A floating laptop showing an essay with an AI writing score.

Read this week’s piece about why AI writing scores shouldn’t be trusted: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

A Guide to the Circular Deals Underpinning the AI Boom A web of interlinked investments raises the risk of cascading losses if AI falls short of its potential.

A handful of tech companies are nearly single-handedly keeping AI developers afloat.

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

It turns out that AI isn’t as inevitable as some are lead to think. Tech companies increase each other’s stock value through circular transactions that give the illusion of AI demand. Read more about how I’m resisting: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

#ai #genai #highered

Question for college instructors: What’s your approach to managing students’ personal device use in the classroom, and why? How do you communicate/negotiate those expectations?

#collegteaching #teaching #highereducation

Let’s stop and ask our students, “What do you think?” About AI (policies), about assignment formats, about their performance in the course. Implement their recommendations. Validate their insights. This is what student empowerment looks like #teaching #highered #facultydevelopment

Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Brief Manifesto Why technology-saturated classrooms need a more critical approach.

Our stances on technology—whether students should use generative AI and mobile devices in general—don’t actually matter as much as how we determine and enforce these expectations in our teaching.

Read this week’s piece: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

Faculty are bringing corporate culture into the classroom. It's not helping their students. Should classrooms mirror the workplace?

Should classrooms mirror the workplace? When career preparation goes too far, and how to strike the right balance, in this week’s Substack piece:

open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

In celebration of #mlkday, I reflect on the powerful words of an 18-year-old Dr. King in his essay, “The Purpose of Education”, and what they say about higher ed’s current climate.

Read it here: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

This is what I do it for ❤️.

I’m so grateful to the Association of Faculties for Advancement of Community College Teaching (AFACCT) for inviting me to set the tone for their 36th annual teaching and learning conference. What a way to start the new year and new semester.

#conference #keynote

As the opening keynote for AFACCT’s 36th Annual Conference, I shared an approach to setting learner-centered policies and expectations about technology with—not for—students.

More conference fun tomorrow 🙌🏿❤️ #bmore #communitycollege #conference #facultydevelopment

This is an example of a personal device police that you might consider using in the Spring. It’s specific, transparent, and allows for discussion.

What will be your approach to personal devices in the spring?

#collegeteaching #highered #pedagogy #teaching #facultydevelopment

Are students so addicted to their phones that the only way to eliminate classroom distractions is to ban them altogether?

I tackle the question, and share two strategies for setting personal device expectations in classrooms: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

Are phones harmful enough to justify stripping students of their agency by outright banning them?

I explore answers in this week’s Substack article: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

Beloved friends and colleagues!
This week's article-about the over-professionalization of higher ed, and its impact on students—will be shared tomorrow (Thursday) morning. Subscribe today to make sure it lands in your inbox.
Sign up here: unteaching.substack.com

Read about how AI agents are already disrupting higher ed classrooms in my most recent piece: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

Your Students' Secret Agent Agentic AI browsers are yet another AI disruption, with immediate implications for online tests and quizzes

Students and instructors can now use agentic AI browsers like Perplexity’s Comet and ChatGPT’s Atlas to complete and grade online assignments respectively without even needing to log into their LMS. Read more below:

open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

Good teaching is unconventional teaching. To teach well, you have to go against teaching traditions that have been around since the 13th century. It sometimes requires winning over students who expect an efficient yet disconnected learning experience that involves consumption and recitation.

This photo feels so refreshing, but I can’t put my finger on why.

For those looking for guidance on how to respond to students when their work appears to be AI generated.

Hint: Plagiarism checkers aren’t as helpful as you think they are.

Read more here: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

How to Respond to Cheating While Not Being A Jerk A playbook for navigating academic plagiarism

Because plagiarism checkers are so unreliable, and because it’s nearly impossible to definitively prove that a student quoted or paraphrased AI without attribution, I don’t even bother accusing or investigating AI misuse.

Here’s what I do instead: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

Read this week’s piece, “The Problem with Punisihing Plagiarism”, on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

Survey on Mobile Device Culture in Education: Classroom Smartphone Policies Thanks so much for your interest this survey. I'm Jordan H. Davis, Faculty Development Specialist and author of Unteaching on Substack. My solo work involves analyzing cultural trends in education. Sc...

I'm looking for insights on how educators manage smartphone use and the rationale and effectiveness of their policies. If you would like to contribute to an exploration of this topic, complete the short survey linked below:

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

How We Should Talk To Young People About Career Choices Podcast Episode · The Unteaching Podcast · 09/11/2025 · 54m

The most consequential talk I’ve given, for young people anxious, exhausted, and unsatisfied as they pursuit of their ideal careers.

Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Are Teacherless Schools Good for Education? Parents pay Alpha Schools $65,000 for their kids to be taught by AI

This week, I wrote about Alpha School’s controversial AI-taught programs, and their implications for the future of K-12 education. ⬇️

open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

A syllabus pro-tip from a student I just spoke with: if a student needs to complete an assignment or task, and that task is listed in the “Couse Overview” or “Assignments” section of the syllabus, put it in read so it sticks out among the rest of the text in the syllabus 🔴👍🏿

Small things! #learning

I’m writing to share a teaching methodology I’ve been tinkering with, a philosophy that undergirds all the approaches I’ve been encouraging instructors to adopt in their classrooms the past few years.

Learn more about unteaching and all it encompasses here: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

AI developers benefit from a mental health crisis in which apathy, exhaustion, and isolation are all rampant. When we turn to the robots, you can trace it back to one of these three reasons.

My most recent Substack post explains why the word “andragogy” is divisive, and how we can shift our thinking about the difference between adult and child education.

Read here: open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

How I'm Responding to AI Misuse What should we do when students break our policies?

I think I figured out the AI academic integrity issue (well, at least in my courses…for now).

open.substack.com/pub/unteachi...

Students accounting grim stories about their schools' anti-Al culture.