Teaching AI Literacy with Susan Ray

Susan Ray is associate professor of English at Delaware County Community College outside Philadelphia. Susan teaches a mix of on-site and online composition courses, and she’s been redesigning her teaching for a few years now in response to generative AI. We highlight some of her teaching practices in our new book, The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching, including an AI-integrated syllabus activity. 

In my conversation with Susan, we talk about that syllabus activity, as well as the AI transparency journals she asks her students to keep during her courses. We also talk about how her personal background prepared her to navigate the challenges and opportunities that AI has posed to her teaching, how she approaches assessing student learning in this age of AI—especially in her online asynchronous courses—and much more.

Episode Resources

Susan Ray’s Substack

Susan Ray on LinkedIn

“I Embraced AI in My Community College English Class—and My Students Loved It!”, Susan Ray, EdSurge, July 21, 2025, with details about Susan’s AI-integrated syllabus activity

“Technological Privilege, AI, & the Fourth Literacy in the Classroom,” Susan Ray, Susan’s Substack, February 28, 2026

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Susan Ray 0:35

But the biggest thing is at the end of the semester, I'll say, okay, go back, look at this 30-page Google Doc. How do you see your prompting evolving? Has your views on AI have your views on AI shifted? How will you use it differently in the future? And these have been like the richest writing responses I've had from my students.

Derek Bruff 0:53

Welcome to Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. I'm your host, Derek Bruff. The ebook version of my new book, The Norton Guide to AI Aware Teaching, co-authored with Annette Vee and Marc Watkins, is now out. To celebrate its release, I have interviewed a few of the faculty whose AI aware teaching we highlight in the book. And I'm excited to share those conversations here on the podcast over the next several weeks.

Derek Bruff 1:22

First up is Susan Ray, Associate Professor of English at Delaware County Community College outside Philadelphia. Susan teaches a mix of on-site and online composition courses, and she's been redesigning her teaching for a few years now in response to generative AI. In our book, we highlighted her AI integrated syllabus activity: "She had her students upload the course syllabus into an AI platform, introduced themselves using a custom prompt she had created, and ask the AI to identify what aspects of the course they would enjoy, plus what they would find challenging, and how the course would help them grow." This activity has been transformational for both Susan and her students.

Derek Bruff 2:03

In my conversation with Susan, we talk about that syllabus activity, as well as the AI transparency journals she asks her students to keep during her courses. We also talk about how her personal background prepared her to navigate the challenges and opportunities that AI has posed to her teaching, how she approaches assessing student learning in this age of AI, especially in her online asynchronous courses, and much more.

Derek Bruff 2:27

Susan, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I'm excited to have you here today and to talk with you about your teaching and AI and kind of where you are with all that right now. Thanks for being here.

Susan Ray 2:37

Thank you for including me in the conversation.

Derek Bruff 2:39

Yeah. So I'll start with my usual opener. Can you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator?

Susan Ray 2:47

Yes, I will tell you about the time because throughout my studies, I it was never on my radar. I went to undergrad to major in English, and I thought I would be an editor to major publishing house. And like all starry-eyed 22-year-olds who just graduated college, I moved to Manhattan to be an editor, where they said you do not have the particular set of skills necessary for this position. So after being an administrative assistant for two years, I thought, well, I'll go get my master's. And if I do that, then I can come back and be an editor. And it was during the second year of my master's, they said they would cover the cost of my grad work, like they do for many of us, if you teach college composition. And not to disparage my institution, but they were between directors of the writing program. So they said, just have them write and revise 20 pages go. That was my training to teach composition. But there was so much, it was it was trial by fire, but there was so much freedom. And so students got to be a part of the process and what we were going to write about and how we were going to explore it. And I was able to teach in many ways, like I always wished I had been taught. And I still am in touch with some of those students. I'll I'll date myself. One of them, she's now an anthropology professor herself.

Derek Bruff 3:58

Okay.

Susan Ray 3:59

But just the energy in that classroom, that was the moment where I was like, This is this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Oh, wow.

Derek Bruff 4:04

So wow. Yeah. And so you did you did you ever you didn't go back to Manhattan?

Susan Ray 4:10

I did not. No. And you know, maybe that's for the best. Because we were not the best fit.

Derek Bruff 4:17

But yeah. I I had two years in Boston and decided that that big cities were hard. And maybe not in ways I wanted to tackle.

Susan Ray 4:24

Me neither. Uh, just like the yelling outside the window at like two in the morning, like that. A little too much energy for me. Right. A little bit. Yeah. Right.

Derek Bruff 4:32

Well, and now and now you teach college English. And uh it sounds like that's a great fit for you and uh and a real passion.

Susan Ray 4:38

So yeah, it's been 20 years as of 2026 that I've been teaching college composition. And I I never get bored of it. There's something about that demographic when they first enter college that it's just so rewarding.

Derek Bruff 4:51

That's great. That's great. Yeah, yeah. Um well, I want to stay in the past for a little bit. Um, you wrote a really um really thoughtful uh article recently about growing up in a home with a computer and how that was a kind of privilege that you had. Um and and you talked about how um faculty have been having a variety of experiences with technology, uh particularly as AI enters the scene. Um and and I've thought about this too in my own work. So my first two books were about teaching with technology. I I've made educational technology a big part of my my teaching center career. And so I find that when AI entered the scene, I had kind of a tool set to make sense of this new development. Um and I I've realized that a lot of faculty haven't had that same kind of experience. Um and yet they still have to deal with AI. And so um, I'm curious about kind of your story. And are there experiences that you had as a teacher prior to Chat GPT's launch in 2022 that maybe prepared you a little bit to navigate this new thing of AI that we're dealing with?

Susan Ray 6:05

Yes, and when AI hit the scene, I realized how lucky I was that you know, I have a retired computer science professor that I can come to with my questions. But very much the way I was raised impacted the way I've always taught. So I'll date myself. Like I mentioned, growing up, there was always a computer, and it started out with games like Carmen San Diego or Castle Wolfenstein, which are interactive computer games where you're evaluating outputs. And in middle school and high school it was Prodigy, which is pre-AOL to look for sources.

Derek Bruff 6:33

Right. Yeah.

Susan Ray 6:34

Right. And so when I got my first job in Manhattan, it wasn't because of the bachelor's degree in English, it was mostly because of the digital literacy that I had. Okay. And so when I started teaching composition, it was always part of what we did. Like, how do you evaluate online sources and determine, you know, if they're reliable, how do we work with databases? I used to always slow down for years and teach students how to write a proper email, which you might think is business writing, but I would get emails like yo Sue's what I miss. Like, okay, let's all slow down and revisit how do we properly communicate now that email is, you know, an everyday occurrence. So when AI entered the scene, it was kind of well, this is the next stage of how I'm preparing them for steps after college and how do we evaluate this language and be a part of this conversation? But I am fully aware, like I have brilliant colleagues who are so great at what they do, and they reimagined their, you know, reinvented the wheel when COVID hit, and now they're doing it again with AI. And I'm just so lucky that I have that foundation from my family and that I can still call them with emergency questions.

Derek Bruff 7:37

Yeah. And do you do you find yourself kind of doing some teaching moves that echo maybe what you would have done 10 or 15 years ago? I don't know, grappling with Wikipedia or something that you had to do with.

Susan Ray 7:49

Absolutely, because with Wikipedia, I have a fun Wikipedia story that I always say it is a resource, but we need to have our thinking caps on. I did my doctorate on an obscure Victorian author named uh William Thackeray.

Derek Bruff 8:02

Okay.

Susan Ray 8:02

And I opened up his webpage to double check his birth date, and it said, William Thackeray is Satan. So clearly someone had been assigned his readings and found them unpleasant and gone in and changed it.

Derek Bruff 8:13

Did that happen live during class?

Susan Ray 8:16

It happened right before class. It was still up when I got to show them. But I've always shown them the dark sides of these technology, not even dark sides, but the flaws within these technologies. And I never assume knowledge. And I've never had pushback like, oh, we already know this. It's just let's let's look at the basics together. And so that's how I approach AI. Like, let's talk about bias, let's talk about hallucinations. Like, what are the positives and negatives? And that's been just kind of the core, the way I've always taught. And so, yeah, it just felt like a natural progression of the conversation in a lot of ways.

Derek Bruff 8:48

Okay, yeah. And I I'll share one of mine that I think has helped. Is that I I'm I've learned not I've learned to be skeptical of the hype around new technologies.

Susan Ray 8:58

Yeah.

Derek Bruff 8:59

And so, like, I don't maybe I should pay more attention to some of the hype, but I feel like, okay, here's this guy, and he's a billionaire and he has these crazy ideas about technology. Okay, well, like, big deal. That they've never really been able to kind of implement those ideas. So I don't respond as much to that as I do, what are my students facing right now as they navigate all of this together?

Susan Ray 9:22

Yes. And don't you find that they love someone coming in and kind of poking holes in it? Because the technology's been, you know, framing itself as magic long before AI. Sure. And for someone to come in and kind of deflate some of those claims, I find that they really respond to.

Derek Bruff 9:35

Yeah. Well, what does what does AI aware teaching look like for you now? What um, what, what moves have you been making this this year in your in your teaching as a response to AI?

Susan Ray 9:47

Yeah, so this is semester three or four, where it's been pretty foundational to everything I'm doing. So day one, I'm very clear, AI is gonna be a huge part of this course. You don't have to engage with large language models, but we're gonna read about them and talk about them. I had two students out of four sections this semester who decided they didn't want to engage, but they did want to be a part of the course and they were still a part of the conversation. Uh, day two for me is also always the okay, this is my one AI lecture. We're gonna dig in. You know, generative AI doesn't think, it predicts, you know, bias, hallucinations. I love to do what I call the good, the bad, and the ugly of AI, where I put out like one slide that's got like eight different headlines that are very anti-AI, all the real harms that it brings. Like environmental, chat GPT, psychosis, copyright. And I'll just say, okay, guys, what do you what do you see? What do you think? What lands for you? And I try very hard to zip my mouth, which is hard because I love this topic. Yeah. But they just flow and they're energized because as we just discussed, there's something magical about that first semester in college where all of a sudden your opinion is like, yes, bring it out, share. You don't just need to regurgitate what I think. And we'll look at the benefits of AI. Um, we talk about throughout the semester, we're gonna have the AI Transparency Journal, which is a Google Doc they share with me. And every time they're gonna touch AI, they post it there and they evaluate it. And I think one thing I've talked about with you in the past, my favorite assignment is the syllabus assignment.

Derek Bruff 11:13

Yeah, yeah. Tell us about that.

Susan Ray 11:16

So, students go to any large language model of their choice. They have my syllabus [chime in background] as a PDF and this fill-in-the-blank prompt, which asks them, okay, what year of college are you? What's your major? And depending on the topic, whatever you're teaching, what have you liked and disliked about English classes, writing, reading in the past? What are your strengths and struggles as a student? And the prompt asked the large language model to evaluate that student profile along my syllabus alongside my syllabus. And it's just been so well, who doesn't like to evaluate stuff about them? Yeah. It's it's yeah, it's like this is where you might struggle, and this is the supports that are built in. And oh, you're gonna be a nurse. This is how this is gonna tie to what you're gonna do in the future. So it's just been [chime in background] really, really positive feedback from students in terms of that assignment.

Derek Bruff 12:01

So do you have a small Star Wars droid on your desk?

Susan Ray 12:05

I'm sorry. I'm trying. So uh yeah, I can repeat that. Um, I thought I had everything on mute. Yeah. No, no. Um, my um when I get a text, it comes in as C3PO.

Derek Bruff 12:16

Nice.

Susan Ray 12:17

And I muted my ringer, but not my text.

Derek Bruff 12:20

Yeah, no worries. No worries.

Susan Ray 12:21

So sincere apologies for that.

Derek Bruff 12:23

It's uh yeah, it's a familiar sound to many of my listeners. So um I think that'll be fine.

Susan Ray 12:28

So you can tell I was raised in a Star Trek Star Wars home.

Derek Bruff 12:31

Yeah. Right. So um, how do your students respond to the syllabus activity?

Susan Ray 12:38

So I love it. Occasionally one will say, I already knew all this because they did read the syllabus and they have thought about it, which is extremely rare. I used to have a clip of Snoop Dogg like telling students to read the syllabus. It didn't help. They still didn't read the syllabus. But most of them, it's the first time they've really seen how these models work by synthesizing information in creative ways and helping them see things they might have missed, which is what we want them to do, and then to evaluate the output because they have to write a response to me. What were the limits? What did you gain? And I have uh colleagues, this is the only AI assignment they do all semester, but they're glad they do it because it opens the conversation about how not to immediately trust and how it can be a useful tool. So it's it's been a fun one. And then throughout the semester, after that first day, AI kind of lives in the background. Uh it comes into some assignments, I bring in chatbots, we I have them you use it for certain aspects of a writing assignment and evaluate it, but it's just really that second day of class when we're kind of all in and they wonder if they're in an English class. Yeah.

Derek Bruff 13:42

Right, right. But it's that um, I don't know. I think I deal with uh with this a lot in my conversations around AI. It's so the discussion is is so polarized.

Susan Ray 13:54

Yes.

Derek Bruff 13:55

Right. And so what I hear from you in this activity is it gives the students a chance to see here's some ways that AI may be useful to you that you hadn't considered in the past, given whatever your AI experience was. Also, it's telling you about you, and you know a fair amount about you, and so you can you're in a better position to push back and be skeptical about the problems with AI.

Susan Ray 14:17

Exactly. And it helps them even think about how could I have prompted it better, that it would have a more nuanced understanding of where I struggle with writing than this fill-in-the-blank prompt, which great, ask it a follow-up question. Give it more details. And they don't realize that I'm secretly teaching them AI literacy.

Derek Bruff 14:34

Right. So yeah. Well, say more about these transparency journals that you do. How does that work?

Susan Ray 14:41

Yeah, so uh I gave a survey to students, it's been a year ago now. It was only a hundred students across our comp one courses. And the first question was, what were you taught about AI before college? And we are community college, we have a lot of returning adult learners, but the majority of our students are right out of high school. And 40% have been taught nothing, and 30% had been taught it's always bad. Oh. So, but yeah, but we know from recent surveys, like the digital education.

Derek Bruff 15:09

It sounds like Wikipedia 15 years ago.

Susan Ray 15:11

There you go, it does. But we know that students are using it. We know that they are. So the whole idea is to make it not this kind of clandestine activity they're doing on their own and don't tell me about it. It's like, hey, let's all put our cards on the table and discuss it. I keep an AI transparency journal for every course. So if I say, how can I make this less wordy, which I often do because I'm a very wordy person, or let's discuss novel ways I could rethink this assignment, they can see that. And about, I'll be honest, maybe three out of 19 are going to dig in and take a look, but they know it's there.

Derek Bruff 15:40

Yes. Okay.

Susan Ray 15:41

And the idea is that throughout the semester, every time they engage with AI, they've dated it, they've shared it, and they've written one sentence. And I'm happy when someone writes this is stupid and it was useless. I'm like, great! You know, you should have trusted your own writing in that, you know, in that in that uh particular spot. But the biggest thing is at the end of the semester, I'll say, okay, go back, look at this 30-page Google Doc. How do you see your prompting evolving? Has your views on AI have your views on AI shifted? How will you use it differently in the future? And these have been like the richest writing responses I've had from my students. And I'm just stealing stuff from comp theory in the 90s with portfolios, right? To go back and look through your process. But it is a really fun approach.

Derek Bruff 16:23

What um what are some examples of some insights that students reach at during that reflection phase?

Susan Ray 16:29

The most terrifying one is I didn't realize AI could be wrong before this class, which that's a an important one, but yeah, but also terrifying. Um, how to prompt better, how to use it as a thinking partner without replacing their voice. I hear that a lot. Uh, that it's a tool, that it's not magic. All the things we would we tell them, but they kind of need to learn that on their own. Yeah. So that's been really wonderful. Um, a lot of them saying they see now how it's going to be applicable in their careers, and that's a variety of different careers. So yeah, I'll I'll keep doing it because it's working really well. I always tell students I'm gonna keep doing something until it stops working. So some things I've been doing for 20 years and some are brand new.

Derek Bruff 17:09

Right, right, right. Well, um, I also know you teach on-site and online. And so I'm wondering if you're seeing differences in the conversations with students around AI in those two different modalities.

Susan Ray 17:23

Absolutely. So I teach online asynchronously. I taught synchronous online a few times. I've gotten so frustrated by students not turning on cameras or connections not working that I teach asynchronous. And of course, it's just there's not that level of connection and buy-in when you can't talk face to face. And I'll tell I always make videos every week where I connect to them and share what's going on and go through the goals and the lectures and invite responses. And I put deadlines for Thursday and Sunday in online courses, but I find so many of them, they just log in on Sunday to get through weeks of work, a week, a week worth of work and a couple hours, and they skip steps. And which is human, but when you skip steps, you're not getting okay, how does the AI transparency journal work? Or what is she asking for in this piece of writing? Or, oh, she's not gonna grade me harshly for grammar and spelling. I missed that bit. So just to be honest, it's something I'm still working through. Um, one thing I'm I've just started that's going really well is asking them once a week for a 60-second video log.

Derek Bruff 18:22

Okay.

Susan Ray 18:23

Just make a video, like two things that like you learned this week, and then I call it a shout-out to something someone said last week.

Derek Bruff 18:29

Okay.

Susan Ray 18:29

Because discussion boards, you know, there's been a lot of writing about the temptation to just outsource that to AI. Sure. Yeah. I I think it would be more bother than worth it for a student to recreate a video of themselves saying what I'm asking to be done. So it's just such a more complicated space, and it's an equity issue. I do think we need online classes. But yeah, AI has made it very messy.

Derek Bruff 18:52

So how do you think about the uh the academic integrity question in your courses? How do you navigate that?

Susan Ray 19:02

Yeah, I know it's almost become like the buzzword in these spaces, but the whole productive friction, which is just showing the process, making thinking visible. I always think about, like I know, and I'm not sure about you, but in undergrad, I had courses where it was the term paper was kind of most of our grade. Yeah. For you know, which that final product weighed so heavy over your head that if there was a magic LLM that said, hey, I can make this perfect for you, you can see the temptation. Yeah. But productive friction is like, hey, have this conversation about your thesis with a chat bot and then tell me where you landed, or what database source are you thinking about using, what quotes are you thinking about using, just showing students that it's a step-by-step repro iterative process. And I'm gonna reward you along the way because it's all part of that final product. The final product is even less important than the steps it takes to get there. So I'm trying to do that in person, online, um, especially in this AI moment. But I think you know, anyone who tells you they have it all figured out perfectly is not to be trusted.

Derek Bruff 20:01

Right.

Susan Ray 20:01

It's something we're all continually reflecting on and trying to find out the best fit.

Derek Bruff 20:06

Yeah. So it sounds like you don't use an AI detector or even like a process tracking tool. You know, what are your thoughts on those tools or or what might you say to a colleague who is thinking that maybe they need some more of that kind of AI detection power in their teaching?

Susan Ray 20:25

Yeah, I do still do the uh open process in that before we even start a paper, I have them share Google Doc. Okay. Because even with all these steps, you know, I can be honest occasionally a student, I'm like, this looks AI generated, and they'll say, No, it's me. And I'll say, You you wrote two pages in 30 seconds. Like, I don't think so. Like, let's say, you know, we'll have a conversation about what got in the way and the anxieties. So that is still part of my process. Um, we have Pangram built into our LMS shelves, our Canvas shells. And I always tell students, it's just a conversation starter because it gets flagged does not mean that, oh, you're necessarily like AI, it's as AI generated pros, because I've had a lot of my second language speakers. I have one student right now, oh, she just finished my course, her native language was Spanish and another one French. And both of them, I could watch their process, but they kept going out for certain phrases, how to say them in English, not whole sentences, just phrases. And their papers were largely flagged as AI generated. Okay. So we had conversations about how can we keep their voices authentic as possible, but of course, no, they have not engaged in what I would consider AI plagiarism. So just any faculty I think who want it to be the answer are looking for that silver bullet in the age of AI and there isn't one, it can be part of a larger story, right? If you're pretty sure a piece of writing isn't your students.

Derek Bruff 21:49

Yeah. Well, and you've got if you do encounter that writing that looks suspicious, I ideally you've got all these points of interaction with students before then.

Susan Ray 22:00

Yes.

Derek Bruff 22:01

To to to at least have a much better conversation with that student about what they did.

Susan Ray 22:06

Exactly. And it's usually students who haven't been there all semester, and then they submit a paper. And yeah, so that's another flag, right? Like part of the process is you were supposed to go through these weeks of transformation with me, and I haven't seen you. Um, so yeah, I I think it's it's all relevant, and I'm kind of trying all of it. But the biggest thing for me is just being open and honest with students. Yeah, like because I one thing I do. Love about Pangram is they see the report the same time I do.

Derek Bruff 22:32

Okay.

Susan Ray 22:33

Oh, it's no cat and mouse. So sometimes they'll email me, like, oh my gosh, it was flagged. And I'll say, Okay, deep breath. Let's look at it together. It's okay. Yeah.

Derek Bruff 22:41

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I remember doing the same things with, you know, Turnitin and plagiarism detection back in the day. Like, okay, that it says 32%. What does that mean? I don't know. Let's have a conversation, right? Let's look at the paper and make sense of this together. Yeah.

Susan Ray 22:56

Yeah. And I think that's where so much of it is missing. And I understand like our classrooms are packed. Some of us have, you know, four or five sections, but the student deserves to be part of the conversation before any determinations made. Right. It shouldn't just be, all right, I'm emailing academic integrity right now.

Derek Bruff 23:12

Right. Right. Yeah. You are teaching AI literacy, kind of along the way, if nothing else. And I'm wondering how you balance or how you think of the need to teach AI literacy along with other course goals and objectives that you have. Because, you know, five years ago we didn't have a thing called AI literacy.

Susan Ray 23:34

Right.

Derek Bruff 23:35

We had other stuff, right? But how do you think of that kind of in your in your in your at the at the course goal level?

Susan Ray 23:41

Yeah, I don't think it necessarily, I think it replaces a lot of the digital literacy I used to cover in comp courses, say 15, 20 years ago. So I got to be on our committee to rethink our freshman composition course, English 100. And I know there's different terms at different institutions, but they we were rethinking the master course outline. So my job was to go look at English 100 descriptions at all our neighboring universities where a lot of our students, you know, eventually transfer. And most of them had digital literacy and navigating databases in that description of what English 100 does. And I think AI is just the new way we're doing a lot of that work. So I'm still very much, you know, Peter Elbow is a comp theorist from like the 90s, early 2000s. I'm still doing so much of what he says, really, let's move away from grammar, grammar drills, and it's an exploratory process and thinking through writing and drafting. Um, but I just see AI literacy as kind of the foundation where a lot of these, the, these, the research and the conversation and meaning making is happening. Yeah. Yeah.

Derek Bruff 24:42

Yeah.

Susan Ray 24:42

And I think comp will continue to move that way. It's just gonna take a little time.

Derek Bruff 24:48

Yeah. Cause there's always, like you say, there's always been um a kind of, you know, writing is thinking and working with sources and the tools we're using to do that kind of work uh change over time.

Susan Ray 25:00

Right.

Derek Bruff 25:01

But the nature of the work is very similar.

Susan Ray 25:03

Yeah, and I think we've always wanted students to understand the importance of keeping their voice. And this is we went through this with like Spark notes, like please don't copy and paste spark notes. I want to know what you think about that Dickens character, not what you know, the gr poor grad student who was paid to write that thinks about the Dickens character. So I think it's kind of the same struggle, it's just in a new frame, if that makes sense.

Derek Bruff 25:24

Yeah. Are there are there moves you make early in the course to try to uh reorient your students maybe from I don't know, writing experiences that were like all about grammar, right? Or like the Yeah.

Susan Ray 25:38

Yeah. I will tell them my own. I had a poetry professor I loved, but he was just flabbergasted by how I couldn't use commas, and he started taking off 10 points every time I misplaced a comma. And I was like paralyzed. Like I just I couldn't make myself write. So I've uh adopted what a lot of my colleagues are doing. So my doctorate's actually Victorian literature with hence the Dickens reference. I have colleagues who are comp theorists, yeah, and they've been talking to me for years about low-stakes writing. And so I do that with like initial stages and homeworks. I'm like, if if you do it thoughtfully and you've engaged and the ideas are there, it's a 90. Like the 10% of the that's just the gravy, right? It's it's the reward for being present. So that's one way I try to take away that anxiety and get them to buy in early, uh, that it's about your voice and don't worry about that perfection and the polished practice.

Derek Bruff 26:28

Yeah. Yeah. Well, another thing I've noticed in some of your writing is that um you talk about preparing students for the workforce more than most English professors I know. Yeah. And it's probably because I tend to work at, you know, research universities and with world arts colleges, right? And they don't always think of themselves as as kind of career readiness faculty. But you seem to have an angle on that. And I I'd love for you to say a little bit more about that and how kind of the teaching you do and how that how that fits in those bigger questions about college and career.

Susan Ray 26:59

And, you know, part of that is I'm so lucky I landed at a community college. Like it just, it's it's been the perfect fit for me. Uh, and I've had the brightest students I've ever had at a community college. But, you know, when I went to like Penn State, you know, over 20 years ago, I was kind of like wrapped in my privilege of what college looked like that you stayed in the dorms and you hung out with friends, and then you did your work and you ate in the cafeteria, and that was college. You went to parties. Uh, my students, I have them arriving to class sometimes exhausted because they've been up all night working and they still made it to class. I've had students arrive with children because childcare fell through and they didn't want to miss anything. And it's just been a very clear wake-up call that they're not there because they're desperate to learn about rhetorical modes. You know, they are there because they want to have a better career, that they want to have greater financial opportunities for their family, that they're excited to, you know, do something different work-wise. And that doesn't mean they don't care about all the wonderful learning that's happening in the classroom, but there is an end goal that I'm always very mindful of. And so when we gave that survey out last year about AI, one student wrote in February, I was pretty sure I wasn't uh given a job because I admitted my naivety about AI. And I like to think that if she had taken my English 100 course, she would be able to speak on the spot, like, oh, I understand about bias and hallucination, and it can be a great idea generator. So that's where I think about those moments that of course I want them to, you know, love my Malcolm X essay because it's like the best piece of writing we're ever, you know, you're I think anyone's ever going to read. But also I'm mindful of like the end goal, how that's gonna translate when they leave um Delaware County.

Derek Bruff 28:38

Do you um are there uh assignment structures or strategies you use to help students see some of those connections between the writing they're doing for you and their long-term careers?

Susan Ray 28:51

Absolutely. So it starts, of course, with like the syllabus assignment, yeah. Uh where they note their major and where they want to go. Um it does tie in the second our capstone papers about a flaw within the education system. And a lot of students end up writing about uh the kind of blue-collar, white-collar dynamic. Like, why is somehow, you know, working in an office seen as more ideal than someone who's, you know, making have a very satisfying career working with their hands. So that's something that they delve into a lot. And we do talk about when I show them how to use AI, how that translates in different spaces. Like once in a while, I'll say, oh yeah, and this is how you might use this in a legal office, or this is how you this might work in healthcare, that we wouldn't want a doctor to just let AI diagnose you. That would be terrifying, right? And so I do bring it in occasionally, um, but I think it's more subterfuge. Okay, they don't even realize it's happening.

Derek Bruff 29:46

Yeah, yeah. I think one of the challenges I see for some faculty, so in contrast, you know, I have colleagues in the school of business, and I feel like they have a keen sense of what's happening in the fields that their students are entering. And they're able to kind of update their curriculum as necessary because they've got some systems for kind of calibrating right to what the workforce needs are. And I'm wondering, do you have anything like that that helps you kind of get a sense of kind of what directions you should be helping your students move?

Susan Ray 30:19

Honestly, I think it's more just research because I've been thinking about that a lot too, like that our colleagues who are in like business or medicine, or you do so much um with technology, they have to keep abreast of all the changes. Where I will say, you know, I love my cohort, but we are humanities folk. Like we've been studying Victorian literature the way we've been studying it, you know, from different angles. And we, that's how we were taught. And that's you know, how we went through graduate school. We want to continue that way. So I find it can be kind of an upheaval to ask folks in the humanities to look towards how are things shifting? How is this changing, how is this changing the way we interrogate sources and language? Like in the article you were so kind enough to bring up, like I put it through Claude to look at spelling and grammar and debated my thesis. And then I put that in my citations. Like that was part of my process. And I would say it made my writing better to have Claude come at me and like challenge my arguments. Like, should this be part of how we do Victorian studies? And of course, I would get a resounding no. Um, but I think you know, I we should maybe be moving in that direction and take um take examples from our colleagues in different different fields.

Derek Bruff 31:28

Yeah. Um I'm just I'm imagining all of these humanities faculty I know who are so opposed to AI. And so and you had mentioned some of your students have told you they wanted to opt out. And so I'm wondering, particularly with your students, how do you handle that when they they share, you know, they have serious concerns about environmental impact or they worry about copy uh, you know, intellectual property kinds of things, or like how how do you navigate those hard conversations with students?

Susan Ray 31:59

I think it's so important. Um, even I'll admit sometimes I can be a bit frustrated because their point of contention is something they don't have a not a lot of knowledge about yet. There's many reasons to be anti-AI, but like they've kind of latched onto a headline and that's their their flag. But I would never say that. Like they are adults and I encourage them, you know, to advocate for what they believe in. And so I tell them two things. We're gonna be talking about it a lot. So I will not be offended if you want to move to someone else's composition section section, and I can recommend folks. Um, but this is the way we're gonna, when students engage with a large language model, I might send you to the databases, for example. And it's always been productive. Um, I did have a third person who was uh said they weren't gonna use AI, and after a few weeks they were like, Can I switch? And I was like, Of course, yes. Um, but yeah, so I I have to, it's hard for me because I want to, you know, have that debate I would have with my colleagues about okay, absolutely environmental impact, but advocacy makes more of a difference, and a large language model search is the same as five minutes on TikTok. But I'm not gonna, of course, I would not do that to my students. But I will say there's moments of frustration.

Derek Bruff 33:05

Yeah, yeah.

Susan Ray 33:06

Yeah.

Derek Bruff 33:07

Whereas with colleagues, you might get into it a little more with colleagues.

Susan Ray 33:11

Oh, yes, yeah. And I was surprised at the AAC&U um conference. Some some faculty were saying they don't let students opt out. They're like, that would be like telling them they don't have to use the internet, that this is a part of your career, adapt. And I get that. I just I don't think it would set the right tone for a composition course for me to come at it that way.

Derek Bruff 33:31

Yeah. And you know, that may be a norm that we get to five years from now, depending on how things shake out, right? We don't let students um have moral objections to the use of email. Uh right. We just make it part of the requirement. You have to have an email account with the institution and you have to check it, you know, a few times a week. And um, we're not there with AI, right? We don't have that degree of consensus. Yeah.

Susan Ray 33:54

Exactly. And sometimes I want to move the needle forward and just say let's just get there already, but I do understand where they're at. And I'm, you know, I'm proud of them. They're making their own decisions and using their voice and standing up for things they're concerned about. Yeah. Because that's what we want from them, of course.

Derek Bruff 34:08

Yeah, yeah. Well, what's what's next for you? What uh how are you gonna continue your explorations of AI and AI literacy this year?

Susan Ray 34:18

So I am so excited that this is my first summer in five years. I'm not teaching. So commencements on Thursday. Um, and I was very excited to find out I got a teaching award that came with a stipend, and I am buying myself a new computer. And I'm of course leaning on the tech people in my family to get something rather robust because I want to learn a lot more about you know running agents and off the cloud and lots of things that are new to me. Like I'll be very clear. I'm fluent in chat bots and large language models, but I want to really get into the nuts and bolts and understand it better because I think that will enhance my pedagogy for the fall. But I really just kind of want to step back and learn all I can on a not like I don't have the computer science background as much as I was raised within it. I want to at least find out a chunk this summer and see what I can wrap my head around.

Derek Bruff 35:08

Yeah. So, like the the ways that you can run AI models on your laptop that are not cloud-based at all, that are just running locally.

Susan Ray 35:16

Yeah, yeah. And I have not done that before. And again, my little um MacBook Air that I've done everything on for the past few years could not sustain that. And I'm you know, I'm understanding why. So yeah, I'll probably go to Erie, Pennsylvania with my kids and hang out with my dad, and we'll just sit at the kitchen table like we did 30 ago and figure some stuff out. Yeah, it'll be fun. I love that.

Derek Bruff 35:38

I love that. Well, and and I can relate, I do have a computer science degree, but it's like, you know, coming up on 30 years old now. So it's it helps a little, right?

Susan Ray 35:48

But you have that foundational knowledge, and that's uh yeah, I'm jealous. I'm sometimes I'm like, I had to choose Victorian literature.

Derek Bruff 35:56

Yeah, yeah. But I also feel you on the laptop, but my my laptop is is showing its age now, and I think I think I'm gonna have to get into it.

Susan Ray 36:04

I'm I'm excited. I feel like that's investing it in ways that will benefit me as both an instructor and you know, my students. And yeah, it's time. I need a new computer.

Derek Bruff 36:14

Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe one last question. Um, back on my old podcast, uh Leading Lines, we would say it was all about technology. Um, the current podcast is a little broader in scope, but the old one was about technology and teaching. And so we would say we, you know, predicting the future is really challenging and probably not worth the effort. But maybe we can shape it a little bit. And so and with AI, uh, we used to ask folks like, what would you like to see five or ten years from now? I feel with AI, 10 years seems a little hard to even articulate. But if you were thinking like three years from now and you're teaching one of your courses, what would you want to be different in terms of either how you or your students interact with or think about AI?

Susan Ray 37:02

Taking that long pause. I know what I want on an institutional level. I don't know if that's like kind of dancing around the question, but we've been finding is that I know we're starting to see different school districts, like New York City Public Schools, are coming up with an AI policy with teacher and parents get a buy-in and a say and how that's going to unfold. Different institutions like SUNY and Ohio State are making it a mandatory part of the curriculum. I would hope that all institutions have some kind of whatever the approach is, if it's like a freshman experience course, and if there was, I would take more of it out of my comp one course and I would let it live there. But I would hope that every single student graduating would have that experience. And I know that AI will keep changing, but I think the need to understand its limits and its faults and how to interrogate it will be essential. So that would be my ideal in the next five years.

Derek Bruff 37:54

Yeah, yeah, I like that too.

Susan Ray 37:56

Yeah.

Derek Bruff 37:57

I've done enough kind of institutional change work to know that can be very hard, uh, depending on the institution. But

Susan Ray 38:03

yeah, I love my colleagues. This is my first time trying to do anything from like a not an admin level, but to like shape policy. And I'm like, man, we are curmudgeons. And I am of them.

Derek Bruff 38:17

Well, Susan, this has been lovely. Thank you so much for sharing and giving us a little insight into your teaching uh these days. Um, this is really great. Thanks, thanks for being on the show.

Susan Ray 38:26

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Derek Bruff 38:28

That was Susan Ray, Associate Professor of English at Delaware County Community College. Thanks to Susan for coming on the show to talk about her AI aware teaching practices. I really appreciate how calm Susan is about all of this. She's not panicking. She's just doing the work of redesigning her courses to help her students develop the AI literacy that they need. She shared many practical strategies in our interview, and she regularly talks about her teaching online. See the show notes for more of Susan's writing, including that essay about her personal background that we discussed in the interview.

Derek Bruff 39:00

And you can read more about Susan's teaching in the Norton Guide to AI Aware Teaching, which features concrete examples of AI aware teaching practices from Susan and from many more thoughtful, effective instructors. The ebook is available now, and the print edition will be available in September. See the show notes for more information.

Derek Bruff 39:19

Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the Online and Professional Education Association. In the show notes, you'll find a link to the UPCEA website where you can find out about their research, networking opportunities, and professional development offerings. This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced and edited by me, Derek Bruff. See the show notes for links to my website and socials, and to the Intentional Teaching newsletter, which goes out most weeks on Thursday or Friday. If you found this or any episode of Intentional Teaching useful, do consider sharing it with a colleague. That would mean a lot. As always, thanks for listening.