How is generative AI going to impact your career? How is it going to impact engineering educators and students’ learning experience? We are planning a faculty design thinking session to explore Generative AI (GenAI) for how it can be used to help students learn. Why? Everyone is curious about it, from students to CEOs, and we are all trying to figure out how it connects to what and how we teach, and how we can create value for our students by using GenAI. We are trying to identify the opportunity it presents for engineering educators and how we can scale it best for impact. Sound familiar?
What do we mean by “safely?” We recognize that most faculty may not have a background in AI and rely on what they hear from others. Many teachers are worrying about how to keep students from using it to cheat. There are many other fears that faculty and students have about AI. There is a feeling and fear of being left behind the technology curve and losing relevance in their future or current careers. Many students that are near graduation are worried they are not prepared for an AI-enhanced workforce. Faculty that have not been in the engineering industry for a while or possibly ever, may be unaware how GenAI is impacting the workforce or the military. Also, by “safely” we want to make sure that as educators, we make sure we limit the exposure of toxic GenAI output, respect intellectual property, and discern accurate and honest content. Faculty and students must learn how to use GenAI responsibly.
We are going to get all of these issues out on the table in a comfortable and open intellectual space. We are going to use design thinking to empathize with faculty and students. We are going to clearly define the needs, pains, and potential gains that faculty and students have related to AI in general and specifically to GenAI. We’ll take time to brainstorm potential solutions or “products.” We will be able to build some teaching prototypes and feedback on our ideas. Trust me, it will be a “safe” space to explore the technology’s impacts and learn how we can tackle the challenges together.
We are delighted to have Christina Hnova, from the University of Maryland Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, facilitate our session. I met Christina through my past instructor at the Stanford d.school Teaching and Learning Studio, Dr. Leticia Brito Cavagnaro. Through Amazon Web Services (AWS) Machine Learning University and AI Educator Enablement Program, we have been able to begin preparing many of our faculty in the School of Engineering to teach and integrate AI. But we are also aiming to help faculty in other schools, including the Humanities, Business, Education, and Science, explore GenAI with curiosity, connections, and value creations for an interdisciplinary AI student learning experience. Come join us!
Picture: A curious learner with Kathleen, one of my Humanoid Engineering and Intelligent Robotics (HEIR) Lab undergraduate research students, during an AI-enabled humanoid robotics outreach event when I was at Marquette University.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to KEEN and the Kern Family Foundation for their support!
© 2023 Andrew B. Williams
About the Author: Andrew B. Williams is Dean of Engineering and Louis S. LeTellier Chair for The Citadel School of Engineering. He was recently named on of Business Insider’s Cloudverse 100 and humbly holds the designation of AWS Education Champion. He sits on the AWS Machine Learning Advisory Board and is a certified AWS Cloud Practitioner. He is proud to have recently received a Generative AI for Large Language Models certification from DeepLearning.AI and AWS. Andrew has also held positions at Spelman College, University of Kansas, University of Iowa, Marquette University, Apple, GE, and Allied Signal Aerospace Company. He is author of the book, Out of the Box: Building Robots, Transforming Lives.
In Search of Innovation 