– Hi everyone. I’m Niya Bond, the faculty developer here OneHE, and I’m so excited to be joined this evening by Carter Moulton. Carter, in a minute, I’m gonna let you tell the community all about yourself, but I wanna just forecast that we’re gonna be talking about a very timely topic. We’re going to be talking about analog inspiration, which is a card deck, but also so much more, and you’re gonna tell us all about that. But we’re also gonna be talking about how to be human in an AI era. So Carter, I’ll let you introduce yourself to everyone.

– Wonderful. Thank you so much. My name is Carter Moulton. My pronouns are he, him. I’m an educational developer. I currently work as a faculty developer at Colorado School of Mines. And I’m the creator of this card deck we’re gonna talk about today, which I always have, right by me. But Analog Inspiration. And it’s really an educational development tool that’s designed to help faculty gather together and share some of the frustrations, some of the ideas, some of the challenges, and hopefully some of the successes that they’re experiencing in their classroom as it relates to generative AI. And the card deck is designed around specific values, concerns, and skills that we hold as humans. And I found that that’s been a really nice way to get folks in the room who maybe are very against AI and very, maybe a little too pro AI in my opinion, but all over the place, all these different perspectives, getting them together to talk about values. It’s sort of a really nice way to ground those discussions, learning from each other and our experiences and being vulnerable with each other based on those values.

So each card in the card deck has a different value on it. So “hope” would be one or “perseverance.” Different values or skills. And then maybe a little bit about, sometimes it’s a thought provoking exercise. Sometimes it’s an activity idea, you know, actually encouraging faculty to, hey, take a minute and upload your syllabus into AI and say, where could I be more welcoming? Where could I be more caring? And sometimes it’s a thought exercise more about, for instance, I don’t know, let’s pick one, the rest card, which is, there’s no idea on it. It’s just kind of asking you to take a rest and remind your students that they’re more than what they produce. You know, our students are so productive and they’re on so many apps to get their information about, where to go and what after class events are happening. And it’s just an overwhelming world. And that rest can be really restorative for everybody and can support learning. So some of the ideas on the cards are very practical, and I wanted to make those really practical because I think some of the hesitancy toward AI integration is just not knowing what to do with this tech. And some of them are kind of using AI as a clever way to actually talk about things like relationships and other values we hold. So in a nutshell, that’s the idea of the project.

– Now you mentioned it can be used in various contexts, and I was reading up about this and you actually have suggestions for how to use it, say like in a faculty development workshop versus how to use it in the classroom. So it really is applicable, as you just said, to any instance where there’s gonna be like interaction or connection, or as you said, with rest, sometimes not even that, just a pause and a thought.

– Yeah, yeah, it’s been fun also to hear from so many people talking about how they’ve used the cards in ways I never really even thought of. So we’ve got folks who are just buying a deck for themselves and flipping a card every now and then in their office and doing that when they’re out of ideas, right, for what to do in the classroom. Something like the variety card, for instance, will say, upload one of your course learning outcomes and then give me three different variety, three variety of ways to assess student learning. Or how can I add more variety to this assignment? So that’s a really solo way of playing. We’ve got centers for teaching and learning who are using them to facilitate workshops. At intensives, you can do a combination where you start with the values discussion and then you actually give folks a chance to play, you know, play cards on the table. And then looking at those cards, spend some time actually integrating, you could call it analog inspiration and maybe digital integration, but using what’s on the cards to work on your courses to actually workshop them. And then the last one that, well, there’s two more really that I’ve been hearing about.

One is, in departmental meetings you might have a departmental conversation about your discipline and how specifically, you know, how are we as a math department approaching AI. Let’s put all the cards up on the table and form some clusters and themes and try to think about where these things are occurring in our classes, in our curriculum and think about the student’s trajectory through that curriculum, and what do we hope to kind of thread through it. And then some of the cards, you know, I’m inviting faculty, like the hope card I showed a minute ago, it’s really about first day of class, an activity you might do with students and bring students into the cards as well to kind of upload some writing about what they hope to do in their life, the things that really spark them and excite them. And then actually have AI come up with like an image of that or a mantra, and they can actually then come to class first day and share those things with each other, and then reflect on those in the middle of the course and at the end of the course to see how their goals are changing. So getting students involved. And I’ve led workshops where we just sit students and faculty down together, and it’s really fun to hear faculty and students talk about something like joy. And then we ask our students in that context, what’s a class that you’ve had where this was missing this, this idea of a relationship was missing or agency or inquiry, right? I wasn’t asking questions, I was just kind of remembering facts. And there’s so many insights that can come, and that’s really why it’s a card deck and not just a web resource or worksheet or whatever, or book. It’s because I really think we need to be sitting down together and talking about these things.

– Yeah, I love that. Now, you mentioned that there’s something in the deck for everyone on the kind of AI spectrum, whether you’re a little hesitant about it or whether you’re eagerly integrating it. So how does that work? What kinds of things are on either end or even in between?

– Yeah, so for the sort of cards that are asking us to pause a little bit, another card example would be like discernment. What does discernment mean in terms of how we’re using it? Not only for students, but for faculty too. I think we need clear guidelines around faculty use. I know from students’ perspectives that they’re a little frustrated that faculty are just using AI to generate questions, emojis and all, right? And it’s kind of like, this is see through, it feels almost like work slop for me. I’m here to get an education, and what I’m missing is that human connection. So discernment on both sides of that. But that’s just a simple exercise where if you flip that card over, it’ll ask you to reflect on what I’m avoiding right now by using AI and what am I trying to offload, but also, am I just bored with the assignment and I just wanna get it over with? Am I feeling a certain pressure or perfectionism in myself? Am I really just trying to offload that struggle? So trying to get people to talk about when you use AI, what are you offloading or avoiding? And then, you know, a lot of these ideas, another one might be imagination, where you could actually invite students to kind of predict or look forward to their discipline in 50 years, what does it look like? What are some of the new challenges? What are some of the ethical considerations of that time?

And then ask AI, give it a little bit of context, ask AI to do its own future visioning, and then compare the two and talk about what skills and knowledge they’ve learned in this class is AI missing in its imagination. So a lot of these are sort of using AI, but skeptically and critically, getting that critical literacy. But some are really just fun, like something like mystery, right? Mystery is just all about taking one of your course concepts, and I have a sample prompt that you can kind of plug it into almost like Mad Libs, create an engaging short mystery or puzzle involving the concept where something unusual happens and I have to figure out what caused it, include clues I can follow, but don’t give away the answer right away. So this is something that with a lot of these activity ideas, I’m hoping that we can have some fun with them. But then I think the theme throughout all these cards is bringing people together. So this would be something you do at home for fun, and all of the students are gonna have different mysteries. They’re gonna have different stories, they’re gonna have different experiences. Come together at the beginning of class and share what those mysteries were, what happened, what was hilarious about it, and what did they learn and how did that kind of shape their understanding of the course concept. So there’s a lot of creative activations, but some that are a little bit like, let’s pause here and be intentional.

– Yeah, it’s so wonderful too, because I think, you know, there are a lot of folks concerned about losing that human connection with AI around or losing the essentials of human critical thinking and reflection and pause and pondering, but you’re showing how it can all exist at once, not necessarily all together, sometimes separate, sometimes simultaneously, but it’s really hopeful and I love that about the deck.

– Thank you. I kind of have been saying it’s between harm reduction and hope. And I think maybe the card has, the card deck has its own sort of tension in it where you can kind of see that I am, not that you’re thinking about me at all, but you can like see that it’s, I really do not like a lot of the things that we’re seeing, and the way that this is being pushed on us without guardrails, without concern for the environment, et cetera, et cetera. And I also believe really strongly in the need for trust and the need for communication with students and relationships with students and a world where we’re policing and surveilling and banning isn’t in line with those values either. So it’s kind of difficult. But I think also what I’m learning about the project, maybe I didn’t even think this when I made it, but I think my message is kind of getting folks to think about learning. We’re talking a lot about how it’s impacting the brain, how it’s impacting our process of learning. But we need to also be talking about how it’s impacting our social relationships and our isolation and our, as we standardize and scale and talk about larger class sizes, what are we losing there? Why would a student risk anything to be connected to us in the classroom when they have this tool? And that’s what we have to try to come up with as a community. So those relationships are central here.

– Well, I love that idea of connection being central. Now, you’ve been in a lot of spaces and places. You’ve been on podcasts, you have the deck. Can you tell a community where they can find out more about what you’re doing, where they can get the deck, and anything else you’d like them to know?

– Absolutely, yeah. analoginspiration.ai. You can read all about the deck there. There’s a physical version, a digital version, and then there’s also a free Google sheet that has all of the card deck ideas on it. So go crazy with that. And then there’s also information about speaking and workshops and other things that I offer on that website and a few ways you can play – formats for playing with the cards. So yeah, if you wanna just talk about it more, reach out there. There’s a contact form. And it’s been great so far, just making all these new connections, including you. But yeah. Thank you.

– Well, thank you. It’s been such a pleasure having you here. I know this is gonna be so valuable to our community and beyond, and I’m excited to dig in. I really appreciate it that you had examples of how to use it in different kinds of interactions. So I’m definitely gonna be following you.

– Thank you so much. And thanks everyone.