Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

This case study examines a graduate seminar disrupted by a mid-semester “EdTech lockout” following unilateral changes to a third-party platform’s Terms of Service. Access to course materials was withheld until students and faculty accepted revised terms—clauses that controversially asserted corporate ownership over anonymized, aggregated student work, granting the company rights to use it for training and refining its AI models. These provisions directly contradicted the seminar’s focus on open knowledge production and academic freedom. The course employed a human-in-the-loop AI design: asynchronous student discussions hosted on the platform were anonymized and analyzed by ChatGPT to generate prompts for in-person dialogue with a visiting scholar. This recursive pedagogy exemplified engaged, problem-based learning and demonstrated how humanities classrooms can work with—and critically against—AI systems. The lockout became an inflection point, surfacing questions about consent, institutional complicity, and the chilling effects of vague platform governance. The controversy ultimately escalated to a formal Federal Trade Commission complaint and voluntary mediation led by the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General. This session invites educators, administrators, and policymakers to consider how AI is reshaping teaching across disciplines—not just in practice, but in principle. Can humanities courses leverage platform conflicts as real-world learning? Could STEM fields adopt interpretive, fluid learning models from the arts? How might institutions safeguard peer-led and engaged pedagogies when corporate tools undermine autonomy? Framed through this lockout, the presentation offers critical insight into the ethical terrain of teaching in the age of AI.