We found 27 results that contain "open textbooks"

Hello Colleagues,

I’m writing to inform you that the MSU Libraries' Open Educational Resources Award Program call for applications for the academic year 2023-2024 opens today.

Now in its 5th year, the OER Award Program provides financial incentives and support to instructors interested in adopting, adapting, or creating OER as an alternative to traditional learning materials to advance our goals of affordability, access, equity, and student success.

Please visit https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/oer/award or consult the attached Call for Proposals to learn more about the application categories, eligibility, participation requirements, timelines, and criteria for evaluation. Application forms are available at https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/oer/award, and the deadline for submission is February 12, 2024.

The OER Advisory Committee will meet to review applications, and successful awardees will be notified on March 1, 2024.

Please feel free to share this information with interested colleagues.

Sincerely,
Linda

Registration is now open for the Basic Needs Educator Training, which will be held in-person on Tuesday, April 2nd from 9:30AM-11:30AM. This training aims to equip MSU advisors and instructors with knowledge and skills to identify and support students who are having difficulty in meeting one or more basic needs. The training will cover how to navigate these sensitive situations with compassion, respect boundaries, and connect students with campus and community resources.

Participants will also have an opportunity to put together finals week thriving kits to take back to their spaces and share with students. A wishlist has been created if you are interested in donating items for the finals week thriving kits. All items not used for the thriving kits will be donated to divisions on campus that stock free self-care items and toiletries for students, including the Student Parent Resource Center. Items are linked to Amazon but do not have to be purchased from this site.

Upon successful completion of the Basic Needs Educator Training, attendees will receive a digital certificate of completion.

Recommended Prerequisite: Attend or watch all recordings from the four Basic Needs Series presentations. All session recordings can be found on iteachmsu: https://iteach.msu.edu/pathways/437/playlist

Register here for the Basic Needs Educator Training: https://bookings.lib.msu.edu/calendar/CTLI/BasicEducatorTraining

Space is limited, please sign-up soon if interested!

Applications are now open for the AT&T Excellence in Teaching with Technology Awards, which recognize effective uses of instructional technology to support student success in credit-bearing courses at MSU. Faculty, instructors, and teaching assistants can submit applications starting Sept. 1 through Oct. 28.

More info: https://attawards.msu.edu/

AI Commons Bulletin 2/19/2025

🧠 AI Tools Soon to Decide How Much They Need to “Think”
Expect the answers from AI tools to generally improve over the next few months, as more of them incorporate “reasoning” into their process. These are models that can discern when a prompt is more complex and would require a multi-step reasoning process. OpenAI is starting this with ChatGPT soon.

Learn More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtwK3hBAjDY

📗 Five Generations of Intelligent Textbooks
Sosnovsky & Brusilovsky compile the literature on intelligent textbooks and organize five generations:
Engineered: AI-powered adaptive reading.
Integrated: Linked with external smart content.
Extracted: AI analyzes and structures knowledge.
Datamined: Tracks student engagement for insights.
Generated: AI creates content, questions, & chatbots
Learn More: Sosnovsky, S., Brusilovsky, P. & Lan, A. Intelligent Textbooks. Int J Artif Intell Educ (2025).

🚫 Guidance for Uses of AI Banned by EU’s AI Act
The EU regulates AI much more than the US does. When it adopted the AI Act, it banned “unacceptable risk” uses, but didn’t provide much explanation. A new report lays out examples, including manipulative, deceptive, and exploitative practices.

Learn More: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/112367

⏳ Waiting 5-10 Minutes for an AI to Answer?! What?!
Deep Research is a newer function of Google’s AI, Gemini. You can ask it an extended question and it will break it down into parts, research each part (including multiple web searches), and write up a report you can download. It’s available both on the web and on Android. Additional $ required.

Learn More: https://youtu.be/IBKRyI5m_Rk

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”).

More on ChatGPT in the classroom from Matt Miller of Ditch That Textbook fame:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNJ5yAuspq8

And some practical suggestions, again from Matt MIller of Ditch That Textbook, on how we can integrate ChatGPT into classroom practices and activities:

https://ditchthattextbook.com/ai/#t-1671292150924

I plan to try some of these in class on Monday.

AI Commons Bulletin 12/18/2024
Human-curated news about generative AI for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

🍔 Try This: Use AI to generate scenario examples

If you often use examples and scenarios in your lectures, AI can refresh them or generate new ones quickly.

BUT: Characters in gen AI scenarios can display a bias toward western culture. To mitigate, add this to your prompt “Ensure that the name used is gender inclusive and representative of a diverse cultural/ethnic background” (Mirowsky, 2024)

Learn More: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00844/suppl_file/ed4c00844_si_001.pdf

🧲 Google Releases New “Learn About” AI Tool

The tool “helps you explore academic topics & concepts.” The layout resembles a textbook, includes additional audio and video sources, and further topics are even organized by terms that Bloom’s uses under comprehension: Understand, Explain, Describe.

BUT: Learning is not saved. Once you close the page, the session is gone.

Learn More: https://learning.google.com/experiments/learn-about

📗 Syllabus Statements

Students want to know what is or is not allowed in using AI for a course:
1. No AI
2. AI Planning
3. AI Collaboration
4. Full AI
5. AI Exploration

Learn More: Perkins, M., Roe, J., & Furze, L. (2024). The AI Assessment Scale Revisited: A Framework for Educational Assessment (No. arXiv:2412.09029). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2412.09029

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”).

I am hosting a discussion of Badging at MSU. Monday at 4 at the tech summit. Here is a link to my outline. https://bit.ly/msu_badging. If you are interested in badging/digital microcredentials, I hope to see you there.