CENTER VALLEY, Pa. — A new program for Penn State faculty will empower instructors to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) as a teaching tool and dispel myths around its usage.
Penn State Lehigh Valley faculty members Pedro Robles, assistant teaching professor of cyber analytics and operations, and Subhadra Ganguli, assistant professor of business, were selected by the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence as faculty leaders for AI-Aware Instruction at the Lehigh Valley campus. This program is designed to advance teaching excellence by cultivating a culture of experimentation and exploration of AI-aware instructional work within departments, colleges and Commonwealth Campuses. The program aims to unite leaders to support the work of their colleagues by sharing successes, processes and challenges surrounding the integration of AI.
AI has changed the landscape of higher education, from the process of course material creation and delivery to the methods students use to complete and submit assignments. The rapid growth of AI has raised questions around its ethical usage and the nature of its seemingly limitless capabilities. Lehigh Valley faculty leaders will be tasked with connecting their local teaching communities with resources and opportunities to advance teaching excellence in the age of artificial intelligence.
“The program will aid us in generating innovative teaching methods and the ways in which we can integrate them into our existing curriculum. But, first, we must promote AI literacy and foster interest in using AI as a teaching tool,” Robles said. “I believe Penn State wants to build more community around AI practice and the steps we can take to help our students, who will ultimately need to hone these skills.”
Ganguli expressed the increasing demand for instructor AI awareness and literacy and its vital role in understanding the tool’s capabilities and applications.
“We don’t know what the future of AI literacy looks like but businesses using it, so students will likely encounter it at some point in their careers, “ she said. “As faculty, we must discuss and share among ourselves how to create AI literacy for our students so they are prepared to enter the workforce upon graduation.”
Details for the specific project at Lehigh Valley have not been finalized; however, both Robles and Ganguli intend to share their own experiences with AI usage.
“I will be speaking about how to craft an effective prompt, or ‘prompt engineering,’ and how that skill can be used in collaboration with AI,” Ganguli said. “Both prompt skills and student domain knowledge will play a key role in identifying the pros and cons of human-AI collaboration.”
“The goal for us as faculty instructors is to alleviate the fear of AI instruction from our colleagues and learn to embrace the technology,” Robles said.
Robles said he intends to share the mutually beneficial outcomes for both students and faculty in their journey towardsAI comprehension and use, noting that several professors already use the tool alongside the large pool of students who have gotten comfortable using the technology.
“My message to faculty will be simple: Instead of fearing AI, understand what it is, so that when you have a basic understanding of it, you can begin effectively integrating it into your teaching instruction and better guide your students,” Robles said.
Robles and Ganguli will begin project discussions with other faculty leaders across Penn State's Commonwealth Campuses in early November at University Park to share best practices around AI-aware instruction. The second part of the project will involve discussions with PSU-LV faculty members around AI literacy for students and faculty, sharing best practices around teaching with AI from other campuses, creating and sharing repositories of resources around AI-aware instruction, and more.
Robles said AI should be seen as another tool to do a job better, whether it’s completing a course assignment or a task on the job.
“We tend to rely on the technology, and when we think tech will learn for us, that’s when we stop learning,” Robles said. “This is where education and information can help a lot. It will be another application in computers.”