AI in Higher Education at Central Carolina Technical College
Sumter, SC (10/31/2024) — When the AI chatbot ChatGPT launched in 2022, educators and academic leaders across the world wondered how AI would impact higher education. Would it destroy the humanities and other academic disciplines? Would it diminish the value of a college degree by enabling students to cheat en masse? Aside from these broader concerns, education professionals also had simpler, more immediate questions: what is AI and what do we do about it?
In the nearly two years following ChatGPT's release, educators in South Carolina didn't receive many answers to their questions. That was until Central Carolina English instructors Margaret Floyd and Scott Chalupa launched their online professional development program "AI for the Trained Eye"-the first comprehensive statewide discussion of AI in higher education-this past summer. "We've heard of a number of folks just blocking access [to AI]. Nobody can access it. You're not allowed to use it," said Floyd of her and Chalupa's motivation for starting the program. "We saw that as a larger gap that, number one, there wasn't a lot of conversation about what this actually is, but also that there's just so much stress and anxiety and overwhelm that folks were feeling that could be impeding that conversation."
Delivered as an online course on D2L, "AI for the Trained Eye" provided 103 educators and professionals across South Carolina's 16 technical colleges a hands-on, collaborative learning experience focused on AI's impact on education and its implications for South Carolinians.
Across ten weeks, participants completed assigned readings, engaged in discussions, and experimented with generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft Designer. The course culminated with an in-person conference at Central Carolina, where participants presented projects they created during the course.
The design of "AI for the Trained Eye" reflected Floyd and Chalupa's desire to foster solution-oriented discussions about how to approach AI with integrity. Participants wrote weekly discussion posts where they applied concepts from the book The Ethical Algorithm: The Science of Socially Aware Algorithm Design to real-life academic policies and practices. They also responded to prompts with ideas on how to responsibly integrate AI into their jobs and joined Floyd and Chalupa for optional live Zoom meetings to further explore course topics.
The decision to make the course discussion rather than lecture-based allowed Floyd and Chalupa to serve as facilitators, which Chalupa said he and Floyd aimed for all along.
"We were very intentional about using the term co-facilitators because the whole point of the program was to facilitate learning about AI, not tell and direct learning about AI," said Chalupa.
They also made sure to model responsible AI usage by noting when they leveraged the technology to create images, topic descriptions, and other materials for the course.
"We were pretty open and intentional about 'Here's how we used AI for this thing. Here's how we used AI for that thing,'" said Chalupa. "We don't just preach this positive example. We have to lead this from the beginning."
The educators' deliberate and diligent work on "AI for the Trained Eye" has received recognition. In September, Floyd and Chalupa were honored as runner-ups for the Innovation Award at the South Carolina Information Technology Directors Association Conference. The award recognizes a state agency or higher education institution that takes a creative or innovative approach to implementing a technology solution.
Floyd and Chalupa hope to continue their work. The educators have spoken with Dr. Rosline Sumpter-the vice president for academics, student affairs, and research at the South Carolina Technical College System-about establishing future summer sessions and smaller webinars of "AI for the Trained Eye" for a more targeted audience.
Floyd believes these endeavors will foster a critical, ongoing conversation about AI and its evolving impact not only on education but also on the lives of community members.
"That is what the heart of 'AI for the Trained Eye' is: How do we come together as a community to adapt to emerging technologies in a way that continues to elevate and prioritize the human contribution to our community?" she said. "And that is a conversation that needs to continue."
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