ASU faculty and students showcase the use of AI for teaching and learning
The AI Innovation Showcase invited faculty and students from across five of the university’s schools and colleges to take the stage to demonstrate the use of generative AI tools to enhance experiences in teaching and learning.
Check out a few highlights from the presentations:
- Writing smarter, not harder: Assistant Professor Jake Greene and two graduate students Stephanie Leow and Amber Hedquist explained their use of generative AI to support scholarly writing last semester. The team was granted access to ChatGPT Enterprise as part of the spring 2024 AI Innovation Challenge.
- Building custom GPTs: Mihir Parmar is a graduate student in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence. During his presentation, he shared how users would be able to train their GPTs for broader applications like legal and clinical reasoning, and even for the accomplishment of daily tasks as simple as laundry.
- Language Buddy: Dr. Christiane Reves, assistant teaching professor in the School of International Letters and Cultures, explored the development of an AI-powered “language buddy” to help students learning a second language. Free speaking is an important component and leveraging ChatGPT Enterprise, the team is developing the Language Buddy to develop conversational skills that are creative and not rigidly scripted.
- AI for storytelling: Dr. Retha Hill teaches in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. For the past two semesters, her course has tasked students with creating immersive media experiences using tools like generative AI and virtual reality.
- Faculty course and support: Jonathan McMichael and Kristen Peña from the Learning & Teaching Hub at Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering are working on a course design project. They are building five custom GPTs that interact with each other, using a list of topics and topic-based assistants. The project is part of the spring 2024 AI Innovation Challenge.
- GenAI in Education: Punya Mishra from Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College presented the idea of an AI playground for college educators, decision-makers, teachers, and students to explore AI applications, programs, strategies, and resources. “If we want to make systemic change happen, it cannot happen just by supporting individuals. You have to support broader teams and groups within the colleges and across the university,” asserted Mishra.
Kyle Bowen from ASU Enterprise Technology hosted the day-long event.
Inspired by the various use cases of AI already underway, attendees broke out into teams to develop their own AI-enabled solutions during the second part of the day.
A total of 48 teams were organized around a persona, tasked with creating an AI-solution to support creativity and efficiency. The teams were all granted access to ChatGPT Enterprise to complete their activity.
Amanda Federico, Jesus Franco Yescas, Bea Rodriguez-Fransen, Jodi Menees, Scott Pennelly and Jennifer Tweedy of team NextAI took home the top prize — one year of access to CharGPT Enterprise — for their project idea FlexiLearn. The AI-powered personalized learning platform would aim to make education more differentiated and self-determined for students.
Each year, Empower gathers the IT community at ASU for a day of connection, collaboration and creativity.