Episodes

In this trailer of the AI for Educators Design Lab podcast, Jennifer Maddrell, a learning experience designer with a PhD in Instructional Design and Technology, introduces the show's mission to help educators navigate the complexities of AI integration in teaching. Focusing on the balance between the exciting potential and significant concerns of AI, Jennifer aims to foster reflection rather than offering quick fixes. The first season will tackle pressing challenges such as academic integrity, ...

As an educator, what do you do when AI can now complete your prior assignments? In this episode, Jennifer Maddrell, PhD, shares how testing and redesigning her own assignment changed her approach to academic integrity in the age of AI. She frames it as a design challenge that educators have professional judgment to tackle. This episode explores five design questions to help educators explore academic integrity as a learning experience design challenge, not a policing problem: Is your assignmen...

If AI can now complete our assignments, does AI change our learning goals? In this episode of the AI for Educators Design Lab podcast, Jennifer Maddrell, PhD, explores how AI not only makes assignments more vulnerable but also prompts a review of traditional learning goals. AI isn't just changing what students can produce. It's also revealing that some of our legacy learning goals were written for a time when recall and reproduction were the dominant aims and indicators of learning. Using her o...

Are your students using AI without really understanding it? This episode of the AI for Educators Design Lab podcast, Jennifer Maddrell, PhD, makes the case that AI literacy needs to be a consistent design intention running through the full learning experience. A one-time tutorial, a first-week policy conversation, or an add-on module isn't enough. Students who use AI without understanding how it generates outputs, where it breaks down, or what ethical stakes are involved aren't developing critic...

As AI is integrated into learning experiences, where is human presence essential? In this episode of the AI for Educators Design Lab podcast, Jennifer Maddrell, PhD, considers the interactions that make learning possible, and makes the case that in an AI-integrated environment, learning is shaped not just by how students interact with technology, but by the people who design, guide, and participate in those interactions. Drawing on decades of distance and online learning research, including the...

Who's responsible for data privacy and security in AI-integrated learning? In Episode 5 of the AI for Educators Design Lab podcast, Jennifer Maddrell, PhD, argues that these issues aren't just IT and compliance concerns, or problems tech vendors should monitor and control. They're core design responsibilities for educators, learning experience designers, and educational leaders that shape everyday tool choices, workflows, and prompt decisions. This episode was recorded amid reports of a major C...

If AI can complete your assignment in minutes, that is not a student misconduct problem. It is a design challenge. In this Design Sprint Preview, Jennifer Maddrell introduces the AI for Educators Design Sprint, a low-pressure, guided experience for educators, instructional designers, and learning leaders who want to redesign one AI‑vulnerable learning experience for an AI‑integrated world. Instead of seeking ways to AI-proof your assignment, this sprint begins with a more fundamental design qu...

In this special summer episode of the AI for Educators: Design Lab podcast, Jennifer Maddrell reflects on a four-day Design Sprint with educators from K–12, higher education, and professional learning. She explores the idea that AI may be exposing “pedagogical deferred maintenance” rather than creating entirely new problems in teaching and learning. Framing AI integration as an ill-structured design challenge, Jennifer examines how learning experiences can become more AI-resilient by reconsider...