Category Archives: Innovation

What’s ChatGPT? Why Should I Care?

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“Change has a bad reputation in our society. But it isn’t all bad —
not by any means. In fact, change is necessary in life —
to keep us moving, to keep us growing, to keep us interested.
Imagine life without change. It would be static, boring, dull.”
Dr. Dennis O’Grady

As time moves forward, innovative products are created and introduced to the world. When this happens, it can become a minor bump in the road or a major disruption that can alter the direction of our lives. How we respond to the “new” will inevitably affect those around us and inform others in their response.

In recent months, one such technology was introduced. ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI that will require us to reevaluate how we engage with our students and colleagues. In this blog post, we will explore the benefits that ChatGPT can bring to education, including streamlining administrative tasks, facilitating personalized learning, and improving access to information.

One of the best use cases for AI and technology, in general, is to take care of repetitive and mundane tasks, to free up valuable time for engagement and building rapport with your students. You can use ChatGPT to draft summaries of your course content, announcements, and other resources. Think about the time-consuming tasks that you do on a daily basis that can now be handed off to your virtual personal assistant to do the first drafts.

In conjunction with your current teaching content, you can take advantage of ChatGPT, to customize materials and resources for students. As an example of this workflow, you can utilize ChatGPT to provide initial feedback for student writing. Before meeting your students for a follow-up on a learning activity, students can use ChatGPT to help with grammar, spelling, vocabulary, style, and coherence. Using ChatGPT to provide real-time feedback and improve the student learning experience, enhances engagement and the effectiveness of personal interactions. It is important to remind students to always use their own judgment and critical thinking when evaluating suggestions provided by ChatGPT.

Acting as a virtual assistant, ChatGPT, can provide students from various backgrounds with help to “level the playing field”. Students can work through course materials and learning activities, rather than focusing on easily identifiable errors due to privileged, Western conventions of education, they can focus on stated learning outcomes and goals. ChatGPT may provide insights into students’ learning patterns and preferences by giving a third-party analysis of their work. Faculty can build upon this interaction without being bogged down with basic mistakes and work towards higher learning outcomes.

To conclude, I asked ChatGPT to finish the rest of this paragraph: “ChatGPT (and other AI innovations that are bound to follow) is a tool. How you wield the tool is…”

This is the response: “…up to you, but it’s important to keep in mind the ethical and responsible use of such technology. The potential for AI to transform society and improve our lives is tremendous, but it’s crucial to consider the consequences and make sure it’s used in a way that benefits humanity as a whole. The development of AI should align with principles such as fairness, transparency, accountability, and non-discrimination. With proper governance and regulations in place, AI can be a powerful tool for positive change and growth.”

Want to try ChatGPT? The actual bot: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
Note: when you sign up for access, you will need to provide a valid phone number that can receive SMS for verification.

From Northern Illinois University’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning – ChatGPT and Education

Here is a list of curated resources from BryanAlexander.org. The following are discussions Bryan Alexander held around ChatGPT in his Future Trends Forum:

Accompanying Blog article – https://bryanalexander.org/future-trends-forum/chatgpt-and-higher-education-last-week-and-this-week/ 

TeachLive: Using Immersive Simulations to Practice Being a Teacher

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Lesley Graduate School of Education (GSOE) faculty members Maureen Creegan Quinquis and Susan Patterson are wrapping up a successful year piloting TeachLive, a new immersive technology to prepare teachers for classroom experience. TeachLive (produced by Mursion) allows faculty to guide teacher candidates through several types of classroom situations from behavior management to practicing for parent-teacher conferences.

To learn more about this initiative, rewind to the summer of 2016.  Faculty members Maureen Creegan Quinquis and Susan Patterson, collaborating with GSOE Dean Jack Gillette wrote a grant proposal to the Department of Education (DESE) to allow Lesley students to gain access to a new technology tool that blends an immersive experience with live action by an actor. They wrote a proposal detailing the elements of teacher preparation that immersive virtual reality could most effectively address. Specifically, it provides students with experience in:

  • Classroom management
  • Parent-teacher/community relationships
  • Special education practice, particularly developing skills in differentiation
  • Job interview practice

Lesley was awarded the grant for equipment and services in August 2016, allowing GSOE to offer this experience for candidates in initial licensure programs. The equipment for the program is situated in a dedicated space in University Hall. Faculty schedule time with their students to interact with virtual students. Faculty introducing the tool have work closely with students on the preparation, the live simulation itself, and then debriefing after the simulation—all of which are essential components to learning from an immersive simulation.

In Fall 2016, Elementary/Creative Arts in Learning and Elementary and Middle/High School students began working with two of the simulation scenarios:

  1. a classroom setting of 8th graders with a variety of personalities and levels of knowledge;
  2. a parent teacher conference where the teacher is speaking with family members about their child’s progress or presenting a serious issue to the family.
image from http://www.rdmag.com/article/2016/04/simulation%E2%80%99s-teaching-moment

image from http://www.rdmag.com/article/2016/04/simulation%E2%80%99s-teaching-moment

The faculty members report that in addition to providing the space to “practice” with simulated students, there is a real benefit to being able to also pause the simulation to debrief specific moments or to step back from the situation.  As Professor Creegan Quinquis notes, “If I have a group of students who have been working on differentiated ways to present a lesson; they can all be in the room fishbowl style– they can watch each other to try and present the lesson. If the student candidate suddenly freezes– he/she can say “pause” and then ask for help or let someone else step in, or we can have a discussion right there in the room. You get to practice it several time.  What’s interesting is how much like real life it is. You have this experience of feeling like it’s really happening…The beauty of this is that they can make mistakes and have a safe space to practice” …before ever getting in front of real students.

Giving Students Access to Film Footage and 3D Models to Enhance the Studio Experience

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Matt Nash, Chair of Video and Animation at the College of Art and Design, received a $2,500 Academic Technology Innovation Grant in Fall 2016 for the purchase of professionally-produced data assets for students to use in Digital Filmmaking and Animation and Motion Media courses. The data assets are raw film footage and 3D models, which will be edited and manipulated by students in courses that focus on concepts of 3D animation, editing theory, advanced technical proficiency, audio design and other aspects of post-production.

Two sets of digital assets were purchased through the grant: professional produced film footage ($1,050) and 3D animation models for Autodesk MAYA ($950). The grant award also includes the purchase of portable hard drives ($500), which will store the assets that will be available for check out by faculty and students.   The acquisition of these sets of video assets allows the Animation and Digital Filmmaking faculty to focus on their primary pedagogical goals without the distraction of creating and managing assets that are outside the learning outcomes.

The Teaching and Learning with Technology committee reviewed the proposal and found it aligned with the criteria for grant funding including:

  • Funding request is primarily to purchase hardware or software
  • The hardware or software represents innovative use of technology to advance teaching and learning
  • Priority is given to projects that would have a direct impact on students

If you are interested in applying for an Academic Technology Innovation Grant and would like more information, please email tech.grant@lesley.edu.

Faculty Spotlight: Martha McKenna

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Martha McKenna is a professor at Lesley University and the Director of the Creativity Commons. As part of her work to support creative exploration in teaching and learning across the university, McKenna is currently heading up a two-year grant-funded project called the Visual Literacy InFUSION Project. This cross-division collaboration aims to support faculty across the university in recognizing, promoting and evaluating non-traditional visual and media literacies in their classroom practice. As the project heads into its second year, we caught up with McKenna to see what role academic technology has played in the Visual Literacy project so far, and how it might intersect with the project’s goals going forward.

[eLIS]: The faculty involved in the Visual Literacies project are a diverse group from across the university, all with busy schedules and other priorities. How have Lesley’s academic technology resources helped to facilitate the project despite these challenges and lay the foundation for an authentic group collaboration?

[McKenna]: Academic technology played a critical role in connecting faculty across the university in the Visual Literacy InFUSION Project.  Through myLesley, we were able to create a learning community where communication was centralized, and where all resources were made available and easily accessible. We have also been able to capture all of our faculty’s activity in the community’s Blogs. The eLIS staff helped us think through how best to utilize myLesley, and helped us to adapt the tools to suit our unique purposes.

[eLIS]: What do you see as the biggest challenges that lay ahead as the Visual Literacies project moves into its second year and scales up to reach more instructors and classrooms across the University? 

[McKenna]: We are excited to move forward with the Visual Literacy InFUSION Project across the undergraduate schools. Since the Project encourages faculty to integrate text and image more creatively in their teaching and learning environments, faculty will naturally be expanding their use of digital resources in the classroom, and many could require exposure and training to support this evolution in their practice. We will also be counting on myLesley to help us reach and coordinate the efforts of greater numbers of faculty across the undergraduate schools.

[eLIS]: With the success of the project so far in a select sample of face-to-face classrooms, do you see potential for this work to impact distance education and online instructional practices at Lesley University? 

[McKenna]: The Visual Literacy InFUSION Project provides an opportunity for all faculty to think about how digital resources can expand the engagement of students in learning and expressing what they know through text and images using new media. This transformation away from text-centered instruction can only expand the way we look at online learning resources and delivery of instruction. And since our approach has students become active agents in their own learning through project-based assignments, it is perfectly suited to create new possibilities in Lesley’s online learning environments.

The Emergence of Learning Analytics: Evidence-based Decision Making

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Learning Analytics is a fast-growing field in education focused on the use of data to improve teaching and learning. Learning management systems are starting to include dashboard tools with visual data displays, products like ALEKS use adaptive learning technologies in concert with analytics tools to provide students with personalized learning experiences, and Columbia University has recently established a Master’s degree in Learning Analytics.

While definitions vary, the focus of Learning Analytics is usually data that instructors and students can use, particularly during instruction, to positively impact learning. Below is an example of a dashboard in the open source learning management system called “Desire2Learn” showing course data for one student:

LA-D2Ldashboard

A different example of data used in teaching is shown below. This table is from Kaltura, which is integrated with myLesley (Blackboard). It shows data related to views of a video in an online professional development seminar facilitated in May, 2016. Such information can allow instructors to know which students are viewing the media and how much they are viewing:

 

Kaltura Data

A final example from the open source LMS called “Sakai” shows the nature of student interaction in online discussions through a social network diagram. This data can be used early in a course to find out which students are less involved, which could be future group leaders, and the level of collaboration in the discussions. As a course is running, an instructor might want to use this data to refine or redirect discussion activities, and enhance the course’s interactivity. This kind of useful information is much harder to discern using the typical discussion tools in learning management systems.

LA-Sakai

We have no doubt that you will continue to hear more about Learning Analytics as the technology you use to support your teaching integrates data that is more visually accessible and actionable. Making use of this information in the right way can only enhance the learning experience you deliver – making it more targeted and responsive.

To find out more about Learning Analytics that are currently available to in myLesley, contact elis@lesley.edu.