor says he just finished delivering a class on AI for educators. The concern with cognitive surrender among students is at an all-time high. Uh Brent Presley follows up by saying his concerns include cognitive surrender even for some of his peers. Uh but he replies with saying the same educators were using AI to answer the forum activities in the course. Um wow u Shauna raised her hand please Shauna go ahead. >> Hi. Um well as so I have two things to speak to. [clears throat] first the short one um regarding the um comment on cognitive surrender being at an all-time high. Um I hope it's okay if I plug the course that I'm teaching in two weeks. Okay. [clears throat] So one of the things that I am doing uh is um there's an organization called force 11 um and they run the future of research communications and ecolarship conference which is coming up uh July 27 through the 31st and um I think there's nine or 10 courses being taught and I'm teaching one that specifically addresses the the biases that we as humans bring into an AI human collaborative partnership. >> Uh, and it lays out five different levels of interaction from um if it's functioning as your assistant by writing your emails all the way up to as a dialogic partner and there's a few different stages in between and now we have agentic AI. So now it's actually conducting our workflows and there's a lot of talk about how AI is biased and then there's pockets of conversation around like cognitive surrender is a real thing. Um, and so it lays out the landscape of that literature and integrates it into and then I've filled in some gaps with some of my own terminology, but it in integrates it into a framework that can be used to diagnose human biases around epistemic uh ownership of what's produced in an AI human collaborative engagement. Um, so I today's the last day to register. Um, classes are only $100 and um, at least with my course, you can walk away with a solid framework to use with your students and I'd be happy to drop that link in in the chat when I'm done. Um, >> link >> in there. We need to see it. Put the link in. >> Yeah. Um, and Brian, this is the syllabus that we had talked about a few uh, I guess it was a couple of months ago and now the syllabus is finished. So, um, and it's published so I can hand that out. only uh a six-hour course right now, but it can be expanded to what I'm working on now is expanding it into a graduate seminar uh length course and um and then you know maybe a semester long course after that. Um so and you walk away with how to diagnose these human biases and counter measures. So what do you do when you recognize that you are exhibiting a bias like how do you correct for it? So that's all included in the course. [snorts] Um so the other thing that I am doing and as you know because you are my external examiner on my committee uh is I'm doing a dissertation and this speaks to where is he mark your concerns about the increase in uh grading effort. Um so my dissertation is mapping the tensions in academia higher ed with regard to using AI specifically in doctoral education. Um and but in the process of mapping those tensions, I'm using a research instrument that um early signals through my pilot study is having resonance regarding uh grading AI assisted papers at scale because my philosophy is it really shouldn't matter how the paper is produced as long as the human is thoroughly in the loop and own every word of every sentence of every concept of every idea that's in the paper. What's that? >> Human in the loop. Yes. Yeah. >> Um and I think that's where we're eventually headed because the effort to uh revert back to manual grading practices is it's not compatible. uh expecting everyone to learn AI at a level to be able to grade is not compatible um with our current economics in higher ed. Um but I think grading at scale is a possibility. So I'm I'm actually exiting my pilot study. This is a timing thing, Mark. So I'm exiting my pilot study. I'm moving into my main study. Um hopefully I'll get IRB approval in August and by the end of the year I will have solid data and findings and probably not the published dissertation that'll come in spring. But that's that's my big thing for the end of the year is collecting [clears throat] the data around the tensions and potential for um creating AI leveraged work at scale >> and I have the pleasure of following your work closely um in your dissertation work. Um >> yes, >> please sha share that share that link for the course and and thank you for um this is one of the great things about the forum uh is that we have so many people who are doing so much great work. Uh friends, if you just joined us, a few people have. Hello. This is our community session. Uh we're sharing our thoughts and it's a kind of call-in show, if you will. Um and uh Mark Rush kick things off by uh by talking about AI and questions of how we handle that in different ways. And so far the the chat has been going all over this. Uh Tom HS has been doing as usual uh very deep uh thinking about this. Raana Sweart uh says, "As a um as a 2E PhD and secondary special education teacher without scholars cultivating digital citizenship skills, AI will continue to double down on learned helplessness." Granted, I use many AI programs as accommodations for a variety of resources from helping with executive functioning to demonstrating how words matter, i.e. prompt engineering, then combining UDL and PBL to help scholars develop mastery and critical thinking, including trust by verify as taught to me by a former subcontracts manager. Um, wow, there's a lot going on. Thank you. Uh, thank you for sharing that, Ra. Um, well, I guess if if I could just jump in and say uh I I'm I'm working on something that a few of you know about. Um, I'm teaching a seminar uh at Georgetown on AI and higher education this fall. And by this fall, I mean starting in a month. Um, and uh I'm redesigning it from scratch uh to be a challengebased class. Uh, so I'm still figuring out how that works and uh and and how to run that. Um but I would um I would love uh any uh any thoughts or any ideas besides saying that I need to have all of you as uh as guest speakers. Um the uh I'm trying to get students to think in a broad way. So bringing up um major contextual issues like AI and economics, AI and policy and psychology. Um but also to get the students to drive as much of the class as humanly possible. Um man and the um people are sharing just lots more in the chat. Um Mike Welker has UDL is an excellent lever for making the ADA compliance discussions way more happy. Good point. And Mike, we have a UDL guest coming up in a couple of months. And uh thanks Jennifer for sharing the course information uh and the document. Uh Dylan says, "AI is hitting higher ed at a time when they're facing multiple converging crises. It would be a massive challenge in the best of circumstances, but with institutions distracted by a policy landscape and so forth, the odds that institution manage this world seem very low. Much the same point can be made about most institutions, they're all having legitimacy crises and dysfunctional, leaving them poorly equipped for AI disruptions. I cannot agree enough. Um Dylan, this is an incredibly important point. uh just this morning I gave a talk to a bunch of academic deans uh here in Arkansas and this is one of talking about the poly crisis of uh bring up all these kind of pressures governmental pressures economic ones demographic ones um as well as AI uh I think that's Dylan I I I I hope we can we can do more of this work here at the forum of trying to support people as we think this through um because this is this is really a constellation of of of challenges. And if anybody can't sleep, um if you need to take a nap and you just can't fall asleep in in the chat, I just put a link to my uh my my slides from my talk. So um take a look at that and then I'll just, you know, conk you right out. Uh Steven Crawford adds that when it comes to AI in economics, I'm sorry, AI in X that is AI in economics justice, I wish more people would look at the algorithms deployed in the 2010s and not assume that I started the launch of chatpt. That's a frustration I have. That's a great point, Stephen. That's a really really good point. Um you know, we have the the enormous power of algorithms for shaping all kinds of media interactions. That's you know, in many way a crucial ingredient in chatb practices. flower, a new employee on boarding. Good luck. Good luck. Take care. Take care. Uh so AI is uh definitely one of the things that's going to be looming large for all of us right now. Um what else are you thinking of? What else is looking ahead? Are you looking ahead to uh for the next few months? Um and by looking ahead, I mean it could be good or bad, something that you're hoping for or something that you're worried about. Uh Laura Madson uh [clears throat] writes that uh her undergraded spring classes were odd in a few ways, including a high a careerhigh percentage of Fs. Makes me nervous about the fall. Laura, what do you think happened there? >> I would really really really love to know. um I teach intro psych. So um the opposite we're we're not in PhD land. We're at first year first semester students in southern New Mexico and fall semesters are always really different than springs. But this spring I had a career low enrollment like >> 50% of what I would normally have. >> Wow. Um, and then a careerhigh failure rate, which was an interesting combo. But >> I've taught the same core I've taught the course the same way for several different semesters and broadly for 30 years. So m maybe this is just everybody has to have a a low point or a high point. Maybe I'm hoping that that's it. Man, if anybody has any >> suggestions for what might have been weird about this spring in particular, I'd love to hear it. >> Oh, Laura, first of all, I'm I'm I'm so sorry. I mean, that's a that's a bad double whammy to have the enrollment be low and then to have so many failures. Do you um I mean, that can be a real after all the effort you put into teaching, shaping the class, and and meeting the students, that's that's really hard. Um I I have been hearing from more and more faculty uh more and more concerns about students struggling with reading. I mean there's a whole literature about this. Uh we can talk about this. I've been hoping to have a session uh just on that. But I mean maybe maybe that's one factor. I I'd love to hear from anybody else. Uh if anyone else wants to join in. Raannah Swearart says that uh um she's experiencing something similar. She's saying this from high school to her undergrads. Can I respond to Laura real quick? >> Please, please jump in. >> So, one of the real um innovations, I don't know what I would call it an innovation, but uh uh one of the real uh light bulb moments I've had recently is I started making my students submit the chat logs that they create with AI. Uh, and I can see I could see a pattern before where when I pushed students up to the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy, I would have a lot more fall off uh in terms of people just not getting there. Uh, with the chat log, I could see exactly where that was happening. And that was really fascinating because I, you know, these are things we all talk about uh and we try to look at people's um outputs, their essays, their tests, whatever whatever you're having them build in your class, right? Uh and guess where it led to that, right? Uh and we spend a lot of time trying to carefully construct assignments to to hit certain levels and then we are always at least I have always been disappointed in the results. uh as the you know in terms of you know meeting the two well with AI I can really pick these things apart specifically design assignments around uh trying to hit higher creative levels evaluation levels things like that uh which um most of our instruction doesn't do uh most pe most high I mean if you look at the if you look at the studies on bloom saxonomy everybody's teaching on the bottom two levels for the most part and the problem with that of is that the AI does those bottom two levels rather well? And so that's where they replace themselves with AI because what's the point, right? Uh and also it's also where they're going to end up being replaced in the workforce because they can only do that level of work. And that's my what I see as the the fundamental crisis going forward that we have to navigate our way out of. And so what I have done, I also had a very high failure rate this June. Uh and uh part of it was because I was hoping the AI would push people up into higher levels by itself. But I found a lot of students did not know how to question the AI in a in a rigorous manner. And when I when I gave them additional prompts and things, okay, ask it this now. Don't just do the one thing, but ask these follow-up questions. Many times they ignored it, they didn't do it, whatever. But I could see all this in the chat logs. So what I'm going to do in the fall is add another layer to this and I call this the reasoning loop. So what they're going to do is they're going to take their chat log itself and then red team the chat log. How well did I think about this problem? How high up the level? You know what what kinds of questions did I miss? What should I have asked? Those kind of things. and then reflect on the response that the red team of their own thinking has as a way of getting them to become more self-reflective because that's really the key. You you have to think for yourself with the AI otherwise it will take over your thinking for you. Uh and that's where you have to develop a real partnership with the AI. Um, and I think a lot of the things people complain about, the cheating and all the other things that, you know, the kind of things that I'm that Mark mentioned that people were concerned about, that's that's because AI is undermining those low-level uh cognitive functions, which is what we test for. And um, that means we need to change all of that. And that's a hard mission, but I think it's doable. And it I think people can students can do it. But um I'm hoping that with an iterative process they'll learn how to learn better. >> We Tom we we we've got a few questions in the chat. Um and um um one of them um so first of all thank you thank you for saying that and question for me Tom is if you could share your most recent couple of Substack URLs in the chat. uh Tom friends if you if you don't if you haven't been following his work he started Substack on his teaching with AI and it's it's just some of the great stuff uh because he is so forwardlooking using AI and he's testing this out in real world classes. Uh also Laura there's a question from Ruben Quentura who wants to know if you could share the broad outline of your course um you know key concepts types of tasks um if you just paste that in in in in the chat. Um, >> yeah. >> U well, let me let me tell you a little bit about it because that I think will affect the conversation. >> Maybe it's a flipped class and I use team-based learning and so students are assigned to permanent teams and they already do all of their important work um and assessments in class. So whatever is going on this spring, I I don't think it was an AI problem because they were doing everything in front of me. So like it's not that they were generating essays that um and it's very much built to create a lot of in-class interaction. I don't lecture, but I had so many students just check out, not do poorly on assignments, but simply not do assignments at all. >> And that's what really makes me worried is because I can shape behavior. You know, if you're training a puppy, you can get the puppy to do different things, but the puppy has to start by doing something. >> Yeah. If students have checked out or if they show up but then are there in body only. >> I don't know what to do with that. >> Oh, I see what you mean. Um, if anybody else is experiencing that, um, please, uh, please share that. And my heart goes out to you. That's a that's an awful awful experience. Um, there's been some, uh, answers in the chat, by the way. Um, Laura Madson says her undergrad gened classes uh were odd. Sorry, that's you. Hang hang on. The one I was looking for was um uh no, Caroline Crawford, excuse me. She said she's having the same concern with grad students, too. Uh several years ago, she had a new student walk into her office and inform her that she needed to revise the content of her class because she didn't have to read anything during her bachelor's degree and she had no intention to read anything during her master's work. Um, I informed her the course is graduate level and held different expectations from her prior experiences. Um, wow. Wow. Wow. Um, Brent Presley adds another one into the mix. Uh, he's been in the middle of discussions about uh the Brown University grading story. Um, I don't think we've discussed it here yet um on the forum, Brent, but that's a really good one. If you want to throw in a link to a story for people who haven't seen it, that would be uh that'd be really good. Uh, Ruben Pador adds one more. He says um he'll add the thing that it's important we use the tool set to examine challenge evolve our own thinking uh which is some of the really great work to do. Um Steven Crawford mentions a nonI thing um which is you know asking what's in what's in your world and he mentions leadership change at his institution a new chancellor and a CIO. Uh Justin Bailey chimes in. There's a new president there at Wford. And Carolyn Crawford says a new provost and his college's dean and her colleg's dean just walked in the door. A low leadership Carolyn. Uh glad to see that. Uh Andrew Sax asks a really uh deep question. Is the funnel poisoned? Um are we experiencing kids coming in from K12 and already checked out? Uh Joe Murphy, please. Good to see you. Good to see you, Brian, and everyone. And and partly I just want to uh give Laura a little bit of of commiseration that like this this issue of students that are just checked out. It it ain't you. Um you know, and I'm I'm at both this and my last institution. And there there are there are multiple reasons that students are not turning things in and you kind of need to do it house by house to figure out why a particular student isn't turning things in. But yeah, I think we're seeing a lot of that. And I I think one of the things that I'm struggling with and as someone who's responsible for faculty development, I'm trying to figure out how to talk to faculty members about about Andrew's question about is the funnel poisoned and about what I perceive as a need to teach things in college that we are used to getting from K12 like the ability to read longer texts, like the ability to take notes and no one is going to want to give up even half an hour of disciplinary time to cover those things and they shouldn't. But do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Um, and I I think there's I think there's a really interesting question about how we're going to maybe go pull some K12 educators out of retirement and come teach college faculty members how to teach reading. Um, you know, I I and I it sounds absurd as it comes out of my mouth, but I can't think of a better initial approach, but I I find myself really kind of juggling what I see as that need to do that work. Um, with everything that Tom said and that I agree with about the fact that ideally getting students to buy in to the top levels of Blooms ought to ought to be the thing that keeps them reading, >> you know, ought to be the thing that actually makes them build the skills that need to be built. Um, and yet there's a level on which I think we do need to teach. Maybe it is sentence diagramming, maybe it is vocabulary tests, maybe it is just like reading time in the classroom. But I think that all of those questions of how we marshall willpower and focus and the specific tasks of reading and writing, I think those are now I I think those are are now college level skills that it's incumbent on us to teach. But I have no idea how I'm going to actually say that to the people that I work with and not just a room full of wonderful colleagues that I have no responsibility to tomorrow. >> Well, it might be um that you can bounce off of COVID. Um what I've been hearing from a lot of institutions that teach primarily traditional age undergraduates is they feel that their uh the co experience deskkilled their incoming students socially and so that they now have an extra unfunded mandate of having to really double down on teaching them socialization and and interaction. >> Yeah, that's another one the the socialization. How do I ask a question? How do I deliver and receive feedback? Um, yeah, that's that's another whole area. >> Um, I I do I mean the the chat is so so sensitive. Uh, Jay, I'm coming right back to your promise. I I haven't I haven't missed you. Um, there's so much good stuff. Uh, Cat Williams uh Cat Williamson, excuse me, mentions that these students get used to not doing the assignments and then either being passed along or cramming them in the last minute in a high school uh and their teachers being required to grade them. uh our friend Vahed Mazour as another piece to the puzzle here which is really really important. Uh he points to the um University of California system um faculty demand to reinstate the SAT. Uh Vahed I I didn't get to read the Chronicle of Higher Red just did an interview with uh Janet Npalitano who was the head of that system. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. Um but I'm curious what she says about this. Uh but what interested me in particular that he was that that was both it was initially STEM faculty who talked about this in terms of math uh education but then a bunch of humanists uh added something very very similar. And just to go back to to to uh to Laura um uh a couple of other people have mentioned uh students being checked out. Uh Amy Nelson says she taught lifespan development online this spring. Uh 10% of students checked out didn't submit the work. Um and Brent Presley says, "Last couple of years the new students have been extremely distracted." Uh for him Jay, please over to you. Thank you for your patience. >> Oh, no problem. And thank you for having me and doing this community session. Um I'm fascinated by this talk about AI and I'm fascinated for it in a different direction. Brian, as you know, I study the landscape and what's going on and the closures and so forth. and hearing uh some of the feedback of students who are in classes and either struggling or not participating or checking out. One of the things I'm looking at in terms of the numbers is as enrollment drops for various reasons. We know a lot of it you know enrollment the the enrollment cliff and so many other reasons but one reason that we find is that students feel parents feel why do I need to spend the money when they can get all this information through AI why you know and we know you know you all faculty or staff administrators we know that's not true and that there's other benefits research has shown what the benefits are for attending I'm wondering to hear from you again not within the classroom but are you are you fearful that AI will the growth of it will become a a bigger percentage of the reason why the numbers are dropping and finding more and more colleges struggling uh again maybe not the top level colleges but the ones who are already on the verge of losing students uh going to be lost again without AI. I want to hear from that and then Brian if I can to do a little selfroing at the end. >> Oh, please but please don't be shy and you can definitely do it right now in the chat. But um but my sense uh Jay I I don't know if you've seen this. I I did a a couple of scenarios that I've um really clung to um >> yes >> about AI and higher ed. And uh one of them that uh um keeps coming back to me is is the possibility that people overall would perceive AI to be superior to higher ed in key ways. Uh and this will further reduce support for higher ed which includes not just financial support and political support but also uh enrollment. Um but I'd love to hear from uh from other people on this like Mark Rush who just raised him. Please Mark chime in. >> Hey Brian J. really great point. This is something I think about a lot. Um, you know, we all here went to traditional, you know, schools and whatnot. Um, but I think one of our one of our great challenges is the the constant perception of higher red touting this exclusivity and especially at the upper, you know, the upper, you know, sliver, micro sliver of uh, higher ed and so forth. You know, if higher ed wants to fight off AI, it should make itself bigger. I mean, I think small colleges with big endowments could easily double their enrollments, double the number of faculty, make graduate school great again, right? By giving kids jobs, um, and and enhancing access to this high quality product. But so long as you know, you read in the media constantly, schools are closing, merging whatnot, uh, seats are becoming more dear, it's becoming more expensive, we are, I mean, this is higher ed's imposing on itself a self-inflicted wound here. Sorry, I didn't mean to be redundant. Um, this is a self-inflicted wound. We could, if we open our doors and make it easier to access our high quality product, we won't have to worry so much about AI. But so long as we tout exclusivity, I think the game is lost. >> Well, I mean, for some institutions, exclusivity is key to their brand. Um, right. But >> but you know, for most of them, it is not. um you know thinking open access community or open access public universities or you know community colleges um what else what else do you think uh Jay in in in the chat there's been a a bunch of different responses um >> um so I think I recommend you perusing that >> um Cat Williamson mentions that she has two lite college students as her own college as her own children they absolutely refuse to use AI and Um, I would say this is true in my own family. I have two adult uh children uh who are lifelong tech users. I mean, I raised them, you know, from scratch to be, you know, to be and they're hardcore digital users and they are both fervently uh anti-AI. Um, and Tom is doing his usual very thoughtful meditation here on this um which is great. Um, the uh um and George, excuse me, uh Rahana mentions uh some great quotes um including the classic tool quote about learning how uh to relearn and unlearn. Um this sounds like I mean it sounds if if I could just sum up really quickly uh it sounds like we're seeing um AI as adding a real complicated multi-prong challenge to our practical teaching um and our practical work in many ways but also uh across the board the institutional and sectoral level uh and this is happening when we are seeing so many uh so many other challenges from uh places >> um Mike Wilker Um, I don't think I know Sandra Sandre Maguire's book. Um, do you know her? I would love if the book is great. I would love to reach out to her to uh be a guest in the program. Um, and Wesson, you you know [clears throat] the book already, man. You should know her, you know, and and and and find a way to bring her in. Um, this is uh this is a lot. Um, let let me let me try and shape this a little bit more and ask looking ahead in the next 5 months, uh, what are you excited about? Uh, what are you hopeful about besides, you know, trying to, uh, you know, learn to be as good a photographer as Tom HS or to have as cool an office as Joe Murphy, uh, or to have a psychoproof as good as Laura Madson. Um, what are you what are you looking forward to? Um, what is bringing you hope uh as you go? Uh, and by the way, in the in the chat, I can't find it right now, but Ruben Pentadora said that Laura's problem sounds like an institutionwide issue. Um, and it may be that this is a a sectorwide u thing as well. Thanks, Stephen, for that lesson. I I I I somehow just outflanked that book completely. I I missed it completely. I'm going to have to get her. Thank you. Um Nicholas Quake, Nicholas, I hope I didn't mangle your last name. um says that his department chair in applied computing likes to say that people who can use AI will outco compete people who cannot. He still does not use it, [laughter] which is which is pretty funny. Um as I talk to prospective and incoming students, he goes on, I tell them that those who know how and when not to use AI will out compete those who just know how and when to use AI. That's why a college degree is still important in applied STEM. Oh, that's fascinating. That's fascinating. uh especially um seeing how this comes out. Uh Jennifer Culver uh says that she thinks there are institutional and generational issues at play. What generation hasn't complained and then blamed levels below them? I think AI has exacerbated the issue but isn't the issue itself. Uh this is a really good point. Um and Mike, thank you. Thank you. Um, uh, Andrew kicked off another thread here saying, "AI represents the greatest democratization of knowledge distribution ever. This is incredible and the future will embrace it." And Andrew, if you could in in the chat, please please share a link to your awesome uh Nobel uh project. I want to make sure that people get to see that. U we're going to talk more about that another time, I'm sure. Um, but that's an area of hope and that's a great great answer. Um Carolyn Crawford qualifies that by saying it's as good as a programmer worries about bias. Uh Andrew is not worried about bias as real stupidity. Um which is definitely happening at scale I'm afraid. Um Jay Keane is wondering if anyone has any faculty roles in higher education programs. Uh Jay I don't have one to mind off hand. Um but um but that's that's a real issue. Um I can say one thing that I'm excited about is uh just myself personally. Um well there's two things. One is this program and keeping all of you guys going is this is just wonderful. Um and I'll say it again. I've said it before because apparently we're a very big mushy bear, but I'll say being able to think together with all of you is a wonderful privilege. Um I'm pitching a publisher of a book on AI. So, I'm excited about actually just taking time to write down all my thoughts and get it into one spot um in a hurry. Uh so, that excites me um among other things. Um and uh oh, thanks Andrew. Thanks for sharing that. Very good. Um friend I uh Ellie Demopoulos says speaking to higher red as a content delivery system. What is the future value proposition for students and parents? If higher education is just about credentiing like the dominant modern media narrative claims it to be then AI is the logical end of the hollowing out and extraction phase of initification. Perhaps a return to focusing on the meaning making that happens on a personal development level and external thinking about the world alongside the content and learning that happens on a university campus. It could become a sav to the current challenge higher rate is now facing. That's a great image Ellie. That's a really really great vision. Um thank you. Uh that's one I think we can really take to heart. Uh Nicholas. Yeah. Yeah. I think we did talk about this last week when we were talking um with Roosevelt Montas about general education reform um in terms of of that kind of focusing on meeting making focusing on that kind of personal closeness. Um uh George Station George it's really good to hear from you and good luck with your new external interim president. Okay. George says at the end of each semester he gets more anonymous faculty comments about the state of things AI engagement etc. In support of Laura and Ruben, we shouldn't have to feel isolated. But it's hard to tell. Uh Whoops. Sorry. It's hard to tell chairs and deans and seem like a whiner. Institutions could help. That's very wise, very sobering. I I'm glad to have this, you know, it helped make available this forum for this kind of discussion. Um it definitely feels like we are facing an increasing anxiety um about our institution as well as about our situation. A lot of the deans I talked to are really they see this um and they they feel that anxiety but they should be able to help better. What could they actually do? Um Mike Wilkers says the author of this book spoke to Pod Network folk and we're excited to run a learning community around the book in spring. big challenge. A big spoon to force a sugar of pedagogy to go [laughter] down. Thank you. Uh thank you for that link. Um uh friends, this is a a community session, a free-for-all of of discussion, the organic conversation. But um if I if I can add this to my to my giant tile my giant tall stack of blog posts to do um I think um this is a great snapshot of where higher right now is in in late September of 2026. Um this is awesome. I agree Andrew. Um so uh Carolyn um and Shauna are in a really good discussion right now about gatekeeping and Caroline ends by saying we don't know what we don't know. It makes her think about in a conference keynote who used the American Revolution as an example for something asked about the shot heard around the world how the revolution could have missed shooting a British soldier. I said to my buddy that was an easy question because a revolutionist had just left the pub and were drunk as skunks. I got the nastiest comments from those who heard me until the keynote said the same thing that I did. But he asked me how I knew. Easy. My family founded the US and these stories were handed down through the generations so he'd never forget who we were. [laughter] Brava. Excellent. Excellent. Uh Tom adds that he's doing systems thinking analysis for a current situation. Uh reactions to AI are totally predictable. Um yeah, in that sense it is or they are. Uh Bren Preszley asks, "In an AIcentric world, what skills are most at risk? Critical thinking?" Uh Lauren Madson, just humanity. Um what what I'm hearing from uh quite a bit of places, Brent, is is this uh sense that there is a cluster of human skills that we need to preserve that AI is bad at. Um and and that group of skills I've been hearing this for quite some time has been shrinking a bit uh as AI gets better and better. Uh so we think about for example human warmth, human conversation and companionship. Well on the text level AI is is uh getting better and better at that. Humans are not. Uh and in many ways AI is a alternative to this. Um you sometimes think about uh wrote knowledge and how AI is is can take care of that minus hallucinations. Uh Shauna adds epistemic ownership which is something AI cannot do. Uh Ellie adds how do we know what we think we know? Uh which is really important. Rahana mentioned social learning. So I mean one benefit we have is that AI so far is fairly isolated. um you know we can share AI urls we can share content images code created um but still it's largely you know it's going to be Andrew versus his bot it's going to be Joe Murphy versus Midjourney um and so we provide the social learning which means we have to double down on that in higher red we have to figure out how to make that work bossible creativity and I I don't know James I go back and forth on this um that's my gut instinct right as someone who's devoted these and creativity. I I want that. But um I keep seeing AI simulating creativity in different ways. Um you know in terms of creating images, terms of creating a pros um and I I don't mean creativity at the level of Gan or Toltoy. I I mean the level of basic human creativity uh that can be done um of course through prompting and we can talk about is it actually creative or not but but I I think we have to boost our game um for how we do creativity. Um [laughter] says as a stick figure artist she greatly appreciates night cafe. Yeah, I can't even do stick figures. Um NASA did this great experiment once on the space shuttle where they took some uh spiders, put them in zero g or microgravity and had them make webs. And the webs are this just nightmarish thing. That's what my handwriting was like. Um George Station does a great summary saying that in the chat we we're divided AI versus great democratizer versus AI as intrusive other. We're polite here, but campuses and systems need to have this come on a larger scale. Absolutely. And I think we need to take those conversations very seriously. They need to be very democratic lowercase D way to uh all sides. For years I lived in New England and we had actual town hall meetings. Um that's the kind of thing you need to have. Um, and as Laura says, without trying to convince either side of one is right and one is wrong, letting that space happen for that kind of conversation and it has to be equalized so people can speak and feel heard and they can share this. Um, uh, Andrew mentions that he does teams um, three to four using Quinn and Claude, mixed mode teams, part human, part AI. Andrew, could you could you say a bit more about that please if if you can? Sure. >> Can you hear me? Okay, perfectly. >> Yeah, it's just uh we teach everything on teams and you just add the add the AI to your teams. They have different skills. You interact [snorts] with them in remarkably similar ways. If anything, they actually keep group status better than most humans do and they have different skills, right? You know, just people have different skills, people make stuff up. AI makes stuff up. you still make the decision as a human team, >> but you they just they just they're team members with different skills on your team. >> Why did you pick those two tools? Uh Quinn and Claude. >> Uh one US, one outside us. >> Got it. >> You know that there's a lot of bias that you get rid of a lot of bias when you do when you do diverse teams of humans and of AIs. Um, if I could say something to you that I just typed in the chat. This is awkward. Um, like deja vu between my fingertips and my brain. Um, uh, Laura Madson Andrew asked, um, she's intrigued by this, but she's daunted. And I just responded was we're doing a session on this this fall, uh, with Dewey Murder from Georgetown University. Um, so the uh I should have a link to that uh on the upcoming uh events page, but um Andrew um this sounds really really very exciting. Um and uh and fun to see. Um thank you. Thank you. Um >> I I I run my learning program just like I ran my startups with technology and people, >> right? [snorts] >> And uh and very team- based. Uh, and Carolyn Crawford mentions that he makes the great uh War Games movie quote. So, I'm kind of waiting to see that um at last. Uh, friends, we've got about four minutes uh to go and uh I could I could talk with you forever, but I want to honor your schedules and to stick to our classic paradigm of the of the hourlong session. Um I'm I'm really c uh and uh in the chat by the way is a is a great long um discussion coming up uh about um the uh differences between human and AI creativity which I really appreciate. Um in the chat George then adds a link to upcoming sessions. So I I warned you all that we had sessions scheduled out for a while. Um but you can see all those lined up right there. Um I'm uh um Oh, thank you Laura. That's very kind. Thank you very I I really enjoyed the conference too. Um um so one of the things that um Carolyn um shoot me a note. I would love to host more of these. Um um I mean I for me the the forum community is special in a lot of ways and politically I like having a kind of headless event uh when there's no one leader where you know it's everyone talking together. Um so I'm I'm very happy to see that. Um one thing that makes me anxious let me think about let me leave with one anxious thing and one optimistic thing. Um one thing that makes me anxious uh about this fall semester is not academic um uh it's the possibility of uh social unrest in um different countries um you know so um coming under from all kinds of directions um so environmental pressure some of you mentioned before um seeing the Canadian wildfires smoke um you know scaring its way across the United States uh thinking about elections um in in the US. I'm trying to volunteer to be an election monitor um in November. So, we'll see if I can get that done. Um I'm anxious as well about some of the other pressures on different nations, those at war right now. Um [clears throat] and of course, uh some nations which are suffering from a lot of uh tension. Uh so I'm worried about the impact those might have on selfishly higher education. Uh so um I'm concerned for example that policies and political attacks may skew towards higher ed. Uh we already have physical attacks um on higher red in different parts of the world right now. Um so I'm I'm that's something that um we haven't talked about um but I I it is very obvious um but I wanted to make sure that we we bear that in mind. Andrew Sox mentions social unrest everywhere. Uh he mentions Nepal which did their anti-corruption revolution. That would be a great thing. Laura Madson mentions port torches and pitchforks. Um but I I tell you um the uprising. I haven't seen this. Oh my gosh. Um I'll have to uh um >> I am no soldier. >> I'll have to take a look at this. >> I am no priest. Um but I'll tell you what um what one of the things that excites me is that um I teach in a small graduate program but we have a new class of students uh and we have returning students from last year and uh the students from last year did so much work uh and were so creative and so thoughtful and it was great just to get to know them and to learn more about them and then to nudge them along uh along their paths. and the new students. I don't know them at all. Uh and I'm so excited about what we can do together. Uh higher ed has this special unique space and time for that where committed people are people who should be committed like some of us um can meet together with learners and to focus on that unique shining that flame of learning. Um that keeps me going and I'm really looking forward to that. And I say this and your discussion here on AI creativity is just rocketing along at grad school level and I I can't add to that right now. Uh George Station says he's more excited about new students than new AI tools. Um I don't know if I'm I'm more excited about people than most things, but um u but we do have to wrap this up. Um Carolyn, thank you for your your best wishes. I appreciate that. Um everybody, thank you for joining us. Um this has been a a terrific event for me and I hope this has been useful for all of you. U we have more sessions coming up. Uh George shared the uh upcoming sessions uh link so you can sign up uh for all of these. Uh if you'd like us to have a session on a topic that has come up, shoot me a note and and we'll see about setting it up. Um I'm this is my program so I'm happy to do that. Um and happy to have more time. Um thank you all. Um, I hope everybody, if you're in the northern part of the world, uh, you get to stay away from the smoke. If you're in the southern part of the world, stay as cool as you can. You're all very cool people. Take care, everybody. We'll see you next time online. Bye-bye.