10:20 am, lecture room CC3, Tuesday 6 October 2025.
A few students are still chatting with the lecturer from the previous lecture. But she has already unplugged her laptop, so I walk to the front. I put my bag on the table and take out my laptop. I look around; there are already a few students I recognise from last week. I connect my computer with the HDMI cable and hope that it will work this time. Yes, the big screen is working. My slides appear: “Lecture 4: Organisational Behaviour: Teams and Groups”. I look at the date in the corner: 7 October 2024. Surely not? Do I have last year’s slides? That recent paper hasn’t been included in these yet. I click through, and luckily, I’m covering that paper as well. I’ll just need to adjust the date next time. I grab my printed slides along with my notes. A deep sigh, I’m ready.
The lecture hall is only half-full. It’s 10.28 am, and I can see that even fewer students have turned up than last week. I don’t see that one lad who always sits at the front either. I wonder if the student society has organised something or something? 10.30 am, I start the lecture, even though I reckon only 40 per cent of the enrolled students are present. What on earth is going on? My lectures aren’t that bad, are they? I always get good evaluations, students laugh at my jokes – well, most of the time, anyway. 11.08 am, I’m well into it.
Hey, a question that’s happening less and less often. Whether I could perhaps explain exactly how, as a leader, you resolve a conflict within a team. Do I have any practical examples? Well, that’s quite a good question, one I hadn’t expected. The student points out that his NotebookLM podcast on the subject states that article A says this, and article B says that, so how do you, as a leader, deal with that potential contradiction? Another student chimes in: In the mini-lecture on this material they did with ElevenLabs this morning, this integration of the conflict literature was already covered. Could I perhaps say more about how that works in practice? More students now seem interested. Whereas the students were initially slumped back in their seats watching the lecture, most are now leaning forward. NotebookLM? ElevenLabs? I can feel the sweat breaking out. I’ve heard of those before.
I tell them I’ll upload some extra reading material on Brightspace. I see the students slump back in their seats, looking disappointed. I hear a student at the front on the right say to her neighbour that she’ll stay at home next time too if the lectures carry on like this. Right, time to step in. I walk to the front and ask which of the students has already studied the material using NotebookLM. About half of them put their hands up. And the rest, is my follow-up question. Who uses a different form of AI? Almost all the other students now raise their hands. So this first part of my lecture (and the rest, I realise) is actually just a repeat? I see a large group of nodding heads in front of me.
11.15 am. It’s break time. I walk over to my notes and pick up a pen. ‘So, teach the lecture completely differently next week, but how?’. I take another look at the buzz of conversation among the students in the lecture theatre. I pick up my pen again. ‘Back to the lecture halls myself’. And draw a thick line under it.