March 20, 2026

Teaching and Learning

Slow Learning (Alexandra Mihai, The Educationalist, Substack, February 9, 2026). Mihai provides a list of suggestions to help us slowdown in the classroom – to return to thinking, and the belief that learning is a process rather than an outcome.

The process of writing forces the writer to be present (Jackie Webb and Christina Birnbaum, Times Higher Education, February 14, 2026). The authors provide suggestions to help students build a writing practice by putting pen to paper in a variety of classes. This supports the post by Pittard from the last NOTW and relates to the Slow Learning post above.

Ten tips for embedding retrieval practice in university teaching (Katie Burgess, Times Higher Education, March 13, 2026). Burgess provides 10 quick tips to help students retrieve information in low stakes activities across the semester.

Teaching and Learning (AI)

AI Is Not Replacing Learning—It’s Exposing Where Learning Was Thin to Begin With (Xinyao Yi, Inside Higher Ed, March 10, 2026). Yi asks us to consider what we have been assessing all along – learning or output – and poses the idea that AI is a problem only if our assessments focus on producing, rather than understanding, an answer.

Is AI Making us Stupid? Cal Newport is worried. (Cal Newport, Chronicle for Higher Ed, March 12, 2026). In this interview, Newport, a longtime advocate of deep work and email reduction, argues that allowing AI to automate thought is problematic. He discusses the challenges we’ve already weathered with the internet, but is concerned that as we allow AI to autofill sentences and generate responses, we lose the “cognitive strain” that is central to learning and our “cognitive health”.

OpenAI’s Education Pitch Has a Free Version Problem (Marc Watkins, Rhetorica, SubStack, March 12, 2026). Watkins reports on a recent meeting with OpenAI and university leaders on the rollout of an educational version of ChatGPT and the limits and considerations that should be discussed.

Tidbits – Supporting Wellbeing

How to Form and Sustain a Faculty Growth Club (Zhanna Sahatjian, Jimena Ramirez Marin and Eileen L. Zurbriggen, Inside Higher Ed, March 4, 2026). This group of female faculty members provide ideas on how to find our people and create a meaningful, supportive and collaborative growth network in a virtual space.

Workplace Hygiene: Salutary Habits to Combat the Great Detachment (Raymond E. Crossman, Inside Higher Ed, March 11, 2026). Crossman provides ideas that may help to reengage faculty and staff given the current and growing sense of detachment at our places of employment. He argues that by placing care, attention and practice on supervision, meetings and social capital, we can decrease feelings of being demoralized.

Sometimes Stress Is Just Stress (Jessie Gold, Inside Higher Ed, March 12, 2026).  In this piece, Gold suggests ways that we can validate a student’s feelings and help them see that stress is sometimes both normal and part of adulting.

CTL Event

The Grading Redesign I Kept Putting Off (And What Finally Made It Possible) with Lew Ludwig

This semester, my 200-level course — mostly non-majors in economics, data analytics, and computer science — are demonstrating a depth of understanding I haven’t seen in fifteen years of teaching. The difference isn’t a new textbook or a smaller class; it’s standards-based grading, with students demonstrating what they know through entirely in-class, AI-free assessments. It’s a redesign I’ve wanted to attempt for years but never had the bandwidth to execute. Since generative AI first arrived in our classrooms, I’ve argued that alternative grading would be our most productive path forward — not to catch cheaters, but to refocus on what students actually know. This semester I finally put that conviction to the test, using AI itself to help with the planning overhead that had kept me on the sidelines.

You will leave with a practical framework for using AI as a course-design partner and, perhaps more importantly, permission to try a grading redesign you’ve been putting off.

Register HERE for the event on April 9, 2026 at Noon EDT.  A link and calendar invite will be sent the day before the event.   Can’t join us live?  Register anyway – the recorded session will be emailed to registrants.