A practical home for instructors rethinking how learning happens in the age of AI, where the rules are visible, the design is intentional, and students still do the thinking.
The internet shifted how students access information. The calculator shifted how they handle calculation. AI shifts something deeper: how they produce work, and how we know if learning happened. The glass syllabus exists because the old signals are broken.
For decades the polished written product was the proof. AI now produces that in seconds. Polish stops being the signal. The way we prove learning has to shift.
Knowles' andragogy is not optional in higher education. Adults need to know why, want to direct their own learning, bring real experience, and learn best from real problems. Treat them as such.
A blanket "no AI" rule teaches students to hide. A blanket "use AI freely" rule lets them skip the work. Design the role of AI per assignment. Make it visible. Make it intentional. The syllabus becomes glass.
A glass syllabus is one where students can see exactly how the work is supposed to be done, when AI is welcome, when it is not, and why. Nothing is hidden in the syllabus boilerplate. The rules show up where the work shows up.
Instructors do not need better tools to catch AI. They need better assignments. Assignments where the learning lives somewhere AI cannot follow, the personal context of your course, the live process of doing the work, the defense of the choices made. The rest is honest about where AI helps and where it does not.
Engagement in the age of AI comes from students creating something to show their learning, not just consuming or copying. The build is the proof. The product is the evidence.
That sentence is the throughline. Every strategy in the working session pulls on that thread.
Dr. Sayyid Cato is a faculty member whose work sits at the intersection of instructional design and emerging technology. His background in instructional design and technology, and in instructional technology and media, anchors his interest in tools that genuinely benefit learners. Today, that work translates into AI and its uses in pedagogical and andragogical strategies.
He teaches at the tertiary level, works with graduate students, and builds the kind of assignments he wants other faculty to consider. The Glass Syllabus is both his teaching philosophy and a practical home for the strategies he uses in his own classroom.