The following update was shared by Jason Rhode, associate vice provost for Teaching, Learning, and Digital Education, at the Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and Personnel Committee meeting of the NIU Board of Trustees on May 9, 2024.
Thank you for the opportunity to share briefly today about our institutional efforts supporting AI use for teaching and learning.
Teaching and learning are at the core of our university mission, guiding our commitment to fostering a vibrant academic community where students and faculty collaboratively pursue knowledge and growth. We work tirelessly to ensure that our teaching practices are innovative, inclusive, and designed to meet the needs of a diverse student body. Whether it's through traditional lectures, interactive workshops, community-based projects, or research collaborations, we aim to provide a comprehensive learning experience that empowers students to become critical thinkers, effective communicators, and responsible global citizens.
Our amazing team in the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) provides comprehensive services supporting excellent teaching and learning at NIU and has been doing so for the past 25 years.
We provide support for everyone who teaches at NIU at all ranks and classifications through professional development, individual consultations, and a robust library of just-in-time resources. Further, we support teaching in all modalities, from fully in-person courses through blended, hybrid, and fully online teaching and learning. We also provide higher levels of support for the design and delivery of courses included in our fully online programs and for the students in those programs, from initial inquiry through graduation.
One aspect of that support is providing extensive support for integrating technology in teaching. For example, we provide training and support for teaching with Blackboard, our learning management system, as well as a number of web-based tools that support student connection and engagement. We are also collaborating with the Division of IT on supporting digital literacy across the curriculum through our designation as an Adobe Creative Campus. We also partner with the Office of the Provost and the Division of IT on updating the technology in our learning spaces and providing support to our faculty to use that technology.
This past academic year we offered over 100 programs for over 1,000 attendees on fundamental principles of teaching, innovative teaching and learning strategies, hybrid and online teaching, and the use of technology in teaching. In fact, this past year we worked individually with over 700 unique faculty, teaching staff, and graduate teaching assistants on over 2,000 occasions.
Certainly, generative AI became a significant disrupter in higher education in late 2022 and early 2023 and was featured prominently in higher education-focused news sources like the Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed, and Educause. Faculty everywhere were concerned about how student access to generative AI would undermine their existing assessment strategies. They also worried about how to best prepare students to live and work in a Gen-AI world, despite having little experience with these tools.
It was during this time as these conversations began across higher education, we sought to hear from our faculty their questions and concerns about generative AI and looked for ways to connect faculty for conversations to address these concerns, but more importantly begin to explore opportunities to further enhance the teaching and learning experiences for our students with the power of AI.
As we had a better understanding of the emerging faculty questions about AI, we leveraged local expertise from NIU faculty and staff who have been working with and researching artificial intelligence for years. These faculty graciously participated in faculty panel discussions on AI in teaching that were widely attended and recorded and are now available as on-demand resources for faculty.
When faculty consider the many new and ever-changing AI tools, the ubiquitous and exponential nature of these tools can make it difficult to know where to start and how they might be best used in the classroom. With input from our faculty experts, we’ve established an AI in Teaching Toolkit that provides resources for all those who teach to explore generative artificial intelligence and how to get started with applying AI in their teaching.
Elements include a quick start guide, recommendations for teaching with AI and about AI, samples of course-level policies that faculty can adapt for their syllabi, and information specifically on how to use AI, such as our guides on ChatGPT and a brand-new guide on using the free version of Microsoft Copilot, which all NIU faculty, staff, and students can access via their NIU credentials. Our Microsoft 365 license provides commercial data protection, which ensures confidentiality and privacy for students when using AI, something that many educators are justifiably concerned about.
This toolkit is ever-evolving as new tools become available and our overall understanding and acceptance of generative AI tools expands.
While we work to strategize about generative AI at an institution level, faculty also have to make decisions about how to approach AI at the course level. One of the key resources in the AI toolkit is a list of sample policies that approach AI in diverse ways. For example, these two samples come from the same institution and offer sample language for those who want to encourage or prohibit the use of AI.
[This syllabus statement is useful when you are allowing, and perhaps encouraging, broad use of generative AI tools.]
You are welcome/expected to use generative AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Dall-e, etc.) in this class as doing so aligns with the course learning goal [insert the course learning goal use of AI aligns with]. You are responsible for the information you submit based on an AI query (for instance, that it does not violate intellectual property laws, or contain misinformation or unethical content). Your use of AI tools must be properly documented and cited in order to stay within university policies on academic honesty. For example, [Insert citation style for your discipline. See these resources for APA guidance, and for other citation formats.]
[This syllabus statement is useful when you are forbidding all use of generative AI tools for any purpose in your class.]
The use of generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, etc.) are not permitted in this class; therefore, any use of AI tools for work in this class may be considered a violation of Temple University’s Academic Honesty policy and Student Conduct Code, since the work is not your own. The use of unauthorized AI tools will result in [insert the penalty here*].
While we don’t have an institution-wide policy, some units, like First Year Composition, have developed guidelines for their faculty and instructors to follow. In their case, they encourage a policy that does not fully prohibit use but instead offers guidance for when or how AI use would be permitted.
One of the first instructional technologies that we have adopted at NIU to add AI-driven functionality is Blackboard. Based on an underlying Trustworthy AI Framework that sets parameters for when and how Blackboard will integrate AI, the AI Design Assistant utilizes generative AI to help faculty be more efficient in key course development tasks, such as generating images for use in the course, writing test questions, designing authentic assessment prompts that are AI-resistant, and generating rubrics. Faculty must always review and approve any content generated by AI via the Blackboard AI Design Assistant, and they are able to modify any aspects of the AI-generated materials.
The pilot this semester has been quite successful – 75 faculty participated, and feedback from participants has been quite positive.
This spring, we were able to extend our partnership with the Association of College and University Educators, or ACUE. We have partnered with ACUE for 4 years to offer their year-long course on Effective Teaching Practices and the shorter microcredential on Fostering a Culture of Belonging. This spring, ACUE introduced a 4-course quick study series on teaching with artificial intelligence. These are designed with higher education faculty and instructors in mind and discuss AI both from a conceptual perspective as well as from a more practical, hands-on approach.
Topics include:
We had 60 slots available in the spring semester for faculty to participate and were thrilled to fill every available spot. While the courses are still ongoing, we have heard anecdotally that faculty participants have appreciated the opportunity to participate in the courses.
One such faculty member emailed us to share,
“I just finished and wanted to let you know that I am grateful to have been able to participate in the ACUE Teaching with AI Quick Study Series. It was extremely helpful and well-structured! I'm going to implement some activities and assignments in my courses that I would never have been able to do without the resources provided.”
As AI opportunities continue to rapidly advance and evolve, Provost Elish-Piper has formed an AI Action Team and charged this team to develop an initial plan for short-term strategies to address AI opportunities at NIU to support student recruitment, student success, teaching, curriculum, and academic programs.
Current members of the AI Action Team include:
We have a great team of faculty and university leaders assembled whose expertise and shared leadership will be essential in helping to chart our next steps.
To help further inform this work with current faculty perspectives, Dr. Andrea Guzman, Associate Professor of Communication and who is chair of the AI Action Team and renowned expert on artificial intelligence, facilitated two meet-ups this semester with educators from across campus. One session was in-person and the other was virtual; over 40 individuals attended the sessions. Dr. Guzman facilitated conversation at both events to explore what faculty were already doing to incorporate AI in their courses and what they envisioned for the future of AI at NIU. She facilitated 2 similar conversations that focused on researchers.
Once compiled, these results and additional faculty perspective will be shared with the AI Action Team and inform next steps in developing the plan to further address AI opportunities.
AI is no doubt a rapidly evolving field. It is unclear what future support exactly will be needed. In the meantime, we will continue to support faculty as they develop their own skills in using AI and provide space where faculty can collaborate and explore.
As additional instructional technologies incorporate AI, we will need to be critical consumers of technology and thoughtful about how we remain competitive as an institution while providing appropriate protections for our students.
“AI is a powerful tool that can be used to create new and innovative learning experiences for students. However, it is important to remember that AI is not a silver bullet. It is important to use AI in a thoughtful and intentional way, and to ensure that students are equipped with the skills they need to use AI responsible.”
- Dr. Sarah Rose Cavanagh
If you’d like to learn more on the various faculty supports and resources we touched on this morning, you can visit the AI toolkit at go.niu.edu/ai-toolkit.
Phone: 815-753-0595
Email: citl@niu.edu
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