AI Insight: Supporting Teaching & Learning Success with AI Tools

(Time to Read: 2 mins.)

This fall, VCC’s Cen­tre for Teach­ing, Learn­ing, and Research (CTLR) has focused on one key ques­tion: How can we help instruc­tors con­fi­dent­ly, eth­i­cal­ly and effec­tive­ly use AI tools into their teach­ing prac­tice? Through tar­get­ed work­shops, per­son­al­ized sup­port, and col­lab­o­ra­tive learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, we’ve worked along­side numer­ous VCC col­leagues to answer this ques­tion and inte­grate the VCC Guide­lines for Gen­er­a­tive AI in Teach­ing and Learn­ing. 

Real Impact: VCC Day

Our VCC Day ses­sion “GenAI: Every­thing, Every­where, All at Once” brought togeth­er staff, instruc­tors, and admin­is­tra­tors for AI triv­ia and demon­stra­tions of some of the lat­est tools. The prac­ti­cal val­ue of these ses­sions emerged through sto­ries like that of Stephen Burns, our Build­ing Ser­vices Man­ag­er: 

“Every year facil­i­ties has a pre-win­ter snow/ice pro­ce­dures meet­ing with our con­trac­tors, typ­i­cal­ly work­ing through a dry man­u­al,” Stephen shared. “This year, I used Note­bookLM to cre­ate a 10-minute pod­cast from the man­u­al. One con­trac­tor thought we’d spent thou­sands on pro­duc­tion – they were amazed to learn it was AI-gen­er­at­ed at no cost!” 

Your AI Teaching Toolkit 

Get­ting Start­ed  

Our foun­da­tion­al “GenAI 101” work­shop has equipped edu­ca­tors with prac­ti­cal under­stand­ing of AI tools and VCC’s new AI Guide­lines (Sep­tem­ber 2024).
Need to catch up? Watch the full record­ing here: GenAI 101 for Teach­ing and Learn­ing 

Build­ing Your Skills 

We’ve devel­oped tar­get­ed work­shops to address your spe­cif­ic needs and con­tin­ue to share out new AI tools of rel­e­vance to our work: 

• Assess­ment redesign with AI con­sid­er­a­tions
• Cre­at­ing Moo­dle quizzes and H5P activ­i­ties using cus­tom AI prompts
• Devel­op­ing course mate­ri­als with Microsoft Copi­lot

Addressing Environmental Impact and Connecting beyond VCC 

At the Edu­ca­tion­al Tech­nol­o­gy Users Group Fall Work­shop, our Instruc­tion­al Asso­ciate Emi­ly Simp­son facil­i­tat­ed an impor­tant dis­cus­sion on “Cli­mate Con­scious AI Use: Wrestling with Envi­ron­men­tal Impacts.” Par­tic­i­pants explored the envi­ron­men­tal impli­ca­tions of AI tech­nolo­gies, engaged with a series of guid­ing ques­tions around pur­pose, impact, and benefits/costs of AI use to devel­op a per­son­al­ized liv­ing phi­los­o­phy of AI use for them­selves. The record­ing of this ses­sion will be avail­able soon here: ETUG work­shop page. 

Next Steps 

Ready to explore AI in your teach­ing?

1. Check out McGill & Con­cor­dia’s quick-start min­i­mod­ules on Gen­er­a­tive AI for Instruc­tors
2. Book a cus­tom depart­ment work­shop or 1:1 con­sul­ta­tion
3. Access our grow­ing library of AI teach­ing resources

Con­tact CTL­R’s Instruc­tion­al Asso­ciates at IASupport@vcc.ca