Designing with Love
Hosted by Grand Canyon University (GCU) adjunct instructor and professional instructional designer Jackie Pelegrin, this podcast explores instructional design, e-learning, and how to incorporate AI technology into different aspects of your work. Tune in for expert tips, real-world insights, and inspiring stories from students, alumni, and leaders in the field.
Designing with Love
The 5-Step Method to Reinvent Your Classroom in the AI Era with Dr. Matthew Metzgar
Welcome to episode 34 of the Designing with Love podcast! In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Matthew Metzgar, an expert in the higher education field and the author of a new book titled The Overnight AI Educator: Transform Your Course in 24 Hours.
Dr. Matthew Metzger explores how AI is transforming education and shares his innovative five-step approach to help educators adapt their courses for this new reality. He discusses his journey from discovering students using ChatGPT on exams to developing a comprehensive framework for integrating AI ethically and effectively into higher education.
Some of the elements we discussed in the episode include:
• Identifying skills in demand using AI research to ensure coursework aligns with workplace requirements
• Creating realistic assignments that are more resistant to AI shortcuts by making them practical and concise
• Supporting learner development with AI-generated resources like podcasts, videos, and digital twins
• Providing efficient feedback using simplified rubrics and exploring AI-assisted grading
• Iterating gradually by implementing small changes each semester rather than overwhelming overhauls
• Shifting the educator's role from content delivery to evaluation and guidance
• Motivating students through realistic, workplace-relevant assignments
• Embracing diverse perspectives by allowing students to use various AI tools rather than instructor-limited chatbots
• Normalizing AI as an educational tool through open discussions with students
Please visit Dr. Metzger's website, The Overnight Educator, to find current AI tools for education and information about his book "The Overnight Educator: Transform Your Course in 24 Hours."
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Hello and welcome to the Designing with Love podcast. I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you information, tips and tricks as an instructional designer. Hello, GCU students, alumni and educators, welcome to episode 34 of the Designing with Love podcast. Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Dr Matthew Metzger, an expert in higher education and the author of a new book titled the Overnight Educator.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Transform your Courses in 24 Hours. Welcome, Dr Metzger Hi.
Jackie Pelegrin:Jackie, thanks for having me.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Thank you. So would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Sure, I'm a clinical professor of economics at the Bell College of Business at UNC, charlotte. I've been there coming on maybe 15 years, and I worked in the private sector before that, with some consulting and other jobs, and most of my focus lately has been on education and teaching techniques and, of course, ai.
Jackie Pelegrin:Great, yes, and we know AI is just. It's in all sectors right, and especially education. So it's exciting, definitely.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:It's a seismic shift. That's for sure it really is how sudden, how much changes it's causing and how adaptable people have to be. It's just amazing, amazing, how much impact it's causing and how adaptable people have to be. It's just amazing, amazing how much impact it's having.
Jackie Pelegrin:Absolutely yes. So what inspired, you to write your new book, and why now?
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Well, I tell you I was a little late to the AI party, so to speak, because I started hearing about it and other people were saying you know, look into it, all that, and I kind of just put it off to the side. But then last year in my classes, you know, my students started using AI and then, you know, magically, these test averages started going up and up and up and the time to complete the exams are going down. And so, you know, I start to ask the students what's going on and everything like that. I surveyed them and most of them were using ChatGPT. And then I got a little more serious about the tool myself and I realized I really had to change everything because the assessments I was using were no longer valid. And then, once you change those assessments, everything else has to change as well.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:You know, as far as what you're teaching for and the structure and so on and so forth, transformed my course. But other professors in the same boat and a lot of people were looking for answers and you know asking me and you know other faculty. You know I presented at some conferences on this and said you know lots of questions because it's so new and there isn't just, you know, one answer out there, but I feel like I have a good enough grasp and I've had some success that I wanted to share that with others and say, look, here's a way you can think about it, here's a process you can use that can hopefully allow you to be successful.
Jackie Pelegrin:Wow, that's great. And so that way they're not shying away from it, but they're embracing it. And I know some of the faculty I work with it's hard because they want to embrace it but they're scared, they don't know how to do that. And if they open it up, what is that going to cause, right? So and I'm glad you mentioned about the curriculum we can't just go and change one thing and then not have a ripple effect on everything else. So it's so important with me working in curriculum design, I always mention that to the faculty that we work with when we go and revise the curriculum. If you want to take a topic out, well that's going to cause a shift and it's going to cause changes. So being able to have that in mind is always important, that we can't just take something out and then not have something be affected somewhere. So it's important.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Absolutely. I mean with something like this that you know, again, it's affecting all pieces of it because you know it can affect the materials you can produce as a teacher. You can use AI, you can use AI for grading, your students can use AI to help on assignments, and so it's affecting all the different parts on the student side and the teacher side, and so if you change one thing, the other pieces have to change as well. There was I don't know if you saw in the news I can't remember what school it was but a student wanted a refund on her tuition because she said her professor didn't want them to use AI. But then they found out he was using AI to produce notes and things like that oh my gosh.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:So she asked for this tuition back or something. He was in the news last week.
Jackie Pelegrin:Oh wow, that is interesting.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:If you're going to use that as a teacher, you have to allow your students to use it.
Jackie Pelegrin:Right. It's almost like that saying goes if you don't allow them to use it, they'll find a way somehow to use it, and they'll do backdoor channels and things like that, and so they'll find a way somehow to utilize it and try to be smart about it. So it's better to at least expose them to it while they're in school and while they're getting their education, and then by the time they get to the workforce it's not going to be foreign to them, and so I think, as educators, it's something we can do to help prepare them for that and learn how to do it in an ethical way as well. So that way they translate it to the workplace, that way.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:It really is. You know we had you know Charlotte's a pretty big city and as far as business and all that and we had some business leaders come in and speak to us and so you know I asked are you guys using AI in your companies? And they all 100% said yes, you know, so it's not theoretical or this is something we're going to do in a few years. You know these are all major companies. You know that are all using AI every day in multiple projects and so you know if a student, graduates and all they've used chat GPT for was the copy and paste exam questions, like multiple choice exam questions, you know you haven't done them.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:You know any service. You know you want to prepare them, like you said. You know here's how to use that tool in an ethical and a productive way. You know it's supposed to make people more productive. You know here's how to use that tool in an ethical and a productive way. You know it's supposed to make people more productive. You know at work and in other situations. So you've got to show students here's how you can use it to make yourself more productive and to help whatever company or organization you're going to work for.
Jackie Pelegrin:Right, absolutely Great. I love that. So can you walk us through your five-step overnight cycle for AI driven course design that you outlined in your new book coming up?
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, and you know the when you talk about that fear part earlier, I mean that definitely is something I thought about, you know, when writing the book, because you know if you look at surveys why faculty might be reluctant to make a change. You know one is time. You know the majority of faculty are actually, you know, part-time in some way and so they may be working other jobs and don't have a ton of time to, you know, put into a course, might just be teaching one or two courses. So time's a factor. You know the way you've done things is a factor. If you've been teaching this class for 20 years a certain way you might be reluctant to change.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:And then three, like you said, the fear part. You know well. You know what do I do with this. You know it's always that fear that the students are going to be way more advanced than the teacher at it and so maybe just forget about it and kind of put your head in the sand. So I was trying to make a real simple process. You know that faculty could go through in a fairly quick way and I think if it's, the more structured it is and you know if it can be done in a short period of time, the more likely someone's going to do it. Absolutely so if you say, here, we want you to integrate AI in your course, it's going to take you six months, well, you know, you might have some people disappear.
Jackie Pelegrin:Right, that's so true, especially, as you said, with most of them teaching part-time, like myself, where you know I have a full-time job and then I do this on the side for extra income and also for an opportunity to be able to stay current in the field as well. So there's multiple factors why. You know we have a lot of adjunct faculty that teach courses at universities.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, absolutely yeah, yeah, and so definitely a lot of thought about designing that product, so to speak, for the audience. But yeah, as far as the five steps, it's a little bit of a backwards design from Grant Wiggins.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:He called it Understanding by Design, I don't know if you're familiar with it probably some of you are but I always was a fan of his. He passed away in 2017 or something, but he had a lot of writing and books and a lot of great ideas, and so that backwards design. It always stuck with me through the years as a good way to think about your curriculum or your class is start with the end goal in mind, and so that end goal is like we talked about. You know, students are going to graduate and go to work for an organization or company and be expected to use AI right away. You know most of these jobs are using AI. Now, if you look at, microsoft did a survey last year and showed, you know, the majority of workers I don't know 75, 80% are using AI, and I'm sure it's gone up in a year since. You know I think the new report will come out soon this year so they're entering that environment where AI is part of it, and so you've got to train them for that.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:So that first step is looking at the skills in demand and, coincidentally, you can use AI, chat, gpt, whatever tool you want to help you do that, and so if you're teaching like in my case, economics or different course, biology, chemistry, whatever.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:You can just go into chat GPT and say you know, chat GPT has that deep research capability, depending on your plan or whatever. And you can say you know, survey current job ads and tell me what are the main skills in demand, not just AI, but just you know all the main skills and so you know you can do that fairly quickly. And what you'll find often is that you know, yes, ai technology is in there, but as AI has become able to do some of these quantitative things, those other skills about you know presenting, communicating, you know working with others on teams, kind of those like evergreen type skills have become even more important. And so you know, if you pull up a job ad, you know today, for whatever this is a biologist, there'll be all the biology part in there, but it's also a lot about communicating. You know presenting, using presenting using Microsoft tools and things like that to present, and so on and so forth.
Jackie Pelegrin:Right.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:So that's step one is figure out. You know your graduates are going to finish and go into what type of jobs. You can also try to speculate a bit and say, all right, well, that's what they may need in 2025. But what about these students that are freshmen or graduated in four years? And you can try to have a little bit more of a future focus. That involves a little more risk and speculation, because no one knows for sure what the job market will look like in four years.
Jackie Pelegrin:Yeah, it can be hard to predict the future job market will look like in four years.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, it's going to be hard to predict the future, exactly, exactly. But I mean again, I would say, still those at least core elements about communication, teamwork, so on and so forth, self-directed learning, are going to be there forever.
Jackie Pelegrin:Right those key soft skills, right that they need Definitely, definitely, yeah.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:And so that's step one um again. So then you come up with the, the skills in demand, current and future um, and now you're looking at designing the tasks. Right, that will, you know, mimic or be similar to those um. And this is where it's really changed, because the class I teach it's technically, historically, been a lot of like quantitative work, you know, so like find this optimal price or calculate this cost, and so students would do that. Well, now I can do all that very quickly, and so a lot of that quantitative work has been kind of like outsourced, so to speak.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Oh, wow, quantitative work has been kind of like outsourced, so to speak. And so now you have to look at, okay, you become almost the evaluator of the AI results. You're making sure it's true. So you could say, all right, calculate this elasticity, and it gives you this number, but it may not be right. Ai can make mistakes. So you don't have to necessarily do the calculation, but you have to know whether it's correct or not and then, if it's incorrect, obviously come up with the right number.
Jackie Pelegrin:Oh, so helping students to disseminate the content that's coming out of AI and whether it's correct or not, wow.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Definitely and it's definitely not always correct. I mean, I've done some things, you know, like sample calculations. I'll put in there. You know calculate this, calculate that, don't give me a wrong number, and then you know I'll write back. You know this is not correct, and then it'll write back, you know think and be like, oh yeah, you are right. So hold on, let me recalculate.
Jackie Pelegrin:Yes, I've done that. Oh, I'm sorry, let me try that again. It's almost like you're having a conversation with the tool. It's pretty interesting.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Well, as you say, at least it's polite right, Right?
Jackie Pelegrin:That's true. I wonder if we were rude to it, if it would be rude back. I just wonder that sometimes, because I'm always polite Say can you do this please? And it'll have that tone, it'll mimic that tone. You know that's where that prompt engineering comes into place really well with that. So they say what you input will get what you get in the output.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:So right, Absolutely, absolutely and so, yeah, so designing those tasks, the other key pieces I think about is one I try to make it a realistic task as good as I can, because I'm a little afraid. You know you can go in AI and say you know, generate this scenario about you know, company X, you know, sells widgets at $2 a widget or something. You know sells widgets at $2 a widget or something. But I think if it's a fake or artificial problem, a lot of students are then going to just run it through chat GPT because they're going to say, like I don't care about this, it's not real, it's just something he or someone made up. Right, you know they're not going to be really motivated to do it, and so I've found that the more realistic problem I can make, the more likely students are to actually try it and not just totally outsource it in some way, like I just gave a task when the semester ended and I ran it through Chet GPT myself to see what the answer, what it would give.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:But I didn't have any student groups submit that answer and that's because I think they thought they perceived that test to be valuable, saying, hey, this might be something that I would actually do and work at some point, so it'd be a good idea for me to try it now, you know, because it was a real task. But if it was just fake, you know, make these widgets or something like that I think you're task, but if it was just fake make these widgets or something like that I think the motivation is going to fall and the odds of cheating, so to speak, go up.
Jackie Pelegrin:Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, and you're taking it beyond a textbook and putting it in real life for them and something that they can imagine themselves having to face right, a real problem or real situation where they have to come up with a solution in a company. Yeah, that's great.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know it's like, if you want to, you know whatever, learn how to ride a bike or something you know. And if someone tells you just you know, pedal on a stationary bike, you know then you might that's not going to help me, right? You know I on a stationary bike, you know, then you might, uh, that's not going to help me, right? You know I wouldn't learn how to ride a bike out on the street or on the mountains or whatever. So you know you want the practice to be as similar to the real as you can get. So you know I pull stuff, you know, from the news. You know, the week I'm making the assignment, you know. So it might be something that happened two days ago and I'll pull it and make a task out of it, and that way there is no history that someone did this.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:You know, someone solved this problem 10 years ago or something you know. It's brand new. It's right out there now.
Jackie Pelegrin:Wow, I love that. That's great.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:So one with the task, I think, one about making them realistic and having them in a good context, and then two, giving them at least the option to work with others. Because, again, if you look at work situations, most work now involves other people, whether it's in person or virtual. And so I, when the semester starts, the first task I assign the groups of five. And then you know, because people may not know each other and all that but then tasks after that, then I open it up and say you can kind of what in economics we call vote with your feet, but you can move. You can, you know, leave a group and start a new group, or you can go to a smaller group, or you can work by yourself or whatever. But at least give that initial chance for everyone to be in a group. Maybe it works, and so on and so forth. And then you know, if people are unhappy I give them the option to work in different ways.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:But you know, now that I'm saying this, I should probably calculate what percent of people stayed in the groups, but I'd say it's pretty high, definitely over half. I'd probably say two-thirds of people choose to stay with the group, even though they don't have to. Obviously it can be easier because you can spread the workload. But two, I think you can end up with a better project or product output by working with others than just yourself usually, and so, again, that's given a more of a realistic scenario that if you're at work and you're trying to accomplish X, it's probably going to pay off to get some people to help you with that Right, because otherwise it's a long slog on your own.
Jackie Pelegrin:Yes and so.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:I'm trying to get them to think about that as well, right, because otherwise it's a long slog on your own.
Jackie Pelegrin:Yes, so I'm trying to get them to think about that as well, right, so that they're not feeling like they have to do all of this in isolation when they get to the workplace, because so much is about collaboration and it's hard to accomplish anything big on your own in the workplace, right? It's always about delegating or, like you said, bringing together a team of people that can come up with a solution together and work on that task together, as well, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, great.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:And then let's see. The third step is supporting the learner's development, and that's where kind of the typical teaching, so to speak, would come into play, where you know whatever classroom setup you have or an online setup through an LMS and all that. But I'd say the other piece, the biggest change to that with AI, is that AI can help you develop all of this, all of these resources now to help learners on their journey. If you have notes on a topic that you yourself, the instructor, wrote, you can have AI turn that into a podcast. There's tools out there to do that. Or you can have it turned into a video. There's digital twinning now maybe call it something different, but it's where you only have to record a couple minutes of yourself on video and then you can give it a Word document and it'll now create a video of you saying these things that you've never said.
Jackie Pelegrin:Oh, wow, yeah, it's called a tool to link out.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:there is a HeyGen H-E-Y-G-E-Ncom.
Jackie Pelegrin:Oh, I've heard of that, I've heard of. Heygen, I haven't used it yet, but I've heard of it.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, it just creates a digital twin and so you could have yourself talking about whatever physics, biology, you know something you don't know nothing about. That wouldn't be good, but I'm just saying it's a. It's a that type of tool, you know. There's all sorts of tools out there like that I said. The one other cool thing about digital twinning is it can also translate what you say into a different language.
Jackie Pelegrin:Oh, I've heard about that.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, and so if you have, you're teaching a class, you know overseas or something and you don't speak that language, you could, you know, have it, create a video of you saying your normal notes in that language for those learners, and so you can just create a whole bunch of resources quickly that you, you know, couldn't do before. You know, with AI, you know you can create podcasts, notes, visuals, again videos, digital twins, all sorts of stuff out there to help the learners get the material.
Jackie Pelegrin:Wow. So that opens up institutions that are doing online education, like Grand Canyon University, to be able to offer the courses to students that are outside of the United States, too. More often. I've only had, I think, two students that have been outside the United States because they're in the military or they work on a military base or something like that, so it's been rare, but it would be nice to be able to tap into more of the international students abroad and get to learn from them and their culture and things like that and how they perceive higher education where they are too. So it would be neat for sure.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Absolutely. I think there's tremendous potential for what you said. That can really open up a lot of doors and make it accessible to a lot more people than previously.
Jackie Pelegrin:Right. Break down those barriers Right.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:And then the other piece I'd say with the supporting learners is honestly, even if you give your students all these different resources, they may choose on their own to just go with a conversational AI agent and I know a lot of my students do that and I build in on the website.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:We have Google Gemini on campus, a co-pilot.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:I kind of build that into pages and with a textbook and all that, just that some students are going to be more comfortable learning about that topic.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:So if you say I want to learn about, you know, price discrimination or something, well they can just put it in to their agents, they tell me about it and go back and forth. And so I think the interactive content or setups like that obviously are going to be probably more ups like that obviously are going to be probably more palatable to students than a lot of the one way stuff. You know, I think these the days of just sitting here listening to this two hour video on the instructor are probably gone or near gone. That you know students are going to be looking to get information quicker and more in a back and forth situation with the agents, and so obviously that's led to, you know, instructors building chatbots for their class and maybe just training those chatbots on their materials, only putting it out there. But again, even if you don't make a chatbot for your class, students can use any AI platform to get at that same information.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:So that's good to know, definitely, I would say one thing on that. That kind of a question comes up when, cause we talked about, you know, faculty trying to new faculty that are maybe hesitant to do this and sometimes they might feel like, well, I have to make a chat bot for my class and I don't know how to do that. I would say that, again, that's not a requirement. You know, if you aren't tech savvy and you don't want to do it or whatever, I would say, just you know, skip it and let them use existing chatbots that are out there, because you can create a chatbot to focus only on your. You know the materials that you have, that you've written or whatever. But in my mind that's a little bit of what I'd call like in economics, like creating a monopoly.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Like in other words I don't want the students to only be dependent on just the way I personally see things. You know, I might explain it this way, I might think of it this way, but someone else may explain it this way, and in a chatbot they're getting a different explanation. And so, like for me, I did not train my chatbot on just my stuff. I just said I just made a general. You know, it's based off a copilot and I would get different type of answers this semester than I would previously in a good way semester than I would previously. In a good way, because before it's like they were, I was almost teaching them to think like me, and so the answers would be answers like I would produce.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:But you know, you want a little more diversity of thought, I think, and so you want diversity of sources, and so sometimes they give me an answer that really surprised me and it's like, oh, that's cool, it's a different way of thinking of it. It's not wrong, it's just different. And so, you know, sometimes I would be like, oh, you know, that's cool, you know, I've learned something. So I think it pays to have more sources than just your own to the students Because, again, each person's limited. You can only know so much, and it's better for them to get a diversity of opinions on something than just what the instructor says.
Jackie Pelegrin:Oh, I love that. That's a great way to look at it too when it comes to these types of tools, and that it's yeah, you don't want to shoehorn them into one thing, but you want them to have that diverse way of thinking. I like that. That's great.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, yeah. So definitely a factor. And let's see the next step provide efficient feedback. And this is something where a lot of faculty are going to start to worry.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yes, because if you move away in a simplistic term, if you're moving away from like multiple choice questions or like numeric response questions to these kind of tasks I'm calling them, could be many projects, whatever you want to label them open-ended type assignments. Now I was in a conference and someone raised their hand and said this well, how do I grade all this? You know, I can't give my multiple choice exams because they can use ChatGPT and get, you know, 95%. I've got to give them all these different types of assignments. How do I grade it all? Well, if you have, you know, 15 or 20 students, you can grade it.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:But if you have big numbers, then it gets to be more problematic, and so if an instructor is making this shift, they have to really think before the course starts shift. They have to really think before the course starts. You know, how much feedback can I realistically offer? Because you can offer feedback on like drafts of, you know, the assignments and then, of course, they have to be graded. So there has to be feedback there. But you have to think about there's only so many hours in the day and you know there's an opportunity cost to grading, to giving feedback. It takes your time as an instructor and so there's no right or wrong answer. But it's just something you have to be aware of because otherwise you can get sucked into just continuous drafts and emails and everything else and you may not be able to get anything else done. So what I found out? I teach big classes. This last semester my class was 230 students.
Jackie Pelegrin:Oh wow, that's a big class.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Very big and so you know, first I get them into the groups, like we talked about, and so that cuts it down from 230 to maybe. I think maybe we'd end up with maybe 80 or 90 assignments after the group's resettled for those other tasks, but still that's a lot. So the one thing, a couple of things I learned was one to keep the assignments shorter, and so when I assign these tasks there's kind of steps to it, but I say the complete thing. You submit a PDF, you know it. Either we cap it at either one or two pages, because if you don't, someone's just going to go on there and make a 20-page chat GPT output and give it to you.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:You're going to be stuck looking at it when you know it's not even real. The students need to do it Right. And also, like I was saying earlier, think about that student motivation. If you tell them you have to submit this 20 page paper, their motivation is going to be low and more likely to use ChatGD2. If it's one or two pages, they're going to. You know again they're going to think, okay, well, that's not too bad, I can do it, you know, or at least you know I'm willing to try it, rather than a 20 page paper. I don't want to write I'm not even going to try that. I'm willing to try it rather than a 20 page paper. I don't want to write, I'm not even going to try that.
Jackie Pelegrin:Oh, that's so important. Yes, especially with curriculum design, being able to keep that in mind with their motivation. Absolutely, definitely.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Definitely, and the other thing, too, I'd say is that it's not beyond that. It's also realistic in the sense that a lot of times in a work environment you may produce a long paper or whatever, but most of the time it might be something like an executive summary or the PowerPoint notes that actually most people, 90% of people, are going to look at, and so that's really what I'm trying to get the students to produce is something, you know, a smaller document or something like that, that would be similar to what they present in the workplace.
Jackie Pelegrin:Right.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:And so, like I think to myself, like you know where I work at the university, no one's ever sent, you know, a 50-page paper for everyone to read, because, one they know no one's going to read it, but two, it's just not effective, right? So instead you get memos and notes or PowerPoints and things like that. So, again, that's what I'm trying to think about them in the workforce, you may occasionally have to write a long white paper, but most of your communication is going to be shorter for general audience, in something like, again, one to two page in this situation. Oh, that's great. And so the other piece with the feedback then comes into, since it's an open-ended task, you know grading it with some type of rubric, and we started with that, you know, in January. You know you can use AI to create rubrics easily. You know just a couple seconds.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:But what we found with that first task was it was still getting too long of a process to grade myself and the teaching assistants on the actual grade. A paper should get you know because, again, some of those rubrics do allow for subjectivity, so to speak. You know, is this a three or a four in this category? And so what we then went to for the other.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:For the rest of the task, the rest of the semester was much simpler rubrics where you know you might have some items, but they were all essentially like binary, like yes, no, type items, and so you know we'd just be like you know, was this piece calculated correctly? You know it's yes or no, was a graph of a demand curve presented, yes or no? And we found that one that sped up the grading. But two I think it really helped the students. It was more structured and allowed them to kind of see what the end product should look like. And some of the first, when we did the very first thing, the rubric, we had all sorts of different formats and looks and everything like that. But as we simplified the rubric and cleaned it up, we were able to get a lot more good-looking papers out of it, and so it's kind of just like putting constraints on it is the way I would think of it.
Jackie Pelegrin:That's a good example I love that how you can really utilize that AI to get those outputs that you're looking for.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, you know it can create rubrics in a snap. And then, of course, the other piece is you know we messed around with a little bit, we didn't go all out, but you know you can also use AI to give you a base grade on a paper, you know. And again, of course, you have data collection issues and privacy and so on and so forth. Right, but you know there's solutions out there, like Timely Grader, where it can, you know, run through the essays. I think they're trying to connect to Canvas and so there'll be other companies soon that'll do that. But it's like the AI will do like a first pass grading and then you, as the human, can come in and agree with that or not change it, make your comments and then go through. But to me, that's definitely going to be the future in some way is that AI will do a first pass grade and then you have the human judgment that kind of confirms it and gives the comments and, you know, provides that value to the students.
Jackie Pelegrin:Right, I love that. So it's giving that first analysis of the paper or the assignment for you as an instructor. I like that.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, because a lot of times it can save time. You know if this assignment's you know way off or something like that, you know it might take you a while to figure out. You know what's even going on.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:But you know AI can kind of quickly look at this and say, oh, this thing is, you know, maybe the student didn't understand the assignment or something like that. It's way off, and so that first pass can definitely help. Again, it's not perfect. We were, because when we'd run some papers through AI to get what it would say for the rubric, again it would never exactly line up with the way we were thinking. You know as people, and so it's a good start, but again, you need that human element in there.
Jackie Pelegrin:Yes, absolutely, that's so true. I can see how that would be a concern for faculty. Wondering, you know, if I'm putting this in here, you know, is it taking away some of what I do? But it sounds to me like what you've discovered is that it enhances the experience as an educator and also for the students as well.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, I mean to me I think also we talk about in the book is AI has kind of shifted the role of the educator, whereas before it was more about the educator was the expert in the educator, whereas before it was more about, you know, the educator was the expert in the content. And I'm going to, you know, talk about the content and explain the content and so on and so forth. And then maybe the grading was done again via multiple choice questions and scan trot sheets and all that. I think it's really shifting it. The other, almost having them swap places, where a lot of the content and the delivery is going to be done online or with AI, and so on and so forth. And the job of the faculty moves more to an evaluate. Okay, you know, because if it's a realistic piece, you need a person to tell you is this good or bad? You can't just have you know it's not going to be enough, right? So I think it really is flipping the role to be more of an evaluator.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Actually, I was interviewing an art professor about this and she was saying you know, there's so much content now for art school students. You can go on YouTube and find a video on anything you know. Here's how to do paint or landscape or sculpt or whatever right, it's unlimited amount of content on how to. But she was saying you know, the reason then, to go to art school is to have professors that you know, have experience and know what they're doing, evaluate your work and tell you is it good, bad, what can be improved, and so on and so forth. She was saying that's our main function. Now, it's not really the how-to, because it's a universe of how-to videos. It's more of just okay, you watch the video and you produce this piece. Now, is it good? Is it going to meet the needs of the company, the consumers, whoever? If not, how can it be improved to do that?
Jackie Pelegrin:So definitely a shift in my view. Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:And the last piece of the cycle is just iterate and improve. And you know the tools are changing so rapidly with AI and all that. That. You know each semester there's going to be a new opportunity for learning and, you know, putting in new things, seeing what worked with students, what didn't, so just kind of a normal feedback process.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:But the only thing I'd say with that that like as far as again I don't want to scare off instructors from trying this out is that you can have a bit of like I'll call it tool fatigue out there because there's so many new tools, so many things coming out, so many changes, but you don't have to use all these tools, you don't have to do everything.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:You might just say, okay, this semester I'm going to add in one new AI tool or try one new AI thing I've never done before. You don't have to try 10 things, or you don't even have to try anything new, but at some point you're probably going to need to update. So it can be done in a in small ways. And so when we're saying iterate, that doesn't mean every semester I've got to massively change this course and do all these things different. You know, once you've got to make a shift and get AI in these pieces. The next semester should be relatively easy to kind of just, you know, clean up and keep up with the current changes, and then, of course, the feedback from the students.
Jackie Pelegrin:Right, and then that way you can do that iteration from each semester right and see what needs to improve, what works well, what, what doesn't, and what needs to shift as well, from each Exactly and that's what you know.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:I feel like this cycle is something you can use. You know before each term or course or whatever in a fairly quick way. You know because again you can go, you can run and now and say, all right, spend six months, run some job ads and see is there anything new or the skills and this more or less, and so on and so forth, so you can do that. Then you can kind of go through your task and see all right, are they matching with what's currently in demand? Do I need to update some of the tasks? Are my resources?
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:You can check the stats and see are students using like these things more than this? Do they like the podcast and not the videos or vice versa? And then you can think about the feedback how much time did it take? Do I need to be more or less or more efficient with it, or can I give more feedback and then again think about small things you can improve. But ideally, again, I'm trying to make an easily repeatable process that someone could do on a semi-regular basis and that keeps them up to date and with the times and producing good results for their students.
Jackie Pelegrin:Right and I love how it's five steps, so it's not complicated, and I think that's great, especially for educators and, like you said, no matter if they've been teaching for 15, 20 years or if they're just starting out.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:I think it's a really great process for them to be able to use at any stage, and their teaching as well. Yeah, exactly that's what you know. When I started writing the book, it's like you know, we initially had, you know, just different chapters and chapter on this, chapter on that, and I was just like you know, the business instructor in me said you know, this has to be more structured. This has to be, you know, step one, two, three, four, five, you know, to really get someone to follow through. In other words, you know, a lot of times you might just read a book and then put it down and it doesn't do anything right. But I'm trying to make a more actionable book that's saying okay, just here's this process, go through it and then you can get you know again up to date and get some good results.
Jackie Pelegrin:That's great, Wonderful. So a final question as we wrap up. So what's one practical piece of advice that you'd give to an educator who's curious about AI but not sure where to start?
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Well, I guess it would depend. You know how often they're using AI themselves. You know, like some people are heavy users of chat GPT, use it every day or something like that. I mean, I use it for a lot of different tasks. So I would say, if they haven't used any AI, to just start going on there and trying to use it for personal use, seeing what kind of value you can get from it. You know, ask questions and so on and so forth.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:I think probably most people have, at this point, at least experimented with it somewhat. You know the other thing, a small step, could just be even asking their students. You know how do you use ChatGPT, asking their students you know how do you use ChatGPT. And so trying to again get it more out in the open that, okay, this is a tool that probably 75% of the population uses, at least 80% of students use, and just making it more kind of like normalizing it. Right, you know, okay, this is a tool, we know you use it, I use it, I use it, everyone uses it.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:And now start the conversation about that. Well, how can we maybe integrate it in this class or what can we do with it? But I'd say that's. This first thing is just maybe some awareness, some transparency about it, just saying, you know, hey, this is a very powerful tool, right? Right, that can help you as students, it can help me as a teacher, it can help the businesses you work for, and so let's just start talking about it, you know. Let's see what we can do with it.
Jackie Pelegrin:Yes, I love that. Yeah, and keeping an open mind about it and seeing where it'll take us Absolutely, I love that. Well, thank you so much for going over the steps. That is very insightful and your advice, because I think it makes it more manageable and something that instructors can. They feel like they can tackle this and be able to integrate it into their curriculum and work with their students and not be fearful of it Like so many probably still are. So at least they can take that, some of those small steps and do some things where they don't, like you said, they don't feel like they have to learn every tool, but pick up the tools that they think are going to be useful and try it out. And that's a great thing is we can experiment and see what works and what we need to improve upon. So that's a great thing about AI as well.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:It is and you know it's just if you look historically, you know things that seemed kind of odd at first become, you know, very, very commonplace. I was talking with someone and I thought, you know, like the idea of Uber and Lyft to think that I'm just going to press this button on the phone and a stranger comes and picks me up and takes me somewhere, you know, if you would have told someone that before it happened, you'd think that's crazy, that's not stuck in real. But of course it became real. And so you know, ai is going to change a lot of norms and you, just like you said, you have to be open-minded to it and be willing to explore it and see where it can take you.
Jackie Pelegrin:Yes, absolutely. I remember as a kid watching the Jetsons and I thought that's so futuristic. We're never going to get to that, but now, who knows, we could have flying cars in the next few years. So I think AI is going to really make a lot of things possible and provide medical breakthroughs and all these different things that they're talking about. So it's a pretty amazing adventure to see that where it's going to take us. So that's great.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Absolutely.
Jackie Pelegrin:Great, great Well, thank you so much for your time, and I am so happy that my students are going to be able, and others even around the world. This podcast does have a global reach, so I'm really glad that those around the world will be able to get a lot of great advice from what you've mentioned today. So thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Definitely, definitely, and I list some of the current tools on my website, overnighteducation. I try to do kind of a roundup of the current tools but, as we talked about, things are changing so quick that I'll probably do, on a somewhat regular basis, try to update what tools are out there and give people some things to work with that can give them value.
Jackie Pelegrin:Great, that's wonderful. I'll make sure to link your website in the show notes so that way all of my listeners can go there and check that out. And then I did notice on your website that you have information on your book, so once it's out, then everybody can check it out and order a copy.
Dr. Matthew Metzgar:Yeah, excellent, definitely.
Jackie Pelegrin:Great. Thank you Appreciate it. Thank you for taking some time to listen to this podcast episode today. Your support means the world to me. If you'd like to help keep the podcast going, you can share it with a friend or colleague, leave a heartfelt review or offer a monetary contribution. Every act of support, big or small, makes a difference and I'm truly thankful for you.
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