An interactive teach-in on “AI in Education: Dreams, Nightmares, Realities” will take place on Monday, October 6 in Miller Hall 152 from 4:00-5:30 PM. All WWU faculty, staff, and students are welcome.
A collective of faculty and staff from Energy Studies, English, Environmental Studies, Fairhaven College, Geology, History, ITS, Mathematics, Psychology, SMATE, and Western Libraries is organizing this event to meet the urgent need for interdisciplinary conversations and critical perspectives about generative A.I.
The event will provide basic education on key concepts, encourage conversations between professors and students, and build critical frameworks for understanding the present impacts and future possibilities of A.I. at Western.
After the teach-in, participants will be able to explain difference between A.I., generative A.I., an algorithm, and a large language model and give examples of tools that use each technology.
They will also gain a working understanding of key concepts that illuminate the wide-ranging impacts of these technologies from several field-specific frameworks. For example, what exactly do climate scientists mean when they say that Chat-GPT is disastrous for the environment? What do political scientists mean when they affirm the vitality of our shared human agency for building just futures? What do psychologists mean when they say that chatbots are exacerbating crises in mental health, loneliness, and misinformation? What do legal scholars mean when they call for democratic (rather than technocratic or autocratic) processes to create tools that do more faster? Or for tools that center the needs of the most vulnerable and the human dignity of all (rather than the interests of billionaire investors)?
The most important goal of the teach-in is for the organizers to learn more about participants. What knowledge and experiences can you share with our campus community to help build a critical foundation for teaching and learning about A.I. together? What do you want to learn more about?
Childcare will be available during the event in Miller Hall 154 from 3:45-5:45PM. Please email Jenny Forsythe at jenny.forsythe@wwu.edu if you have additional access needs.
The Critical A.I. Literacies Collective (CALC) will hold a fall town hall meeting on Monday, November 17 in Parks Hall 146 from 4:00-5:00 PM on “A.I. in Education.” This event is open to all Western faculty, staff, and students. Dr. Caroline Hardin, professor of Computer Science and SMATE (Science, Math, and Technology Education) will give opening remarks on “Large Language Models and Learning,” and the majority of the time will be dedicated to an open town-hall-style discussion moderated by professors Claudia Johnson (Fairhaven), Amites Sarkar (Math), Emily Spracklin (Western Libraries), and Xi Wang (Environmental and Energy Studies). The event will be followed by a coffee and tea reception from 5:00-5:30 to encourage more informal conversations and connections.
The idea for this open meeting comes from feedback the collective received during the October 6 teach-in on “A.I. in Education: Dreams, Nightmares, Realities.” During the teach-in, participants worked in small groups to share their ideas on topics to explore in more depth at future events. A large portion of participant responses centered on A.I. in education. For example, participants reported wanting to talk more about
Professor Hardin is well-positioned to lay the groundwork for a conversation about “A.I. in education generally” and about “how to respond to the idea that students need to learn A.I.,” since she has a Ph.D. in computer science and teaches technology education classes to future K-12 teachers.
At the same time, the most important goal of the event is to create a forum for participants to speak and listen to one another. CALC affirms that there is no single person who can answer every question on A.I. in education, and there is no single department or area of expertise that offers a comprehensive understanding of this topic. By talking with members of our campus community across various disciplines and areas of practice, CALC hopes to explore the local and global impacts of generative A.I. CALC rejects the false binary that we are either “for” generative A.I. or “against” it and instead aims to build critical A.I. literacies grounded in a shared commitment to creating life-affirming futures for all of us together on this planet.
CALC is planning future teach-ins for the Winter and Spring quarters to address other topics of interest to past teach-in participants, including generative A.I. and water use, legal issues around A.I. tools and privacy, and the impacts of chatbots on users’ health and well-being.