July 13, 2026 • 23 mins
In this episode of Teach Me Something, hosts DJ Prostyle and Penny Dellas sit down with Jason Gulya, Professor of English and Media Communications at Berkeley College, Chair of the AI and Academic Integrity Committee, and member of the College’s AI Task Force.
A nationally recognized voice in higher education and artificial intelligence, Jason has worked with colleges and universities around the world to help rethink what teaching and learning look like in the Age of AI. His work has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Forbes, Business Insider, and more.
Known for his bold and forward-thinking perspective, Jason believes AI is not simply a new classroom tool—it is a catalyst pushing educators and students to revisit how we learn, why we learn, and what it means to build meaningful, career-ready skills in a rapidly evolving world.
In this episode, Jason explores the role of experiential learning in artificial intelligence, how Berkeley College is preparing students to think critically and ethically in the age of emerging technology, and why AI literacy, reflection, and process-based learning are becoming essential to the future of higher education.
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🎙️ Hosted by @djprostyle & @pennydellas📚 Presented by @berkeleycollege × @iheartpodcast
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, what's up. This is DJ pro Style.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
And this is Pennydellas.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And this is Teach Me Something.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Brought to you by Berkeley College. I.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Ladies and gentlemen, Boys and girls, we are back with
another amazing, spectacular episode of Teach Me Something, presented by
Berkeley College.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I am Pro Style and I am Penny Deellas.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Are you feeling today, Penny?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm feeling pretty good. Liam fixed my mic.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I think we're winning.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
We are winning.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
You didn't fix it. It's still broken there. Okay, great, Liam,
we'll see how this goes today. Technical difficulties.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Oh, it's great to be here. I hope everybody listening
is having an amazing day or evening or whatever it
is right now while you're listening, yes, wherever that may be.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
And we have some exciting news. We won a Communicator Award.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I know if we're gonna do that right here on
this one. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, that's awesome. Why not. We're on the line.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
So now if you're watching us, here you go. This
is what it looks like. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
It's e people, it's me.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Emmy's for like for.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Acting, right, Yeah, So it's definitely I mean, you act
every day, every time, every day. Okay, great, but we
are going to jump into yes for those of you
on the live, this is what.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
We do about it. Where that was going?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
What you know what, Let me drink some water.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
This is getting fierce, all right, it's going to get
spicy people, all right, but.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
We are excited and we don't have to act in
excitement for like that, Like all right, there you go.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's because we won the Emmy.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
For our guest that's here with us today, Jason Goulia,
professor of English and Media Communications at Berkeley College and
the chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity Committee,
I mean, Jason has been featured on Forbes Wow, so
many things. We're so blessed to have you here with
us today. And also we have some Berkeley College students
(01:52):
in the building today in the bag, so they're observing
and watching us, you know, and hopefully they come back.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I don't know, that's right. They can see how crazy
you are in person hundred percent. Chason, Thank you so
much for being here, Like what did I get myself into? Exactly?
Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Thank you so much for having me. How was the tripping.
It was good.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
It was I was very thankful that I could just
take the train in and just walk.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I didn't have to drive, didn't have to deal with traffic.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I almost got out my car and walked that today's traffic,
you know, with FIFA in town.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It's been a little case.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
The World Cup has been okay, I mean next there's
there's a.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Lot going on now that the Nis past that that
eased a little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
But now with the World Cup kicking in, Yeah, it's
it's roads or blocks, streets of this da detour here.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
This is bad.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
If only we had some platform artificial intelligence assistant that
would wait, Google Maps ways, you know, that can tell
us the things.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
But I'm gonna start filming. It'd be a lot easier.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah, but then I have to drive to your house
a lot. Okay, Okay, okay, let's get into it. Okay,
Oh you want me to start. You've become a leading
voice in conversations around AI and higher education. Why do
you believe that AI sends it such a transformational moment
for education?
Speaker 5 (03:24):
So one of the things I think is so interesting
about artificial intelligence is I don't think it really has
broken all that much, but it has shown us things
that have been broken for a while. And I think
that when we have AI programs like Chat, GBT, Gemini, Claude,
all these things where you know, in the past we
can just tell the student write a paper on something,
(03:45):
and now.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Suddenly we have these tools that can do that.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
Right, they can get pretty close to completing that paper,
except they're going to do it in a few minutes
it's opposed to in a few hours. And so I
think that this is actually really cool opportunity for education
to take au sep and think about why we educate,
why we do things right, Why spend you know, the
time to say, write a paper or finish a project
(04:11):
when you have an AI program that's kind of waiting
in your not even now on your computer, just on
your phone. One of the things that has really happened
this is where I think it becomes really transformative, is
we have these programs that it's less and less about
going to them.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
It's less about going into your.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Computer and logging into CHATGPT or anything else not using it,
but it's coming to you.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Right.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
You go on your phone and it automatically pops up there.
Right you open your browser and it's automatically there, and
so I think we need to take very seriously what
that's doing for society. I think that it is in
many ways a social technology. It's changing how we communicate,
it's changing how we think, it's changing how we learn.
And so I think that one of the things we
need to do in college and education more broadly is
(04:58):
to take a step back figure out like why we
are doing things, what is the intentionality here, and also
how we can bring joy into the classroom. And so
I think that is a chance to take a step
back and kind of make think about the assumptions that
we've been making for a while about education. And that's
what I think is transformative and exciting about it.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
That we're like, it's such a big topic right where
we talk about AI and education.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
And you know, going back to like you said with
the paper, like you know, there's such a like balance now, right,
Like in the past to write a paper, you had
to do the research, you had to really dig it.
Now you've got kids, I'm sure who just you know,
books in the library, the essay out yourappy, yeah, right,
going to the library, that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Analogue writing, yeah, right, and all of that.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
What do you see right now with the dynamic shift
in terms of this generation being dependent on the AI tools,
two complete assignments to develop thoughts. What is that process
now within academia. I mean it affects the whole landscape,
but specifically in academia, and.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
I do think that it's starting to change as we
have these tools that were just around more and more
and are being worked into everything. So after chat GBT
came out, so this would have been November twenty twenty three,
for the first year or so, many of us, myself included,
really used AI as a search engine.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
We thought about it like Google.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
You go and you put in something, you put in
a question, and you just take whatever you get the answer,
and you take whatever you are given. You don't do
the verification. You don't do, you know, the fact finding.
And one of the things that I think students and
myself are becoming more and more aware of is just
how limiting that is. And now we recognize that even today,
(06:54):
even with these programs being around for a while, we
have to go and we have to verify us there
there are still a lot of errors and you still
have to go in and direct generative AI programs, and
that's something that I talk to my students a lot
about that if we go and we are using AI
for something, having that level of critical thinking is essential.
(07:16):
And I think it's interesting because many times the companies
themselves market these programs chat Gbtgemini, Claude and everything else
as just making our lives easier, and there's something very
tempting about that. In some ways they do sometimes, but
we have to get to that point of thinking critically
(07:37):
about them, and that's when we start to unlock more things,
unlock more uses. And the other thing that I knows
with my students is they're becoming more and more aware
with passing time of how easy it is to lose
your voice. I teach at Berkeley, of course, on aipower
communication and for the first two weeks we do not
(07:57):
dive into the AI program.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
We actually spend quite a bit of time.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
Talking about voice, What is your voice, how would you
characterize it? What happens when you have a voice in
your writing versus speaking on a podcast or whatever else.
And then after a couple of weeks then we can say, well,
now let's take a look at AI programs and how
can you use them? Once you have a pretty firm
understanding of what your voice is. And I didn't used
(08:22):
to teach it that way. I actually change that because
I felt like that's what was missing, and I think that,
you know, I went through my own experience and trying
to figure out what happens when you lose your voice
of these programs, and that is something that I think
the students and faculty alike need to be very very
aware of. If you're using chat GVT, it can be
(08:44):
a slippery slope. You ask for more things, You start
to ask it to write for you, to speak for you,
and then at what point do you take a step
back and say, well, I'm losing my voice. And how
do we help students figure out where that line is
and how to pull back from because we've all done it.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
That's so crue Yeah, you know we don't.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
We tend not to think of ourselves as our brand
and you are and what does that twin of voices?
What does that self indicator look like? And when you
depend wholeheartedly on tools instead of using them as an
assisted tool, you lose yourself. But that's in anything, it's
a transferable skill. So it's so important that you're teach students.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Do you agree with this? We have students with us today.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Thumbs up, thumbs up, All right, you're giving us thumbs up.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
I would definitely say that you want to use AI
and all these different apps and things as more of
a partner than an easy way out, right, like somebody
that could It's like having your own partner to help
you do an assignment, help you figure things out, versus
just spitting out the answers for you, because then you're
not it's the easy way out of everything, right, and
then that's how you do lose your voice and things.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
So, and one of the things that's been so interesting
to me is if my students are using AI and
I invite them to use AI intentionally, I often ask
them for their chat logs so I can actually tell
this is where I start to see it taking over
your what they're asking what the questions? Yeah, because you
can see when you have a chat with an AI
program when the AI starts to take over, and it
(10:10):
will do that if you don't rain it back.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Attention, students, employees, we can tell if AI wrote your homework.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah. We've had a few people here that specifically say that.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
You know what's great when they copy the prompt and
leave it.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
They leave it there. They forget leave your question along
with the answer.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yes, that's amazing talking about is we keep bringing up
students and we have some amazing, lovely Berkeley College students
in the building. Shout out to them, walk us through
an AI topic in your class.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So one of the.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Things that I do in my film class, which students
really really I can find very interesting. So in my
Art of Film class, and I teach this entirely online.
In the past, students wrote a paper right five years
ago and I was teaching it.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
They wrote a paper on a movie of their choice.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
And now I've completely flipped it so that my students
still choose a movie, something that they are passionate about,
something that they are truly interested in, not something I'm
just giving to them. And they go and they create
a mini lesson, and for the mini lesson, they have
to teach a custom chatbot it. So I will go
and create a chatbot for them, and I design it
(11:23):
to act like ten year old me. I give it
that kind of personality. And I was sort of a weird,
very inquisitive kid as a ten year old and so
they have to go and they have to engage with it,
they have to teach it, and at the end of it,
I ask them to send me the entire chat and
it's been very very helpful for me to get And
what I'm really trying to look at is I'm trying
(11:44):
to see their understanding of the movie. So it's what
I call a pressure bot because often when we engage
with chat GBT, we think about it as something that's
just going to take things over. Right, you ask to
do something and it doesn't. And one of the things
we can do in education is we can actually use
of technology to put more pressure on the student. Right,
(12:04):
So instead of going to the program for answers, they
are going to yet question, I.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Would say, the program's coming to you for answers, coming
to you for.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Answer because if you can that you really know that,
yes that I really like that we have we have
at our house. We haven't even got into using them,
but we've bought like for Christmas or something, we got
our kids like one of those like little robots that
but I think it's more of a teaching robot. But
I would love to have like another those kind of
little things. That ask the kids questions consistently and have
(12:33):
and they have to answer it back, because that's what
you want for your kids. You don't want them just
asking questions and to shoots the answer back. I'd rather
the opposite way around. So that's great.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You want to activate the critical thing, Yeah yeah, you
want the brain firing off. Yeah yeah, and at the
end you have evidence of it.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Until you get to my age, then I just want
to ask questions and I need the answer.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Oh, pro.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Don't agree with me. Penny, Okay, Penny is my AI.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
By the way, I will confirm yes. Hey, Penny, two am, Hey,
I have this question. If YouTube doesn't fix it, there's
Penny Jason. How did you get into education? Jason's laughing.
By the way, for those of you listening on your
(13:21):
way to work.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
My journey in the education was very odd. So I
hated I hated school. I hated school in middle school,
in high school.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
And one of the reasons that I really really disliked
it was I felt very micromanaged. I went to a
high school that was extremely competitive. It was so competitive
that they couldn't tell us about class rank because if
you were ranked ahead of someone, they would target you.
They would go after you. And so that's not a
funny environment. No, it's a very negative environment.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I didtive house rus to teach first, who did their
bed first.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Everything's a competitive great and so.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
One of the things that I saw was so interesting
was when I went to college, the only thing I
knew was that I didn't want to teach. It was
literally the only thing I was sure of. I wanted
to go into law. I wanted to go into something else.
And what ended up happening is and this is the
kind of weird or counterintuitive par to my story. I
went to Rutgers University, which is huge, giant, and I
(14:26):
started taking these classes with one hundred students, two hundred students.
No one was taking attendance, no one was micromanaging me.
It was just you're an adult. Come or don't come,
We do not care. I took my first the end
of my first year. I took an astronomy course with
(14:48):
three hundred students. I swear the average attendance was four
of us. So four of us came and talked to
the professor about it. And in a weird way, that
experience of just having complete agency and doing what I
wanted to do, and figuring out what worked for me
was actually very empowering and it's so interesting to me
(15:11):
because I do want my students to come to class
and engage with me. So that's how I'm kind of,
you know, moving against that. But for me, it's all
about agency. I started to get interested in education once
someone said to me, you figure it out, You figure
out what works with you, and that's something that I
try to put in my classes. So for a lot
of my classes now, I don't give my students an assignment.
(15:35):
I asked them to create a project that works for them. Right,
So based off of what we're doing, what we're covering,
what is your project something that you want to exist?
And then what is the process? How are you going
to get there?
Speaker 1 (15:49):
What are you going to do along the way? And
I walk them through and they evaluate themselves.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
Right, they have agency over how it's actually going to
be assessed at the end of it all, and so
we're way. I got into education through a kind of anonymity.
No one really cared about me, and that gave me
agency and that at that point. Once I got into
that environment, that's when I found education to be more
(16:14):
interesting and now I recognize that a lot of times
you can't force education on another person. You can kind
of create the learning conditions where you hope they would
choose to learn. But learning is such a personal decision.
And so I ended up finding a lot of agency
and a lot of power in that kind of anonymity,
(16:34):
and that gradually got me into it. I didn't actually
have a major in college until I was a third
year student. I kind of moved around and then I
got into education, but I very much wandered around for
a lot of my college education.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
That's so well, yeah, but it's so beautiful that you
took your experience and now you have created a safe
space for students to own their experience and control their narratives.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
And that's really.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Unique to position your curriculum that way and to really
amplify their voices within the classroom.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
I think people want agency, people want control, and not
just like a sprinkling of it. They want to make
real decisions, real high impact decisions. And then, you know,
the thing that I'm trying to do that I didn't
quite have my first couple of years was get.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Community in there.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
Right, what does it mean for students to have real agency.
A lot of it is codesigning that I don't just
have a syllabus that I teach again and again and again,
and a curricula I teach again and again. Students co
design with me. They get to choose what we're doing
that day, what we're focusing on, and so I found
I find that to be exciting for me and different
for me, and so trying to find a way to
(17:50):
give students that level of agency but also have community
in there, because that's what I was missing that I
think would have been made my college experience even better.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
So that's what I try to do. I try to
combine those two as much as I can.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
That's awesome. I want to come shadow a class.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
So interestingly enough, we are sitting in this recording studio
and we're doing this because of another program that we
have that Jason also teaches in is on the committee for,
and we actually developed together two classes for that program
called Media Communications, and you know, we looked at the
gap analysis and figured out, you know, we don't have
(18:29):
college radio and we've talked about it here on the
pod and how this came to be, which is pretty cool.
I did not know you were like this whole other
realm when we were developing that program.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
But it's so cool.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
So how do you portray the coursework with media comms?
Same kind of workflow, same outline.
Speaker 5 (18:49):
Yeah, I adapt it based off of the students and
what they're interested in and what we're focusing on. So
the flow of something like Ani Power Communication can be
a little bit different. That's within the media the communications
program that focus and so there, and that's why I
frontload voice and right now I often teach that as
(19:10):
an accelerated online class, and so we frontload voice and
even their students have a lot of agency, and we
have conversations about ethics. We actually talk about ethics and
voice up front. I give them scenarios. I say, well,
this student went and used chat GPT for this, or
this student used an AI avatar, which I'm more and
more common now for doing this, and I asked students
(19:31):
to weigh in, and from there they create. And this
is where it's kind of similar to some other classes.
They create their own process. I'm very big on bringing
less and less attention to the product. We're creating those essays,
those presentations, and I'm much more interested in getting students
and myself to think about the process we actually go through,
(19:52):
because that's what matters. Matters is that you learn a
lot as you're creating it. What is your journey like?
How can you reflect on that journey? And that's something
that cuts across all of those classes, right, and I
think that especially for communications and media, we have to
do that.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Right.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
If we're going to teach our students to really think
about their own voice, we need to find ways to
get them to slow down as they're creating that process
and create a kind of self distance, right, because one
of the things about communication is you need to figure
out kind of how to understand yourself right instead of
just being in your own first person point of view, right, Notice,
how are you working, how are you doing things?
Speaker 1 (20:31):
What is your voice actually like?
Speaker 5 (20:33):
And trying to find ways and workflows that get students
to do that on a regular basis because it's really hard,
but it's something that cuts across I think literally every field, right,
being able to understand yourself as a thinker and what
you're doing and why you were doing it. And once
we have that as a pattern, I think it can
send students anywhere and it's not just career focused, even
(20:57):
though it is that, it's also just life focused.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Self assessments of awareness. It's all the transferable skills. You're
taking me back to my high school ninth grade math teacher,
where she's like, the students are laughing. Yes, listen, you're
gonna remember these things. You're laughing because it's true where
they used to be like, Okay, that's the answer, But
show your work.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
How did you get there?
Speaker 4 (21:18):
Yep, see now they're nodding. Okay, you were laughing at
the beginning. Yeah, how'd you get there? How'd you get here? Bro?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
There's not enough pages of work to show you. It's
not enough pages.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
But I do think that's important, showing the work because
I help my kids now with their homework, and I
love how some of it is on computers now like tablets.
We have to log in in New York and they
make you, you know, they have an area where you
have to break down how you're getting the answers versus
just putting the answer in. So Penny, Yes, this pod
is going so amazing, right, and I think we have
(21:52):
so many, so many more questions.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I want to ask you right now.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
It's never enough time.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
It's never enough.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
And we always talk about bringing somebody back, yes, but
instead of that, I know we have some amazing students
that we've already talked about here. Instead of bringing him back,
let's bring the students in here.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
And say Jason anymore. So, let's keep judent. Let's keep
Jason here with the students.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
That's even better.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
And let's do another podcast. Do you want to do that?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
So we're going to do that.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Unfortunately, you guys, not unfortunate, but you're going to have
to wait till the next podcast drops to check that
one out.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Okay, so make sure you're tuning in to the next podcast.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
But come back, tune in. We're gonna have Liz and Bianca.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
With us and Jason and Jason criminal.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Justice and Media Communications Majors. I'm so excited. Maybe they're
going to teach us something.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I hope.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
So thanks for listening. I'm Penny Tellers, I am pro
Stole and this is Teach Me Something. Don't forget to
follow pod dot Teach me Something and listen to us
on WOR seven ten Sundays at nine am, also wherever
you catch your podcast, and of course.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
On one O three five k T you be right
back in the flash.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Hey, thanks for listening.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Tune in next week for all new episode of Teach
Me Something, brought to you by Berkeley College
Hey, what's up. This is DJ pro Style.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
And this is Pennydellas.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
And this is Teach Me Something.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Brought to you by Berkeley College. I.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Ladies and gentlemen, Boys and girls, we are back with
another amazing, spectacular episode of Teach Me Something, presented by
Berkeley College.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I am Pro Style and I am Penny Deellas.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Are you feeling today, Penny?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm feeling pretty good. Liam fixed my mic.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I think we're winning.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
We are winning.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
You didn't fix it. It's still broken there. Okay, great, Liam,
we'll see how this goes today. Technical difficulties.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Oh, it's great to be here. I hope everybody listening
is having an amazing day or evening or whatever it
is right now while you're listening, yes, wherever that may be.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
And we have some exciting news. We won a Communicator Award.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I know if we're gonna do that right here on
this one. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah, that's awesome. Why not. We're on the line.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
So now if you're watching us, here you go. This
is what it looks like. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
It's e people, it's me.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Emmy's for like for.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Acting, right, Yeah, So it's definitely I mean, you act
every day, every time, every day. Okay, great, but we
are going to jump into yes for those of you
on the live, this is what.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
We do about it. Where that was going?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
What you know what, Let me drink some water.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
This is getting fierce, all right, it's going to get
spicy people, all right, but.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
We are excited and we don't have to act in
excitement for like that, Like all right, there you go.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's because we won the Emmy.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
For our guest that's here with us today, Jason Goulia,
professor of English and Media Communications at Berkeley College and
the chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity Committee,
I mean, Jason has been featured on Forbes Wow, so
many things. We're so blessed to have you here with
us today. And also we have some Berkeley College students
(01:52):
in the building today in the bag, so they're observing
and watching us, you know, and hopefully they come back.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I don't know, that's right. They can see how crazy
you are in person hundred percent. Chason, Thank you so
much for being here, Like what did I get myself into? Exactly?
Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Thank you so much for having me. How was the tripping.
It was good.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
It was I was very thankful that I could just
take the train in and just walk.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I didn't have to drive, didn't have to deal with traffic.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I almost got out my car and walked that today's traffic,
you know, with FIFA in town.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It's been a little case.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
The World Cup has been okay, I mean next there's
there's a.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Lot going on now that the Nis past that that
eased a little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
But now with the World Cup kicking in, Yeah, it's
it's roads or blocks, streets of this da detour here.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
This is bad.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
If only we had some platform artificial intelligence assistant that
would wait, Google Maps ways, you know, that can tell
us the things.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
But I'm gonna start filming. It'd be a lot easier.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah, but then I have to drive to your house
a lot. Okay, Okay, okay, let's get into it. Okay,
Oh you want me to start. You've become a leading
voice in conversations around AI and higher education. Why do
you believe that AI sends it such a transformational moment
for education?
Speaker 5 (03:24):
So one of the things I think is so interesting
about artificial intelligence is I don't think it really has
broken all that much, but it has shown us things
that have been broken for a while. And I think
that when we have AI programs like Chat, GBT, Gemini, Claude,
all these things where you know, in the past we
can just tell the student write a paper on something,
(03:45):
and now.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Suddenly we have these tools that can do that.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
Right, they can get pretty close to completing that paper,
except they're going to do it in a few minutes
it's opposed to in a few hours. And so I
think that this is actually really cool opportunity for education
to take au sep and think about why we educate,
why we do things right, Why spend you know, the
time to say, write a paper or finish a project
(04:11):
when you have an AI program that's kind of waiting
in your not even now on your computer, just on
your phone. One of the things that has really happened
this is where I think it becomes really transformative, is
we have these programs that it's less and less about
going to them.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
It's less about going into your.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Computer and logging into CHATGPT or anything else not using it,
but it's coming to you.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Right.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
You go on your phone and it automatically pops up there.
Right you open your browser and it's automatically there, and
so I think we need to take very seriously what
that's doing for society. I think that it is in
many ways a social technology. It's changing how we communicate,
it's changing how we think, it's changing how we learn.
And so I think that one of the things we
need to do in college and education more broadly is
(04:58):
to take a step back figure out like why we
are doing things, what is the intentionality here, and also
how we can bring joy into the classroom. And so
I think that is a chance to take a step
back and kind of make think about the assumptions that
we've been making for a while about education. And that's
what I think is transformative and exciting about it.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
That we're like, it's such a big topic right where
we talk about AI and education.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
And you know, going back to like you said with
the paper, like you know, there's such a like balance now, right,
Like in the past to write a paper, you had
to do the research, you had to really dig it.
Now you've got kids, I'm sure who just you know,
books in the library, the essay out yourappy, yeah, right,
going to the library, that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Analogue writing, yeah, right, and all of that.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
What do you see right now with the dynamic shift
in terms of this generation being dependent on the AI tools,
two complete assignments to develop thoughts. What is that process
now within academia. I mean it affects the whole landscape,
but specifically in academia, and.
Speaker 5 (06:11):
I do think that it's starting to change as we
have these tools that were just around more and more
and are being worked into everything. So after chat GBT
came out, so this would have been November twenty twenty three,
for the first year or so, many of us, myself included,
really used AI as a search engine.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
We thought about it like Google.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
You go and you put in something, you put in
a question, and you just take whatever you get the answer,
and you take whatever you are given. You don't do
the verification. You don't do, you know, the fact finding.
And one of the things that I think students and
myself are becoming more and more aware of is just
how limiting that is. And now we recognize that even today,
(06:54):
even with these programs being around for a while, we
have to go and we have to verify us there
there are still a lot of errors and you still
have to go in and direct generative AI programs, and
that's something that I talk to my students a lot
about that if we go and we are using AI
for something, having that level of critical thinking is essential.
(07:16):
And I think it's interesting because many times the companies
themselves market these programs chat Gbtgemini, Claude and everything else
as just making our lives easier, and there's something very
tempting about that. In some ways they do sometimes, but
we have to get to that point of thinking critically
(07:37):
about them, and that's when we start to unlock more things,
unlock more uses. And the other thing that I knows
with my students is they're becoming more and more aware
with passing time of how easy it is to lose
your voice. I teach at Berkeley, of course, on aipower
communication and for the first two weeks we do not
(07:57):
dive into the AI program.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
We actually spend quite a bit of time.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
Talking about voice, What is your voice, how would you
characterize it? What happens when you have a voice in
your writing versus speaking on a podcast or whatever else.
And then after a couple of weeks then we can say, well,
now let's take a look at AI programs and how
can you use them? Once you have a pretty firm
understanding of what your voice is. And I didn't used
(08:22):
to teach it that way. I actually change that because
I felt like that's what was missing, and I think that,
you know, I went through my own experience and trying
to figure out what happens when you lose your voice
of these programs, and that is something that I think
the students and faculty alike need to be very very
aware of. If you're using chat GVT, it can be
(08:44):
a slippery slope. You ask for more things, You start
to ask it to write for you, to speak for you,
and then at what point do you take a step
back and say, well, I'm losing my voice. And how
do we help students figure out where that line is
and how to pull back from because we've all done it.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
That's so crue Yeah, you know we don't.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
We tend not to think of ourselves as our brand
and you are and what does that twin of voices?
What does that self indicator look like? And when you
depend wholeheartedly on tools instead of using them as an
assisted tool, you lose yourself. But that's in anything, it's
a transferable skill. So it's so important that you're teach students.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Do you agree with this? We have students with us today.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Thumbs up, thumbs up, All right, you're giving us thumbs up.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
I would definitely say that you want to use AI
and all these different apps and things as more of
a partner than an easy way out, right, like somebody
that could It's like having your own partner to help
you do an assignment, help you figure things out, versus
just spitting out the answers for you, because then you're
not it's the easy way out of everything, right, and
then that's how you do lose your voice and things.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
So, and one of the things that's been so interesting
to me is if my students are using AI and
I invite them to use AI intentionally, I often ask
them for their chat logs so I can actually tell
this is where I start to see it taking over
your what they're asking what the questions? Yeah, because you
can see when you have a chat with an AI
program when the AI starts to take over, and it
(10:10):
will do that if you don't rain it back.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Attention, students, employees, we can tell if AI wrote your homework.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah. We've had a few people here that specifically say that.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
You know what's great when they copy the prompt and
leave it.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
They leave it there. They forget leave your question along
with the answer.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yes, that's amazing talking about is we keep bringing up
students and we have some amazing, lovely Berkeley College students
in the building. Shout out to them, walk us through
an AI topic in your class.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So one of the.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Things that I do in my film class, which students
really really I can find very interesting. So in my
Art of Film class, and I teach this entirely online.
In the past, students wrote a paper right five years
ago and I was teaching it.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
They wrote a paper on a movie of their choice.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
And now I've completely flipped it so that my students
still choose a movie, something that they are passionate about,
something that they are truly interested in, not something I'm
just giving to them. And they go and they create
a mini lesson, and for the mini lesson, they have
to teach a custom chatbot it. So I will go
and create a chatbot for them, and I design it
(11:23):
to act like ten year old me. I give it
that kind of personality. And I was sort of a weird,
very inquisitive kid as a ten year old and so
they have to go and they have to engage with it,
they have to teach it, and at the end of it,
I ask them to send me the entire chat and
it's been very very helpful for me to get And
what I'm really trying to look at is I'm trying
(11:44):
to see their understanding of the movie. So it's what
I call a pressure bot because often when we engage
with chat GBT, we think about it as something that's
just going to take things over. Right, you ask to
do something and it doesn't. And one of the things
we can do in education is we can actually use
of technology to put more pressure on the student. Right,
(12:04):
So instead of going to the program for answers, they
are going to yet question, I.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Would say, the program's coming to you for answers, coming
to you for.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Answer because if you can that you really know that,
yes that I really like that we have we have
at our house. We haven't even got into using them,
but we've bought like for Christmas or something, we got
our kids like one of those like little robots that
but I think it's more of a teaching robot. But
I would love to have like another those kind of
little things. That ask the kids questions consistently and have
(12:33):
and they have to answer it back, because that's what
you want for your kids. You don't want them just
asking questions and to shoots the answer back. I'd rather
the opposite way around. So that's great.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You want to activate the critical thing, Yeah yeah, you
want the brain firing off. Yeah yeah, and at the
end you have evidence of it.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Until you get to my age, then I just want
to ask questions and I need the answer.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Oh, pro.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Don't agree with me. Penny, Okay, Penny is my AI.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
By the way, I will confirm yes. Hey, Penny, two am, Hey,
I have this question. If YouTube doesn't fix it, there's
Penny Jason. How did you get into education? Jason's laughing.
By the way, for those of you listening on your
(13:21):
way to work.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
My journey in the education was very odd. So I
hated I hated school. I hated school in middle school,
in high school.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
And one of the reasons that I really really disliked
it was I felt very micromanaged. I went to a
high school that was extremely competitive. It was so competitive
that they couldn't tell us about class rank because if
you were ranked ahead of someone, they would target you.
They would go after you. And so that's not a
funny environment. No, it's a very negative environment.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I didtive house rus to teach first, who did their
bed first.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Everything's a competitive great and so.
Speaker 5 (14:04):
One of the things that I saw was so interesting
was when I went to college, the only thing I
knew was that I didn't want to teach. It was
literally the only thing I was sure of. I wanted
to go into law. I wanted to go into something else.
And what ended up happening is and this is the
kind of weird or counterintuitive par to my story. I
went to Rutgers University, which is huge, giant, and I
(14:26):
started taking these classes with one hundred students, two hundred students.
No one was taking attendance, no one was micromanaging me.
It was just you're an adult. Come or don't come,
We do not care. I took my first the end
of my first year. I took an astronomy course with
(14:48):
three hundred students. I swear the average attendance was four
of us. So four of us came and talked to
the professor about it. And in a weird way, that
experience of just having complete agency and doing what I
wanted to do, and figuring out what worked for me
was actually very empowering and it's so interesting to me
(15:11):
because I do want my students to come to class
and engage with me. So that's how I'm kind of,
you know, moving against that. But for me, it's all
about agency. I started to get interested in education once
someone said to me, you figure it out, You figure
out what works with you, and that's something that I
try to put in my classes. So for a lot
of my classes now, I don't give my students an assignment.
(15:35):
I asked them to create a project that works for them. Right,
So based off of what we're doing, what we're covering,
what is your project something that you want to exist?
And then what is the process? How are you going
to get there?
Speaker 1 (15:49):
What are you going to do along the way? And
I walk them through and they evaluate themselves.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
Right, they have agency over how it's actually going to
be assessed at the end of it all, and so
we're way. I got into education through a kind of anonymity.
No one really cared about me, and that gave me
agency and that at that point. Once I got into
that environment, that's when I found education to be more
(16:14):
interesting and now I recognize that a lot of times
you can't force education on another person. You can kind
of create the learning conditions where you hope they would
choose to learn. But learning is such a personal decision.
And so I ended up finding a lot of agency
and a lot of power in that kind of anonymity,
(16:34):
and that gradually got me into it. I didn't actually
have a major in college until I was a third
year student. I kind of moved around and then I
got into education, but I very much wandered around for
a lot of my college education.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
That's so well, yeah, but it's so beautiful that you
took your experience and now you have created a safe
space for students to own their experience and control their narratives.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
And that's really.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Unique to position your curriculum that way and to really
amplify their voices within the classroom.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 5 (17:13):
I think people want agency, people want control, and not
just like a sprinkling of it. They want to make
real decisions, real high impact decisions. And then, you know,
the thing that I'm trying to do that I didn't
quite have my first couple of years was get.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Community in there.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
Right, what does it mean for students to have real agency.
A lot of it is codesigning that I don't just
have a syllabus that I teach again and again and again,
and a curricula I teach again and again. Students co
design with me. They get to choose what we're doing
that day, what we're focusing on, and so I found
I find that to be exciting for me and different
for me, and so trying to find a way to
(17:50):
give students that level of agency but also have community
in there, because that's what I was missing that I
think would have been made my college experience even better.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
So that's what I try to do. I try to
combine those two as much as I can.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
That's awesome. I want to come shadow a class.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
So interestingly enough, we are sitting in this recording studio
and we're doing this because of another program that we
have that Jason also teaches in is on the committee for,
and we actually developed together two classes for that program
called Media Communications, and you know, we looked at the
gap analysis and figured out, you know, we don't have
(18:29):
college radio and we've talked about it here on the
pod and how this came to be, which is pretty cool.
I did not know you were like this whole other
realm when we were developing that program.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
But it's so cool.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
So how do you portray the coursework with media comms?
Same kind of workflow, same outline.
Speaker 5 (18:49):
Yeah, I adapt it based off of the students and
what they're interested in and what we're focusing on. So
the flow of something like Ani Power Communication can be
a little bit different. That's within the media the communications
program that focus and so there, and that's why I
frontload voice and right now I often teach that as
(19:10):
an accelerated online class, and so we frontload voice and
even their students have a lot of agency, and we
have conversations about ethics. We actually talk about ethics and
voice up front. I give them scenarios. I say, well,
this student went and used chat GPT for this, or
this student used an AI avatar, which I'm more and
more common now for doing this, and I asked students
(19:31):
to weigh in, and from there they create. And this
is where it's kind of similar to some other classes.
They create their own process. I'm very big on bringing
less and less attention to the product. We're creating those essays,
those presentations, and I'm much more interested in getting students
and myself to think about the process we actually go through,
(19:52):
because that's what matters. Matters is that you learn a
lot as you're creating it. What is your journey like?
How can you reflect on that journey? And that's something
that cuts across all of those classes, right, and I
think that especially for communications and media, we have to
do that.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Right.
Speaker 5 (20:09):
If we're going to teach our students to really think
about their own voice, we need to find ways to
get them to slow down as they're creating that process
and create a kind of self distance, right, because one
of the things about communication is you need to figure
out kind of how to understand yourself right instead of
just being in your own first person point of view, right, Notice,
how are you working, how are you doing things?
Speaker 1 (20:31):
What is your voice actually like?
Speaker 5 (20:33):
And trying to find ways and workflows that get students
to do that on a regular basis because it's really hard,
but it's something that cuts across I think literally every field, right,
being able to understand yourself as a thinker and what
you're doing and why you were doing it. And once
we have that as a pattern, I think it can
send students anywhere and it's not just career focused, even
(20:57):
though it is that, it's also just life focused.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Self assessments of awareness. It's all the transferable skills. You're
taking me back to my high school ninth grade math teacher,
where she's like, the students are laughing. Yes, listen, you're
gonna remember these things. You're laughing because it's true where
they used to be like, Okay, that's the answer, But
show your work.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
How did you get there?
Speaker 4 (21:18):
Yep, see now they're nodding. Okay, you were laughing at
the beginning. Yeah, how'd you get there? How'd you get here? Bro?
Speaker 1 (21:26):
There's not enough pages of work to show you. It's
not enough pages.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
But I do think that's important, showing the work because
I help my kids now with their homework, and I
love how some of it is on computers now like tablets.
We have to log in in New York and they
make you, you know, they have an area where you
have to break down how you're getting the answers versus
just putting the answer in. So Penny, Yes, this pod
is going so amazing, right, and I think we have
(21:52):
so many, so many more questions.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I want to ask you right now.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
It's never enough time.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
It's never enough.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
And we always talk about bringing somebody back, yes, but
instead of that, I know we have some amazing students
that we've already talked about here. Instead of bringing him back,
let's bring the students in here.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
And say Jason anymore. So, let's keep judent. Let's keep
Jason here with the students.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
That's even better.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
And let's do another podcast. Do you want to do that?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
So we're going to do that.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Unfortunately, you guys, not unfortunate, but you're going to have
to wait till the next podcast drops to check that
one out.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Okay, so make sure you're tuning in to the next podcast.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
But come back, tune in. We're gonna have Liz and Bianca.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
With us and Jason and Jason criminal.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Justice and Media Communications Majors. I'm so excited. Maybe they're
going to teach us something.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I hope.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
So thanks for listening. I'm Penny Tellers, I am pro
Stole and this is Teach Me Something. Don't forget to
follow pod dot Teach me Something and listen to us
on WOR seven ten Sundays at nine am, also wherever
you catch your podcast, and of course.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
On one O three five k T you be right
back in the flash.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Hey, thanks for listening.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Tune in next week for all new episode of Teach
Me Something, brought to you by Berkeley College
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