To ensure that our students become critical, ethical, and agile users of generative AI, we need to integrate it into courses in every discipline. In this session, four faculty members shared a dozen successful classroom exercises and lesson plans that engage students and help build transferable skills like creativity and collaboration.

Our speakers shared:

• Practical day-to-day approaches to integrating generative AI in ways that promote student learning outcomes
• Pedagogical principles behind the lesson plans and exercises

Our students are eager to learn to use generative AI and incorporate it into their work, and we are, too. But how can we integrate this technology into our coursework in ways that support our desired learning outcomes? In this session, faculty from four different disciplines led us in an interactive conversation about what their students have been doing in the classroom with generative AI.

They shared class activities that have engaged students and helped build skills like critical thinking, collaboration, and creative problem-solving. And they told us about the challenges they've encountered and the successes they've achieved. 

Our speakers shared: 

• How they created assessment strategies and rubrics to support their teaching goals
• Practical insights on achieving the right learning outcomes
• Instructional materials and student work samples to inspire your own innovations with assignments and assessment

At the start of the 2023-2024 school year, thought leaders from four campuses visited the Adobe Digital Literacy Café to share how they established initial guidelines around the use of generative AI in academics. One year later, three schools have gathered and shared how they have evolved their approaches to responsibly integrating the technology across the curriculum — as well as one EDUCAUSE researcher who recently coauthored a report on AI integration in the education sector. 

Our speakers shared:

• How they’ve been working to ensure that their students and faculty can benefit from game-changing technology while maintaining academic integrity
• How their new policies and guidelines are designed to help students develop in-demand career skills
• Access to reports, projects, and other materials they’re creating related to generative AI policies and guidelines

In April, we concluded the Digital Literacy Café series with student perspectives. Four student exemplars from across the curriculum showcased their inspiring work as they reflected on the “essential skills” and “student learning outcomes” that they developed as a result.

Four award-winning college instructors from across the curriculum shared innovative assignments that they designed to develop the “essential skills” and “student learning outcomes” that were the focus of the March Digital Literacy Café.

Each case study included the principles, goals, and contexts of each assignment, including lesson plans, materials, assessment strategies, and a reflection on the results.

The February episode of the Digital Literacy Café brought into focus the “essential skills” and “student learning outcomes” that educators were increasingly looking to integrate into their coursework across the entire curriculum through digital storytelling supported by generative AI.

Last fall, most of the conversations about generative AI in higher education had focused on text, Large-Language Models, and academic integrity, for obvious reasons.

In the November Digital Literacy Café, we broadened and deepened the conversation by looking closely at generative AI image creation in terms of the visual arts and communication.

Our panel of expert faculty in graphic design, visual communication, photography, and illustration shared their perspectives on best practices for curricular integration, implications for the future of creative professions, and the future of creativity in general.

Last September’s Adobe Digital Literacy Café brought together thought leaders who direct centers for teaching and learning, and each shared a collection of lesson plans that successfully integrated generative AI into the curriculum on their campuses.

Our conversation highlighted best practices from across the disciplines, and we aimed to provide resources that could be easily used by any instructor in any higher education context.

In this 2023 Back-to-School episode, each of our invited speakers spent the summer months last year as curricular leaders working to help their campuses prepare generative AI policies, statements, and best practices for the upcoming fall term.

Each shared the history of the development of these statements, the consensus they built so far, as well as what they anticipated right around the corner.

We compared different forward-thinking responses to AI, including especially authentic assessment and project-based learning.

The April session was one of our most engaging Adobe Digital Literacy Café ever! Each of the inspiring guests shared their experiences using transformative digital pedagogies to address deep-seated, “wicked problems” such as racism, climate change, and social justice.

The premise, which was supported by abundant research on experiential learning, was that when students are asked to creatively share stories that matter, concerns about authenticity and integrity take care of themselves. In the words of one of Professor Eddie Webb’s students: “It’s too fun to cheat!”

Assessing student work with confidence and clarity has always been a complex challenge, especially as new, digital tools seem to emerge suddenly on our campuses — and none may be more challenging than GenTech technologies such as ChatGPT and Adobe Firefly.

Instructors who are new to assigning and assessing digital student compositions can range in approaches from “the rubric remains the same” to “I’m not qualified to grade a podcast or website.” 

In this session, Todd Taylor and Justin Hodgson reflected on decades of research and experience in assessing digital work against the backdrop of the more recent arrival of AI bots in student academic writing spaces.

• Can previous best practices of digital pedagogies extend into the new technologies?
• Do we need to rethink assessment strategies dramatically?
• To what extent will battling bots and detectors occupy center stage in these conversations?
• Or is it “same as it ever was” when comes to authentic assessment of student work?