Academics

I was an engineering professor for 30 years. In this section I am putting my advice to my colleagues that may help them adapt to the new world of AI. As of February 2026 it is very much a work in progress, so expect further changes.

t focuses on tools available to faculty and students today, ones readily available at minimal cost. Many of them are already being used by students, so this is more for faculty.

Most of this website is devoted to tools useful for nonprofits because I have been working with them since my retirement. I believe that many of those tools would be appropriate to both faculty and students as well. I urge you to look at them.

I have strong beliefs about higher education that guide my choice of topics and exposition. They are not universally shared. You will want to weigh these when reading what's on this site.

The methods of education must change

• The industrial approach to teaching no longer works well. A professor lecturing and students taking notes was appropriate to the 16th century, but not the 21st.

AI is the primary vehicle for this change. 

• Those who adopt it will prosper, and those who don't will languish.

• It is now possible to provide personalized instruction in the mechanics of almost any topic.

• Students will be able to proceed at their own pace. Exceptional students have always done this, but it should be the rule for all students.

The Structure of the University Will Change

• It is too expensive

• It doesn't recognize the possibilities of good education

• It is too rigid

Below are overviews of the tools that I believe would be generally useful to faculty and students. I have classified them by how much effort I believe is required to learn to use them effectively, from minutes to a few hours.

I focus here on tools from Google because I have found that to be the most generally useful, but note that the other major players (Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity) have similar tools.

The tools built into the traditional apps, such as MS 365 or Google Workplace, are immensely valuable as well.  They are covered in the rest of this website.

Chat Boxes- e.g. Gemini

• • What they offer

    • There is much more that can be accomplished with these by learning how to write effective prompts

    • Look at the options available within a chat window - they offer much

  • How to use them

    • Brainstorming

    • Planning

    • Student Tool (In directed exercise or assignment)

Customized Learning

• • Google Learn About

Verified (RAG) document repositories

• • NotebookLM

    • Useful for paper writing, FAQ's

    • Resources for education (or research) knowledge - All with large AI-Generated Component

      • Best Practices for Summative Assessment in Large-Scale STEM Higher Education: Navigating the Artificial Intelligence Paradigm - JEM 2026-01

      • State-of-the-art (SOTA) education research and teaching tips - JEM 2025-12

      • AI in STEM Higher Education Teaching - JEM 2026-01

      • Notebook LM, AI Research Assistant and Learning Tool. - JEM 2025-11

      • Teaching AI to Teach You with NotebookLM - JEM 2025-10

Guided Generation - e.g. Gemini Gem

• • Abstracts

  • Syllabi

  • Student References

  • FAQs

  • Course revisions

  • Assessment

Code Generation Tools (Vibe-Coding)

• • e.g. Google Antigravity or Claude Code

  • What you can Create with a few hours of effort

    • Customized Interfaces - e.g. JEM Prompt Generator

    • Rapid Physics & STEM Simulation Prototyping 

    • Verifiable AI & Ethics (The "Trust" Layer) 

    • Autonomous Agent Orchestration