Creative Uses of AI: Highlights from a Recent Teaching and Learning Conference

Spring is conference season in many academic disciplines. Wherever your recent conference adventures have taken you, it’s likely GenAI was a discussion topic in your recent or upcoming learning with colleagues beyond Furman mall. Such was the case at this year’s Southern Regional Faculty Instructional Development Consortium (SRFIDC), held March 24–26 and hosted by the University of Central Florida. This unique gathering of faculty, academic staff, and educational/faculty developers has been convening in some form since 1973.  

One of this year’s activities was a gallery walk of our current uses of GenAI in our personal and professional lives, many of which resonated with what we have been getting up to in our “AI in Action” series, such as: 

• Student research: students generate a GenAI research log to share their prompts and how they refined them to work through a learning task. 

• Feedback and Grading help: ask AI to generate an initial rubric and invite students to refine it in a class activity. 

• Meeting hack: use Otter.ai or Zoom AI Assistant to generate meeting summaries (but verify the “to do”/ “action item” round-up!).  

And some “new to us” promising practices, including: 

• Assignment design: upload your project prompts and use AI to evaluate an assignment for unintended difficulties. 

• Class activities: generate (and then improve upon) case studies. 

• Accessibility: collaborate with your GenAI of choice to generate ALT-Text descriptions. 

The next AI in Action session, Collaborations with AI in Student Research, is on Monday, April 14, and will feature Jess Hennessy. Don’t miss her hands-on demonstration of AI collaboration in her research classes! Join us in the Trustees’ Dining Room, 12:30–1:20 p.m., to explore practical AI tools for your teaching. Remember to bring your laptop/tablet to test out new AI software. Register online. Walk-ins are also welcome. 

 Some fun uses from SRFIDC gallery walk: 

• Meal plan for the coming week: Just tell ChatGPT (or Claude or Copilot, etc.) what your food parameters and goals are, and get a week’s worth of recipes along with a shopping list organized by type of food. 

• Lesson planning: If you’re looking for a way to get students more engaged, tell ChatGPT what your learning goals are for the day and ask for ideas for interactive activities. 

• Party planning: Yes, ChatGPT can plan your next party (though you’ll still have to pay for it yourself).

Finally, we’ll conclude with a snapshot from a recent Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Faculty Evaluation Conference held at Rhodes College March 20-21st. “Pictured” below are panelists who spoke on promising practices in teaching evaluation Shiree X. Williams, ACS Project Manager, JT Torres, Director of the Harte Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington and Lee, and the FDC’s own Diane Boyd. JT generated the image using Chat GPT Studio Ghibli-style animation, a recently-released controversial GenAI tool.

We aren’t yet sure how we feel about it, and would love to hear your thoughts! Comment on our forthcoming newsletter announcement Instagram post (set to drop Thursday 4/3) to weigh in.