In a TxDLA DEscussions podcast, Brad Denison sat down with Marcus Popetz, creator of Harmonize, to explore how innovative collaboration tools are reshaping the online learning landscape.
The Isolation Problem
One of the most significant challenges in online education is student isolation. “I just feel alone,” is a common complaint Popetz hears from students. This disconnection isn’t just about comfort—research consistently shows that learning is fundamentally social. When students work together, they comprehend and retain information better.
Harmonize addresses this challenge by providing instructors with a comprehensive toolkit designed to foster authentic communication in virtual environments.
Meeting Students Where They Are
Today’s students don’t primarily communicate through text. They share videos, images, memes, and audio messages. Harmonize embraces this reality by offering multimodal engagement options that allow students to express themselves naturally.
“Literacy doesn’t necessarily mean able to read, it means able to communicate,” Popetz explains, highlighting how the platform supports Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles by giving students multiple ways to participate.
This approach also naturally addresses concerns about AI-generated content. While text-based responses are easily produced by AI tools, multimodal communication remains more authentically human—for now.
AI as an Instructor’s Assistant
Harmonize takes a thoughtful approach to AI integration. Rather than implementing technology for its own sake, the platform focuses on solving specific pain points instructors face:
- Activity Generation: AI helps instructors create engaging discussion prompts aligned with sound pedagogical practices.
- Rubric Development: The platform streamlines rubric creation, setting clear expectations for students.
- Formative Feedback: Students can receive real-time guidance based on rubric criteria, allowing them to improve their work before submission.
As Popetz notes, “How do we make it so that the instructor isn’t dealing with the mundane stuff… and then let them step in so the instructor time’s more valuable?”
Looking Forward
As online education continues evolving, tools like Harmonize demonstrate how technology can enhance rather than replace human connection in learning environments. By addressing real instructor challenges and student needs, such platforms are helping to create online classrooms where authentic engagement flourishes.
For educators looking to bridge the gap between social media’s appeal and sound instructional design, solutions like Harmonize offer a promising path forward.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Brad Denison: Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to DE discussions, the podcast where we explore the intersection of education, technology and innovation to spark ideas and conversations that drive meaningful change. I’m Brad Denison, your host and ed tech enthusiast here to dive into the tools and strategies that are shaping the future of learning. Today I am joined by Marcus Popetz the creator of Harmonize, a suite of collaboration tools designed to elevate student engagement by blending the best aspects of social media with solid instructional design. Harmonize goes beyond just discussion forums, it integrates Q &A spaces, multimedia annotation, polling, chat, and even working into AI-powered content creation to help instructors scale their efforts while keeping the human element there at the core. In this episode, we’re going to explore the deeper mission behind Harmonize, look at why collaboration is essential for student success in online learning, how AI can empower educators without replacing them, and Marcus is going to give us a sneak peek into some exciting new AI features coming to Harmonize. So I hope you take something valuable from today’s discussion, let’s dive in. Marcus, welcome to the podcast. Did I miss anything? Is there anything about yourself you’d like to add or any additional details you’d like to tell us about Harmonize?
Marcus Popetz: Not too much, I would say. I guess people often ask what’s my background because they’re wondering if I’m in education or come from education. And the answer is I came from education as a failed educator, where I tried to become a high school teacher and realized how incredibly hard it is to actually be an instructor. And so backed out of that quickly and came back into tech. So now my mission is to help tools that instructors can use to make their jobs easier with a firm grounding in that I wasn’t able to do that.
That is such a difficult job. So I guess a little background on me there. Come from tech, tried to go to become a teacher, did not succeed, came back into tech.
Brad Denison: I’d like to echo that for you, Marcus. Yeah, teaching is not as easy as some people might think it is. All I want to do is try and make their life easier. So let’s jump into it with these questions about Harmonize. Beyond the features, what problem are you really trying to solve for educators and students when it comes to the platform?
Marcus Popetz: It’s really communication is key. We’re really focused on the online education space. One of the biggest student complaints is I just feel alone. I feel isolated in this class. Am I taking this class with other people? Do I know my fellow students?
Do I know my instructor? And then when you couple that with this idea that all learning is social, tons of research shows that if you can actually get students working together, they can they comprehend things, they retain things better, et cetera. So that’s really what we’re trying to do is trying to make it easier for students and instructors to communicate inside the class in whatever way that the instructor sees fit.
We’re not dictating how that happens. It’s just like, hey, instructor, here’s all the tools you wish you had so that you could actually communicate with your students so that you can bring that interactivity into your online class.
Brad Denison: So before we move on, like, do you want to touch base? You’re talking about very important things. Learning is social. Communication is key. Students are feeling alone. So, I mean, your platform is helping bridge into that. But can you help kind of talk about what are those best practices when it comes to online engagement and why it’s important to make those connections?
Marcus Popetz: Yeah, 100 percent. It’s really we we tell peer connectivity a lot. Like, how do you look to find ways to get your students to connect to each other? And the reason we started with discussion platforms is that that’s what most instructors are using.
Right. How do I get my students to interact with each other? This is something instructors are already comfortable with. They already understand how it fits into the class, but it’s pretty weakly implemented, I would say, as it is there now. And so, you know, the first place we start with instructors is like best practices of let’s just replace your existing discussion forums with something that is actually more authentic so that you’re starting from a comfort zone of what you’ve already built into your class, but you’re actually making it count for something.
And so we start there. Once instructors are comfortable with that, we start to look into different ways of adding an engagement to it. It’s like, OK, you have a great document you want to read.
Do you know anything about social annotations and how can you pull your students into the readings themselves and actually have those become the place where the interaction happens or or anything along those lines of pulling them more into the content? But I have this firm belief that like you have to meet instructors where they’re at now. So we’re like, I’m not going to jump in and be like, here’s some best practices you’ve never heard of.
And that you should go and try to revamp your course to make that happen. It’s like, no, you’ve all heard of discussions. You probably loathe discussions because they haven’t worked very well. But can we help you make those better? And can we help you build prompts and such to be able to take advantage of that? But we’re really trying to start with the things that they’re already trying that just maybe aren’t working that well, because that’s what we feel like we’re going to actually move the needle. Right. How do we get the most instructors to adopt something that works better as we go into it?
Brad Denison: And I think the online discussion, that whole idea is uniquely placed that I mean, on the scale of education, it’s a newer idea, right? And so I’ve had conversations with faculty where they’re like, well, I’m not going to force every single student to raise their hand and participate in a face to face discussion.
And I’m like, well, wait a minute, pause. You should probably have that as a goal to get every student to participate once. But when it is your online engagement, it really is. It’s either typing back and forth or adding to the value of the discussion.
Right. And so harmonize as a tool that is doing that and contributing to peer to peer collaboration. My next question is, why is it so critical for student success in online learning? That is, why is collaboration so critical for student success in online learning? And how does harmonize foster it? So if you talk a little bit more about that collaborative aspect of the
Marcus Popetz: platform, right, I think what a lot of why it’s so important is that, you know, it’s one thing to consume content, but until you start to actually process the content, you’re actually not really learning, right? And it’s through that conversation that we’re getting them to process the content. Like we can have them read all day long, brain bank the data away, and maybe they learn something, maybe they don’t.
But until they actually have to synthesize that and use it in some way, that’s where it really becomes key, right? So when we’re trying to get those students to participate in the discussion, it’s not just, you know, parrot comments back and forth, but it’s like, take that information and now let’s actually make that information stick in some way. How do you, you know, how do you apply the knowledge that you’ve now learned to throw in some blooms, phrases there for you? How do we actually get them to apply that so that that information starts to really dig deeper into, into their mind and then they actually understand it at a deeper level? It doesn’t necessarily have to happen through student collaboration, right?
There are other ways to make that happen. Student collaboration in peer-to-peer is really where we’ve just tried to focus on that because then it’s not the onus isn’t on a one to many for the instructor to guide each individual student through. It’s like they’re doing it as a group and they are each bringing their own perspective and their own viewpoint to it. And so they’re getting a wide variety of approaches to what this content means, as opposed to relying on the instructor as a single point of sort of driving the students forward. So I don’t know if that really gets at the entirety of why social learning is important, but that’s how we think of it. And that’s why we are approaching the peer-to-peer side of things as the first place to start.
Brad Denison: I like it. And talking about this peer-to-peer engagement like this, one thing I found interesting, I’m always trying to stay up on top of current events with technology because it moves so quickly, right? And one thing I was reading over the weekend, I forget where the article was from, but it was about students are finally starting to push back in discussions against their peers using artificial intelligence in the back and forth. And so that is, that is a, I think that is something that’s going to be inherent to the nature of typing discussions. So where does harmonize come in to help with that kind of situation?
Marcus Popetz: Yeah, it’s interesting. Like the A I think is relatively new, right? But we’ve been doing harmonize for mumble-mumble years, I don’t know, six, eight years, something like that at this point. And we push back initially on the text because it’s like, well, that’s just not how students engage, right? Like they, if they’re on social media, they’re engaging with images, they’re doing quick videos at the TikTok generation, etc. And so if they’re trying to engage authentically, as they’re accustomed to communicating, then you’re not just using text. Well, now enter A I where if they are using texts, it’s like, is it really them writing?
Like, is it truly authentic? I don’t know. And so we’re kind of killing two burns with one stone at this point where we’re like, look, don’t just do text. Like that’s not how students communicate.
You’re not meeting them where they’re at. When you think about, I had a great conversation with a professor who was talking about literacy and like literacy doesn’t necessarily mean able to read, it means able to communicate. And then that doesn’t mean able to communicate in a written format. It can be expanded out to able to communicate in all the ways like you and I are talking here. We’re not doing this in text.
And, you know, the audience doesn’t know it, but we’re on video so I can see your facial expressions, you know. And so all of these, all of these types of things kind of expand out how that interaction happens. And so AI is the newest threat to it, but it’s a problem that’s existed forever. Like trying to get students to communicate authentically in text has always been a struggle. I mean, except for perhaps maybe before video was a thing back in my gym when I was a kid. That’s what we did. But but now not a crawl monitors.
Brad Denison: Yeah, exactly. And so now when we’re having these discussions, it’s like, yes, part of it can be taxed. That’s totally fine. But what if it can be a little reflection video? What it can actually be an actual video conversation?
Asynchronously, of course, or record audio or throw a meme up there or throw an image up there or add a resource in that we can pull in and embed for you. Those types of things towards like, how do you make that conversation richer so that we are at least more confident that it’s not AI bought talking to AI bought. And then the three students left in the class going, what is going on here?
That type of thing. So can we start to make it, you know, it’s let me take a step back. The idea of UDL, right, Universal Design for Learning, let students express themselves how they want. Like, can we push them in this direction because it’s good for learning.
It’s good for all the different expression types, but it also naturally sidesteps the fact that most AI generated content is written text right now. It’s not going to be the case forever. It’s already drifting away from that. But right now that’s the case. And so if we can drift more in that multimodal realm, we’re doing amazing things for so many different reasons and also naturally sidesteps some of the AI stuff. And I like it.
Brad Denison: And you talk about UDL and we talk about artificial intelligence and how that can help, you know, in a lot of ways with UDL and targeted content for specific learning styles and specific students. And so the next question I’ve got for you is when it comes to artificial and artificial intelligence for instructors, how can AI help instructors create a better learning experience without replacing that human element. Yeah, and this is where
Marcus Popetz: we started down this path by our very first move and one of the biggest complaints we get from instructors is like you’re asking me to redesign a large part of my course, even though I’m just swapping discussions.
How do I take advantage of your tools. How do I actually build an activity my students want to participate in and so we were training them one on one one on three one on five how to do this. And then enter AI and the very first move we made was, why don’t we actually just take what you’re trying to teach and we will just keep building activities and putting them in front of you until you find one that’s compelling to you. So can we take all of these best practices of how do you get students to tie it to their own personal lives how do you get them to express themselves in non written ways how do you do all of that will tell you what you just tell us what you’re trying to teach. And we’re going to use AI to just churn up examples until you find one you like, then run with that you know edit it, tweak it make it your own but let’s do that 80% lift for you. Because the all of the instructors right now are faced with. Oh my gosh I have so much of my assessments and my discussions and everything to revamp.
How am I going to do that I’m not paid enough I don’t have enough time like how am I going to make this happen I don’t necessarily have the expertise. And so that’s where we went first with AI was how do we even just build the better activity for the students to participate in.
Brad Denison: No networks like I mean my job is to pay attention to technology my job is to pay attention to cultural learning and shifts and blah blah blah right. But that also means that part of my job is playing with all the cool new toys as they come out so boring side fun side. And so I can sit here all day and say well here’s exactly how you can use a tool like notebook LM to do this thing and yeah you’re going to have to learn how to do this and you’re going to have to learn how to do this and you’re going to have to learn to do this and so the other part of what I’ve been paying attention to is watching industry find ways to adapt this technology into a user friendly way in their platforms. And so I do want to start before we get into kind of talking about what you’re doing. I would curiously ask how did you all approach that you saw a coming. You saw a need to incorporate it. What was that conversation like a year or two however long ago you all started that.
Marcus Popetz: It was actually it happened about a month before the API is for us to integrate chat GPT came out. We were talking to some instructors and actually some some D some distance ed leaders and they’re like this tool is great. My instructors don’t know how to write discussion prompts so man you know and we’re like yeah and then I’m like but I’ve been playing around with a I and man I know we can’t get instructors out to use AI because it’s it’s hard right to go jump in and play with a new platform.
But it’s coming and then a month later the API is opened up and I immediately got our team on it. I’m like we can build this straight into the I am creating a harmonized discussion and we can be like what are you teaching. You’re like and we have always the bypass right and the next step would be like let us give you some examples but if you’re AI phobic just click write my own instructions and carry on it didn’t get in the way it wasn’t mandatory but it’s right there.
You don’t have to go to another website you don’t have to sign up for an account you don’t have to even understand prompting because we put all the instructional design prompting in there for you type of thing so how can you kind of tear down that barrier to say I have two clicks to catch this instructor’s attention. Because if I do more than that they already are too busy to be able to learn new technology so can I blow it in that way and just say just give us two clicks and and and most of them when they see it when they first start they’re like AI man then when they see it they’re like oh wow yeah that would save me a lot of time. We’re like got it you know so then we made it more streamlined and even more in front of them as they go made it the default honestly in the last release after it been live for about a year. Make it the default because so many instructors once they saw it were like yes this please type of thing still bypass it if you want one click to bypass type of thing but I think that’s where a lot of it comes in it’s like yes you could do all of this by just going to any of the period. AI engines but but it’s just there it’s in your LMS it’s easy to use you don’t have to think about it’s not a barrier to entry.
And that was where we started we’ve gone different places from then but that was the initial thing of like what pain point are we trying to solve it’s not AI for AI sake it’s like here is something that instructors by and large either don’t have time for aren’t trained to do or you know whatever the cases can we help solve that problem.
Brad Denison: Awesome I like it yeah I mean on campus. I got a subject matter expert so if I need to learn about economics I know I’m going to go to Dr Ching Lee if I need to learn about a deep dive in the Civil War I’m going to go see Dr Steve Sewell right.
I can’t expect them to also stay on top of these things and so that’s why it’s great to me that y’all companies like yours are paying attention to their needs and so that leads me to the question of what exciting new tools related to AI are coming from harmonize and how will they help enhance the experience both our faculty and students.
Marcus Popetz: Yeah so let me cover a little more what’s there so you’ll see the path going down. We started with that activity generator right and then the very next thing that instructor said was I hate building rubrics and we’re like. We can use AI to tell the students more or less how are they doing on this so that they can get a real time feedback loop we can’t do that ethically if we don’t have the perfect map of what the instructor is expecting from their students but if we can use AI to help you build a rubric we’re going to have more rubric use that’s proven that that’s good because it sets good expectations for students so once again what’s a pedagogy we want them to actually do great move on. But what that allowed us to do was to run a quick AI check if the student if the instructor wants and if the students wants. The student can say just let me know how I’m doing on this rubric and we’ll say like. Focus on rubric criteria for not doing great there I mean we’re nicer than that obviously.
But but we don’t tell him what’s wrong we’re just trying to create that self reflection process so now we’re offering some more that real time feedback. Because so much of the research shows like the first year college students the students who are most in need of help. At least likely to even ask their instructor for help the barrier just to email email the instructor and ask am I doing okay before I turn this in isn’t there.
Right so and we’re not seeing you huge options not every student’s using it but because it’s optional it’s there they can use it. And so that’s the kind of thing we’re pushing into now and that’s come live just a few months ago. The thing we’re going into next is that you know you mentioned all the tools we were working on at the start but the thing a lot of our instructors have asked us for is peer review. Because it’s one of those great ways to get students to interact in a more formal way kind of sidestep also some of the written stuff, but the tools are either really expensive, or they inhale and that’s they’re not great. So we’re like okay we can do that but what’s the main pain point with peer review and they’re like, didn’t start to do it.
And we’re like, yeah, you’re right and then they’re like oh and assigning the students is terrible and we’re like, yeah, you’re right. So, so we solve the student assignment problem that was easy but using the same idea of like if we have a rubric that defines what a good peer review is, we can go through that same coaching process, so that the instructor is still like the voice assessing what’s going on, and whatever it is so they can look at the submitted peer reviews and be like okay great you did a very thorough job. The AI coach helped you get to what thorough meant, but now I can actually take a look at what’s going on and I don’t have to be like look you forgot to access two of the four rubric criteria when you were doing your peer review like the instructor doesn’t have to say that instead they can say, great content.
Now let me dig into your knowledge of what it’s actually done. And that’s the direction we’re looking to go it’s like how do we make it so that the instructor isn’t dealing with the mundane stuff, give the students they need the time they need to be able to get real time feedback make themselves better as far as they can, and then turn to the instructor and let them step in so the instructor time is more valuable right there the subject matter expert they shouldn’t be messing with grammar problems, unless they’re the subject matter expert on grammar in which case, hallelujah. But, but how do we get them to be able to focus more of their subject matter subject matter expertise like in a way like that. And we see that in the data like when the students are using this they will continue to use that AI coach, until they’re not making their work better anymore we put these little trend lines on it.
As soon as they stop seeing those trend lines things are getting better they stop because that’s as good as they can make it. But, but great right, you went through three revisions you made it as good as you can make it now you hand it over to the instructor, and let them assess what happened of course we show all that to the instructor they used it three times this is what did. But it’s kind of like how do we just make the instructor more efficient by taking care of some of these edge cases things that they don’t want to deal with classroom management or activity building or whatever type of thing it is. No I like it.
Brad Denison: And really it’s it’s just like when it comes to working with faculty to create like video content five minute things that are going to be used every semester over and over it’s front load that time put in the effort up front. Save yourself the time the next semester put more time into student engagement student contact student reach out right so this is just more tools and that’s what I love to see that’s coming from from the technology community, community when it comes to higher ed is just more and more tools to make it easier for our faculty to take advantage of the tools that we know already exist out there. And what you’re talking about with like these a tools it’s just another way to help with everything from an iterative process that you’re not having to give constant regular daily feedback to your students, you’re relying on a trained assistant that you’ve cultivated through a which is really fantastic.
So I guess, really, the last question I’ve got for you Marcus here is, is there anything you would like to add anything I didn’t ask anything you didn’t get to touch base on.
Marcus Popetz: No, I don’t think so I mean we’re pushing in other directions with AI but but I won’t say that they’re in our product roadmap because we have to determine if we can actually do them ethically or not. You know it’s things like you have a large class you don’t have time to read all 30 posts every week from every student can we somehow use AI and we have a lot of ideas on this but like to surface the first five things to look at you have more time let’s give you another five or whatever. But we have to be really careful with stuff like that because if we surface the wrong five or we don’t surface a student in a certain way. What does that look like and what if we then have we done more damage then good sure we may have saved the instructor time but did would they have seen something that we missed.
And how do we make sure that happens so there’s a lot of things we’re thinking about along those lines but man you have to be so careful around what the impact of what you’re doing is to make sure you’re not actually causing harm that you’re actually a building things instructor wants which they’ve asked us definitely for that but be doing in a way that you’re actually being helpful. Be great and I guess that’s the thing like so many of these tools out there are revolutionizing education or blah blah blah and it’s just it’s exhausting and and so I just caution people I guess you know take a high take a hard look at everything that’s done with AI and ask like.
If I could have had a TA or an assistant or someone do this task for me would it have been useful. And or some other way to tie it to a real like is this actually good good not learning science type of thing because and it’s the same reason we stay away from things like chatbots because it’s like it could go who knows what direction it could go. And so we’re just not going there and we stay away from grading because we’re like no also not ethical and sure we can.
We could auto grade but and you could then give up on grading but it’s also a really key point to give the student the feedback and then if we’re doing it wrong because I is biased you know sure we’re biased in one way it’s who humans are biased on the way I and another but. And there’s so many ethical problems that are cropping up because of this because it’s so powerful that we can do so much with it but but how do we keep on track with it. I guess that would be my parting thought is be cautious with AI tools put a really hard think on it whether it’s useful or not.
Brad Denison: I like it to give the listeners something to chew on you mentioned the chatbots and kind of how that could go one way or the other and encourage them to see how Watson adapted to being released on the Internet a number of years ago. So if you check out Watson on social media that you’ll let you know how chatbots can go really south really fast.
Yeah. Also Marcus it sounds like when I get around to doing a multi part series on the ethics of AI I’ll be reaching out to you boss so I really appreciate the words on that because caution is key. So ladies and gentlemen if there’s nothing else you’d like to add Marcus I just want to thank you for being on the show today it has been de discussions this was Marcus puppets he is the creator of harmonize it is a suite of collaborative tools that you can learn all about by hitting rewind. But kidding and bad jokes aside Marcus thank you so much for your time today and I do hope to have you back. It sounds good.
