Putting AI to work

On Wednesday morning as part of our Art of the Possible week, we heard from three colleagues who have been working with and using AI. They brought very different perspectives:

  • Dr Stephen Parnell, from APL, described his experiments with Midjourney, an image generating tool. Stephen outlined and illustrated how he has used AI generated images to explore his own research interests and catalyse creativity with his students. (View Steven’s slides).

  • Dr James Stanfield, ECLS presented reflections from his students’ use of AI in a Masters module, revealing their sophisticated multi-tooled approaches. For his students of Technology Enhanced Learning, James encouraged experimentation and positive use of AI to help support their learning.  Acknowledging the use of AI was an integral part of their assessment. (View James’ slides)
  • Dr David Grundy, NUBS, described his own use of AI as a productivity tool and walked us through how he uses AI to produce audio podcasts feeding the output from ChatGPT prompts into his own AI generated cloned voice to make MP3 files. (View David’s slides)

You can catch up on this session from the recording below:

Use the contents page in the recording (^) to jump to specific segments or scroll to the following timestamps: Stephen 0.00; James 16:16, David 34:24

Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle University Podcast – AI at Newcastle University

The Learning & Teaching @ Newcastle University podcast was launched in the 2021 Art of the Possible week Blended learning: effective practice. This monthly podcast celebrates the great things we are doing in learning and teaching here at Newcastle University.

In each episode we hear from a wide range of guests, and guest hosts to discover more about their stories and the work behind their stories. These can be long form conversations, magazine style articles, and much more.

In the latest episode (episode 37), Ben Steel from LTDS sat down with Pro Vice Chancellor Education Professor Ruth Valentine and Dean of Digital Education Dr David Kennedy.

AI text generating technologies have been around for a long time, but they have made significant advances in recent years. Most are trained on extensive data sets and are capable of producing human-like written content quickly and easily. There has been a lot of media coverage of these tools recently (in particular ChatGPT) with concerns raised about the risk they present to academic integrity. 

As with all emerging technologies, it is our role as educators to explore and investigate the opportunities they provide to our students’ educational experience, as well as to consider any potential negative impacts. Ben, Ruth and David discuss Newcastle University’s response to these tools, with a focus on the five principles for the use of AI at Newcastle.

You can find this episode (and our back catalogue) at the following places: 

Our site on the Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle website

Apple

Spotify

Next time we are going to look at our 2023 Art of the Possible week AI in Education, with highlights from our sessions. 

So, remember to download, like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from. If you are new to podcasts, you will see some useful links on each episode page.   

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Getting to Grips with AI: A Selection of Articles

An AI-generated image of a vast library of books, used to highlight the difficulty of keeping up to speed with AI literature.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly changing landscape, with new and innovative tools emerging constantly. But how can you keep up-to-date with the latest developments and trends in this fast-moving field? In this blog post we will share some of our favourite articles on AI to help get you started:

QAA: Maintaining quality and standards in the ChatGPT era

JISC: Generative AI Primer

UNESCO: Guide to using ChatGPT in higher education

JISC Webinar: Bias and explainability in artificial intelligence

Teaching with ChatGPT: Examples of Practice

To find out more about AI at Newcastle University, and keep up-to-speed with new and emerging developments in the use of AI in teaching and assessment, please visit our Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle site.

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Embracing AI – opening our Art of the Possible Week

We were delighted to welcome Debbie Kemp, MBA director from Kent Business School to open our Art of the Possible week. Debbie described her practical experience of openly embracing AI in her module on “Delivering Innovation”. She shared her initial fears and concerns and reflected on the response of students and the wider impact of AI use on their programmes.

We said to the students “we have taught you how to use AI in an ethical way… use it”

Many thanks to Debbie for such an engaging talk and for giving permissions to share the recording. It generated many questions and comments.

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Art of the Possible – AI in Education 26-30 June 2023

This year there have been many conversations about AI in Education – at School level, with our students and between colleagues. Next week we have further opportunities to keep the conversation going and learn together. What’s clear is that no one person is the expert in this fast moving space.

Over the week we have a number of in-person and online events. We will also be adding to this blog over the week. Come back to see posts about AI, outputs from our events and the next AI themed episode of our Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle podcast.

Add your thoughts

Throughout the week we will be collating questions and opportunities and adding them to two Padlet boards. Get involved by adding your own thoughts to these boards or upvoting ideas that resonate with your own. At the end of the week we’ll revisit these with our Dean of Digital Education, Dr David Kennedy.

Questions about AI

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Open Questions Padlet in a new window

Opportunities

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Open Opportunities Padlet in a new window

What’s on over the week

We have a few places left on many of our in-person and online events:

Monday 26 June 

  • Embracing the AI Landscape: Debbie Kemp from the University of Kent will open our week, sharing and reflecting on how she has incorporated AI in her teaching and assessment. 
    Online 10:00-10:45 
  • Introduction to AI: a one-hour overview from LTDS and FMS TEL colleagues.   
    In person 14:00-15:00 

Wednesday 28 June 

  • AI and Assessment: a one-hour session exploring the impact of AI on assessment.  
    In person 10:00-11:00 
  • Embracing AI @Newcastle: find out how colleagues at Newcastle University are embracing AI in their teaching and learning.  
    Online 14:00-15:00 

Thursday 29 June 

  • Hands on Explore AI Tools: Join us in the Herschel Learning lab to try out a range of AI tools. 
    In-person, bring your own device: 10:00-11:30 
  • Microsoft 365 and AI: Join the NUIT Digital Adoption team for an overview of what is currently possible, and what the future holds, for AI in Microsoft 365.  
    Online 14:00-15:00 

Friday 30 June 

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