Looking All AIround: A Retrospective & Forward-Looking Discussion of Generative AI

November marks nearly a year since ChatGPT made its debut and while so many things feel different, there’s still so much that hasn’t changed.  In this talk, Lance Eaton will explore the year in review around Generative AI in education and also look to the next year of what it could mean, particularly for online learning and the unique challenges and opportunities it represents. 

Speaker

Lance Eaton is the Director of Faculty Development & Innovation at College Unbound, a part-time instructor at North Shore Community College, and a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts, Boston with a dissertation that is focusing on how scholars engage in academic piracy. His work is often engaging with the possibility of digital tools for expanding teaching and learning communities while considering the various deep issues and questions that educational technologies open up for students, faculty, and higher ed as a whole. He has given talks, written about, and presented at conferences on artificial intelligence generative tools in education, academic piracy, open access, OER, open pedagogy, hybrid flexible learning, and digital service-learning. His musings, reflections, and ramblings can be found on his blog: http://www.ByAnyOtherNerd.com.

Featured Speaker and 2023 Winner of Georgia Tech's Teaching Excellence Award for Online Teaching

Joel Sokol was recognized for his exceptional contributions as the founding director of the online M.S. in Analytics program. He believes in engaging online education for learners of all backgrounds, and has transformed thousands of students' lives through the program. Despite the large number of students he educates, Dr. Sokol is known for his personalized mentoring approach, which helps his students achieve their goals. He is a highly regarded expert in online education and has been quoted in several prestigious publications, including Forbes and NPR.

Speaker

Joel Sokol is the Harold E. Smalley Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is also Director of the interdisciplinary Master of Science in Analytics degree (on-campus and online).

His primary research interests are in sports analytics and applied operations research. He has worked with teams or leagues in all three of the major American sports. Dr. Sokol's LRMC method for predictive modeling of the NCAA basketball tournament is an industry leader, and his non-sports research has won the EURO Management Science Strategic Innovation Prize and been a finalist for the Cozzarelli Prize.

Dr. Sokol has also won recognition for his teaching and curriculum development from IIE and the NAE, held the Fouts Family Associate Professorship for a three-year term, and is the recipient of Georgia Tech's highest awards for teaching. He served two terms as INFORMS Vice President of Education, and is a past Chair and founding officer of the INFORMS section on sports operations research.

Dr. Sokol's Ph.D. in operations research is from MIT, and his bachelor's degrees in mathematics, computer science, and applied sciences in engineering are from Rutgers University.

Serving as a TA in an Online Course: Words from the Wise(r)

In this session, we will hear from Georgia Tech’s online TAs and Head TAs who recently won our 2023 Institute-wide TA of the Year Award.  Panelists will share their experiences interacting with students at a distance while serving as a Teaching Assistant and give their perspective on some of the latest developments in distance education pedagogy. Panelists will address a mix of moderated questions as well as questions from attending participants.  So if you’ve ever wondered about what it’s like being a TA for an online course or what unique challenges they face, join us for this session and get your questions answered.

Speakers

Adavya Bhutani,

Division of Computer Instruction

Ryan Ellis,

Economics

Aleksandr Kalenchits,

Division of Computer Instruction

Abdulaziz Qwbaiban,

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Birds of a Feather

Various topics will be offered for discussion in breakout rooms by various Georgia Tech online and technology experts from across the institution. Participants are welcome to choose their own breakout rooms and engage in conversation with their peers.

•  A(academic) I(integrity) in the Age of AI - Led by Lauren Barbeau
   
• Exploring Generative AI in Student Assessment  - Led by Yahong Xu & Lachelle Smith, OIT  Digital Learning Team
  
  

• Faculty Presence and Connecting with Students Online- Led by Karen Franklin, Center for Teaching and Learning
   
• Learning Analytics: Should Faculty Become Data Scientists? -Led by Myk Garn, Professional Education, & Laura Carruth, Transformative Teaching and Learning & Center for Teaching and Learning
   
• Navigating Canvas Mastery Paths for Personalized Learning -Led by Simeon Payne & Samba Diop, OIT  Digital Learning Team

Observing Critical Teaching Behaviors: What Does Good Teaching Look Like Online?

Classroom observations of peer and TA teaching are common practice in higher education as a means of providing formative feedback for growth and assessing effectiveness. This process typically involves an observer sitting in on a class meeting to take notes for discussion with the instructor, but how does the process work when your class never meets? Quality Matters (QM) reviews “observe” online courses by evaluating the design; however, QM guidelines do not offer strategies for evaluating online course delivery. In many cases, TAs and other online instructors may have little to do with the design of the courses they facilitate. How can we identify effective delivery strategies and provide feedback on their facilitation of online courses?

The Critical Teaching Behavior (CTB) observation instruments provide guidance to observers who want to provide feedback on both design and delivery of online courses. Tools are grounded in the CTB framework, developed to help faculty and administrators identify, document, and assess effective teaching behaviors. Observation guidelines create a structured, transparent process for giving and receiving holistic feedback that identifies teaching strengths and clear goals for development. The CTB observations incorporate self-assessment to promote instructor reflection and integrate instructor perspectives into the observation process.

Speaker

Lauren Barbeau is the Assistant Director for Learning and Technology Initiatives. In this role, she coordinates the Teaching with Technology partnerships and assists faculty in finding the right technology tools to meet their pedagogical needs. She developed an interest in the intersection of pedagogy and technology as a graduate student Liberman Teaching with Technology Fellow. This interest led her to faculty development positions at Georgia Southern University and the University of Georgia. Her co-authored book project, Critical Teaching Behaviors: Defining, Documenting, and Discussing Good Teaching (Stylus Publishing, 2023), offers instructors a framework for identifying, implementing, and documenting effective teaching behaviors as well as aligned peer observation and student feedback instruments to help them gather external perspectives on their teaching. Lauren earned her Ph.D. in English, specializing in 19th century American Literature with a certificate in American Culture Studies, from Washington University in St. Louis.