This review covers the topic of AI possibly replacing instructors steaming ahead in the education sector, with California lawmakers voting to require people to be instructors of record in community college teaching, while Microsoft announces a range of educator features using AI. There are also more calls for continuous learning and new learning opportunities in the AI literacy space.
Education
Inside Higher Ed reports on California lawmakers voting for a bill to require community colleges to have a person as the “instructor of record” to exclude AI bots from becoming instructors.
Eric James Stephens comments on how the rollout of Microsoft 365 Educator features such as guided content creation, content aligned to standards, and AI feedback in apps may allow universities to bypass writing 101 courses and embed writing into discipline-specific courses such as biology or history.
Kimberly Pace Becker, Jessica L. Parker, and Desi Richter publish a white paper on an AI literacy framework for higher education that builds on prior theories and includes functional, critical, and rhetorical dimensions.
Ashlee Russell discusses her delivery of a Data Literacy and AI Literacy curriculum to the first AI integrated unit in the US Army, and the goal of ensuring everyone has the foundational skills to understand AI in the high-stakes area of national defense.
Jason Gulya reviews how asking students to create a chatbot on Poe and test it out enabled them to practice AI literacy and see the help and hurt the bots could bring about.
Beth McMurtrie writes in the Chronicle about the different camps of faculty members regarding AI: either despairing over assignments being easy to cheat on, focusing on how AI can enhance learning, or ignoring AI’s existence.
Leon Furze launches a free 4-week email course based on his ‘Practical Strategies for AI Prompts in Education’ professional learning session designed for educators, covering Generative AI, ethics, apps, prompts, and suggestions.
Anna Haney-Withrow announces the sharing of the AI Playground developed for faculty, staff, and students at Florida SouthWestern State College under Creative Commons licenses that people can request access to via a Google form.
Biases and Equity Issues
Marijana Asprovska discusses her forthcoming research on ChatGPT and different languages, and how differences in its treatment of non-English languages matters. Essentially, it can remember around 12,000 words in English but fewer words in other languages, so this penalizes non-English speakers in terms of usability and costs.
Creative Industries
Mathilde Pavis begins a collaboration with UNESCO to develop a strategy on the impact of AI on culture and creative industries. She’s looking for reports, evidence, and projects in this space.
General
Ethan Mollick updates his six-monthly guide to doing stuff with AI, choosing to start with fun before getting into the serious work.
Mike Kentz presents The importance of AI literacy for all at TEDxSavannah, reiterating that the responsibility for developing AI literacy is not just a problem for schools. All adults need to educate themselves. At one point Kentz defines AI literacy in a nutshell as “Having the knowledge base and the experience and the know-how to manage, push, pull AI in the ways that you need it to and in the ways that you don’t.”
Getting the most out of AI tools means continuous learning and improvement, with Nicole Leffer pointing out that even if your prompts are performing well for you, new research and experimentation mean you should regularly revisit and improve them.
Brian Sykes launches a Back to Basics Beginner’s Guide series on his Substack covering AI prompting starting with the AI image generator Midjourney.
AI detection tools such as GPTZero remain popular and profitable despite research showing their inaccuracy and numerous other issues, especially in the education world. Part of AI literacy means knowing enough about generative AI to know why these tools are problematic (despite possibly good intentions of separating human and machine-generated content).
