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On the very first day of class as students walk into my classroom, a small branch of pine needles or an acorn gathered from somewhere on the UMass Amherst campus or some aromatic leaves of lemon balm from the UMass permaculture garden rests on my open binder where I sit at the top of a U shaped circle. As I offer students welcoming words of love and kindness, I wonder what they are thinking about me and about the journey we are embarking on.

Instructional Innovation Fellows share a commitment to innovative pedagogies and strategies that embrace both low and high forms of technology integration into their courses. During the April 10, 2026 meeting, Fellows explored NotebookLM and Silent Discussions. 

What the Text is About: This article highlights moments when group activities lose momentum and offers practical strategies for creating inclusive, purposeful, and manageable collaborative learning experiences.

What the Text is About: In this final part of the series, we explore how graphics and animations can serve not just to up the entertainment value of our videos and save us the trouble of recording ourselves, but also help our students grasp complex concepts. Animated videos like these often make their way even into synchronous, in-person classes because their capabilities have no chalkboard parallel.

Animation Specialist Koby Leff and Manager of Faculty Development Joan Giovannini explore the growing role of generative AI in higher education, particularly in the creation of instructional videos. They argue for the irreplaceable value of human creativity and pedagogical intent; while AI tools promise efficiency and convenience, they cannot replicate the nuanced storytelling, emotional connection, and instructional design that faculty bring to their teaching.

This video essay emphasizes that video production is not merely a technical task but a communicative process rooted in human connection

The IVCN met up again on Feb. 17th to begin their second semester of discussing video content creation and best practices. In this session, contributors laid out goals for the Spring semester, discussed project management and the benefits of a digital “whiteboard” to move projects from concepts to deliverables.

I am passionate about writing, especially academic writing. Imagine my chagrin in Spring 2024 when I achieved a longtime dream of teaching a college course a little more than a year after the groundbreaking release of ChatGPT 3.5.

Navigating the implications of recent digital innovations can be enough to make a newbie college instructor throw their hands up in defeat. As a lecturer teaching in Developmental Disabilities and Human Services, the landscape of teaching has been transformed by shifting norms of attention and the rise of AI. 

Instructional Innovation Fellows share a commitment to students’ sense of safety, motivation, and belonging. During the February 13, 2026 meeting, Fellows discussed career education, un-grading, and social-emotional learning in higher education 

What the Text is About:  In part one of this series of video essay recommendations, we focused on simple, informational videos. The presenter’s tone and personality always help to retain our attention, but the star of the show is the educational content, not the presenter.

In part two, we’ll explore an alternate possibility: videos where the presenter takes center stage and their personal relationship to the content matters most to the audience. These videos are more immersive than the initial examples; their creators break the standard lecture format until the audience loses the self-conscious