Foraging in the Land of AI: A Field Guide for the Curious and Skeptical
Dr. Megan Workmon Larsen, ASU, Director of Learning Experience Design
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming education, but the landscape is wild, unpredictable, and filled with both opportunities and pitfalls. Like foragers in an unfamiliar ecosystem, educators must navigate AI with curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking—identifying what is useful, harmful, or simply a fascinating mystery.
AI is not a prepackaged solution but a knowledge system in flux, shaped by human choices, biases, and values. Some applications enrich learning, others require careful handling, and some are best avoided. Through an interactive, dynamic approach, this keynote will explore AI’s potential in teaching and learning, uncover hidden dangers, and cultivate strategies for responsible and innovative use.
Participants will leave with a forager’s mindset—equipped to engage AI critically and creatively, balancing wonder with skepticism—ensuring that education remains a distinctly human endeavor in an age of machine intelligence.
Participant Note: Please bring your laptop to fully participate in the interactive sessions. These sessions are designed for participants to actively use AI tools throughout the day.
AI-Powered Productivity: Automating Teacher Workflows with Make.com, Google Sheets, and Airtable
Hannah Cheloha, PhD, Associate Teaching Professor & ASL Program Coordinator, ASU - Presentation
As teachers juggle lesson planning, grading, communication, and data management, time-consuming tasks can hinder effectiveness and reduce valuable instructional time. This session explores how AI and automation tools like Make.com, Google Sheets, and Airtable can streamline repetitive tasks, boost efficiency, and enhance organization. Attendees will gain practical strategies for automating workflows such as attendance tracking, assignment feedback generation, quiz creation, and student progress reports. With real-world examples and a step-by-step demonstration, educators will leave with actionable insights and templates to start automating their own processes immediately.
AI Prompt Power-Up: A Fast-Paced Faculty Challenge
Dr. Jeannette Shaffer - Interactive
Unlock the power of AI through an AI Prompt-s-Thon, a fast-paced, hands-on challenge designed to sharpen faculty’s AI prompting skills. In this **interactive 45-minute session**, faculty will collaborate in teams to craft effective AI prompts, experiment with strategies, and put their skills to the test in a **“Prompt-Off” competition.**
The session kicks off with a **brief introduction** to the art of writing high-quality AI prompts, covering key strategies such as clarity, specificity, and structured formatting. Armed with this knowledge, teams will engage in a **rapid-fire brainstorming session**, designing prompts tailored to educational applications—lesson planning, assessment design, student engagement, and more.
As the challenge heats up, each team will select their **two best prompts** to showcase in the **Prompt-Off**, where they will compete for the title of **Best AI Prompt Creator**. The winning prompt will be determined by effectiveness, creativity, and potential impact in education.
Whether you're an AI novice or a seasoned user, this session offers a **fun, dynamic** way to deepen your understanding of AI’s role in education. Walk away with **a collection of faculty-generated prompts** and the skills to leverage AI effectively in your teaching. Are you ready to step up to the challenge and master the art of AI prompting?
Beyond the Essay: Turning Written Assignments into AI-Powered Job Interview Simulations
Karri Sisson - Interactive - Virtual
What if assessments could do more than test knowledge—what if they could prepare students for real-world job interviews? This workshop explores how AI can transform traditional written assignments into interactive interview simulations, helping students apply their knowledge in a professional context while improving engagement and comprehension.
In this session, we’ll showcase how a Data Governance Interviewer Chatbot, built using ChatGPT, replaced a written paper in an online Data Analytics course. Instead of writing a static essay, students now engage in a simulated job interview, answering AI-generated questions that mirror those they might face in the workplace. The AI asks follow-ups, evaluates responses, and provides a dynamic learning experience that goes beyond memorization.
Attendees will learn how to design AI-driven assessments by converting written assignments into structured, conversational job interviews, crafting effective prompts, and ensuring academic integrity. A live demonstration will highlight how the AI Interviewer mimics real-world hiring processes, reinforces key concepts, and helps students develop critical thinking and communication skills.
This approach isn’t limited to data governance—it can be applied to any discipline, from history and psychology to business, STEM, and healthcare. By the end of this session, participants will leave with practical strategies to integrate AI-powered interview simulations into their own courses, enhancing both student engagement and career readiness.
Connecting Zoom, AI, and RSI
Christina Ahles - Presentation
The focus of this session will be to provide faculty with the tools to navigate zoom and AI to support and manage the time invested for Regular Substantive Interaction in the online environment. The goal is to provide faculty with ways to integrate more RSI, while providing student supportive accountability.
Empowering Education: Practical Strategies for Integrating Generative AI into Teaching
Roxanne Klassen - Interactive
Do you know your students are using AI but you aren't sure if they are using it responsibly? Is AI helping their learning? In this session I will share how I have used AI as an instructor to enhance real life applications of the concepts. We will discuss applications in all subjects. I will share how I have used AI for students to review competencies they will be assessed on throughout the course. I will also share how I have leveraged AI for an error analysis activity where students have to critically think in order to know if the output the AI is producing is accurate. Join me in a conversation about how to leverage AI as an instructor and help students use it appropriately in and out of the classroom to critically think and learn the concepts required in their courses.
Using AI as your creative thought partner
Laura Ballard, eLearning Director, Mesa Community College - Interactive - Virtual
In this session, we will explore how to use AI to ideate, design instructional experiences, and to even make your emails and writing sound better. In fact, I probably used AI to design this session!
Assessing Learning in a World Where Everyone Is a “Great” Writer: Exploring New Possibilities
Craig Jacobsen and Jennifer Strickland - Interactive
As AI-assisted writing becomes more common, higher education must reconsider traditional writing-based assessments. If tools like ChatGPT can generate well-structured, grammatically sound essays in seconds, how do we ensure our assignments still support deep learning? In this interactive session, participants will bring a writing assignment from one of their courses and examine it through the lens of AI’s capabilities and limitations. Through small-group discussions and shared examples, we will explore practical ways to adapt writing tasks to prioritize meaningful engagement, critical thinking, and academic integrity in a ChatGPT-influenced world.
Creating OER Materials with NotebookLM
Beth Alsen - Interactive - Virtual
Open Educational Resources (OER) provide flexible, cost-effective, and accessible learning materials, and NotebookLM offers an AI-driven solution for streamlining their creation. This session will explore how educators can use NotebookLM to generate, adapt, and enhance OER materials, including custom readings, study guides, glossaries, and podcasts tailored to student needs.
By leveraging automation and AI-assisted organization, NotebookLM simplifies content curation while ensuring materials remain dynamic, interactive, and engaging. The platform also supports Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, providing multiple means of representation, engagement, and expression to enhance accessibility for diverse learners.
Participants will engage in a hands-on demonstration, exploring how to create and modify OER content efficiently, ensuring alignment with course objectives while reducing preparation time. This session will provide practical strategies for using NotebookLM to develop high-quality, adaptable OER materials that empower educators to deliver inclusive, student-centered learning experiences.
Enhancing Data Literacy with AI: Smarter Dashboards for Smarter Decisions
Kaushiki Kansara - Presentation
This interactive session explores how AI-powered tools can enhance data visualization and dashboard design, helping faculty, staff, and administrators make more informed decisions. By integrating AI-driven insights into tools like Tableau, participants will learn how to create dynamic, intuitive, and predictive dashboards that improve student success and institutional efficiency.
Relevance:
In higher education, data-driven decision-making is crucial for improving learning outcomes and streamlining operations. AI can enhance this process by automating insights, detecting patterns, and optimizing dashboards for clarity and usability. This session will bridge the gap between AI capabilities and practical applications, equipping attendees with actionable strategies for using AI in data visualization. Notably, these tools have demonstrated measurable success, contributing to a substantial increase in committed learners for Computer Science courses at ASU while I served as a Manager for CS at ASU from 33% to 55% within two semesters.
This AI is Just Right: Right Sizing AI Use in Your Classroom
Paulette Stevenson, English Faculty, Mesa Community College - Interactive
As educators interface with AI, we are stuck with the question "how much of this should we be embedding in our classrooms?" For each discipline and course, the answer is different (and it should be). This session will help teachers think in the context of their discipline, course, teaching philosophy, and student degree outcomes to right size AI in your classrooms. Spoiler alert, there are no correct answers! Please come prepare to think, write, and collaborate.
Unlocking AI’s Potential in the Classroom
Jennifer Caldwell, Math Faculty, Mesa Community College - Interactive - Virtual
Join us for an engaging, hands-on session exploring how generative AI can enhance teaching and learning! We’ll kick off with a fun icebreaker before diving into real-world applications—see how AI-powered activities and feedback can transform student engagement. Then, we’ll explore cutting-edge AI-driven assignments from the article Harnessing Generative AI in the Classroom and brainstorm ways to responsibly and productively integrate AI into our teaching and professional practices.
Using AI How-to Guides to Improve Teaching and Learning
Megan Garvy, Arizona State University - Interactive
Graduate students in the leadership and innovation doctoral program at ASU engage with action research to address a problem of practice. After providing the local and larger context and problem statement, students complete a literature review to identify appropriate education theories that will inform an intervention to address the problem of practice. For the past two years, students have been provided a how-to guide that encourages them to use AI tools to explore education theories for the literature review. During this session, participants will be guided through exercises to articulate their own problem of practice and use multiple AI tools to explore related education theories. We will discuss the implications of providing AI how-to guides to improve teaching and learning.
AI as your Virtual Client: Interactive Role Play for Any Industry
Michelle Jung, Residential Faculty, Exercise Science, MCC - Interactive
Effective communication, problem-solving, and adaptability are essential across all client-facing professions, yet real-world practice opportunities can be limited. This session explores how AI, specifically ChatGPT, can serve as a virtual client, providing an innovative way for students to develop professional skills through interactive role-play and AI-generated feedback.
Participants will engage in a hands-on session where they test AI-driven scenarios tailored to their industries—whether it's healthcare, education, fitness training, counseling, or technical support. By crafting dynamic AI prompts, attendees will experience firsthand how AI can simulate clients, patients, students, or customers with different personalities, needs, and challenges. They will also learn how to interpret AI-generated feedback to refine responses, improve communication, and better prepare students for real-world client interactions.
This interactive workshop will empower educators and trainers to integrate AI-driven simulations into their curricula, enhancing experiential learning across disciplines.
Creating rubrics with AI
Stephanie Williams, eLearning Manager, Mesa Community College - Interactive
In this session, faculty and staff will learn how to use AI tools to create rubrics for assignments.
Empowering Education: Practical Strategies for Integrating Generative AI into Teaching
Roxanne Klassen - Interactive - Virtual
Do you know your students are using AI but you aren't sure if they are using it responsibly? Is AI helping their learning? In this session I will share how I have used AI as an instructor to enhance real life applications of the concepts. We will discuss applications in all subjects. I will share how I have used AI for students to review competencies they will be assessed on throughout the course. I will also share how I have leveraged AI for an error analysis activity where students have to critically think in order to know if the output the AI is producing is accurate. Join me in a conversation about how to leverage AI as an instructor and help students use it appropriately in and out of the classroom to critically think and learn the concepts required in their courses.
Enhancing Canvas Quizzes with AI: ChatGPT & VoiceMaker
Beth Alsen - Interactive
This session explores how Canvas New Quizzes can be enhanced using ChatGPT to generate quiz questions and VoiceMaker to add AI-generated audio to slides. By leveraging ChatGPT, educators can quickly create customized, high-quality assessments, while VoiceMaker enables them to add narration, making content more engaging and accessible. Additionally, incorporating transcripts ensures alignment with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) by providing multiple means of representation for diverse learners. Participants will learn practical strategies to streamline quiz creation, integrate AI-powered audio, and enhance accessibility in their courses.
Leveraging AI to Foster Creativity and Critical Thinking in Writing Projects
Leanna Hall - Interactive
This workshop will address the challenges of assigning and teaching writing projects in higher education in light of the expanding use and development of generative AI. Participants will explore the functions, opportunities, and limitations of generative AI, and brainstorm approaches to designing writing projects that employ AI tools to foster critical thinking.
Using AI How-to Guides to Improve Teaching and Learning
Megan Garvy, Arizona State University - Interactive - Virtual
Graduate students in the leadership and innovation doctoral program at ASU engage with action research to address a problem of practice. After providing the local and larger context and problem statement, students complete a literature review to identify appropriate education theories that will inform an intervention to address the problem of practice. For the past two years, students have been provided a how-to guide that encourages them to use AI tools to explore education theories for the literature review. During this session, participants will be guided through exercises to articulate their own problem of practice and use multiple AI tools to explore related education theories. We will discuss the implications of providing AI how-to guides to improve teaching and learning.