Another email from the Provost’s office. Subject: “Updated Guidance on Generative AI.” It’s the fourth one this semester. It’s three pages long, filled with toothless platitudes about academic integrity and vague suggestions to “innovate.” It’s everything and nothing. It’s a document written by a committee to protect an institution, not to empower a single person standing in front of a classroom.
This is the state of AI in higher ed. While universities are busy forming task forces and issuing memos, faculty are on the front lines of a pedagogical revolution with no map, no compass, and certainly no useful air support. We’re left to figure out the difference between a student using AI to cheat on a paper and a student using it as a brilliant Socratic partner. The former is a headache. The latter is the future, and most of us were never trained to tell the difference.
Let’s be honest: the firehose of AI resources online is useless. It’s built for venture capitalists, developers, or futurists making grand pronouncements. It’s not for the history professor trying to design a final paper that can’t be faked in 90 seconds, or the biology instructor wondering how to teach lab reports when an AI can write a flawless one.
We don’t need another TED Talk. We need a framework. A way to think. That’s why we built TEACH.
Ditch the Panic Memos. Adopt a Pedagogy.
TEACH is not another top-down mandate. It’s a faculty-first framework for making strategic, defensible decisions about AI in your classroom and your career. It’s a compass for the overwhelmed.
TEACH stands for:
Tools & Tech Fluency: Moving beyond “Is ChatGPT allowed?” to “Which tool, for which task, at what level of student development?” It’s knowing, for instance, that Perplexity.ai is powerful for annotated bibliographies, while ChatGPT-4 can be a ruthless sparring partner for testing the logic of a thesis statement. It’s about developing a professional, defensible opinion, not just a binary yes/no policy.
Ethical & Legal Awareness: This isn’t just about plagiarism. It’s about data privacy, algorithmic bias, and intellectual property. It’s about architecting classroom conversations that prepare students for a world where the ethics are messy and the answers aren’t in the back of the book.
AI-Integrated Pedagogy: This is the engine room. It’s where we stop hand-wringing and start redesigning. The old 10-page research paper on the causes of the French Revolution is dead—a student can now generate a B+ version in the time it takes to brew a cup of coffee. Fretting about that is a waste of energy. The pedagogical move is to re-architect the assignment completely.For example: Instead of asking for a paper, the new assignment becomes a process-driven analysis.
- Step 1: “Use ChatGPT-4 to generate a timeline and summary of the key economic and social factors leading to the French Revolution. Submit this raw output.”
- Step 2: “Now, use a different tool, like Perplexity.ai or Claude, to generate a counter-argument focusing on the influence of Enlightenment philosophers. Submit that raw output.”
- Step 3: “Your final paper is not a summary. It is a 5-page critique of the two AI outputs. Where did they excel? Where were their hidden biases (e.g., over-emphasizing economic determinism)? What crucial nuance or connection did they both miss? Your grade is based on the quality of your critique and the originality of the synthesis you provide.”Suddenly, the assignment isn’t about producing a known artifact. It’s about engaging with, critiquing, and transcending the AI. You’ve shifted the work from information recall to metacognition—the very skill we claim to teach.
Curriculum Innovation: Zooming out from a single course to the program level. What is the value of your degree in the age of AI? If AI can do the low-level cognitive work, we must double down on what it can’t: critical thinking, creativity, and systems-level problem-solving. It’s a mandate to justify our curriculum’s existence.
Human-Centered Practice: Identifying and amplifying the irreplaceable human elements of teaching—mentorship, connection, empathy, sparking curiosity. AI is a powerful tool, but it’s not a colleague or a mentor. This is our greatest source of leverage.
A Framework, Not a Script
The administrative response to AI has been to treat faculty like cogs who need scripts. But we are not cogs. We are architects of learning environments.
TEACH is designed for architects. It’s flexible. You can focus on one domain or all five. It respects your autonomy and expertise. It doesn’t tell you what to do; it gives you a robust model for figuring out what’s right for you, your discipline, and your students.
The noise around AI is deafening. Most of it is hype or fear. The path forward isn’t in a memo from the central office. It’s in deliberate, informed, and pedagogical action.
It’s time to stop reacting and start leading.
Ready to move past the memos?
Download the free TEACH Starter Toolkit. It includes a full overview of the framework and a self-assessment to find your starting point. No jargon, just a practical tool.
Upgrade to the Core Toolkit for our complete set of implementation guides, editable templates, and slide decks to help you take action—or lead a departmental conversation—this week.
The future of higher education won’t be determined by AI, but by how we teach with it. Let’s get to work.
Author: Ryan Baltrip, Ph.D. is the founder of Navigate AI and the creator of the TEACH Framework. He’s spent 15+ years helping faculty build innovative, student-centered programs across higher education.
