Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn this episode, Jared Pyles and Dr. Rob McDole talk with Dr. Vladimir Bratic who has a PhD in Mass Communication from Ohio University and is an assistant professor of Media and Communications at Hollins University. Check out this episode to hear how ChatGPT has gone from being a flashy innovation to an everyday tool. Podcast links Show notes Dr. Bratic has noticed that over the past year, ChatGPT has gone from a flashy innovation to a normalized, embedded tool that influences the average person’s daily life. It is “coming to us and begging us to use it.” However, he notices that there are still obstacles to…
-
-
Transform Your Teaching: Generative AI Applied with Tiffin University Faculty – Part II
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles continue their chat about the use of Generative AI in Higher Education with faculty from Tiffin University. Check out the episode to hear how instructors can employ Generative AI in their day-to-day teaching practices. Podcast links Show notes The rapid changes of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT make keeping up with them challenging. To combat this challenge, instructors learn how to use these tools better through training in prompt engineering. At Tiffin, they have recently hired someone to assist faculty in incorporating AI tools into teaching. The Tiffin faculty also shared about an upcoming webinar on using…
-
Transform Your Teaching: Generative AI Applied with Tiffin University Faculty – Part I
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles chat with two faculty members from Tiffin University about the use of generative AI. Check out the episode to hear how Tiffin equips students and faculty to use AI well. Podcast links Show notes Tiffin University’s approach to generative AI is marked with innovation. They start with being transparent about how generative AI should be used, giving students an AI “toolkit” so they are aware of AI’s limitations and are able to use it ethically. Dr. Meadows, Dr. Clark, and Tiffin introduced design statements (statements that students include in assignments describing how they used AI to aid in…
-
Transform Your Teaching: Generative AI Applied with Dr. Jules White
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles chat with Dr. Jules White who has a Ph.D. in Computer Science and serves as Senior Advisor to the Chancellor for Generative AI in Education and Enterprise Solutions at Vanderbilt University. Check out the episode to hear their discussion about how instructors can help students become comfortable with generative AI and use it effectively. Podcast links Show notes Dr. Jules White is excited about generative AI and sees it as a “new medium”—fundamentally transformative to how people live their daily lives. More specifically, Dr. White has seen AI’s impact in education. In his current position, he has been…
-
Transform Your Teaching: Generative AI Applied – Whisper
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles explore a generative AI tool called “Whisper” through asking it to play the role of “guest” on the podcast. Check out the episode to hear the conversation and strategies Whisper provides for teaching and learning. Podcast links Show notes Jared and Rob explore the capabilities of a generative AI tool created by OpenAI called “Whisper.” According to OpenAI, it is “an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system trained on 680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised data collected from the web.” To showcase its capabilities, Rob and Jared create a prompt for Whisper to act as a guest…
-
Transform Your Teaching: Generative AI Applied – Introduction
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles start a new series on generative AI and its practical usage in higher education. Check out the episode to hear a general overview of generative AI models and possible ways that instructors can begin using these models in their teaching. Podcast links Show notes Generative AI Language models are designed to process large amounts of information and are trained to understand and generate text like a human through a vast amount of data, including books, websites, and articles. In many ways, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become synonymous with generative AI, however, a wide variety of generative AI models…
-
Alicia McCartney: Using Google Slides for Classroom Collaboration
Reading Time: 3 minutesPerhaps you already leverage small group discussions to powerfully engage your students in the classroom. Or, perhaps, like me, you’ve wondered: How do I push students towards more specific, quality discussion answers? In this post, I’ll share how I’ve used collaborative Google Slides in the classroom to encourage students to actively engage in analysis and problem-solving. Why use digital collaboration for discussions? I began implementing small group student discussions in the classroom during my first year of graduate teaching after reading Stephen D. Brookfield and Stephen Preskill’s Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms (2nd ed., 2005). Brookfield and Preskill’s classic guide…
-
Transform Your Teaching: Building a Community of Inquiry for Effective Online Learning – Adapting to Online Learning and Future Outlook
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles conclude our series on the Community of Inquiry framework. Check out the episode to hear their discussion on the future of online learning in higher education. Podcast links Show notes Building on the Community of Inquiry framework, Jared and Rob emphasize the importance of constructing an online course that is well-designed. They encourage frequent communication between instructors and students in an online setting and suggest strategies such as using video feedback and monitoring student engagement to ensure effective communication. As Rob thinks about the future, he emphasizes the potential of AI in online learning, citing examples of…
-
AECT Reflection: Rob McDole on Seize the DAI
Reading Time: 2 minutesLike my colleagues, I spent three days at the AECT conference. I had contemplated not going because of mental fatigue. But I decided David Wiley—Chief Academic Officer for Lumen Learning and former president of AECT—may have something interesting to say about AI. As I approached his session, it was standing room only. Attendees filled the seats and others stood in the back and in the doorways. I found a table right outside and put my headphones in and joined the Zoom session from my iPad. I felt a little like Zacchaeus. From the start, the session was different from what Mr. Wiley had originally planned. He intended…
-
Canvas Update: New Quizzes Can Build on Last Attempt
Reading Time: 2 minutesCanvas has allowed instructors to give students multiple attempts on quizzes for a while, but they recently modified this feature. Now, Canvas allows instructors to choose whether a student must re-do the entire quiz in subsequent attempts or if they only need to answer questions they had previously gotten wrong. Accessing this feature This feature is already live in Canvas and can be accessed in the settings page for a New Quiz. Toggle “allow multiple attempts” on, then check the box for “Build on last attempt.” When this feature is enabled, students can reattempt questions until they either get it correct or run out of allowed attempts…