Connection Catalysts

A humanizing element for college courses (all modalities). Sends the cue: Human connection matters to your well-being and cannot be replaced by AI.

The challenge: Human connection is a basic biological need that is increasingly unmet in our students’ lives. Loneliness among young people has reached crisis levels, and many are turning to AI companions to fill the void. As educators, we have an opportunity—and perhaps an obligation—to design learning experiences that foster genuine human connection while building critical AI literacy.

The opportunity: Connection Catalyst Assignments reframe what education is for. Instead of assessments that test whether students can reproduce disciplinary knowledge in isolation, we design assessments that center conversations with other people.

In a moment when AI threatens to make human connection feel increasingly optional, education that requires and rewards authentic human interaction isn’t just pedagogically sound—it’s a form of intervention to support well-being. It’s a declaration that the people in students’ lives matter, and that knowing them deeply is part of what being educated means. It’s also an opportunity for students to experience vulnerability, which research has linked with happiness, creativity, and productivity.

The Loneliness Epidemic

The 2023 U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory declared loneliness and isolation a public health epidemic (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023). The statistics are alarming:

• 79% of adults ages 18-24 report experiencing loneliness—nearly twice the rate of those over 65.
• The health impact of social disconnection equals smoking 15 cigarettes daily and exceeds the risks of obesity and physical inactivity.
• Time spent in-person with friends dropped from 60 minutes daily in 2003 to 20 minutes in 2020 among young people.

AI Cannot Fill the Connection Void

Into this crisis of disconnection, AI products have arrived promising companionship. A significant and growing percentage of people, now use AI chatbots for emotional support and companionship and these rates are higher among teens. But can AI actually meet our need for connection?

Sherry Turkle’s research about how digital technologies influence humans suggests that technologies may be able to simulate thinking but when they similate feeling, it isn’t feeling. Engaging in companionship with artificial intelligence is leading more people to experience a fake sense of empathy, which many accept as “good enough” or “better than nothing.” Turkle’s work, which remains optimistic, warns that such responses may be signs that we expect more from technology than from one another.

Sociologist Allison Pugh’s concept of connective labor (2024) helps explain why AI companions fail to fulfill our basic needs. Connective labor, according to Pugh, is the work of truly seeing another person. It involves two individuals: one who witnesses the other’s experience, recognizes their humanity, and is genuinely open to be affected by the encounter. The other, the witnesser, leans in with trust, choosing to make something important to them vulnerable to the witnesser. Connective labor requires mutuality of risk: both parties must be capable of feeling changed by the interaction. Being aware that your story has changed an algorithm is not the same as knowing you have left a mark on another person’s soul. Despite its value and tremendous impact, practitioners have struggled to find a way to make connective labor thrive in systems engineered for greater efficiency – whether we look at education, nursing, or therapy, the tension between knowing it’s important and making it work has heightened. This is, perhaps, the greatest challenge for implementing this type of assignment.

This is the key insight for educators: AI may be able to help students prepare for human encounters, but it cannot be the encounter. The irreplaceable thing—the connective labor that transforms, heals, and inspires—requires human presence.

Connection Catalysts: A Response

Connection Catalyst Assignments transform traditional academic work into structured opportunities for students to engage authentically with other humans—family members, community members, professionals, and peers—and bring those interactions back into the classroom as primary material for analysis and collective sense-making.

This approach accomplishes something radical in its simplicity: it makes the people in students’ lives intellectually relevant to their education. A grandmother’s immigration story becomes a lesson in history and humanity. A neighbor’s experience with a policy becomes political science material. A professional’s reflections on their work becomes career preparation that no textbook could provide.

Why This Approach Works

It builds AI literacy organically. Students don’t learn about AI’s limitations through lecture—they experience them. When they prepare meaningful questions with AI’s help and then sit across from a person who pauses, sighs, laughs, they experience the uniqueness of human connection that cannot be automated.

It addresses the loneliness crisis directly. Loneliness rates are high. Loneliness occurs when a person experiences a gap between the quality and quantity of human connection they need and that which they actually experience. These assignments scaffolds genuine human contact that might not otherwise happen in lives fragmented by school, work schedules, personal responsibilities, and screens. They also hold the potential to surface and become aware of personal values.

It promotes assessment integrity. Nothing is AI proof. However, these assignments are less likely to be completed by AI because they are relational, rather than transactional, and they require evidence of human encounter—recordings, photographs, specific details that emerge only from presence. Academic integrity becomes a natural byproduct rather than an enforcement challenge.

It generates meaning. Students discover that their coursework connects to real people and real stories. The people they interview often express gratitude for being asked, for having their experiences treated as worthy of attention. These assignments may become a gift rather than a burden.

Ready to Get Started?

Download the Connection Catalyst guide with the five-phase framework, assignment ideas, sample AI prompts for students, assessment criteria, and instructor tips.

References

Office of the Surgeon General. (2023). Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Pugh, A. J. (2024). The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World. Princeton University Press.

Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books.

Turkle, S. (2015). Reclaiming conversation: The power of talk in a digital age. Penguin Press.