Episode 56: Emily Perkins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsVTEp20JRs

"I need to find ways to trust them more and invite them to invest in their learning more at this point."

"Are we going to be moving away from writing labs and designing more thinking labs when it comes to the classroom?"

In this episode of The Opposite of Cheating Podcast, David sits down with Dr. Emily Perkins, Associate Director of the Writing Center at Le Moyne College, for a wide-ranging conversation about what happens to writing — and thinking — when AI can produce a passable paper with no thought required.

Emily brings a unique cross-campus perspective, working daily with writing tutors, first-year students, and faculty across disciplines, and a background that spans academic integrity case management at Syracuse University and a PhD in teaching and curriculum with a certificate in trauma-informed care.

The conversation zeroes in on process over product: Emily argues that the real value of a writing assignment isn't the final paper but the brainstorming, drafting, and decision-making that got the student there. She shares results from Le Moyne's student surveys showing that a meaningful number of students are choosing not to use AI because they want to learn by doing, and she advocates for transparent teaching, reflective assignments, and tools like Cursive that make the writing process visible.

David and Emily also grapple with a provocative question: if writing is now decoupled from thinking, what does the future of thinking look like?

You can follow Emily on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ecallahanp/

(Disclaimer: episode quotes and summary were created using Youtube's Transcript and Anthropic's Claude but edited by a human. Any errors are the responsibility of the human).