New Project: Preparing Students and Educators for Ethical AI Integration in Higher Education
AI + teaching project will develop educational resources & pedagogical strategies to support ethical integration of AI, informed by interdisciplinary research on AI impacts on teaching and learning.
I am excited to announce that a team I'm co-leading was awarded a $75,000 Fund for Excellence and Innovation grant from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
About the project…
Preparing Students and Educators for Ethical AI Integration in Higher Education
This cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary project will develop educational resources to support students and instructors in navigating the ethical integration of AI in postsecondary education, including actionable guidelines, pedagogical strategies, and policy recommendations. It will focus on the key areas of student onboarding, assignment design, assessment, personalized feedback, accessibility, and open educational resources (OER). The educational resources, developed by a team of faculty and staff from George Mason University, James Madison University, the university of Virginia, Roanoke College, and Bridgewater College, will be evidence-based, informed by cutting-edge pedagogical research on these topics conducted by graduate students, faculty, and staff across colleges and universities in Virginia, as well as the evolving scholarly literature. Findings from the team’s own research in this domain will be used to create faculty development materials to support synchronous and asynchronous workshops and learning opportunities for instructors across the state.
Past work in this area…
The project will leverage the networks and resources of the Virginia Educational Development Collaborative (VEDC), a network of faculty developers, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Collaboratory, a multi-institutional community of practice. Prior work of these two organizations, conducted in academic years (AY) 2020-2023, focused on developing a network of state-wide faculty development opportunities supporting transparent and equitable assignment design principles, and developing processes and best practices for supporting faculty in conducting scholarly inquiry into their teaching and their students’ learning (funded by a 4VA grant). With the rapid rise of interest in and use of AI tools in teaching and learning, efforts in AY 2023-2024 have focused on supporting the development of interdisciplinary, cross-institutional research teams to engage in inquiry about the impacts of AI on teaching and learning.
By bringing together experts across disciplines, including an advisory board of representatives from business and industry across the state, this project will create new and strengthen existing efforts in AI academic integration and student outreach in postsecondary education. It will empower students and instructors to harness the potential of AI while upholding principles of equity, transparency, and human dignity, so that students are equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world. The project will benefit instructors and students across the state by providing access to rigorous research and emerging insights on AI impacts on teaching and learning, open access repositories of AI integration resources, professional development workshops and training modules to increase knowledge and responsiveness. Key to each of these will be the input of employers across the state and across a variety of fields through the business/industry leaders advisory board and inviting industry leaders as co-facilitators of the workshop series, including the AI Career Pathways Showcase. Students will benefit through enhanced learning experiences and personalized supports, access to quality resources to support student understanding of AI capacities to aid learning, enhancement of AI literacy and critical evaluation skills for the emerging technologies shaping the workforce.
Basically, over the next 30 months, we will be doing all kinds of cool stuff with AI-integrated teaching!
Project leads
Dr. Breana Bayraktar – Blended Learning/Hybrid Pedagogy Specialist, Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning, George Mason University
Dr. Dayna Henry – Interim Assistant Director, Center for Faculty Innovation, James Madison University
Dr. Jessica Taggart – Assistant Director, Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Virginia
Project personnel
Dr. Tim Ball – Professor, School of Communication Studies; Faculty Associate, Center for Faculty Innovation, James Madison University
Dr. Amanda Bryan – Assistant Professor, Department of English, George Mason University
Dr. Sevinj Iskandarova – Assistant Professor, Department of Economics and Business Administration, Bridgewater College
Meghan Jester – Director of Career Exploration, Roanoke College
Gwen Nuss – Coordinator of Assessment/Data Analyst, Roanoke College
Prof. J.H. (Rip) Verkerke – T. Munford Boyd Professor of Law; Earle K. Shawe Professor of Employment Law, University of Virginia
Fang Yi – Assistant Director, Learning Design and Technology, University of Virginia
Get involved!
We will be recruiting for various ways to participate in this project.
faculty reviewers of student onboarding materials, OER teaching supports, and other resources
faculty, staff, and student research participants
volunteers for the business/industry advisory board
Stay up-to-date…
I invite you to subscribe to the AI+ Teaching section of this newsletter to get regular project updates, calls for participation, and opportunities to engage with the project team as the research and faculty development materials progress.
Congratulations on the grant! Excited to see what comes out of this. Feel free to reach out if my background in engineering education or technology development might be helpful in support of the project.
congratulations!