A Year in the Life of This Substack
Doing that whole, "it's been a year--let's review" thing...please bear with me :)
Upcoming Events to catch me at:
New England Faculty Development Consortium Fall Conference in person on Friday, October 18th at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA
A day-long in-person event with NERCOMP, Generative AI and Higher Education - In-Person Workshop on Wednesday, November 20th at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.
A flexible online program that I’ll be facilitating through EDUCAUSE: Teaching with AI (November 11-22).
For folks familiar with my other blog, I often do year-in-review posts (like this recent one). To no surprise, I’m going to do “A Year on Substack” post as processing and reflecting in public is a lot of what I do.
I began without much of a plan other than the fact that I was doing lots of posting on my other blog about the work I was doing with AI and wanting to share it for others to learn or make use of. That didn’t feel quite right for that blog. I mean, I’ve treated that space as a way of doing all sorts of things such as reading and reflecting on a short-story a day for over a year, capturing the experience as a doctoral student, sharing reviews of books, audiobooks, comics, etc, and yes, even how to make apple leather.
I could have easily just dove into AI in the higher ed space. Still, it didn’t quite work for me. I noticed there were enough folks who were interested in this focus in particular and did not want to intermingle it with the wandering that my other blog has (though I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that you all should check out the recent series of deep conversations that Stacey M. Johnson and I are having about what we would tell our younger educator selves!)
Still, I didn’t have a clear sense of what it would be, I just kind of built it as I have with many other things in my life and continued to figure it out in real-time. I know one intention was to share my talks in one centralized space. Inspired by folks like Maha Bali, Autumm Caines, Bryan Alexander, and others, I wanted to make my work available and open to others. I had decided earlier in my career that if I were to end up in the current situation (regularly asked to do talks, workshops, programming, consulting, etc), I would do it while also making sure I took what I made and shared it out with others. So much of my work focuses on access and openness that this seemed an obvious practice and this would be the space for it.
Therefore, I’ve regularly shared the slide deck, text, and resources for much of the work that I’ve done at conferences and universities in the past 18 months. I’ve pulled them together into posts like this one: Comprehensive List of Talks in 2024. I’ve also shared the workshop materials and framework when I’d done more specialized work such as this one on Resources for Student Support and GenAI or this 8-part series of lightning talks that I did: On Using Generative AI Throughout the Institution.
Some Other Ways I’ve Engaged Here
And it made perfect sense to approach it this way given that part of why I got into the discussion early on was because of other people’s sharing and being open with their syllabi policies in the AI Syllabi Policies document that I was crowdsourcing (if new to that, you can read this post—which also happens to be the most popular post this year by far: AI Syllabi Policies Post).
Still, sharing those talks felt limiting. I do them regularly but often, there are calls for similarly themed talks, so I’m only sharing here when a talk is largely new.
That’s worked and also, I needed to do more thinking and writing about AI in education and have leaned into this space as a place to share my emerging thoughts. That is, using this space as a place for my own growth, conversations with others, and to provide readers with other things to chew on. Therefore, I found other things to talk about and share (I even shared a flash fiction piece I wrote). These are a few of my favorite posts from the past year.
Academic Fracking: I feel like this was a piece that was not as interesting to the main audience here, there were others that have picked it up and run with it. It’s something I want to come back to because of how it relates to my own work in academic piracy and open access.
AI Plagiarism Conversation Part 1 (part 2 and part 3): I needed to write this series and given its popularity, folks wanted (and continue to want) to read it. Also, now that I have them next to each other, there’s a way that this whole conversation about AI Plagiarism (and the checkers) intersects with the post above on how publishers are academically fracking authors’ work.
On Building an AI Policy for Teaching & Learning: My proudest post of the year—largely because it’s about my students and their work in passing the (most likely) first student-driven usage policy for faculty and students for an entire college in the country.
Growing This Space
The growth has been gradual and consistent. I’m just over 3200 subscribers to the newsletter and about another 400 or so follow me on Substack (in the app or on the platform). For me though, that’s serious growth given I’ve written 2000+ posts on a blog over the last 13 years and still have fewer than 200 followers. I’m so grateful for the folks that have shared it and linked to it as well as the folks that do read this and when they meet me (virtually or in person), tell me they read it.
Among the 3,600+ followers, I have about two dozen folks who are paying subscribers. Given that there is no distinct content for paying subscribers (see above about access and openness), I feel quite honored they chose to support this work. Some of them, I know and some of them I’ve never met, but their generous support is special!
And since we’re on the topic, let me do a shameless plug:
In terms of people reading (or opening the newsletter/visiting each post), I’m averaging about 2,500 hits or so per post in the first 24 hours. I’ll take it—again, my own blog by contrast is usually 100-200 hits in the first day.
This post marks the 61st post in the last year. I don’t always do every week but pretty close, I think. And that is one of the keys to this kind of work—consistency. I’ve figured out what are go-to posts I can always pull together (e.g. the research insights series), what I know will regularly be shared (new talks and keynotes as well as how-tos), and then, there’s always room for new ideas or things I want to be in conversation about AI that cross over into other areas (e.g. copyright and open education). Among all those, I feel like I have plenty to write and just have to navigate how much time I actually have.
And I’ve settled into my writing habit with this mostly in the morning. I do my best to have my morning writing session (5am-5:50am—yes, I am an informal member of the #5amWritersClub) focus on the Substack—it usually happens 4 out of 6 months (yeah, I do sleep in on Sundays till 6:30am—if my cat lets me). This too helps me keep a focus and commitment and I find it the right space for thinking through ideas.
Going Forward
Looking to the year ahead, I hope to be in more conversation with others and to bring more folks into this space to share and engage. I would like to share this platform with others for direct conversation or for contributions that are in alignment with this platform’s goals. (See below).
I also hope to have more room to share more distinct ideas and thoughts, which I believe will start happening after December (when I’m defending my dissertation!). I also want to bring more voices into this space in the form of books, articles, other substack posts, and podcasts that highlight a wider spectrum of exploring AI in Education besides just what I’m seeing and doing.
I’m curious for folks who are regular readers—what draws your interest? What keeps you reading? Given what I’ve covered, where do you see the value in what I provide?
Finally, let me just say thanks to all of you for joining me in this space. I wasn’t sure what this space would turn into and I imagine it will continue to evolve. But I’m grateful to have the space and share it with y’all. Whether you’re reading it, commenting, sharing, or finding other ways of making meaning, it’s pretty dang awesome that you’re here as we continue to figure out what to do with this whole AI thing.
AI+Edu=Simplified by Lance Eaton is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Congratulations on this milestone. Your work has been influential. Keep it up.
Congratulations, Lance, and thanks for sharing your thoughts on doing this Substack for a year. For me, the main draw is seeing what you do here. I just had an exchange with John Warner that helped me clarify that my own writing aims to AI and education rather than persuade people to take a specific position or share my specific viewpoint. I come here because I think of you as a fellow explorer, and I particularly admire your experimentation. Of course, when you knock one out of the park, like you did with the plagiarism series, that's great. But, it is your willingness to try our new forms or ideas rather than crank out pieces using a formula on a schedule that I find distinctive.