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Posted on: GenAI & Education
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Posted by 7 months ago
AI Commons Bulletin 2/3/2025
Human-curated news about generative AI for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

👀 Get an Inside Look at How Students Use a Course Tutor
Social Science educators at Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) found their simple chatbot for learning statistics boosted critical thinking and active learning for some students, who strongly supported its use.

Learn More: https://www.ksh.hu/statszemle_archive/en/2024/2024_02/2024_02_003.pdf

🔮 The Use of AI Isn’t Enough on Its Own to Predict Student Performance
AI’s impact on learning sparks both hype and warnings, with evidence supporting both views. This balance is likely to persist through the next academic year.

Learn More: https://journals.sta.uwi.edu/ojs/index.php/qef/article/view/9338

🎓 DOE’s AI Recommendations for Postsecondary Education
Establish transparent policies
Create/expand infrastructure to support AI
Rigorously test and evaluate AI-driven tools, supports, and services
Forge partnerships with industry, nonprofit, and other HE institutions
Review and update program offerings to address the growing impact of AI on future careers

Learn More: https://tech.ed.gov/ai-postsecondary/

👀 Soon Students Can Let ChatGPT “See” Their Screen
Expect this to have a big impact on teaching and learning practices. Some of the possible ways an AI could assist a student:
- Walk through a multi-step assignment
- Tutor how to use a software application
- Provide feedback as the student sketches out an answer
- Craft an answer to an instructor's question during a synchronous online course

Learn More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIQDnWlwYyQ

Bulletin items compiled by MJ Jackson and Sarah Freye with production assistance from Lisa Batchelder. Get the AI-Commons Bulletin on our Microsoft Teams channel, at aicommons.commons.msu.edu, or by email (send an email to aicommons@msu.edu with the word “subscribe”).

Posted on: #iteachmsu
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Posted by over 3 years ago
If ever you have utilized a collaborative approach in your courses, you might be familiar with the following. Sometime just after the middle of the semester, a student contacts you complaining about various problems and/or people within their team during the first nine or ten weeks of the term. Typically, it is clear from the language of such emails that these young adults want someone else to step in and address the litany of issues described. Yet a large part of student-centered learning is providing young minds with the tools necessary to help them navigate our courses with a reasonable amount of success as well as the skills necessary for our students to address any related interpersonal challenges. For many undergraduates in 2022, learning to manage the latter, in particular, is one area where guidance is often necessary. Here is the language I now use to provide helpful suggestions that keep students in the driver's seat without helicoptering in to the rescue myself:


Thank you for your email X. Your frustration is certainly understandable. The issue(s) you describe are something that the entire team should address together in order to determine a concrete and efficient way forward. Communication, problem solving, conflict resolution, and revision of team work habits or processes are all part of effective collaboration.

With that in mind, take a proactive approach to the points outlined in your email. That means ALL of you should collaborate to identify the exact problems hindering the team. A passive ‘wait and see’ approach will not change the situation. Neither will a round of strident text messages or email back and forth between team members. What will help is for all team members to prioritize a meeting in real time plus their direct involvement in making concrete decisions to improve the dynamic and move ahead in the most efficient way possible.

Whether your team meets online or face to face, have an honest yet civil discussion to determine and implement the changes team members deem necessary. This is not easy, but it is vital for improving the situation. Positive change in a team setting comes through strategic, organized, and well-executed plans with specific goals identified and carried out in an orderly manner.

Beginning this sort of conversation might feel uncomfortable, but it is necessary. Contact your other team members right away. Arrange a meeting in real time to pinpoint and address the ongoing issues within the team. Brief explainer videos, part of each course module, provide tips for effective collaboration, but here are three for review that are most relevant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDX61xCHN74&t=58s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BghSivQlhVY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIuTi83L0vE


It is also beneficial for the entire team to revisit its list of values developed early in the semester plus the specific member roles determined at that point. These tasks were part of Week Three team activities when weekly collaboration began. Likewise, have a look again at your collective responses to questions on the team assessment worksheets, part of the collaborative work for Week Six and Week 11. On those, your team took stock of its processes and work habits followng completion of Project #1 and Project #2. Your team also identified collective steps it could take to improve collaboration as part of that work.

Keep in mind that active collaboration to address team issues is solid practice for life in the globalized digital economy of the 21st century where 'teams' are the norm. In most fields now, no single person is responsible for project research, development, and completion. Cohesive teamwork is the name of the game.

Careful attention to the guidance above will help your team have a productive discussion, pull together, and move forward more effectively in the time remaining this semester. Your student learning team is in the driver’s seat and has the power to do this.

Kind Regards,

Prof. Y



Keep in mind that the intent is to guide and empower young adults in navigating their own lives. The language offered above might be too forthright for some, but it gets to the heart of the matter and communicates to students that their interpersonal issues are something they must learn to handle now if they have not already done so. After all, the adult world following graduation is not that far off, and we do our students no favors by taking care of their problems for them.

The language presented works for individual queries but can also be sent to the entire student learning team as a reminder with appropriate changes made. If this idea sounds like something you might like to try yourself, feel free to tailor the reply above to your own needs.


Posted on: Reading Group for Student Engagement and Success
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Posted by almost 4 years ago
My background in Scandinavian languages and literature keeps rearing its head in various ways after many years. Specifically,when it comes to folklore, magical tales, and perilous journeys toward maturation. In a way, I have become a pedagogical Ashland, of sorts, since coming to MSU in 2015. My journey, an ongoing quest if you will, has been in trying to find that one magical key, which will unlock the enchanted door to greater student interest and involvement in their general education course requirements.

Those of us who teach these courses know that, too often, many students view gen. ed. requirements as hoops to jump through. Something they must satisfy to graduate. Subjects that, they feel, have little to do with the real world, their intended majors, or envisioned careers. Scheduling and convenience more than genuine interest seem to be the determining factor for many students when they choose to enroll in such courses. Put the head down, muddle through, and get it done with as little effort as possible.

But there might be another way.

In my own ongoing quest to motivate and engage the students in my various IAH courses more effectively, I have come back to Bloom's Taxonomy again and again since first learning about it in the 2016-2017 Walter and Pauline Adams Academy cohort. More specifically, it is Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, revised by various scholars for use with 21st century students who exist in an increasingly digital world, that has been especially useful when it comes to designing assessments for my students.

For those who are interested, there are all kinds of sources online -- journal article pdfs, infographics, Youtube explainer videos, etc. -- that will be informative and helpful for anyone who might be interested in learning more. Just search for 'Bloom's Digital Taxonomy' on Google. It's that easy.

For my specific IAH courses, I organize my students into permanent student learning teams early each semester and ask them to create three collaborative projects (including a team reflection). These are due at the end of Week Five, Week 10, and Week 14. Right now, the projects include:

1) A TV Newscast/Talkshow Article Review Video in which teams are ask to locate, report on, review, and evaluate two recent journal articles pertinent to material read or viewed during the first few weeks of the course.

2) A Readers' Guide Digital Flipbook (using Flipsnack) that reviews and evaluates the usefulness of two books, two more recent journal articles, and two blogs or websites on gender and sexuality OR race and ethnicity within the context of specific course materials read or viewed during roughly the middle third of the course.

3) An Academic Poster (due at the end of Week 14) in which student teams revisit course materials and themes related to gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and identity. In addition, students are asked to examine issues of power, marginalization, disparity, equity, etc. in those same sources and look at how these same issues affect our own societies/cultures of origin in the real world. Finally, student teams (in course as diverse as Film Noir of the 1940s and 50s, Horror Cinema, and the upcoming Contemporary Scandinavian and Nordic Authors) are asked to propose realistic, concrete solutions to the social problems facing us.


Anecdotally, student feedback has been largely very favorable so far. Based on remarks in their team reflections this semester (Fall 2021), students report that they enjoy these collaborative, creative projects and feel like they have considerable leeway to shape what their teams develop. Moreover, they also feel that they are learning quite a bit about the material presented as well as valuable 21st century employability skills in the process. Where their all important assignment grades are concerned, student learning teams in my courses are meeting or exceeding expectations with the work they have produced for the first two of three team projects this semester according to the grading rubrics currently in use.

Beginning in Spring 2022, I plan to give my student teams even more agency in choosing how they are assessed and will provide two possible options for each of the three collaborative projects. Right not, these will probably include:

Project #1 (Recent Journal Article Review and Evaluation)-- Powtoon Animated TV Newscast OR Infographic

Project #2 -- (Review and Evaluation of Digital Sources on Gender and Sexuality OR Race and Ethnicty in our specific course materials) a Digital Flipbook OR Podcast

Project #3 -- (Power, Marginality, Disparity, Equity in Course Materials and Real World of 21st Century Problem-Solving) an Interactive E-Poster OR Digital Scrapbook.

Through collaborative projects like these, I am attempting to motivate and engage the students in my IAH courses more effectively, help them to think more actively and critically about the material presented as well as the various social issues that continue to plague our world, and provide them with ample opportunity to cultivate essential skills that will enable their full participation in the globalized world and economy of the 21st century. Bloom's (Revised) Digital Taxonomy, among other resources, continues to facilitate my evolving thought about how best to reach late Gen Y and Gen Z students within a general education context.

If anyone would like to talk more about all of this, offer constructive feedback, or anything else, just drop me a line. I am always looking for those magic beans that will increase student motivation and engagement, and eager to learn more along the way. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy has certainly been one of my three magical helpers in the quest to to do that.

Takk skal dere ha!

Posted on: Online & Hybrid Learning Group
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Posted by over 5 years ago
Adopt the 5 main resources for managing online experiences at MSU: Microsoft 365, Google docs, Zoom, Mediaspace, D2L. These tools at MSU are provided to all students (domestic and international) faculty, and staff. These tools are also supported by MSU IT. Take advantage of them! :)
Posted on: Teaching Toolkit Tailgate
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Posted by about 5 years ago
MEGAN - when it comes to digital T&L or research (especially qual), I'm intimidated by what feels like a "missing" human component - the conversations and sometimes the emotions can get warped, misinterpreted, or even missed altogether... Do you have advice or experience with keeping the humanness in our online/digital work?

Posted on: #iteachmsu
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Posted by about 4 years ago
I just heard about the idea of "enduring understandings" and thought I'd share some resources that have been helpful. This website from the Pedagogy Resources at the University of Alaska Fairbank (UAF) has lots of great info! From a brief explanation of the concept to applying the ideas in your course (including considerations for online) - I'm excited to think more about what this looks like in my day-to-day.

https://iteachu.uaf.edu/enduring-understandings/

Attached below is the UAF Understanding by Design Tree, a tool to help in planning your course as a way to help identify what you expect students to get out of the course and how those “results” will be distributed between assignments and scaffolded through course content.
ubd_tree_2016.pdf

Posted on: GenAI & Education
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Posted by 9 months ago
AI Commons Bulletin 12/16/2024
Human-curated news about generative AI for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

💚 New CTLI Resource for Using AI in Courses
Very practical introduction to AI at MSU. Details for accessing MSU’s licensed Co-Pilot. Step-by-step instructions on using AI for:
1. Writing emails to students.
2. Summarizing your course videos.
3. Designing lesson rubrics.
4. Forming learning objectives.

Learn More: http://bit.ly/SLXD_07

🏹 Open AI targeting K-12 Educators
Can Higher Ed be far behind? At the very least, increased use in K-12 will shape our incoming students. Topics in the new Open AI free online course: What is ChatGPt and how does it work, ways to use ChatGPT in teaching, best practices for responsible AI in a school setting.

Learn More: https://www.commonsense.org/education/training/chatgpt-k12-foundations

💚 ChatGPT for Natural Course Design
MSU educators explore how using ChatGPT enhances course design by improving structure, aligning objectives, and generating engaging content. Key challenges include content inconsistencies and a steep learning curve, highlighting the need for AI literacy to maximize its potential while managing risks.

Learn More: Kumar, J. A., Zhuang, M., & Thomas, S. (2024). ChatGPT for natural sciences course design: Insights from a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis. Natural Sciences Education, 53, e70003. https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nse2.70003

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