Welcome to Fall 2025. As the semester kicks off, I offer four considerations for your classrooms:
Teaching Naked. Borrowing from the title of a wonderful book by José Bowen, Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your Classroom Will Improve Student Learning, and inspired by our Fall Conference opening presentation about how relationships drive student success, I invite you to consider the place of technology in your classrooms. How are you and your students spending the time together? What tools and approaches are best suited to in-class learning or to out-of-class experiences? I enjoyed this related opinion piece, Here’s what happened when I made my college students put away their phones and also appreciated the various perspectives shared in the comments section.
Connections are Everything. Once again referencing our recent Fall Conference, I wanted to highlight the fact that speaker Peter Felten’s book, Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College, is available as an eBook through University Libraries. A companion book for students, Connections Are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education, is also freely available through Project Muse. If you would like to hear more from Peter, the recording of his keynote presentation is now available on our website. I so appreciated the research findings he presented as well as the practical suggestions offered to help build and strengthen trusting relationships with and among our students. A small group of us had the privilege of meeting with Peter the day before the conference and engaging in a rich discussion around trust; I offer just a window into the research on the topic with this piece, Building trust in the classroom: A conceptual model for teachers, scholars, and academic developers in higher education. The next “trust move” is yours.
Assets and Aspirations. I had a lovely conversation yesterday with a parent of a new GVSU student. It was a privilege to bear witness to the pride and excitement evident in the parent’s remarks. What also came through loud and clear in this brief exchange was the student’s high expectations for themselves, for their GVSU education, and for their future impact. It was a timely reminder of the importance of our shared work and to the significance of what we mean by “student success.” It also brought to mind an asset-based approach to teaching. As a refresher, I recommend both the ACUE planning guide, Teaching from an asset-based mindset and the Every Learner Everywhere toolkit, What is asset-based teaching and how does It enable equity practices in college classrooms? And, given that everything is connected, in exploring the toolkit section “utilizing digital tools to create a more engaging student experience”, I was delighted to read the following: You don’t even get to see your students’ brilliance if they’re not yet in a space where they feel comfortable sharing it with you.
Digital Literacy and AI. We have been working on a series of events for faculty related to digital literacy, which naturally includes artificial intelligence. In June, we organized a Digital Literacy Summer Institute and this academic year, we are offering Digital Literacy Fridays. I am excited to unveil the growing schedule of Friday morning discussions on a range of digital literacy topics. We welcome all to join to learn from colleagues, share ideas and resources, and generally find community around digital approaches to teaching and learning. Sessions are held from 11am to 12pm and rotate among the Valley Campus, the City Campus, and Zoom.
On the subject of AI, we are still making updates to our Generative AI in Education page. I encourage you to explore the resources on this page as well as on the university AI Strategies & Initiatives site. Throughout this year, I will continue to share multiple perspectives on the ways in which AI is impacting education. One interesting piece I read last week has the provocative title, Death to online discussion boards: How AI is making discussion boards obsolete. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this one, so don’t hesitate to drop me a note.
I will close with an insightful snippet from an interview published earlier this month during which the sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom offered: Perhaps one of the biggest threats that A.I. poses to education isn’t that it’s going to make educators useless, but that it is going to make educators so much more necessary than we are willing to invest in. A.I. actually makes it more important that we have everything from librarians to counselors to teachers to professors to researchers who can put this rapidly changing information environment into context and can develop the capacity in students to make sense of things.
May this semester begin smoothly for you and may your students inspire and challenge you–
–Christine Rener
