Episode 60: Julia Lang on How Gen AI is Transforming Coursework and Careers
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How is generative AI transforming admissions, curriculum-development, and feedback and evaluation in higher education? How is it enhancing accessibility and inclusivity? What are the emerging AI skills and fluencies for students and faculty to learn? We delve into these questions and inspiring examples with Julia Lang, Professor of Practice at Tulane University
The landscape of higher education is shifting at a pace few could have predicted. While the initial reaction to tools like ChatGPT and Gemini was often rooted in fear or denial, forward-thinking educators are beginning to realize that we are at a "plant a tree" moment. The best time to integrate these tools was yesterday; the second-best time is right now. Julia Lang, a professor of practice at Tulane University, suggests that our duty as educators isn’t to ban these tools, but to teach students how to ethically and responsibly harness them to supercharge their skills rather than "turning their brains off."
Reimagining the Gateway: AI in Admissions and Enrollment
One of the most immediate and controversial impacts of generative AI is found at the very start of the student journey: the admissions process. Large institutions like Cornell University are already exploring how AI can supplement human evaluation for application reviews and transfer credit evaluations. Because AI can process massive volumes of data and identify patterns that a human eye might miss during a thirty-second resume scan, it offers a level of scalability that traditional methods lack.
However, this efficiency comes with a caveat. AI inherits the biases embedded in the data it’s trained on. The goal isn't to replace human judgment but to use AI as a "research assistant" that can comb through every sentence of an essay to find specific talents—like a creative thinker or a niche musician—that might otherwise be overlooked in a sea of thousands of applicants.
The AI-Powered Classroom: From Syllabus to Synthesis
In the classroom, generative AI is acting as a catalyst for more dynamic, interdisciplinary curricula. Faculty members are now using these tools to brainstorm 14-week syllabi in seconds, allowing them to integrate the latest global movements and research in real-time. This isn't about letting the machine do the teaching; it’s about using AI as a "referee" or a "brainstorming partner" to blend subjects from different disciplines that might otherwise remain siloed.
For students, the classroom experience is shifting toward "debate the bot" exercises. By asking an AI to argue the opposing side of a healthcare policy or a historical event, students are forced to think more critically and verify information through rigorous fact-checking. In an era of "fake news," the ability to analyze AI output with a critical lens is becoming a foundational literacy skill.
Personalized Support and the Next Frontier of Accessibility
Perhaps the most heartening application of generative AI in higher education is its potential to democratize support. Historically, one-on-one tutoring was a luxury for the privileged. Today, AI can serve as a 24/7 tutor, a language conversation partner, or a coach for interview preparation.
For students with disabilities, AI is the next iteration of assistive technology. It can describe visual environments for the blind, simplify complex texts for those with dyslexia, and reduce the mental fatigue of social communication for neurodivergent students. By acting as a "thousand eager graduate assistants," AI ensures that support is personalized, immediate, and inclusive.
Conclusion: Dancing Atop the Boulder
As Julia Lang poignantly notes, technology is like a boulder rolling down a hill. We can either run from it until we are overtaken, or we can learn to "dance atop it" with nimble feet. To ensure student success in a future dominated by AI, we must move past trepidation and embrace a model of lifelong learning. By embedding AI knowledge into our curricula now, we prepare students not just to survive the future of work, but to lead it.
Episode 60 Transcript
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Julia Lang: One of the ways I also love using it in my class, is to help students think a lot more critically about a topic. So, debate the bot is one of my favorite ways to deepen students critical thinking, so students might believe one thing about, you know, a healthcare policy or whatever it is, and then to ask ChatGPT or Gemini or BARD, whatever tool you're using, debate me on this topic to understand both sides of an issue, use these tools to really better understand the history of both sides. I think it's a really incredible tool for helping students think critically about what they're viewing and reading.
Elliot Felix: That was the great Julia Lange, a professor of practice and the associate director of career education and life design at Tulane University's Taylor Center. She returns to the podcast to share everything she's been up to using generative AI in teaching and learning, career development, and more. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Connected College Podcast. I'm your host, Elliot Felix. I've helped more than a hundred colleges and universities change what they offer, how they operate, and how they're organized to enable student success. And if you're a leader in higher ed, and you think that the silos and separations get in the way of student success, then this podcast and my upcoming book, The Connected College, are for you. We're here to learn and work together to bust silos, question tradition, and forge partnerships so that students feel connected to their college, their community. Their coursework and their careers. Julia, very excited to have you here.
Julia Lang: Yeah, me too. It's definitely been a hot topic and is a hot topic. And what I've been seeing is with the release of generative To be honest, I'm seeing a lot of widespread fear and denial and trepidation from both students and my colleagues. Really early on, I started using these tools and I was asked to be on a panel for faculty using generative AI tools and People were super resistant, faculty, and my students as well. The first day of class, I asked students, both my first year students and my seniors, who is using these tools, and not one hand in my class went up. Um, for my first year students, they said that in their high school, it was outright banned, and that in a lot of their classes, they were strongly discouraged from using these tools.
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Elliot Felix: AI is a topic that's reshaping higher education as we speak at a faster clip than anyone imagined. How do you stay in the supercharged camp and not, you know, unintentionally drift into the brain off kicked out, camp, I think is an important one. And how do you, unlock the possibilities and allay the fears at the same time? What struck me is how open you are as you learn something, as you teach something that you're, sharing it online.
Julia Lang: On one hand, I understand that, I tell my students this all the time, that there are ways that you can use these tools that will get you kicked out of college, right? There are ways that you can use these tools that will turn off your brain. And there's ways that you can use these tools that can supercharge your skill sets. Whether it's a working professional or professor or someone in the business world, there's just so many ways that you can harness these tools. And so I think it's part of our duty as educators who are preparing students for the future of work to teach them how to ethically and responsibly harness these tools to support both their educational goals and their professional goals. I think that the future of technology and the future of work is going to focus on our ability to develop skills, to embrace lifelong learning. And that includes reskilling and upskilling to technologies like AI.
Elliot Felix: Personally, I've also felt that really helpful to think about, AI as like a team member too, right? Like it's, somehow it makes it much more concrete if you're like, Oh, in this instance I'm using it as a research assistant in this instance, I'm using it as an editor, you know, in this instance, I'm using it as a coach, you know, in this instance, I'm using it, as a brainstorming partner or whatever.
Julia Lang: One of my beloved mentors, Amjad Ayubi, describes generative AI tools as a hundred or thousand really eager graduate assistants that are available to help you do any task at any time. And you still have to double check their work, right? Sometimes they get things wrong, but they can really help do that initial brainstorming, research, editing, that can get you a lot further than if you were working alone.
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Elliot Felix: Let's talk about the good work you can get back in admissions.
Julia Lang: Thinking about AI and admissions, I think that, Generative AI can really help with efficiency and scalability. Generative AI tools can process really large volumes of data a lot more efficiently than human staff. They can focus on predictive analysis and analytics. Pattern recognition, and that can all really help to identify successful candidates. My alma mater, Cornell University, actually announced in January that their administrative AI task force recommended using generative AI tools for admissions, application review, and transfer credit evaluation. This is pretty controversial. But there is significant potential for AI tools to supplement human evaluation. AI tools can potentially find really talented applicants who might also be traditionally overlooked, but AI is prone to bias that's embedded in the human decisions on which they are trained.
Elliot Felix: How is AI changing the curriculum they'll see and learn?
Julia Lang: AI tools can create content really quickly. Whether that's quizzes or worksheets or helping with administrative tasks, even like grading assignments. The main way that I've been using generative AI tools is actually to help develop curricula or adapt curricula based on student performance or on emerging educational trends. I can put in an idea for a class and ask it to generate a 14 week syllabus. Within two seconds, I had 14 weeks broken out. It can be a way immediately to integrate the latest research or global movements into the curriculum. It can also really help with blending subjects from different disciplines to create more comprehensive and interdisciplinary courses.
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Julia Lang: Debate the bot is one of my favorite ways to deepen students critical thinking. I also think it's a really incredible tool for helping students think critically about what they're viewing and reading. In the era of fake news, where I pull up a news article online, and I can't just take that at face value. I have to think about where the content's coming from. Sometimes the output is plain wrong. So using it both to be like, huh, that's interesting, but then also to close that loop and really fact check.
Elliot Felix: What about the other skills that AI can help students develop?
Julia Lang: So many. Research topics, generating research questions, summarizing data, one on one custom support for challenges with roommates or faculty. It's an incredible way to learn languages. I've been teaching students how to use these tools to prepare for interviews. It can help them to create schedules, to prioritize tasks, to run efficient meetings. I can't tell you how many horrible emails I get from students and I always beg them, please just use these tools to help you write more professional emails.
Elliot Felix: How do we turn that frown upside down and enable a more inclusive, more accessible future?
Julia Lang: It is our job to help prepare students for the future and for the future of work. I would just encourage any educator to try on these tools. They don't have to keep them. One of my favorite meditations by Thich Nhat Hanh talks about how people respond to change, and he describes a boulder coming down a hill. Some people are running as fast as they can away from it, whereas other people learn how to dance atop of the boulder with nimble quick feet. We can learn how to work with it to support the work that we're doing with students.
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Julia Lang: I actually went to a session last week hosted by the Goldman Institute, and it was run by two staff members who were sharing how excited they were about AI as the next iteration of assistive technologies for people with disabilities. Generative AI tools have the potential to revolutionize learning by making information more accessible. It can summarize information, convert text to alternative formats, and follow accessibility guidelines. For instance, for someone who is blind, AI can describe a visual environment through a photo. It can simplify complex tasks, such as helping someone who's dyslexic to learn a complex topic.
Elliot Felix: Do you see other applications?
Julia Lang: I think it can help with people where English is not their native language. I think it can also create more inclusivity on the employer side. An employer might put in, "how might I create an inclusive interview process for someone with autism?" We don't know what we don't know. With generative AI tools, you can have a one on one tutor on any subject at any grade level, providing access that only privileged, wealthy students had before. AI and robotics combined could even be revolutionary for prosthetics and for helping people with physical disabilities as well.