EP 40 - Does Allowing AI Reduce AI? A Surprising Finding with Dr. Megan Haselschwerdt

In EP 40, John and Jason talk with Megan Haselschwerdt about her transformative semester moving from a futile "cat-and-mouse" game of AI detection to a trust-based partnership with students, demonstrating how transparent dialogue, a more open policy, and addressing "insurmountable" assignment loads are far more effective than policing.

See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com

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Guest Bio:

Megan Haselschwerdt, Ph.D., serves as an Associate Professor and HDFS Graduate Program Director in Human Development and Family Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Human and Community Development from the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and a B.S. in Psychology from Indiana University-Bloomington. As an interpersonal violence and family science scholar, Dr. Haselschwerdt’s research focuses on intimate partner violence (IPV) from the perspectives of victimized adults, young adults with childhood exposure, and support professionals. Specializing in qualitative methodologies like grounded theory and reflexive thematic analysis, she also collaborates on mixed-methods studies to examine help-seeking behaviors and develop trauma-informed interventions. She currently directs the Family Violence Across the Lifespan research team, leading initiatives such as the REVEAL Project and the Young Adults Live and Learn Project to promote safety, healing, and justice.

Resources:

Dr. Haselschwerdt’s Scholarship: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=hTSsBcQAAAAJ&inst=9897619243961157265
Megan’s AI Use Policies: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I2THuGIaKYstGyZylQS4FgvbNV0B1j3Q3hEpGI4K_l4/edit?usp=sharing
Jason’s AI Policy (and free / open source icons for communication) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MG9h68__uqPSz6HXNeVymJhal1VNapjyK-2PFa5QFxI/edit?usp=sharing

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!

[00:00:00] Jason: I'm going to butcher your last name probably

[00:00:02] Megan: Oh yeah, that's okay. We do too.

[00:00:03] Jason: us with that

[00:00:05] Megan: Yeah. So, we say it all very differently in our family, so it's totally fine. I, I say Haselschwerdt as though there's a z Yeah. Other people, other family members say hassle, but yeah, I say it as though there's a z Hazel Schwart.

[00:00:16] John Nash: Okay, cool. I was,

[00:00:18] Jason: Hazel Schwart

[00:00:20] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:00:21] John Nash: I took German for years and so I love the sound of German, so I Yeah. I said,

[00:00:27] Megan: Yes. Yeah, we, we.

[00:00:29] John Nash: be totally German of

[00:00:30] Megan: We offend Germans when I say, like, what, how we say our last name? Yeah. It's unrecognizable. Yep.

[00:00:36] John Nash: Nice shirt. Yeah. Okay, cool.

[00:00:40] Jason: Haz-el-Schwart

[00:00:41] John Nash: Haselschwerdt,

[00:00:42] Jason: You

[00:00:42] Megan: Yep. That's totally fine.

[00:00:44] John Nash: Okay. Haselschwerdt.

[00:00:45] Megan: I think Jo, uh, John has it the authentic way and Jason's American butchered from Ellis Island Way works just well too.

[00:00:53] John Nash: I can't, yeah, I can't help myself though. So

[00:00:55] Jason: I can't help myself either

[00:00:57] Megan: ha ha...

Intro

[00:00:58] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.

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

[00:01:06] 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 a lot of it still has a ways to go. How are we going to get to the next stage? Jason?

[00:01:22] Jason: That's a great question How about we do a podcast and talk about it

[00:01:26] John Nash: love that idea. What do you want to talk about today? I.

[00:01:29] Jason: today I don't know how many times I can do this joke but how about we talk a little bit about AI and education

[00:01:34] John Nash: Wait, is that a thing now?

[00:01:36] Jason: Yeah

[00:01:37] John Nash: I'm willing to try.

[00:01:38] Jason: Yeah, I don't know much about it seems like everything I learn about it then I unlearn about it as well. But I'm really interested today We've got a colleague here one of my colleagues from University of Tennessee Knoxville with us Megan and we are just talking about me butchering her last name And so I'm just going to let her introduce herself Megan

[00:01:58] Megan: Hello, I'm Megan Haselschwerdt

[00:02:00] Jason: Welcome to the podcast It's so great to have you here and tell us a little bit about what do you teach what do you do at University of Tennessee Knoxville

[00:02:08] Megan: So, I'm an associate professor in the Department of Counseling, Human Development and Family Science. I'm in the Human Development and Family Science side of things, and I'm the Director of Graduate Studies. Outside of teaching, I'm an intimate partner violence researcher, family violence researcher. But in the context of teaching at the undergraduate level, I teach HDFS 385, which is Child and Family Diversity. I teach this course at the graduate level, and I also teach some qualitative research methods, family theory, that sort of thing. But for undergrads I've been teaching Child and Family Diversity, fully in person, hybrid, kind of split between in person and asynchronous online.

this semester is our first time with the fully launched distance ed online course.

[00:02:50] Jason: That's great we really got talking because of really my role at University of Tennessee which is in more of a centralized office And I was included in a conversation where we started talking a little bit about AI the classroom And first could you give a little bit of a context about how long the course that we're talking about and then how long you had been teaching that course.

[00:03:16] Megan: Absolutely. So, I've taught this class since fall of 2020. And so, it's had the, I can't even keep track of the number of modalities I've taught it in since 2020, which I think some people don't realize if they haven't taught between multiple modalities, that really, you're ending up creating a new class multiple time

[00:03:35] Jason: Yeah

[00:03:36] Megan: Things don't translate. And I, that's part of the learning this semester is what translates well from even hybrid into fully online asynchronous. So, this course is a semester long class. It's a three-credit hour course. And this is my first time teaching it this fall 2025 in this current form.

it's mostly traditional brick and mortar students. It's our new distance ed program. So only five of about our 85 are fully online. The other 75 or so are, traditional students who either opted into the online version or were registered for an in-person version that we ended up canceling and merging into my course.

[00:04:16] Jason: Interesting. I wonder about how many of our classes and programs will shift into more that digital doesn't necessarily mean distance

[00:04:25] Megan: yeah.

[00:04:26] Jason: know that as students are taking these online that as we flex modalities you talked about the modality shift of your classes. Thinking about the number of modalities that they have taken to go through an undergrad Then potentially a graduate program

[00:04:41] Megan: And it's been interesting, our students, we collected data, coming out of, the early parts of the pandemic at least. And what we found is that students really wanted more in-person classes. they said they felt frustrated that they'd had mostly online courses.

And so, we tried to make sure we were always offering a good balance. But when we offer an online and an in-person in the same semester, the in-person course is under-enrolled. We think that maybe this is specific more to juniors and seniors who have established their social networks, they have work, they have volunteering, they have just a lot of complicated demands, and so maybe for them online is more appealing.

But we've also heard from students how difficult it is to, if you have an online class and an in-person, like racing out of the in-person to find a place where they can do the online, especially if it's a synchronous online class.

So, the data that we get does not align with students' registration decisions, and that's made things a little complicated.

[00:05:36] Jason: Yeah, so gettin...