Fall 2024 Community of Practice: Artificial Intelligence

Overview

This semester-long community of practice is for teachers whose pedagogies are seeking to respond to the increasing use of artificial intelligence like OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 and other generative technologies. Click here to download the full CoP description.

Summary

Meetings

11AM-12:15PM Thursdays 9/12, 9/26, 10/10, 10/24, 11/7, 11/21

Meetings held at the CTL plus field trips across campus | Snacks & drinks will be provided

Description

While we may have different thoughts and feelings about AI’s role in education, all of us are increasingly encountering the use of AI (understood broadly to account for emerging, generative, and other technologies) in our teaching. We are also obliged to share our expectations with our students regarding the use of AI for coursework. This community of practice is for educators whose pedagogies are seeking to respond to the increasing use of AI on and off campus.

Together we will explore how AI is changing teaching and learning in higher education, what we do and don’t know about how students engage with it, and how our pedagogies can respond to these changes from our different disciplinary perspectives and ethical commitments. We will also consider what it means for us to think about these issues in the context of Catholic, Jesuit educational principles and frameworks. Over six meetings, we will mix seminar-style discussions with workshop-style activities to both think about and play critically with AI technologies for text and image generation.

Learning objectives

• Develop understandings of AI and how it interacts with teaching and learning

• Grow more comfortable with using/discussing AI in our classrooms and pedagogies

• Produce a collaborative product with contributions from multiple disciplinary perspectives

Deliverables

One goal for the community is to collaboratively write an open-access academic journal article for publication. We will discuss what shape this publication should take together over the course of the semester with volunteers gathering to write after the CoP concludes. Other goals may also include developing sample classroom policies, sample assignments, and recommended teaching practices to be shared with the university community through the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Facilitator team

Lilly Campbell, Associate Professor (English); Maxwell Gray, Digital Scholarship Librarian (Raynor Library); Jenna Green, Teaching Assistant Professor (English); Jen Maney, Director (Center for Teaching and Learning); Melissa Shew, Associate Director of Teaching Excellence (Center for Teaching and Learning); Gabriel Velez, Associate Professor (Education); Larry Zhiming Xu, Assistant Professor (Strategic Communication)

PLEASE REVIEW BEFORE APPLYING

Who Should Apply

We want to cultivate a diverse and inclusive community of interdisciplinary voices and perspectives. So, we welcome applications to join the community from faculty and staff based in the humanities and social sciences as well as those based in the sciences and professional studies. We especially welcome applications from folks who are also interested in collaboratively writing an open-access academic journal article for publication together (see deliverable above).

Application Guidelines

To apply to join the community, please complete this application before August 1, 2024. All applications may not be accepted. Applications will be reviewed and accepted based on their relevance to the goals of the community.

Three more reasons to consider applying

#1

This Community of Practice explicitly aligns with Marquette’s 2031 strategic plan.

Objective 3 of Marquette University’s 2031 strategic plan explicitly aims to advance innovation and excellence in teaching and learning, which fits squarely with the topic and composition of this Community of Practice.

#2

This Community of Practice provides opportunities for faculty to turn their expertise and interests in a scaffolded but flexible community of colleagues.

All communities of practice are characterized by three traits: Individual interest in a certain topic, a desire to learn with others in community, and a desire to put what’s learned into practice.  “[C]ommunities of practice develop around the things that matter to people” (2022).[1] The domain of interest represents the area of competence that brings a group of people together. The second characteristic of the learning partnership is community, recognizing that social networks can bind people together in productive and life-giving ways. The third characteristic, practice, connects the topic of the CoP—in this case, the scholarship of teaching and learning—to the practitioner. In a CoP, the group, through their relationships, aim to improve their practice (broadly understood) and, in this case, contribute to research about teaching and learning. [2]

#3

Engagement with the scholarship of teaching and learning and research about AI more broadly can advance teaching excellence and heighten students’ learning.

The 2030 Boyer Report  elevates teaching excellence aligned with goals in equity in education. This Community of Practice, as an example of a faculty success initiative, aims to create “an inclusive, engaged, and research-informed teaching culture that has the power to shape the experience of every student.”[3] Members of this CoP will aim toward creating at least one collaborative product together and/or in sub-communities.

For more information, please send an email to a member of the facilitator team or to the CTL (ctl@mu.edu) with the subject headline: AI CoP Inquiry.

[1] Rebecca Wilson-Mah, Jo Axe, Elizabeth Childs, Doug Hamilton, and Sophia Palahicky.

“A Collaborative Self-Study: Reflections on Convening a SoTL Community of Practice.” IJ-SoTL, Vol. 16 [2022], No. 2, Art, pg. 4.

[2] Ibid., pg. 4.

[3] The Boyer 2030 Commission. The Equity/Excellence Imperative: A 2030 Blueprint for Undergraduate Education at U.S. Research Universities (2022), pg. 28.