By Joshua Robison / The Jambar
The Youngstown State University Institute for Teaching and Learning will host a conference May 7 at the William College of Business Administration Conference Center on the use of artificial intelligence in an academic environment.
In preparation for the conference, ITL is accepting proposals from YSU faculty until Jan. 31, seeking to personalize the topics covered. Hillary Fuhrman, assistant provost for ITL, said proposals can be submitted online through the conference’s webpage on the YSU website.
ITL was formed in 2019 and is responsible for students learning assessment in academic programs through the National Survey of Student Engagement and Ruffalo Noel Levitz Student Satisfaction Survey.
Fuhrman said that ITL is working with the American Association of Colleges and Universities to host this conference to support educators approaching AI use.
“[The AAC&U] decided that we wanted to do a conference around AI, in order to support faculty exploring ways that it could be incorporated into courses and curriculum,” Fuhrman said.
Through the proposals, Fuhrman said ITL wants to know how AI is currently being used by educators.
“What we would like and would love is to hear how faculty are currently using it in order to share it more widely with other faculty,” Fuhrman said.
Fuhrman said the conference hopes to prompt YSU faculty to explore how AI can be useful to them.
“The hope is that we encourage more faculty to explore how they might use AI, how AI might be useful — either in curriculum planning or to support student learning, class activities or even how it is used in different career fields,” Fuhrman said.
How the conference functions depends on how many proposals the ITL receives. If few proposals are received, Fuhrman said ITL has five predetermined tracks attendees can participate in.
According to the YSU website, track one will cover the basics for and appropriate use of AI in academic settings. It will focus on AI literacy and students’ applied writing and thinking skills.
Track two will emphasize content creation, and faculty efficiency by implementing AI into coursework and creating virtual teaching assistants. The third track will focus on AI as a tool that emphasizes human cognition while also helping with idea generation.
In addition, Track four will focus on policy and ethics regarding AI, with strategies for fact-checking AI outputs. The final track will be discipline specific and how AI can be applied to various professions from Science, technology, engineering and mathematics, humanities, arts and business and it will include how AI is being used in the workplace.
Those interested in learning more about academic AI use and the conference can visit the ITL website or contact Fuhrman at hlfuhrman@ysu.edu.