AI learning strategist spearheads AI solutions

Jennifer Werner has been an educator for over 20 years. Over the past two decades she has championed initiatives that help students of all ages, educators, and organizations understand the importance of technology in education. 

From installing the first computers in the school as a teacher in preschool classrooms, to building full computer labs out of scrap parts for her elementary students, to being faculty in technology forward student success classes, she has managed to connect her degrees in elementary education, educational technology, and her newest academic endeavor.

Now, as she works toward her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on AI in Education, while also teaching courses within the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Werner is casting a wider net for impact in the role of AI Learning Strategist, working with the Learning Experience Design team at ASU Enterprise Technology to create success for the communities she’s a part of.

With a focus on impacting the communities she's served, she has created over 10 new technology-based learning programs, many of which were designed to bridge a gap for those that were underserved or underrepresented in technology.

As a technology teacher she recognized the gaps and set out to fix them. “The digital divide was very strong,” Werner said. “So, my whole world was about, how do we get these students access to tools and access to technology so that they can be successful and move forward?”

While she no longer works inside a single classroom, she is developing AI-driven solutions to enhance the overall student experience across the entire ASU enterprise.

Here’s a sneak peak at Werner’s top projects, still in various stages of development.

What is this thing called AI? The question is the focal point of Werner’s talks, events and workshops, which she provides to schools and units at ASU.

From W.P. Carey School of Business to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Werner discusses AI’s role with teaching integration, learning development, and student experience. These workshops, trainings, and discussions have directly impacted over 3,000 people across the university.

“There’s a lot of, still figuring things out,” Werner said. “There’s curiosity around what these tools actually do.”

By providing outreach to faculty and staff, Werner is able to positively improve the student experience as AI becomes more and more necessary in and out of the classroom. According to Werner, some units request conversations and opportunities, in which faculty can ask questions, propose discussion, and start conceptual conversations.

She also works with other schools and colleges, like the New College Hack the Curriculum event and the Thunderbird Hands on AI workshop, to provide hands-on workshops on integrating specific tools into their classes. These include tools made available via the university’s newly upgraded Digital Backpack – from Google Gemini to NotebookLM and Zoom AI Companion. She also works to support the use of the university’s own generative AI tool, CreateAI toolkit.

With these hands-on workshops, Werner helps various faculty and staff think outside of the box in developing AI-friendly learning environments.

Successful collaborations of these AI-friendly learning  environments can be seen in the projects Werner has supported including: creating fashion-focused AI solutions with Naomi Ellis and generative AI and human collaboration for feedback at scale with Lance Gharavi.

Read: https://tech.asu.edu/features/putting-ai-fashion

The T4 Leadership Academy at the Thunderbird School of Global Management cultivates IT leaders who are globally engaged and locally attuned to the role of technology for social benefit – a vision which perfectly aligns itself with Werner’s personal mission. As a T4 participant, Werner is completing her capstone project: an agentic experience meant to assist students with cross-functional classroom learning. 

The conceptual project, called “Forge,” would act as a personalized student helper.

“If a student takes BIO 101 freshman year, and then they take BIO 200 at the end of their sophomore year, they can go back like, ‘I remembered this in BIO 101, what exactly was it and how does it connect to the current topic?’” Werner explained. 

The agent, created using CreateAI Builder, would join the student throughout their journey at ASU, storing lesson information from courses alongside extracurricular connections so it can attune itself to the student’s own unique university pathway.

By utilizing the training program Werner is creating, students would be learning how to build an agent with a personalized knowledge base, students can refer back to concepts from previous courses, ask questions related to various ASU hubs, and connect them to their real-time queries.

“It’ll be a kind of one-stop shop,” Werner said. “The big idea is that is will connect to all of the different agents that are being created throughout the university, from Experience Center, health services, the gym, those sorts of things, and the student will be able to go to their own agent that they’ve customized and ask questions, and it will go to those other agents and pull the answers back in for them.”

The capstone is still in the conception and ideation phase, with collaborations from colleagues throughout the university.

Everyone knows how draining a discussion board can get.

Werner wants to tackle the silos of discussion boards head-on with AI. Rather than having the students answer the discussion prompt, Werner posits that an AI agent should answer the prompt with limited knowledge of the topic, and the students would then pick apart the agent’s answer. According to Werner’s summer pilot at Northern Arizona University – where Werner is completing her PhD – the silo has been broken and the students consider it a success.

For Werner’s PhD dissertation for Curriculum and Instruction, she incorporated AI integration into established academic practices. When students pick apart and discuss the answer given by an AI agent on a discussion board, they’re working on various cognitive presence measurements and developing their critical thinking skills in a unique way.

With the framework created and verified by various faculty members, Werner expects to collect data in the fall which will contribute to her dissertation defense as she looks toward the future of AI discussion boards, and the role they could potentially play in the student experience.

Improving technology access for students is a vision that’s not new for Werner.

“I’ve done so many things with bringing technology access to classrooms,” Werner said. “From building entire computer labs out of scrap parts to building online servers in the Arts building, to servers for gaming and robotics and all sorts of stuff, out of an old computer that we found in the back of a closet. That’s the sort of stuff I’ve done forever.”

While the three projects on Werner’s docket are all in progress, the path underscores the initiative it takes to innovate with cutting-edge technology as it becomes more and more relevant to the student experience across ASU and the entire country.

“There are a lot of exciting new projects coming in Agentic AI, AI avatars, and new teaching and learning projects across the university,” Werner said. “I am also excited about the new in-person services happening at the Tech Hubs this year. We are rolling out the AI creative Learning Lab and the CreateAI Studio to give people a place to come and talk and explore these tools hands-on.”

Technology is the norm, and with Werner’s goals, it will become the expectation and necessary tool across all classrooms.