Innovating Higher Ed

The Measure of a Man preview opens Innovation Pulse Weekly Edition 22 with a richer way to judge AI in higher education. Dr. Norma Jones reflects on Picard, Data, leadership and human agency, then the 8:21 episode follows six full stories about AI teaching choices, AI writing and professional judgment. At Cornell, students can challenge historical chatbots against the records behind their answers....

Captain Picard did not expect Data to become human to deserve respect. In this 21:40 Special Feature, Dr. Norma Jones reflects on how Star Trek’s portrayals of curiosity, leadership and autonomy can help us think more clearly about AI in higher education. From The Measure of a Man and Picard’s relationship with Data to Hugh, the Borg and Janeway’s reflection on fear, Jones explores what it means t...

See how AI can support the thinking behind your work. MIT professor Eric So describes the practice that develops professional judgment. This edition also examines AI tutoring conversations used in assessment, Glasgow’s task-based AI literacy framework, a proposed approach to grading evidence, the gap between an AI citation and its claim, and forecasts several weeks ahead. Listen to Innovation Puls...

Dr. Norma Jones’s script, scene and editing decisions may help you plan a teaching video of your own. In this 7:32 Original Feature for Innovating Higher Ed, she tells the story behind My Voice at Scale: AI Supported Feedback, the separate film demonstrating her Gemini-supported speech-feedback approach. Dr. Jones and producer Brent Jones built a two-column production script and used AI tools to c...

Make more informed choices about AI in higher education, from student reasoning and course reminders to vendor comparison and lesson design. Listen to the complete 8:28 Innovation Pulse Weekly, Edition 20, covering October 3–9, 2026. In the audio: • AI Turned His Brain Signals Into His Familiar Voice • Make Course Reminders Give Students a Useful Next Step • Get a Clearer View of Student Reasoning...

Make more room for AI creativity in higher education while keeping human judgment at the center of your choices. Dr. Norma Jones pairs Willy Wonka’s imagination with Green Lantern’s sense of responsibility. This Original Feature explores how to question AI-generated ideas, consider whose perspectives they include and decide what to revise or reject. Hear a speech-course example and ideas for campu...

Make clearer teaching decisions about AI in higher education, and give your AI experiments a purpose. In this 8:23 edition of The Innovation Pulse from Innovating Higher Ed, Dr. Norma Jones connects grading, class discussion, assignment design, teaching-pilot evidence and course-tool choices. Hear Dartmouth's process before an AI flag affects a grade, Wharton's approach to participation, what to c...

Could a shared AI learning lab help educators and students work through a real course challenge together? In this Original Feature, Dr. Norma Jones proposes two models: faculty sessions built around a teaching question, and class visits where the professor, students and an AI teaching specialist develop and test a lesson on the spot. She also considers how selected sessions might bring in workplac...

What could educators try with more room to explore? Dr. Norma Jones opens this week's Innovation Pulse with a faculty learning lab idea, followed by practical stories on teaching, university strategy, workforce skills and a bionic arm's first home trial. Listen to this 7:04 edition, then read all 12 pieces, including Dr. Jones's Original Feature: https://www.innovatinghighered.com/innovation-pulse...

AI in higher education: Stanford’s Paper2Agent turns published research methods into research assistants. This week also examines course policies, faculty development and how students use AI. The complete Innovation Pulse for September 12–18, 2026. Runtime: 7:39. In this episode: • Stanford’s Paper2Agent research assistants • Helping faculty move from experiments to course redesign • Students usin...

In this complete 10:19 Innovation Pulse for September 5–11, 2026:   1. Harvard's David Deming Wants Students to Show Their Thinking. 2. Texas A&M Finds the Instructional Design Behind Better AI Role-Play. 3. A Five-Level AI Scale Starts With the Assignment's Purpose. 4. Austin Community College Wants Student Alerts to Lead Somewhere Useful. 5. Dartmouth Pairs Permission to Use AI With Work Oth...

AI in higher education: four new models and what they could help you build, plus assignment design and human judgment. Listen to the complete 6:07 Innovation Pulse: four stories from August 29–September 4, 2026, plus a later Grant Portal launch update. This episode covers OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta’s four new AI models; writing conferences at Santa Clara University; student-written exams i...

Before setting AI guidelines, MIT’s final AI and education report asks what an MIT education is meant to help students learn, practice, demonstrate, and value. In Feature Coverage, Dr. Norma Jones examines what that principles-before-policy sequence could mean for assessment, mentored learning, and campus policy. This 9:14 Innovation Pulse also covers new AI-era degree paths at USC and UCLA, Clems...

A.I. fluency is appearing in degree requirements, new majors, and general-education courses. The episode also covers student choice, A.I. literacy, role-play for judgment, accountable guidance, staff training, business curricula, robot learning, and teen safeguards. Full written coverage and source links: https://www.innovatinghighered.com/innovation-pulse/2026-08-21?utm_source=podbean&utm_med...

Claude's new text watermark may appear after proofreading or translation and may disappear after substantial rewriting. This episode examines what the mark can establish and what it cannot, then covers student agency, A.I.-assisted learning, Grok Bot, dental simulations, an A.I. course, human skills, and an adult A.I. academy. Full written coverage and source links: https://www.innovatinghighered....

Universities are turning off A.I.-detection tools and redesigning assessments around process, judgment, and evidence. The episode also covers A.I. curricula, employer skill questions, classroom assignments, psychiatry simulations, teaching prompts, A.I. literacy, and career preparation. Full written coverage and source links: https://www.innovatinghighered.com/innovation-pulse/2026-08-07?utm_sourc...

OpenAI is providing 100,000 academic researchers with free access to its advanced A.I. models through 2027. The episode also covers campus A.I. readiness, student demand, data-center training, student policy, newsroom verification, and A.I. tutoring investment. Full written coverage and source links: https://www.innovatinghighered.com/innovation-pulse/2026-07-31?utm_source=podbean&utm_medium=p...

Harvard President Alan Garber said researchers in quantitative fields, science, and engineering are unlikely to remain at the forefront without using A.I. The episode also covers teaching approaches, applied A.I. degrees, hiring shifts, assignment frameworks, affordability, agent security, and model safeguards. Full written coverage and source links: https://www.innovatinghighered.com/innovation-p...

Professors are redesigning assignments around discussion, process, judgment, and authentic work so a copied A.I. output has less value. The episode also covers liberal-arts strengths, agent limits, trade-school enrollment, advising, campus governance, A.I. literacy, and Claude for teachers. Full written coverage and source links: https://www.innovatinghighered.com/innovation-pulse/2026-07-17?utm_s...

OpenAI released the GPT-5.6 model family for enterprise work, coding, and scientific research. The episode also covers biomedical A.I. agents, cancer-recurrence testing, nursing simulations, work-based learning, educator attitudes, and university A.I. curricula. Full written coverage and source links: https://www.innovatinghighered.com/innovation-pulse/2026-07-10?utm_source=podbean&utm_medium=...

Fifty percent of faculty feel overwhelmed by new tech, yet student AI use is soaring. In this episode, Dr. Norma Jones talks with Professor Chesa Caparas, media-literacy scholar and Fulbright researcher, about a people-first path to AI adoption in higher education. Chesa shares how a two-question survey surfaces hidden anxieties, how faculty can adapt without burnout, and why over reliance on AI d...

Can a chocolate factory and a power ring teach us about the future of AI on campus? Dr. Norma Jones introduces the “Wonka-Lantern Framework,” pairing boundless creativity with moral clarity to guide AI integration across teaching, learning, and administration.

Textbooks can cost more than tuition,AI‑powered OER wipes that cost out entirely. In this conversation, Dr. Sarah Harmon, Adjunct Professor of Spanish and Linguistics, OER / ZTC Coordinator at Cañada College, and Chair of the SMCCCD Academic Senate Standing Committee on Teaching and Learning (DTLC), lays out the five‑spoke ZTC Wheelthat drives course material costs to $0 without sacrificing rigor....

Can a chatbot rewrite your toughest assignments in under five minutes? In this episode, Dr. Norma Jones talks with Scott James—an instructional-design veteran who began in disability services and now builds AI copilots for faculty. Scott explains how his PlayLab custom-bot lets instructors quarantine course materials, slash hallucinations, and surface crystal-clear rubrics—all without surrendering...

Welcome to Tinker Lab, a dynamic new segment of Innovating Higher Ed. In this episode, host Dr. Norma Jones tests OpenAI’s powerful ChatGPT Pro and its premium Deep Research feature. Norma shares her firsthand experience using AI to draft and enhance chapters for an Open Educational Resources (OER) textbook on Public Speaking. Discover how ChatGPT Pro helped identify gaps, suggested valuable updat...