Announcing: AI for Educators Design Lab Podcast is Live!

The AI for Educators Design Lab podcast hosted by Next Path Design is live! If you've been following along over the past few months, you know I've been exploring the AI topics of greatest interest and concern to educators, instructional designers, and learning leaders across educational sectors. 

This podcast is for anyone interested in designing meaningful learning experiences when AI changes everything. But that’s not all. We’re also rolling out additional programming focused on teaching and learning in the age of AI. 

Listen to the Podcast

👉 nextpathdesign.com/podcast | Spotify | Apple | YouTube

Each AI for Educators Design Lab episode explores real‑world challenges in education, including academic integrity, learning goals, AI literacy, privacy, inclusion, and policy. In addition to highlighting these issues, the podcast considers design informed ways to navigate these issues in your context with your learners.

The first podcast episode targets one of the biggest challenges I hear time and again from across sectors: academic integrity in the AI era. Is it a cheating crisis or a design problem? I share several design questions to help you examine whether your assignments are measuring human learning or AI capability. 

New podcast episodes will drop twice each month through the end of the 10-part first season. In our next episode, we'll explore what happens to our learning goals when AI can handle much of what we used to ask students to do.

Access the Companion Design Brief

👉 nextpathdesign.com/designbriefs

Be sure to also take advantage of the free Design Briefs offered as a hands-on podcast companion. The first Design Brief is now available and picks up where Episode 1 of the podcast leaves off.

You'll consider the central design questions about academic integrity in an AI Assignment Vulnerability Audit worksheet. It's a quick tool to help you look at your own assignments through the same design lens discussed in the podcast. Future Design Briefs will be released along with new podcast episodes.

Looking Ahead: Summer Design Sprints

👉 Add your name: Design Sprint waiting list

Later this summer, we’ll be hosting a series of short AI for Educators Design Sprints. In these 4-day design challenges, we'll convene small cohorts to tackle the same AI-related issues explored in the podcast series.

Thank you for being here. I look forward to engaging with you in this conversation.

Jennifer Maddrell, PhD
Next Path Design

About the Podcast Series: 

• A couple of years ago, I tested one of my own assignments in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity. It was a literature review I'd assigned for years, and what AI returned in seconds looked a lot like what I'd been asking students to produce over several weeks. That moment changed how I think about teaching and learning in the age of AI.
• With AI, we're facing a tension I like to call the convergence of messy and the magical. AI promises exciting innovation and efficiency, but it also raises significant concerns. I want to emphasize that this podcast series isn't quick tips or AI tools to hype. Instead, it's about the agency we have to design effective learning experiences and make informed decisions in the face of this new reality.