Days/Times: Mondays 10:30am-noon, starting January 27
Instructors: John Martin and Andrew Jason Turner
Location: Online (Zoom)
Credit: 2 credits
Certificate in Higher Education Teaching and Learning: elective
Course Description
AI continues to change the way we teach, learn, research, and even think. It is crucial to learn to use it in ethical, equitable, and effective ways to enhance rather than diminish our distinct expressions of humanity.
Human-Centered Teaching with AI is a full-semester, graduate-level course held on Zoom that is open to students, postdocs, staff, and faculty. This is not a course on how to have AI teach more, but on how to use it to teach better, while keeping our humanity intact. This Spring 2025 course is similarly designed to the Fall 2024 Staying Human with AI-enhanced Teaching where ~25 participants explored both individually and together how to harness these emerging tools in our teaching.
Personal voice is a major goal: the course is for participants to explore how generative AI tools can be leveraged to create adaptable and evolving educational experiences that resonate with their own personal teaching philosophies, values, and the diverse needs of learners. In other words, we will focus on how AI can assist in meeting us and our students where we’re at and honoring/developing who we are rather than trying to change us (educators and students) into versions of ourselves that are not authentic to ourselves or our disciplines. We will use AI to create more equitable, effective, and efficient teaching practices tailored to participants’ specific academic fields, and tailored to complement their individual teaching styles.
Through individual and group exploration and experimentation, we apply AI to proven teaching techniques such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT), backward design, inclusive teaching strategies, and social/active learning that promotes peer-informed critical thinking.
Anonymous Testimonials from Fall 2024
- “This is a very useful class in the era of AI and so much to learn with this new emerging tool”
- “This is one of the most effectively designed and supportive courses I’ve taken at UW. I had very limited knowledge of AI and its applications for teaching when I enrolled, and the course discussions and activities have been really valuable in getting practical experience with the benefits and drawbacks”
- “an excellent job guiding us and exploring with us to integrate AI into our teaching while maintaining a human-centered approach. It was very helpful to have a community around us to explore the topic safely and share AI tools and practices.”
- “Great course, I would definitely recommend to other colleagues, it is both useful for teaching, research and even for personal use and career development.”
- “This class helped me overcome the stereotype about using AI for teaching. After incorporating elements of AI in my teaching, it has helped improved my classroom activities”
About the Instructors
John Martin’s PhD looked at experiential and game-based learning. He’s taught on campus (first-year to graduate students) since 2012. His interest in collaborative experiential learning has led him to embrace technology to build trust-filled social learning environments. He’s helped students and educators transition from typewriters to word processors, from standalone computers to the internet, from desktops to laptops to tablets to mobile phones. He’s developed augmented reality apps for learning, and leans into new learning tech as it develops. So here we are with AI! His own ADHD-issues have driven him to approach generative AI, like the many other potentially-dehumanizing technologies before it, with determined optimism, leaning in to harness them to help the full spectrum of learners.
Andrew Jason Turner (he/they) is an Application Administrator within the Learn@UW-Madison team in DoIT Academic Technology where he has provided technical, administrative, and pedagogical support to instructors, staff, and students for the past 6 years. Andrew has published work on identity and learning in informal learning environments, and he is broadly interested in the impacts of Generative AI technologies on Higher Education, especially with regard to what counts as academic misconduct as these new technologies emerge and how they can positively impact learning. He has a MS in Digital Media education, a professional capstone certificate in computer sciences, and a BS in Plant Pathology.
Questions?
Contact info@delta.wisc.edu