Our inaugural Summer Institute was a BIG success!
Purpose
In May 2024, ATL hosted its first Summer Institute, focused on equipping faculty with knowledge and best practices to effectively incorporate A.I. into one or more of the courses that they teach for URI.
ATL’s Writing and A.I. Summer Institute brought together URI faculty in writing-focused disciplines to learn about artificial intelligence (A.I.) from campus experts and consider meaningful ways to incorporate best practices around A.I. into their courses. Participants identified an area of their course where they wanted to thoughtfully integrate A.I. and made preparations to share their work with instructors during ATL’s 2024 Fall Symposium.
Through the institute, participants engaged in a 4-week workshop series (3 weeks in-person on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:30-noon and 1 week asynchronous), where they identified and (re)designed a course element to include A.I. This fall, participants will present the findings of their result of their work to colleagues during a showcase-style event.
The dates for this year’s Summer Institute were Monday, May 21, 2024 – Wednesday, June 12, 2024.
Participants
Kirtley Fisher, College of Business
Luzi Shi, College of Arts & Sciences
Odile Mattiauda, College of Arts & Sciences
Crystal Greene, College of Arts & Sciences
Laura Skrobe, College of the Environment and Life Sciences
Barbara Somers, College of the Environment and Life Sciences
Peter Phipps, College of Arts & Sciences
Karen Haskell, College of Arts & Sciences
Chris Hemme, College of Pharmacy
Betty Cotter, College of Arts & Sciences
Brittany Martin, College of Arts & Sciences
Hillary Leonard, College of Business
Faculty Experts
Steven Atlas, College of Business
Sarah Brown, Department of Computer Science & Statistics
Amanda Izenstark, URI Library
Genoa Shepley, Harrington School of Communication & Media
Stephanie West-Puckett, Harrington School of Communication & Media
Outcomes & Topics Covered
Participants learned to:
- Discern the pros and cons among various generative AI tools and be able to make an informed choice among AI tools for the pedagogical tasks they wish to accomplish.
- Ethically incorporate generative AI tools into their courses.
- Use generative AI to support instruction around writing within their discipline.
- Use generative AI as a writing assistant for professional tasks, such as: recommendations, syllabus generation, prompt generation, grant writing, brainstorming.
Agenda
- Session 1: May 21 (in-person) – What is A.I.?
- Session 2: May 23 (in-person) – A.I. and faculty learning activities: Taking a deeper dive and working toward a heuristic for evaluating for ethical use
- Session 3: May 24 (Zoom) – Optional instructor’s cafe to discuss topics from sessions 1 and 2
- Session 4: May 28 (in-person) – A.I. and out of class writing
- Session 5: May 30 (in-person) – A.I. in my classroom: Friend or Foe
- Session 6: May 31 (Zoom) – Optional instructor’s cafe to discuss topics from session 4 and 5
- Session 7: June 4 (in-person) – Assessment and A.I. student learning
- Session 8: June 6 (in-person) – A.I. and course writing improvement: Designing assignments to motivate students
- Session 9: June 7 (Zoom) – Optional instructor’s cafe to discuss topics from session 7 and 8
- Session 10: June 10 (Asynchronous) – Complete peer review
- Session 11: June 12 (Asynchronous) – Complete final materials