A few quick updates & (AI) resources

It has been a busy semester! As a part of my work I’ve been tasked with co-facilitating a series of conversations around Artificial Intelligence and education.  As a part of this work, I helped to facilitate two workshops a few weeks ago and I’m sharing them out here for others to (re)use, remix, recycle. Both were highly interactive in nature and intentionally constructed to not be a “sit and get” session (there are plenty of those (many great!) that are out there.)

The first workshop (co-facilitated with Marta Bustillo & Emily Smith) is up on Humanities Commons:

Artificial Intelligence and Ethical Practice in Teaching and Learning Facilitator Guide

These are the materials associated with a one-hour workshop on artificial intelligence and ethical practice for higher education faculty, staff and students. This workshop aims to facilitate a conversation in higher education contexts about ethical ways of using AI for teaching, learning and research using three lenses: An educational lens [e.g. what is the impact of AI on teaching and learning practice?] An accessibility lens [e.g. how does AI affect accessibility of learning materials, assessment and the overall educational experience?] An information acquisition and management lens [e.g. how can we evaluate, use and trust information created using AI?] The workshop draws heavily from the Civics of Technology Project: https://www.civicsoftechnology.org/

 

The second was a “share and swap shop” session co-facilitated with Leone Gately. The “secret mission” doc can be found here and helps to support the activity.  Below, you’ll find an associated recap post shared with the community post-activity.

Over the past two weeks there were quite a few campus events and conversations related to Generative AI. First, was a conversation hosted by the Digital Literacies Community of Practice focused on the ethics of AI in teaching and learning. The second was our own Community Conversation (which we will recap shortly in this post) and there was also the WST October Roundtable on Disruptive Technology with a panel discussion on AI.  We know many conversations are happening across campus in informal and formal contexts – please feel free to chime in with events in this space here!

In addition to enjoying a networking lunch at our first Community Conversation we had some time to gather input into what people were already doing with AI and to generate ideas for future conversations.

When asked What AI Tools are you already using? these are some of the tools that were frequently mentioned:

Bard (other Google tools)
Bing
Casper.AI
ChatGPT
Dall-E

When asked What AI tools are you interested in learning more about? these are some of the tools were listed (There was also a desire to learn more about educational, visual and business AI tools broadly.):
Bard
Bing
ChatGPT 4
Consensus
Eduaide.ai
Grammarly
MidJourney
Otter.ai
Swapp.ai 

We also engaged in a collaborative activity to brainstorm educational experiences to help others learn more about topics related to AI. There was a strong desire for more conversations related to guidance around the use of AI and for opportunities to try out new tools. The focus of our February conversation will be “play and display” style and we will ask participants to come with tools to share and we will have opportunities for collective sharing and experimenting with various generative AI tools.  If you would like to volunteer to “display” or share, please get in touch!