In EP 39, John and Jason discuss with Lance Eaton the threat that AI-driven "agentic browsers" pose to continue industrialized online learning models, the necessity of clear institutional policies to support instructors, and why good pedagogy remains the best solution to the “AI problem” and faculty exhaustion.

See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com

Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)*

Guest Bio:

Lance Eaton, Ph.D. is a writer, educator, faculty developer, instructional designer, and educational consultant based in Providence, Rhode Island. He holds degrees in History, Criminal Justice, American Studies, Public Administration, Instructional Design, and Higher Education. His writing has appeared in newspapers, trade publications, academic journals, books, and encyclopedias. With more than 15 years of experience creating online content—including blogs, a YouTube channel, and other digital projects—his work spans education, technology, and learning design. He has extensive experience working with youth, nonprofit organizations, higher education, and online communities. Connect with Lance at his website here: https://www.lanceeaton.com/ , his substack here https://aiedusimplified.substack.com/, and LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leaton01/

Resources:

Post: Looking for ChatGPT Teaching Advice? Good Pedagogy is Nothing New, July 19, 2023 by Autumm Caines
Lance’s appearance on AI Diatribe Podcast.
NCFDD Workshop “The AIs Go Marching On: Finding Our Way with AI in Education” - https://members.ncfdd.org/finding-way-ai-education-webinar?submissionGuid=b1228e61-a304-42ca-a174-83c92a56a7e5

Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Transcript

We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions or can help with any corrections!

Cold Open

[00:00:00] Jason: Lance you had brought up AOL - don't know if either one of you knew, but just recently, September 30th, they actually finally stopped servicing their dial up. Just September 30th, 2025.

[00:00:14] John Nash: I heard about that there were some people That were still dialing up.

[00:00:19] Jason: Yeah.

for a lot of our listeners, they don't even realize that, that we use the dial up sound in the beginning of our podcast very intentionally because we were talking about online learning in the second half, and that was an artifact of.

The first half of online learning, we would call it where people had kind of sketchy internet connections weren't able to do a lot, but it was the beginning, you know, as, as we kind of talked about, you talked about Lance starting in online education even in the early two thousands. So, so I wondered if maybe because I, I thought you guys would understand, maybe we take a moment of silence for the, the AOL dial up service.

[00:01:01] Lance Eaton: I feel like there should be a digital bugle.

[00:01:05] Jason: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Playing some digital taps.

[00:01:09] John Nash: Alright.

[00:01:09] Jason: Yep.

Intro

[00:01:10] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason

[00:01:11] Jason: Hey John. Hey everyone. And this is Online Learning in the second half the Online Learning Podcast.

[00:01:17] John Nash: Yeah, we're doing this podcast to let you in on a conversation we've been having for the last three years about online education. Look, online learning has had its chance to be great, and some of it is, but some still has a way to go. So how can we get to the next stage, Jason?

[00:01:33] Jason: that is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?

[00:01:38] John Nash: I think that's a fabulous idea. What do you want to talk about today?

[00:01:40] Jason: Well, first I want to say it has been three years for the podcast, I think now. Right? But you and I have been having this conversation a lot longer than that now, John.

[00:01:49] John Nash: We have. We have, we

[00:01:51] Jason: We probably first met in 2016 now, so we're coming up on like almost a decade, I think at University of Kentucky when I was there.

[00:01:59] John Nash: Yeah.

[00:02:00] Jason: You were

[00:02:01] John Nash: Yep.

[00:02:02] Jason: 2016, a potential professor as I was thinking about the PhD program and then became my professor and chair of my dissertation study.

[00:02:10] John Nash: Well, I was a, I was a professor. I wasn't a potential professor, but I

[00:02:14] Jason: That's right.

[00:02:15] John Nash: I was a, I was a potential dissertation advisor.

[00:02:19] Jason: You know, don't lock yourself down. I think you have a lot of potential, John.

[00:02:23] John Nash: Yeah. And we were teaching online in that department since 2012. So, with the days of Adobe Connect, oh my God. And Moodle and yeah, all the fun things.

[00:02:36] Jason: Yeah, yeah. And we have with us today, sorry, I don't want to ignore our guests. We have with us Lance Eaton. You know, the bottom line is this is just an opportunity for John and I to talk. Hope you don't mind just stepping in here and listen to us jabber.

[00:02:49] Lance Eaton: To pull some popcorn. Like I, I'm interested why I'm into this hook. Where's the season going? I want to know.

[00:02:55] Jason: You could probably even riff off of like you've been at online learning for a long time, Lance, so we'll get into a formal introduction in a second. But what are some of your earliest memories of doing online learning and technologies and

[00:03:07] Lance Eaton: I, I often talk about, like, I took my first online course in 2000

[00:03:11] Jason: wow.

[00:03:11] Lance Eaton: then I taught my first online course, I want to say around 2009,

[00:03:16] Jason: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:17] Lance Eaton: And then started doing instructional design with faculty around online learning in like 2011.

So, it's definitely been, been around the block and, and have been at different institutions from community colleges up to like Ivy League institutions doing this, this kind of work.

[00:03:33] Jason: Yeah, that's good. Well, tell us a little bit more about yourself where you are located, what your current role, what, what you do with yourself.

[00:03:40] Lance Eaton: Gosh. That's a loaded question. So yeah, I'm Lance Eaton. Full-time, I’m senior Associate Director of AI and teaching and learning at Northeastern. And then outside of that I've been teaching part-time at different places like North Shore Community College and College Un Bound for years now, and then I've been doing a whole lot of like, talks and workshops and consulting around AI in higher ed since pretty much like March, 2023. I think I have hit the hundred mark in terms of like talks and workshops that I've been doing.

Just helping and, and thinking and, and working with folks to. Help figure this out. And it's been quite the trip. I'm located in Providence, Rhode Island, just for geographical sense.

[00:04:27] Jason: Yeah.

[00:04:28] John Nash: Yeah. That's excellent. So, so Lance, what are you noticing right now seem to be the experiences that faculty are having on what's working and what's not working with generative AI?

[00:04:38] Lance Eaton: I mean, what is working is what has been working, and I go back to Autumm Caines of like, if you want to figure out how to navigate ai, good pedagogy. And like that, that there's a post she wrote back in 2023, the post is like, you know, the solution to Chat GPT is, is good pedagogy. So, I think that that's one thing is just recognizing good pedagogy is adaptable. It is, it is often thinking relationally with the students. In a lot of what I have been seeing is where there's the most success is also where it's often. And, and this is hard, but it's, its often where like faculty are engaged with students thoughtfully about how to navigate this, these new set of tools that are familiar to some things in the past and also new in certain ways and, and building that trust and that rapport. So I've seen that work really well. Also, like that can, like trying to find, you know, there's real struggle there because there's some spaces that doesn't work as well or it needs something else to move it along. So large enrolled classes, you've got 200 students. That becomes harder.

Asynchronous courses also become more challenging in this.

So, I think I've like, I've seen movement in that space. I think a lot of it is like what assignments are and what they should be, what they're assessing, how that, that gets structured is a lot of the discussion and a lot of the good discussion and, and things that I see people coming up with that get me excited. We're also in this cool moment where we ...