Faculty Invited to 2024 Winter Teaching Symposium Jan. 11

Roy G. Cordell

The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center, the Teaching Academy, the Office of Faculty Affairs and the Provost's Office invite all faculty with teaching responsibility to the Winter Teaching Symposium on Jan. 11, 2024, in the Verizon Ballroom in the Arkansas Union. This year's symposium will include a plenary address on student engagement and persistence, as well as a keynote address and three workshops on artificial intelligence. Join us in the morning session for the plenary and keynote addresses; join us in the afternoon for the three workshops, or join us all day, and we will provide lunch. Bring your water bottle to stay hydrated, and bring your laptop for active learning opportunities!

Click here to RSVP - Please be sure to RSVP no later than noon on Jan. 3, 2024. 

Morning Session

9:30 a.m., Plenary Address
"Staying the Course: Strategies for Motivating Student Engagement and Persistence"
Heather Walker, Ph.D.
Associate department head and teaching assistant professor, Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering
2023 Recipient, Ro Di Brezzo Service to Teaching Award

Student engagement and persistence have been shown to be critical for academic success, but how do we get our students engaged and keep them engaged? In this session, we will consider ways to motivate student attendance, build meaningful connections and maintain student engagement all semester long. Dr. Walker will share practical strategies that faculty can implement this semester to help their students start, stay and finish strong.

10:45 a.m., Keynote Address
Teaching and Thinking with AI
José Antonio Bowen, Ph.D.
Bowen Innovation Group LLC

The excitement (and panic) surrounding AI is shattering expectations around assignments, assessment, class preparation and attendance, while challenging us to build more future-proof and inclusive classrooms. AI is changing working and thinking: as jobs and the way humans do thinking tasks change, how will our curriculum respond? AI is also changing how we think about average. If ChatGPT can produce consistent "C" work, then we need to update our policies around grading. AI is even changing creativity. Together, we will examine the skills and content that will matter most in this new age, what policies and practices improve motivation and decrease cheating and why articulation of "quality" is essential. Focusing on the tangible, attendees will also learn techniques to transform assignments and assessments to motivate and engage students by placing greater emphasis on the process and experience of learning.

Afternoon Session

1 p.m., Workshop
AI Feedback and Role-Playing
José Antonio Bowen, Ph.D.

Feedback is essential for learning, and the best feedback is like a tennis net: objective, immediate and specific. AI makes customized and immediate feedback available for every student: submit your code/story/lab report/business plan to an AI and ask it to find all of the security breaches/inconsistencies/loopholes/unforeseen problems. It is now easier to experiment, visualize and see implications of new ideas. In this workshop, we will learn how even very simple prompts can return useful feedback, how to use AI feedback to make student (and faculty) work better and even how to set up students to get support or have direct conversations or debates with tutors, editors, analysts, historical figures and more. AI can supply the early feedback needed to improve student work and allow them to surpass what AI can do.

2:15 p.m., Workshop
AI Grading and Policies
José Antonio Bowen, Ph.D.

AI is also changing how we think about average. If an AI can produce consistent "C" work, then we need to update our policies around grading: why would an employer hire a "C" student if AI can do that level of work? Together, we will design new rubrics for an AI era that articulate how human "quality" goes beyond AI. We will discuss what policies and practices improve motivation and decrease cheating, and why.

3:30 p.m., Workshop
AI Assignment and Assessments
José Antonio Bowen, Ph.D.

All assignments are now AI assignments. In the same way that the ease of finding information on the internet forced faculty to rethink what homework students did and how we wanted them to do it, we will all need an AI strategy for assignments and assessment. We will consider both potential strategies: making your assignments AI-Resistant or AI-Inclusive. Since most work will soon be AI-assisted work, we can help prepare students for the jobs of the future with assignments that require or suggest that students use AI to assist in completing them. Through a wide diversity of examples, we will also discuss how we can reduce cheating and raise standards.

About TFSC: The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center provides a variety of programs for new and not-so-new faculty each academic year. These programs are available for all faculty (tenure track and non-tenure track) who have teaching responsibilities. For more information on teaching tips and programs, check out the website: teaching.uark.edu.