Innovating Higher Ed

In this compelling episode of the Innovating Higher Ed Podcast, Dr. Norma Jones sits down with Dr. Suha Aljuboori—a visionary educator whose passion for teaching led her from the war-torn reality of Iraq, through rebuilding her career in Jordan, and ultimately to establishing one of the first AI departments in the California community college system. Discover how Dr. Aljuboori overcame language ba...

Nine in ten rookie nurses freeze during their first real code—no matter how many textbooks they’ve aced. What if they could practice the chaos in a headset first? In this episode, Dr. Norma Jones talks with Dr. Jenna Zeller, Assistant Director of Cabrillo College’s nursing program, about a layered VR workflow that lets students “fail safe,” page a cranky on-call physician, and still make it to lab...

Can a VR headset and two smart prompts rekindle student belonging in a single class period? Dr. Norma Jones sits down with Dr. Garrick Grace—Director of Professional Development for the California Virtual Campus—to reveal how extended-reality simulations and adaptive AI tools are reshaping classrooms across the nation’s largest community-college system. Grace recounts using grade-leveled articles...

Eighty-six percent of students already lean on AI—yet only 22 percent of faculty have even opened ChatGPT. Author-trainer Lynn Dickinson joins Dr. Norma Jones to help instructors close that gap. Lynn traces her journey from wary observer to classroom pioneer, shares the prompt pattern she uses to build full slide decks in about ten minutes, and explains how a one-month writing sprint (with ChatGPT...