ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING AT UD

Created in May 2023, the AI for Teaching and Learning Working Group represents the broad educational landscape of the University. The working group meets monthly to help guide the University of Delaware in the development of innovative practices and sound policies regarding the use of emerging AI tools.

The purpose of this series is to help UD faculty and staff start to grapple with how AI might change the nature of teaching and learning in higher education by understanding foundational concepts related to AI and large language models (LLMs), implications of AI and LLMs within different higher education disciplines, and implications of AI and LLMs on the future of work. 

Multiple in-person and virtual seminars will provide insight into the broad topics of:

• AI: Strengths, Limitations, Ethics, and Accessibility

  • This first part of the series will inform the audience of foundational concepts related to understanding and contextualizing AI in life and society. These concepts relate to understanding what AI and LLMs are and how they work, their strengths and limitations, and ethical considerations related to their construction and utilization.

• Implication of AI for Teaching and Learning and the Future of Higher Education

  • This part of the series will engage the audience in considering how AI and LLMs may change how we teach and, considering the topics in Part 2, what the future of higher education looks like. 

• Preparing Students for the Future of Work

  • These sessions will engage the audience in considering how AI and LLMs are changing the nature of work in major industries, and the implications of those changes on how we prepare students to enter those fields. Sessions in this part of this will illustrate current initiatives taken in certain disciplines to provide AI-related education and training to UD students and/or sharing debates and concerns within a field/program/department. 

Most seminars are hybrid events, and registration is required. When registering, please denote whether you plan to attend virtually or in person.

Upcoming seminars:

Virtual AI Information and Demo Session for Faculty

Are you curious about generative artificial intelligence, how it can be leveraged in your classroom, and what pitfalls and promises it might hold for student learning and your teaching? Join the UD AI Working Group to explore the opportunities and challenges of integrating generative AI into your teaching practice. This virtual event will highlight insights gathered throughout an AI seminar series held this past year and feature lightning talks by UD faculty who have firsthand experience implementing these tools into their teaching. Following the presentations, you will have the opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of adopting generative AI tools with a community of your peers. The session will provide you with a grounding in the functions of at least on generative AI teaching tool and how those functions can contribute to an improved teaching, learning or assessment experience for your students. This session will be offered on three dates:

• April 24 from 12-1:30 p.m. Register here.
• April 29, 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. Register here.
• May 3, 1-2:30 p.m. Register here.

Implications of AI on Training the Next Generation of Healthcare Workers and Business Leaders

May 2, 1-2 p.m., hybrid

Generative AI is profoundly impacting Human Resource (HR) development. Using a framework drawn from the presenter's co-edited book project on this topic, this seminar delves into the evolving role of AI in HR, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges it presents. It will cover key topics like personalized learning, adaptive training for HR professionals, and ethical considerations of AI in HR. The discussion extends to future trends and the integration of AI into HR training. Concluding, the seminar stresses the need for curriculum adaptation and continuous learning in response to an AI-enhanced future. This exploration of generative AI's impacts on HR offers insights into AI's broader implications for workforce preparation, emphasizing the need for universities to adapt their educational approaches accordingly. This is the final seminar for the 2023-24 academic year.

Register here.

Previous seminars:

Large Language Models — Challenges and Opportunities

Sept. 26, 2023 — Large language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT are changing many aspects of our lives, such as how we access online information and how we learn. This talk explored the mystery of LLMs and discussed the challenges and opportunities in this new era of AI.  

Watch the recording of the seminar here

Ethical Considerations in AI

Oct. 19, 2023 — This seminar presented two engaging talks. One delved into ethical and conceptual issues surrounding Generative AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), in the context of research misconduct. The second explored the duty of teachers to support students in learning to use AI and to resist the temptation to limit teaching to the tools that happened to be available in the past.

Watch a recording of the seminar here.

Pitfalls and Promise: Generative AI, Disability, and Access

Nov. 6, 2023 — This talk considered the duality of two realities disabled people face in the context of their everyday lives, and specifically, generative AI. The first, considerations of people with disabilities and our experiences are often left out of decision-making processes which produce policy, like those being made within the university and individual classrooms. The second, we are often the "test market" and expert users of many tools used by the masses to gain more physical and electronic access to the world around us, like closed captioning, descriptive audio, voice to text, and other predictive and generative AI tools. 

Watch a recording of the seminar here.

Navigating the AI Landscape: A Framework for Evaluating Assessment Tools in Higher Education

Nov. 29, 2023 — Advanced automated tools, including generative AI open a world of new possibilities for assessing student learning. They can provide immediate, personalized feedback. But determining if a particular tool should be used is complex with many potential questions and decisions. The presenters shared a draft framework that will help faculty make well-informed decisions about the use of AI tools to assess student learning.

Watch a recording of this seminar here. Download the slides here.

AI and the Future of Higher Education

Dec. 7, 2023 — The integration of AI into academia presents unparalleled opportunities for enhancing core university missions of teaching and research, but it also poses significant challenges, from misinformation threats to concerns about equity, intellectual property, and undermining critical thinking. The presenters surveyed the national landscape to see how public research universities are responding to the moment and consider how UD can promote the AI literacy of our students and harness AI's transformative power responsibly.

Watch a recording of this seminar here.

AI and AI – The Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity

Jan. 17, 2024 — This session addressed how students can use AI while still upholding standards of academic integridy and how faculty can define and encourage appropriate use of AI. This session also covered how faculty may identify inappropriate use of AI as well as the range of response options when AI-assisted academic dishonesty occurs.

Watch a recording of this seminar here.

Ethical Use of AI Tools for Research and Publishing 

Feb. 15, 2024 — New tools for quickly and easily finding research publications are exploding in popularity and are being used extensively on campus right now. AI can be controversial: Is it ethical? Does it replicate bias? Can using it infringe copyright? Sometimes the answers to these questions are complicated. This seminar covered effective ways for thinking through these questions when you are exploring particular tools. 

A video recording of this seminar will be posted here when it becomes available.

AI-Powered Career Advancement: Navigating Career Preparation, Recruitment, and Lifelong Learning

Feb. 28, 2024 — Lifelong learning and career preparedness are crucial in our fast-paced, technology-driven economy. Predictions about job security have rapidly shifted over the past few years, highlighting the importance of adaptability, skill development, critical thinking, and problem-solving for both traditional and emerging roles. This session explored the best practices for coaching students in their use of Generative AI in career exploration and job/internship searching as well as how employers utilize Generative AI for recruitment. The session covered how we can support students to be enterprising in their learning for career exploration and reskilling throughout their lives.

Watch a recording of this session here.

The AI Literacy Tutorial was developed by the UD Library, Museums & Press as a resource for students and faculty to start a conversation about appropriate use of artificial intelligence.

The tutorial provides an overview of how large language models (LLM) like ChatGPT work, the limitations of their use, and ethical considerations for the appropriate use of LLMs. Specifically, it describes hallucinations (i.e., when the LLM generates false information), asks you to consider bias embedded within AI, and the appropriate uses for AI tools.

The tutorial takes about 30-40 minutes to complete.

How can faculty use the tutorial?

• To spur a discussion between you and your students acknowledging AI tools and education

• To help you and your students collaboratively craft a policy about appropriate and inappropriate uses of AI tools within your specific course

• To introduce content about bias

• To introduce content about ethics

How can students use the tutorial?

• To learn the basic concepts of AI

• To increase awareness of the appropriate and inappropriate uses of AI

• To consider bias, ethics and other considerations related to AI

The University of Delaware's AI for Teaching and Learning Working Group is part of a two-year partnership with 19 universities to assess AI’s impact on higher education and evaluate institutions’ readiness to implement the technology.