By Adam J. Parrish, Ph.D.
Communication Lecturer
General Education Program Coordinator
Nicholson School of Communication and Media
I arrived at the Teaching and Learning with AI conference with a rudimentary understanding of AI and its potential applications in higher education. Dr. Ray Schroeder’s keynote address made a strong, persuasive case that I needed to learn much more about this technology quickly. He argued that AI will transform the collegiate workplace more significantly than the personal computer or the internet. Further, he noted that these changes will be evident to faculty, staff, and administrators within six months to one year.
Over the next two days, I attended sessions exploring AI’s conceptual, practical, and ethical ramifications. As a speech instructor, I could see how AI would be a beneficial resource for students when generating topics, analyzing audiences, conducting research, building arguments, and designing presentational aids. AI can assist instructors when developing learning outcomes, activities, quizzes/exams, rubrics, and course assessment strategies.
As we integrate AI into our classrooms and administrative processes, it will be important to develop ethical frameworks to help us navigate challenges of bias, privacy, accessibility, and transparency. Collaborative conversations aimed at helping our students develop practical and principled experience with these technologies belong on policy and planning agendas.
As I left the conference with a more sophisticated but still developing knowledge of AI, I reflected on another of Dr. Schroeder’s arguments. Given the inevitable presence of AI in academia, it will be wiser for us to go with the flow than fight the current. The Teaching and Learning with AI conference provided the tools we need to do just that. The UCF Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning and Division of Digital Learning designed and delivered an outstanding conference!