Et Tu, PowerPoint? Teaching Through Tech Trouble
Nichole DeWall
July 13, 2026
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Like many faculty, I’ve long assumed that building custom digital tools was work that belonged to someone else. I am not a programmer, but over the past year, I developed a series of interactive web applications for my anatomy and physiology courses using generative AI.AI
Many years ago, when I was in graduate school, I attended a high school college fair as an alumnus college representative. I had been an undergraduate at Carleton College, a small liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, and was enthusiastic about answering questions from prospective
As an instructor of bachelor’s-level courses in software development, where most assignments are code-based, I teach courses that are among the most vulnerable to AI misuse and outsourced learning. This reality left me with a foundational question: How can I structure my assessments so that
This past fall, I lost my job. As a tenured full professor at a state university, that is not a sentence I ever thought I would write. I study higher education, and I live in the state with the lowest public funding for its colleges,
Diving into the world of academic research feels like learning a new language for novice researchers. Concepts like ontology, epistemology, research paradigms, and methodology can be daunting. To help our graduate students learn research methods, we built an AI agent that guides them through the
I’ve been a college professor for over 40 years. As a cognitive psychologist, I’ve spent my career studying learning and memory and as a teacher, I’ve integrated my research knowledge with my practical teaching experience. When I took my last position at Samford University in
In modern classrooms, where students have diminishing attention spans, some freeze when called upon, and others seem to unravel at the slightest sign of critical feedback, old methods of teaching are caving under the weight of a new, trending reality. Across higher education, faculty are
When faculty tell me their online students “just don’t engage,” I always want to ask a simple question: Do your students actually know you? Not your credentials. Not your syllabus. You.
Our students do not need yet another reverent speech about literature’s profound importance, especially from English professors like me. They need examples, models of what people actually do with books.
