Happy Fall Semester!
It is wonderful to walk our IU campuses and see the energy of our students. With the IU 2030 Strategic Plan finalized, the success of every student has emerged as the centerpiece. I have enjoyed reading how each of our campuses plans to promote student success, with some of the common themes being improving student outcomes in general education courses, increasing engaged and experiential learning opportunities, and creating microcredentials to help students see the connections and importance of their learning.
Over the past year, Learning Technologies (LT) has focused on how we can support faculty, students, and staff in the realization of the IU 2030 goals. One of our key focal areas is broadening our partnership with faculty to support the use of technology in pursuit of teaching goals. This includes continued efforts around:
Of course, realizing the IU 2030 goals will mean new responsibilities, new practices, and new experiments as we seek to make substantive progress. LT is here to help. As we think about our work, we are most focused on partnering with you to achieve your teaching goals and solve problems that you have. In the last year the following tools and programs have been created or enabled:
- The Course Setup Wizard to help you create new Canvas courses
- TidyUp to help you identify and delete unused course materials in Canvas
- Ally to provide suggestions on how you can make your course more accessible
- ProfBox to provide new, first-year faculty with tips and ideas around teaching with technology
And no fall 2023 semester discussion of learning technology would be complete without some mention of generative artificial intelligence (AI). It has not even been a year since we started to hear about the substantive advances with and access to ChatGPT, but in that time, we have seen some of the powerful (and sometimes concerning) capabilities offered by these tools.
I am excited to engage with faculty regarding the work they are doing to provide guidance for the use of generative AI in teaching and learning. Many faculty have creatively integrated these tools into the student experience, understanding that it will be a part of our students' careers (irrespective of their disciplines). I applaud you for appreciating this opportunity, asking questions around how it can be integrated into your teaching, and seeking more information.
To assist with navigating the implications and applications of generative AI, we have been hosting regular virtual events in collaboration with our campus teaching centers. In fact, a recent presentation on generative AI and syllabi attracted more than 250 people, and the related materials have been accessed more than 1,000 times.
Up next is our September 19th "Generative AI: Exploring Applications for Teaching and Learning" event, where participants will have the opportunity to engage with a dozen different topics in 12-minute intervals. Each round will help you learn about a topic of your choosing—from ChatGPT or Bing Chat for writing to Adobe Firefly for image creation to the issues with generative AI detection tools.
While I could share quite a bit more about the work happening in LT, I will instead end with a request. We truly want to hear about the challenges you are facing or the opportunities you would like to pursue. Please do not hesitate to let us know (reachlt@iu.edu) how we might be of help to you.
Best,
Jay
Jay Gladden
IU AVP Learning Technologies
