Teaching and Designing a Taylor Swift Literature Course - Dr. Matt Kinservik and Rachel Lapp
In this video, I sit down with Dr. Matt Kinservik, a literary expert and professor, and Rachel Lapp, a self-proclaimed Taylor Swift expert and instructional designer, as they share the behind-the-scenes journey of co-creating a one-of-a-kind college course focused on Taylor Swift. Together, they discuss how their distinct expertise combines to craft an innovative curriculum and how they not only marketed the course with social media, but how they let students use Gen AI. Swifties and educators alike—this one’s for you!
👉 More About the Course and Staff:
Rachel's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-lapp-a8255519/
Matt's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-kinservik-80a85226/
University of Delaware: https://www.udel.edu/academics/winter-summer/
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Transcript:
Luke Hobson (00:00)
What happens when a professor and an instructional designer get together to create a course using Taylor Swift's lyrics to teach this upcoming generation about literature? Well, you are going to find out because this podcast episode, I'm going to be speaking with Dr. Matt Kinservik and Rachel Lapp to hear about how they created a new type of literature humanities course using Taylor Swift's writings. It is.
fascinating. This is such an interesting episode when they wrote to me about the idea. I had to bring them on the show because I was so curious to learn more about this. What I didn't know they surprised me in the episode is not only are they being experimental and innovative, which is what we should be doing within higher education. And they are actually doing it, which is fantastic. But on top of that, they decided to kick that up several notches.
by using Gen. AI in the course for the different types of activities and assignments. And we break that down as well too. And going one step even further, this is Dr. Matt's first course of working with an instructional designer. So it has, this might be like the best episode we have, because it combines everything. Gen. AI, the instructional design, subject matter, expert partnership, being innovative and trying something new.
It's an incredible episode. cannot wait for you to listen to this and to hear what they're doing at the university of Delaware. And this course is live. It's happening right now. another one is going to be starting next semester for everything. It's amazing to hear what they actually did. And on top of that too, I can't forget about this. They even thought about this from a marketing perspective by doing tick talks and creating different other forms of visuals to make sure that they were generating interest from.
the student population and using focus groups and hearing their feedback. And it's just, this episode is fantastic. I can't wait for you to listen to it. So I'm going to stop talking. Let's get into the episode. Here is my conversation with Dr. Matt Kinservik and Rachel Lapp.
Luke Hobson (02:03)
Rachel, Matt, welcome to the podcast. How are you?
Rachel (02:06)
Good, thanks for having us.
Matt Kinservik (02:07)
Yeah, thank you.
Luke Hobson (02:09)
Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on. So folks, for those who do not know about what you do at home, could you just please introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit more about who you are and what is it that you do? Matt, you're first on the screen. I'll start with you. Tell us more about yourself.
Matt Kinservik (02:23)
All right, my name is Matt Kinservik. I'm a professor of English at the University of Delaware. And I have been involved over the past several months in creating my first ever online asynchronous course and my first time working with an instructional designer. So yeah, all good stuff.
Luke Hobson (02:40)
love it, love it,
love it. And Rachel, I'm assuming you're the instructional designer.
Rachel (02:46)
I am, I am. I'm an instructional designer who works at the university and I'm inside an IT organization. So it's a little bit different than some IDs who might work on the academic side. That means that I have a little bit more access to tech tools and a lot of freedom to do creative things, which is pretty awesome. In addition to being an instructional designer, I'm also a former student of Matt's, which kind of kicked off our partnership. I won't tell you how many years ago, but.
Luke Hobson (03:12)
we're cool.
Rachel (03:17)
many, many years ago. And so I primarily work with courses in business. So this is also an exciting course opportunity for me to work outside of my normal course development portfolio and to get to do something really creative.
Luke Hobson (03:34)
Awesome. Well, clearly this is creative because it is not every day that someone emails me saying, Luke, we have an idea for this podcast episode. We're creating this Taylor Swift literature course together as instructional designer and subject matter expert. And I remember reading it and I was like, you're doing what? Like, please, please come on the show. Cause I have to know more. So give us an overview. What is this idea for this kind of course?
Matt Kinservik (04:02)
Well, I think the idea for the course, the course could really be called Free Taylor Swift, right? Liberate Taylor Swift from the conventional way that her fans receive and critique her music. It's often very biographical, readings of it. It's often, they're looking for Easter eggs to find out who she referring to and kind of in celebrity culture, what does this mean?
And we wanted to take a really different approach and step back from the here and now and say, if we take these songs to be like poems, right? And think of them as literary works and read them in the context of the literary tradition, what happens, right? Do they stand up to that kind of scrutiny? Does the effort reward the...
the exercise. So that's what our goal was. These, you know, what you find out is these are not all breakup songs and they're not all about her personal life. There's a lot of fiction in there. The chorus is studies in contemporary fiction. So we're looking at her songs in the context of literary history that defamiliarizes the work for her fans, the students, right? And it helps them to see the songs in a new way.
Luke Hobson (05:29)
That is all right. So now let's talk more about that. Okay. So what then inspired you to create a project like this? Because I'm assuming it's going to come to you naturally of just what if we dissect the Taylor Swift lyrics and figure out how this ties into literature and like that seems like it's just and the everything too and credit to both of you by the way, because higher education, we're supposed to be innovative. We're supposed to be experimental and try new things that oftentimes, especially if in traditional higher ed.
It never gets to that point. And this is clearly innovative. This is, this is something new. So Rachel, how did you flush out this idea and try to get this really to come to be?
Rachel (06:09)
Well, I won't take full credit for flushing out the idea, but the idea started when Tortured Poets Department came out last year. It's just Taylor's latest album. And I am chronically online. And as I was scrolling through my For You page, I kept seeing people talking about not just individual words, close reading passages, but then looking for connections between songs and between albums.
And then I saw one creator who was talking about a line that Taylor Swift had said about how she wished that she could live in the 1830s. And there was this huge amount of discourse about what does that mean? Why is that there? And I realized we have this opportunity to provide context, the kinds of things that happen in academic spaces to talk about the historical context, the literary context, who are the contemporaries? Where did this all come from? What are the...
the kind of perimeters of thought around these ideas and people were doing the academic work, the literary analysis, but they were doing it maybe without a lot of the important work that comes from academic research, that comes from being an expert in a particular time period. And as I heard them, these people online talk about, the 1830s, how could she say that? I know a guy.
I know a guy who could provide the kind of context that people need to understand why she would say something like that, why she's making the choices that she's making, and that those choices would be far beyond just who she's dating. So I think that alone just the framework of Matt and his academic expertise, but also I don't think that there are...
There are a lot of people in academic spaces who would be as embraced by the Swifties as Matt for being such a great, not only speaker to her work, but just really understanding and appreciating the humanities in general, and then just being such a good storyteller. So I knew that I had to talk to him about talking about Taylor Swift. I don't think that the idea of it being a course was really there in that moment, but I knew that.
that the work that he does and his ability to teach and to draw in audiences was something that needed to be brought to people. The original idea was for him to make short form content for social media and that that would be kind of like a micro learning environment to bring academic conversations to social media spaces. And the idea really evolved from there.
Luke Hobson (08:45)
Interesting. I now we have like a full fledged course is what it sounds like. And now this is coming to be. So Rachel, as you just mentioned about thinking from like the traditional academic sense, Matt, have to ask you, has any of your colleagues pushed back on you as being an instructor and saying, what are you doing? What, what is this idea? How are you going to make this? Have you faced any resistance from this type of sort so far?
Matt Kinservik (09:09)
So yeah, there's been a certain amount of eye rolling. mean, a lot of people are really excited about it, but I mean, I totally get it, right? People would look at this and say, come on, is this really a course? And I mean, I'm fine with that. I think it helps that I am not actually a very likely suspect to teach this course. I mean, my field is 18th century British literature and theater history. teach Shakespeare and all the old stuff.
You know, I don't do contemporary literature in my teaching or in my scholarship. And, you know, when Rachel emailed me in the spring to suggest, you know, hey, do you want to do some fun TikToks of an English professor analyzing Taylor Swift? At that point, and I swear to God, this is true, I'd never listened to an entire Taylor Swift song. So, yeah, ever.
Luke Hobson (09:59)
Really? Ever?
Matt Kinservik (10:02)
Isn't that
wild? mean, and this is because of Spotify and the way we can compartmentalize. It's just not anything I listen to or that my kids listen to. So I had to sit down this summer, this past summer, and listen through the entire discography. And that's where it started, right? The work started in earnest with just sitting there with my AirPods in and listening to the songs and taking notes. And I started with Tortured Poets Department.
Rachel (10:04)
That's wild.
Matt Kinservik (10:31)
And after about songs, I thought, am I not at the end of the album yet? And no, it had like 30 songs. I mean, it was crazy.
Luke Hobson (10:36)
Sure.
Rachel (10:37)
He
was eating.
Luke Hobson (10:40)
Yeah,
well, she does do like what three hour live shows and it's just her is something like that, which is just I know that the tour ended recently and from what everyone I know who of course went to there, which is many people is that they loved it and they couldn't believe how long she performs for. So it makes sense. So tell me more with the two of you about your relationship for this course coming together because it's really interesting. Rachel, you're the ID map. Obviously, you're the professor in this and
How are you trying to be able to work together to bring, Rachel, your expertise on Taylor Swift, which is last learning design, but then also obviously your 1830s background and everything from this. So what does the balance of partnership look like for the two of you between ID, content creation, faculty, everything of a sort? Now, Rachel, I'll hello to either one of you.
Matt Kinservik (11:29)
So this
is my first experience working with an instructional designer. So I want Rachel to start this answer because she has more experience. This is my first time. So to me, this is the norm, this kind of collaboration.
Rachel (11:38)
Yeah.
Luke Hobson (11:45)
Sure.
Sure. So Rachel, what is it to you?
Rachel (11:46)
Yeah,
well, I think, you know, any ID listening to this knows that working with SMEs is different depending on, you know, what kind of content, who you're working with. I've, for me, this is different because I've never worked with a subject matter expert that is so open to ideas and so willing to do so many new things. And that's very cool. But from an ID perspective, I think, you know, I won't overstate and that is incomplete.
creative control of the content, but when we first started thinking about the course, we really were in open dialogue about the architecture of what we wanted it to look like. How would students experience the content? How were they participating in the course? What kinds of things would resonate with them? IDs are always a bridge between SMEs and students anyway.
But I think I got to be a unique bridge, not only between adult learners and an SME in an online learning environment, but also for a niche audience that had specific expectations and pop culture knowledge. And so I provided some of that, the outline of knowledge to Matt early on, you know, here are some of the things that the Swift community is into, here are the questions they have, here's some of the thoughts and.
I'd kind of given him an outline when I had first pitched the idea of topics I thought he could address in the TikToks. And I think from there, the rest of the content was him. We kind of had conversations about, you know, does this work? And as he was recording the scripts, I was there and gave notes. But I think that piece that's unique is that I was able to have some contribution to.
the architecture of the course, not just taking the content from him and putting it into Canvas, but that we were able to dialogue about what the students needed in that particular case and how they needed to experience the course and then being able to have conversations about how that would come together.
Luke Hobson (13:57)
That makes sense. So let's dive into the course a little bit more. I'd love to hear more about the ins and outs of this. So it seems like a part of this project is that you want to be able to draw more students into the humanities and you're doing so with now the most popular person on earth and trying to be able to get them to want to learn more from this idea, which makes plenty of sense. Can you elaborate on how from a student forward-facing perspective this is going to appeal to them?
Matt Kinservik (14:01)
Thank
Rachel (14:03)
Yeah.
Luke Hobson (14:25)
that, of all the courses you can enroll in, you should enroll in this one first, and then take your other types of courses or whatever manner. But tell us more about how this is going to appeal to this generation of students.
Matt Kinservik (14:38)
So I think the course is a literature course, and you've got to understand that first off, right? This is an English course. And we were very upfront in all of our promotion of the course through the TikTok videos and through the course descriptions and some promotion that the university communications people did that, yeah, this was about Taylor Swift, but it was also about English literature.
and not American literature, not contemporary literature. The texts that students are reading, mean, some of it is Ovid, the Roman poet who wrote 2,000 years ago, but the blind share of it is British literature from the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Most of it's by men, right? These are old works.
the, you if I offered a course called 12 Great British Poems, nobody would take it, right? But that's kind of what they're getting along with the Taylor Swift content, right? And so this was really a way to, you know, to attract students, to, you know, really to attract their attention and then make a pitch, right? Because we didn't hide the, you know, the academic and the literary content.
Luke Hobson (15:44)
Mm-hmm.
Matt Kinservik (16:07)
We were very upfront about that, but we got their attention with the Taylor Swift hook, right? And I think that's really important. We have to understand as educators that we are competing 24 seven, right? For our students attention, they live in a really different information environment from what their faculty live in. They live in a world that is literally designed to distract them all the time. So we got to find a way to break through.
Rachel (16:32)
Yeah.
And I'll just add to that, I think that this course is unique because it's student centered in a way that a lot of courses that I've worked on are not. A lot of times the student centered part comes from just the activities themselves or the ways that we translate the faculty members' expertise into something that the students want. But in this case, it really put the students' desires in the center, right? The subject matter.
And we brought them in in unique ways. Our social media intern and I went out onto campus and asked students if they could tell the difference between Ovid and Taylor Swift lyrics. So it was really cool to be able to bring students on the street into that conversation. And all of the assignments are designed around students creating something with the use of AI. But we're not just asking them to be passive participants in the course. They're doing the work of the humanities. They're contributing.
other songs and ideas that they wish they had seen in the course through a discussion board every week. They are creating their own songs, creating their own images, social media posts. We're not just asking them to sit back and watch the humanities work, the academic work that Matt does to read and analyze and make connections. They're doing it. So just like being a Swiftie, you don't just sit and listen to the music. You make
fan art, you make fan theories, you connect to other people, you make the friendship bracelets. In this course, it's the same. They're not just listening to the music. They're participating in the academic process and are getting to be part of the academic work as they're in the course.
Luke Hobson (18:11)
That's interesting. So the discussions make a lot of sense. And I'm sure that Matt, you're I know for online courses, you mentioned you don't have as much experience with them. But do you have a ton of organic conversations in a discussion board is a little bit abnormal. And I feel like you're going to get a ton. So this might be setting the bar really high for you from like the get go. And then hopefully future online courses that you make will hopefully have as much level of enthusiasm. But I'm predicting your discussion boards are going to be blowing up in the best of ways.
from the learners, but let's talk more about the assignments and the activities. Because like I said, discussions make a lot of sense. But as far as from like an assessment perspective, if you were going to be crafting a rubric around an assignment, they're going to be submitting to you for a grade and proper evaluation. What does that look like? What are they going to be doing?
Matt Kinservik (18:59)
So I can describe one of the assignments that I think is exemplary of the others. The first assignment required the students to use an AI song generator and to take one of the old poems that we had read in the first module. First module was about genre. So we read Carpe Diem poems and Taylor Swift songs with the Carpe Diem theme.
And we read Swift breakup songs. And then we looked at classical origins of the breakup songs, which there are, right? And the students had to take one of the old poems. They had to either use it verbatim or update it in some way that still made the source text recognizable. Use an AI song generator.
and make a Taylor Swift style song from that old content. And I just got done grading all of them and they were, the result was really amazing. I mean, some of them were so good, they would work as radio play right now. I mean, they're just, they're amazing. Students used chat GPT and, you know,
Rachel (20:18)
I think one.
Matt Kinservik (20:27)
kind of showed us here's my prompt, here's how I worked with ChatGPT as a collaborator to get the lyrics, and then I used this or that song generator to produce the music. They also had to write a reflection essay that talked about their process, but then also about the ethics of artificial intelligence, this kind of generative AI. So it's been a remarkable.
experience. I've never had more fun grading. I've been teaching for 27 years at the college level. I was excited to grade every single one of these. I can't wait to get to the next assignment, which has them using an image generation tool and reflecting on that as well. So, you know, I'll stop there and see if Rachel has anything to say about the rubric of the assessment, which was the other part of your question.
Rachel (21:20)
I think, you know, the rubric piece is always a challenge because this is the first iteration. These are very unique assignments and I don't have a lot of precedent for AI created assignments, but I think the goal is to make sure that in an online environment, the expectations are very clear. The rubrics are simple and that there is, despite the difference in the assignments from module to module, there is some unity in the rubrics. So I think
One of the pieces that we introduced was a pretty standard rubric. The categories are similar. The kinds of things that Matt's looking for are similar from assignment to assignment. So it's easier to get students acquainted with doing novel tasks because though they're using AI in unique ways, he's still looking for connection to source material. He's still looking for quality. He's still looking for the reflection across the assignment. So.
from an ID perspective, helping faculty to create something like this because it's scaled across multiple modules. Building the rubrics to be easy for him to use, have easy to remember criteria and consistent criteria was a priority for those. And then I think just making sure that students were really aware of what
each benchmark meant. And I know we all talk about this with rubric creation, but it's really easy to just say, I'm using seven points or five points or 10 points. But Matt took the time to make sure that he clearly articulated what, what he was looking for in an exemplary model. And I think he got it. A lot of the work is amazing.
Luke Hobson (23:03)
I bet, I bet. So you mentioned about Gen.ai too, which I didn't realize the level of in-depthness you're using for Gen.ai. So now I have to ask more about that because a lot of these music tools, like I think about from Suno and I know that, Google's, Test Lab Kitchen also has one. And I think Runway now actually has a music producer now too. They're all built to make sure that they are not stealing from the artists. So you can't just go say, create a Taylor Swift song about blah, blah, blah. They won't let you.
Rachel (23:21)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Luke Hobson (23:32)
How
are they doing this then to create a new song that would be like a Taylor Swift song, but it's not so much actually like taking her identity from your music? How are you doing that?
Matt Kinservik (23:44)
Well, so some of the tools that they use, and students use all different, they used a real range, right? They went out and found ones that worked for them. Some of them do allow you to pick like an artist or a song as the inspiration for what it's going to produce. Only a couple of them really kind of sounded like Taylor Swift's voice. Most
Luke Hobson (24:01)
Good.
Matt Kinservik (24:12)
didn't and didn't try to, but the prompt told students, know, make it sound like a Taylor Swift song, but think about the era, right? Like which era of Swift are you going for? And that was really helpful, I think, for the students in generating because, you know, if they don't put in, if the tool didn't recognize like Taylor Swift and folklore as a prompt, they could at least then describe like,
indie pop, introspective, know, these words that would get them to where they wanted to be. So the, you know, the, I think the value of the assignment was in making the students do something that, you know, some of them were really excited and others kind of dreaded. And they said this in their reflections. They're like, this was really scary, right? And I found it really difficult to use with these, but the product was
less important to me than the process. Because I think it's imperative that faculty give students guided opportunities to use and then reflect on generative AI. I think the AI saturation in the workplace and in our world is inevitable and it's already happening. And if colleges and universities aren't giving students guidance and helping them to
to use and then reflect on the use of these tools. We're not doing our job. We're not preparing them for the world they're going to graduate into.
Rachel (25:46)
you
Luke Hobson (25:48)
I'm just gonna say please preach. Please teach other people that. Because I've been trying the good fight as well of just trying to show folks that there is a right way and a wrong way, but as you just mentioned about, it's gonna become a part of our lives. It already is. So like you need to be able, even this very podcast episode, by the time this thing is done and recorded, it's then going to generate for me all the amazing words that you said as far as highlights and notes. And to be able to take that event to use that as like a description of the show. Like it's just, this is what it is now.
Matt Kinservik (25:50)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel (26:00)
there.
Yeah, it's amazing. And I'll just
jump in on my little soapbox here before we put the assignment into Canvas. I had done it myself, which is my guiding advice to anybody using an AI tool. like, if you want to use the tool, try it yourself and...
I'm not sure that we prescribed any particular tools. provided them with some options, but we knew that they worked and knew what the output could look like. So I had made my own song and kind of knew what I would need to do in ChatGPT to get the prompt and knew what kind of output I would get. And so that would be my advice to anybody who's implementing a tool is make your assignment before.
before giving it to students. And despite that, there were still a couple things that students pointed out as challenges. And that's inevitable. Like Matt said, there are just so many tools. We can't be prepared to troubleshoot all of them. But do the assignment yourself first.
Matt Kinservik (27:16)
Yeah, and I did it in real time with the students. So when they were working on it, so I didn't do it in advance like Rachel, I did it along with them. And I posted on the discussion in an announcement kind of midweek, said, hey, I used this tool, I found it really clunky and it didn't include lyrics.
I looked around, encourage you to look around. I landed on this one. I created two terrible songs, do better than me, know, in the assignment. And I think that was helpful for students to get that kind of real-time feedback from, you know, the instructor who's groping through this stuff and trying to manage the AI revolution himself.
Rachel (27:58)
Yeah.
Luke Hobson (27:59)
leading by example. It's, it's a great thing. Yup. It makes sense. Rachel, I to go back to something that you mentioned about, because you discussed about a social media intern. You discussed about using TikTok to spread the awareness of a course and, Hey, TikTok's back. Apparently it got shut down for like 24 hours. So I don't know where this is going in the future for, social media wise, but tell us more about your strategy.
for bringing in a social media intern and trying to really be able to use social media for this course content creation. Like how did that all work?
Rachel (28:30)
Yeah, I think it, I'll be really honest, came out of a real fear of not being relevant to the generation of students that we have. So I really just wanted someone by my side that I could rely on to give good feedback. It's like a focus group in a way. But as we were developing content, short form content, I knew that we would need a person who could navigate social media in the ways that
our students are navigating. Like I said, I'm chronically online, but I recognize that the students that we're reaching are going to be looking for things and expecting things that I might not necessarily have access to. So the social media intern, Maddie, was a person who had really cool thoughts about trends we could hop on. the ideas really, I mean, it's micro learning, right? That Matt has these wonderful ideas for lectures.
that land really, really well in a class environment, but then when we want to take them to this other environment, social media, they need to look a little different, they need to feel a little different, and we repackaged them in some cool ways. We hopped on some trends, we used some sounds, we did some walk with me's, and it was really, really cool to not only have that as a space to teach students a little bit more about literary analysis and Taylor Swift, but then it became
a special opportunity for recruitment to let students know what we were doing, to let students know that this was available. It is hard to launch a new course and to make people aware, especially on a campus as large as ours. it, you know, we tagged the University of Delaware in all of our posts, so it was another opportunity to highlight that the university is a place that's doing innovative things and that there's a lot of cool stuff going on. So.
I think that was part of it, the visibility, the recruitment, and then finding out what kind of content would land and just getting that feedback loop a real touch point with our audience.
Luke Hobson (30:37)
So was that what the focus group was doing? Was to be able to say like yay or nay to the different types of content? How did they come into the picture?
Matt Kinservik (30:46)
So we got feedback from people on TikTok, right? And not everybody always agreed with what I was saying, which I thought was really cool, right? So we got some pushback, which I thought was really, that's good, that's engagement, that's the idea. I do know that we got people to register and enroll for the course because they found it on TikTok. And one of the people who registered for the course,
is a senior citizen male, right? I mean, it's amazing. So you just don't know who's out there and when, you know, who you're gonna appeal to, you know, using a tool like this. So the, you know, the, I think the idea of using TikTok to promote the course is really important. The focus group, so we have a course innovation grant and.
Rachel (31:19)
No.
Matt Kinservik (31:39)
We said we want to use focus groups. Our idea on that shifted. We originally wanted to do it kind of in progress. But as we, and this course is running right now. It's running in our January term. So students are halfway through the course. We decided as we were developing the course and putting things together that we wanted to do the focus group after the course and have a way once grades are in and everything is done.
to reach out to the students who were enrolled in it, and then also to our nascent Taylor Swift registered student organization on campus, which is just coming into being, to pull them in, talk about the learning experience and the course content, and then think about how can this help us to make the course better for the next time we offer it, but also, you know, what are we learning from them about the experience of taking an online asynchronous course?
with, I think the count was 48 instructional videos. Some of them highly designed. Rachel should talk about the work she's done with some of them because it is so visually appealing and attractive and engaging. We want to find out from students, how did this land? How did it affect you? How does it compare to other courses? And what will we learn from that? We don't really know.
Rachel (33:09)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think just one more piece related to that, though we had kind of abandoned, not abandoned, shifted the idea of focus groups from an ongoing process to an after, Matt intentionally did put in our discussion board called Surprise Songs to get...
that ongoing feedback. What did you like? What did you not like? What did you wish that you had seen? So like I had said in the beginning, this is a very student focused class and their voices shape so much of it and they did in participating in our TikTok trends and in giving feedback all throughout the course. And we'll make sure to continue to listen to their voices after the course and to use that as iterative feedback.
Luke Hobson (33:51)
So let's talk about success for a moment, because what does success look like for you in this course? Is it with student evaluations? Is it with students actually posting on TikTok that they're like, completely the course is wonderful. Like what's, what is that level of engagement that you're looking for to be able to say that we know that this thing was a huge hit? What are you looking for?
Matt Kinservik (34:15)
Well, I feel like I'm already, I feel like I'm already seeing signs of success with the course. the, going through this first major assignment and grading it and looking at the students reflection essays in particular, mean, listening to the songs and reading the lyrics they created was really exciting in itself. But as I mentioned earlier, the process is more important than the product really with
Rachel (34:32)
Thank
Thanks
Matt Kinservik (34:44)
you know, with having students use these generative AI tools. So that it was the first assignment, they have to make a song. Second assignment, they have to do an album cover using an image generator. And the third assignment, they're going to use, you know, a kind of conventional chat bot and do something textual. You know, so we get sound, image and text, you know, three different experiences. The seeing the students engagement and reading their reflections on it.
is that feels like a big win to me because I am evangelical about generative AI and college level teaching. I it's, think inaction is inexcusable. And I see too many people at, know, not just at the University of Delaware, but all around the country, too many faculty are not really engaging with this yet. We have to close the gap between student and faculty familiarity and use with generative AI.
and really think about the implications for our learning goals and our teaching. And so to me, having the opportunity to innovate in this way, in this course, and then to see the students in their work, kind of showing the value of that, and in the weekly, you know,
know, posts and the bulletin board, the electronic bulletin board that we have. I mean, I think that's really important too, because it's the same once a week, they have an opportunity to say, what did I miss, right? What did you think and what did I miss? And they're happy to tell me what I missed, right? So they have lots of Taylor Swift songs. They're like, what about this one? What about that one? And it seems like there is a really good level of engagement. So those just all seem like markers of success.
Rachel (36:34)
Yeah, and to add to that, like Matt said, the course is currently running now. We have a unique session, runs for four weeks during the winter break. And so it's optional. Students could be on vacation doing absolutely nothing right now. And so not only did we fill our first section, we had to fill a second section during this optional vacation time. So I think that's a measure of success that because the course was so topical and so interesting to students.
Luke Hobson (36:34)
Mm.
Rachel (37:04)
They'll be willing to do the work even in a time where they don't have to. So obviously we've talked about the students, but I think one other piece that I would like to continue seeing signs of success in is faculty being inspired by this idea. We've already had one faculty member who knows Matt and heard about his course and said, hey, I want to jump on this train. He came to our office and asked for instructional design support to develop an innovative course and create something that was student focused and engaging.
Matt Kinservik (37:31)
Thank
Rachel (37:34)
and it's going to be awesome. can't wait for that course to launch. But that, I think, is going to be an even bigger measure of success for me that faculty look at the process of doing something innovative, doing something topical, doing something with instructional design, and not thinking, I'm too busy. I don't have time. That's a lot of work. Instead, they think, this is a really accessible process. I'm excited to do this. I have a model of success, and we clearly see that students are here for it. So that, I think,
It's a high bar, but when we see more of that, then I'll be satisfied.
Luke Hobson (38:06)
Yeah. And that's interesting too, Rachel, because I kind of forgot about that piece for a second of like the instructional design is new in this as well. Of course, I'm thinking all about like the topic, but, the actual design process itself, it sounds like you are really doing something different than your university to try to be able to show the value of instructional design and how IDs can very well be on these different forms of projects and trying to be able to expand upon this world of what we do from behind the scenes that a lot of people don't know about still, which is kind of funny, but true.
Rachel (38:29)
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, right?
Anytime I have to talk about what my job is, I have to start from nothing because it's, yeah, right? What exactly is an instruction designer?
Luke Hobson (38:39)
Yes, that's exactly right. Yes.
It is interesting, but that's great for being able to see what that is scaling up in that way. So if you, mentioned about how that's you want to be able to hope for, have more people come to you and want to be able to expand upon this. Uh, what other opportunities can people do this at scale? What other topics and themes and courses are we not thinking of that people can do more of this and to try this out for themselves, whatever areas you think this would go into.
Matt Kinservik (39:10)
Well, I mean, it's shown me that as we think of, in the humanities, right, I'm an English professor, I'm a humanist, as we think about the value of the humanities, which is, it seems like it's perennially questioned, but more and more because of the cost of higher ed and the pressure on employment after graduation,
people really worry, you know, is getting a degree in a humanistic discipline, does it have value, right? And I the generative AI is a boon to the humanities because the old approach, the old value proposition of come to our university for four years, learn, know, gobble up a lot of content knowledge that we
uniquely have and will impart to you and then go off and have a successful career, that's out the window with generative AI because content is ubiquitous. It's getting better all the time and it's available with simple prompts, right? So content isn't king anymore. What's really gonna be important is the skills of communication synthesis.
adaptability, those durable skills, empathy, all these things that we talk about the humanities providing, these are now the essential skills in every discipline. And so what I would love to see is more of my colleagues in the humanities seeing this stuff as fundamental and not just ornamental, right? These are fundamental skills.
to help people navigate a world that's gonna continue to change very rapidly and is gonna continue to devalue that sort of content delivery mode of instruction. We need to have students using and critiquing the tools that are gonna create content for them for the rest of their lives once they leave our university. So to my mind, what we've got with this course is kind of a framework that others could look at independent of
and say, okay, I can do something like this with X, Y, or Z, pick your topic.
Rachel (41:43)
Yeah, and I think one of the pieces that in addition to the humanities and soft skills that Matt talked about is that I think there's this perception that our Gen Z, Gen Alpha students aren't that passionate about things or that school is not always a priority or that there's not interest, but there are so many.
subcultures and so many fandoms where students are very, active. And I think that's part of the reason why this course was so successful. Not that it's just Taylor Swift, but there are active communities where people are doing academic work. They just don't know that's what it's called, where they will deep dive and research and make text to self and text to text comparisons. think that any discipline could hop on to
those environments, those subgroups, and realize that the academic work that's happening there just needs the terms and the framework and the concepts from the academic world brought to those spaces. We see that with one of our colleagues, Dr. Katie Bender. She developed an entire, again, Taylor Swift, but Taylor Swift-themed course on how to teach students to use STATA, which is a statistical software.
Matt Kinservik (42:50)
Thank
Rachel (42:57)
for analysis and it was so interesting that that course, she did a workshop series, brought in a bunch of girls because of the topic, but they had commented on how that was not a topic that they felt was very accessible to them. Understanding how to use data and interpret data didn't feel accessible. so Katie was able to not only leverage the interest of Taylor Swift, she created a networking event where she made friendship bracelets and...
kind of brought a sense of safety and the community to the course. And I think that's the piece that anybody could do in any discipline. You can do it with business, you can do it with humanities, you can do it with the sciences. And so I think that's really the piece is that student focus, leveraging the power of fandoms, and then having your own passion, right? This wouldn't have worked, hers wouldn't have worked without her passion for the fandom. obviously had the commitment and the passion to the fandom. So.
It's kind of that mix of passion and subject matter knowledge that I think you can replicate anywhere.
Luke Hobson (44:03)
What I love too, is that the people who push back the most, in my opinion, on gen AI, usually pertains to writing instructors for humanities. Everything Matt's talking about where I'm like, I've given many workshops to faculty members and those are the ones who instantly say, this is evil. This is going to put me in retirement early. Like I'm not going to be able to use this. And then here are real live examples that you're sharing with us of like, well, no, actually here is the way that this is actually going and what you can make students do. And it's, it's awesome.
Rachel (44:14)
Yeah!
Matt Kinservik (44:22)
Thank
Rachel (44:28)
the way forward.
Luke Hobson (44:31)
Thank you both for sharing those examples because hopefully more people hear about this, the more they give it a chance. And I'll just instantly say, this isn't for me. So hopefully more, more of these stories keep on coming about from the podcast. And, and the last thing I just want to be able to go to kind of piggyback off of that question is what advice would you give to faculty? They want to be able to try something new, experiment at their institution, do something like this. What advice do you have to give to them to be able to try to replicate your same types of steps?
Matt Kinservik (44:59)
Well, I mean, I would say make friends with an instructional designer and work with them. this has been so eye-opening for me to work collaboratively with Rachel on this project. Faculty can't keep up with all of...
Rachel (45:02)
you
Matt Kinservik (45:20)
the advancements or know all of the affordances of the different educational technology tools that we have. So to have an instructional designer who can say, you know, here's what this can do. And Rachel's great because when I have a question, she will answer the question, but then she'll send me a little tutorial every time like here, here, now you can do it yourself. And I feel like a big boy when I do it myself, right?
Luke Hobson (45:45)
you
Rachel (45:46)
you
Matt Kinservik (45:50)
Definitely understand what instructional designers can do to help you as a faculty member to increase the effectiveness of your pedagogy. And as you do that, the second piece of advice I would have is take some risks. If you're not a little uncomfortable,
you're probably not growing and learning. And so it was very awkward for me to begin this work and to begin recording instructional videos, because I'm very Socratic. know, English professor, small group, sitting in a circle talk, right? You know, mean, that's been my MO for decades. So it was very odd to sit there talking to, you know, a camera with a green screen. But the...
The videos that we've created, like I said, there are 48 of them. There's a ton of content in this course. And the work that Rachel did, and please do say something about this, Rachel, designing backgrounds that reinforce the learning and are engaging for the students, it just blew me away. I mean, I'm just so impressed. So it's been a really fantastic experience.
Rachel (47:02)
Thank you.
that part was really fun and I think part of the reason why I was able to do that is because Matt is so easy to work with and so open to ideas. So I think part of what I had done that Matt was referencing is as he did the green screen videos, I made corresponding backgrounds and you know, there's so much iconography in the Taylor Swift universe that it was pretty easy to go down a rabbit hole and overdo it.
I might have done that. I created some visual schemes and color palettes for different modules and had all these little Easter eggs for the students in the videos and it was a lot of fun, but that was only possible because Matt was really open to working with me and to being open to new ideas. Like you said, being willing to take risks, but
I think in a lot of partnerships I've worked with an SME to an ID, there's kind of a prescriptive, I have these ideas, you take them and you go with them. And so his openness to new ideas and to giving me some creative space was a really unique part of our partnership and something that I think faculty could benefit from. To just realize there are other people on your team that can add to the experience and that you don't have to know.
everything when you come up with a creative course idea, you don't have to do it all. There are partners on your campus that are to support you and help make it happen. But I think maybe just separate from that idea too, is so much of Matt, his personality, his experience is in this course. Our social media intern and I asked him to do absurd things on TikTok and he did. He did.
And it was fun, but I think it's so evident that he is a person who's bringing his real authentic self into the course. And I would love to see that more. Like you don't feel like you're watching lecture videos. You're listening to it. I think I had said this when we talked about TikTok. It should feel like you're on FaceTime with a friend. And that is exactly the vibe that you get from all of his lecture content. you know, when faculty have innovative ideas, what would I tell them?
Bring your interests to the students. Like share your authentic self, bring the passions and interests that you have and you know, let them see the real you. I feel like that's a part that is missing from so many courses. There's this feeling that we need to have this academic wall. Just break the fourth wall and show up. And we're having a lot of fun watching students receive that very well.
Matt Kinservik (49:46)
you
Luke Hobson (49:51)
Love it. Love it. If you want to see Matt dancing on TikTok, please go to know I have no idea what you're doing.
Rachel (49:55)
You can.
Matt Kinservik (49:55)
No, that's,
Rachel (49:58)
What was this line?
Matt Kinservik (49:58)
we met weekly through the fall with our social media intern. And one day she came in she said, all right, I have this idea. You can sing and dance a little. I was like, done, we're not doing it. Like, we're out, next idea. So that was where I would not go.
Rachel (50:08)
No.
Luke Hobson (50:09)
Hahaha!
Rachel (50:11)
That's not the one. Lip
Luke Hobson (50:14)
understands.
Rachel (50:14)
syncing?
Yes. Jumping on trends? Yes. Dancing? No. But you can find us at the Tortured Professors Department on Instagram and TikTok.
Matt Kinservik (50:16)
Lip-syncing, even.
Luke Hobson (50:18)
Okay.
I just going to ask you, where can people go to learn more about this course? That was, that was the final question that I had for you. Is it there on Instagram?
Rachel (50:31)
I think, yeah,
I well right now we're still on tick-tock and we still have our Instagram so the torture professors department and we will soon have a page based on our the grant that we received we'll have information about our project there as well once the project is wrapped but for now you can find us on socials.
Luke Hobson (50:53)
Awesome. Well, folks, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I did not expect this show to talk not just about instructional design, but Gen. AI trying to be able to make people adopt it more in the humanities of all things for trying to be able to get that pushback and talking about Taylor Swift. A fascinating conversation. So thank you both so much for coming on the show. Best of luck with everything for your course. I hope it grows. I hope enrollments boom. And I hope people talk about it more. And hopefully I stumble across it on social media one day and just can.
Rachel (51:17)
Thank you.
Luke Hobson (51:22)
ping you later to say, it's a hit. Like I'm just seeing it organically pop up while I'm mindlessly scrolling as I do since I'm a millennial. So yes, exactly. Well, thank you both for coming on the show. Appreciate it.
Rachel (51:23)
Absolutely.
That's right. Thank you.
Matt Kinservik (51:28)
Thank you
Rachel (51:32)
Thank. you for having us. It was so great to talk to you.
Matt Kinservik (51:33)
Thank you.
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