Outcomes

• Gain a deeper understanding of the benefits and challenges of incorporating ChatGPT in the language and ESOL classroom.

• Develop practical strategies for using this technology to enhance language teaching and promote equity and inclusivity. 

• Identify ways to incorporate ChatGPT activities that engage and benefit students with diverse language backgrounds.

• Evaluate the potential of ChatGPT in their own teaching contexts, considering factors such as student needs, institutional policies, and ethical considerations.

Description

This discussion will center on the topic of incorporating ChatGPT in the language and ESOL classroom. With the growing demand for AI and its integration into various industries, there is a pressing need to explore how language teachers can incorporate this technology in their teaching without leaving any students behind.

The discussion will explore several themes, including the benefits of ChatGPT for language and ESOL teachers, its potential as a tool to help save time and enhance the work-life balance of teachers, and how it can be used to engage students in language learning.

One topic of discussion will be the hot-button issue of AI replacing ESL teachers, and the presenters will provide insights into how ChatGPT can complement the work of teachers, rather than replace them. Additionally, the discussion will examine how to include students in ChatGPT activities, and how it can be used to provide meticulous language feedback to enhance accuracy and fluency.

The proposed discussion will also highlight how ChatGPT can help promote equity in the classroom by creating a level playing field for students with diverse language backgrounds. We will explore different ways of incorporating ChatGPT to ensure that all students benefit, regardless of their language proficiency.

Overall, this discussion aims to offer practical insights and ideas for language and ESOL teachers looking to integrate AI into their teaching and to promote equity and inclusivity in the language classroom.

Outcomes

• Describe important elements of the classroom experience including agency, power, and bias

• Identify the barriers that traditional grading creates for students, especially those with marginalized identities

• Brainstorm learning assessment strategies that mitigate issues in grading and present new opportunities for learners/instructors

Description

Grading is a familiar structure in our roles as instructors, but this long-standing tradition can lead to inequities for our students. In this conversation, we will explore our relationship to grading and how it fits into our teaching practice. What grading systems did we ourselves experience as learners? How do instructors in our discipline typically grade? How do we feel about our current grading approach? By exploring ideas such as agency and power, we will also delve into the ways that grading affects students and their relationship to the course material as well as us as their instructor. Who benefits from grading, and how do they benefit? Through this discussion, we will consider new ways that we can facilitate learning as well as make student learning visible to us and to students themselves. Participants are invited to figure out a grading approach that honors their own individual style, discipline, and values.

Outcomes

• Describe how Universal Design principles benefit all students.

• Identify barriers in course content.

• Explore how to make course content more accessible.

Description

The recent trend in higher education to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) efforts and initiatives has primarily focused on addressing inequities of race, gender, and ethnicity. And while this work is both crucial and necessary; disability, as a historically marginalized and excluded identity, is often left out of these efforts and conversations, and relegated to the institution’s disability services office. As educators, we have an opportunity to create and provide accessible learning content in an inclusive and equitable manner. Utilizing available technology, such as Anthology Ally, can help break down barriers for all students, whether they have disclosed disabilities or not. Accessible content specifically can support students with various learning needs and preferences, and those with situational or temporary needs such as working in loud environments, slow internet connection, and more.

In this session, Dr. Katie Grennell, Accessibility Strategist for Anthology and adjunct faculty member at Buffalo State College, will demonstrate how Universal Design (UD) principles increase equity for all students and how faculty can leverage technology to empower learner choice to support all students. Dr. Grennell will be joined by University of Buffalo undergraduate student Kerri M. who will share insights into how she leverages Ally and alternate content types to meet her needs in different educational contexts.

Attendees will learn about accessibility barriers in course content, Universal Design principles, the benefits of UD for students, and learn actionable tips on how to make their course content more accessible and equitable for all students. 

Outcomes

• Consider issues of equity for in the non-credit context broadly. 

• Reflect on those issues in relation to one’s own institution.

• Identify potential areas to address to positive impact the learner experience.

Description

The context and issues related to equity in online education are reasonably well known for degree-seeking students, though certainly identifying and implementing solutions remains the work of many amazing people. As more institutions explore offering workforce learning via online offerings like microcredentials, it seems worth examining in what ways the context, population, and solutions may be different in this environment.

Many of the rules that guide or constrain online learning for credit-bearing classes come from the federal government by way of Title IV funding rules or HEA and from accrediting bodies – both of which do not (today) apply to non-credit, workforce learning. The learners who participate in workforce learning have significant differences to matriculated students, not least is that the relationship is often much shorter and often off-site, even for non-online offerings. The resources and services that are made available to learners and instructors involved in credit-bearing classes are often not available to workforce learners – either through cost, policy, or because no one has asked.

Presenters from Mitchell College, a small independent college in Connecticut, have wrestled with these challenges as they develop and launch a new online professional learning and upskilling initiative and will share their conclusions and remaining challenges as a way to get the conversation started. Session attendees will be invited to talk through how the principles of equitable online learning apply to this growing area of practice.

Outcomes

• Explore how collaborative programs leverage online learning environments and provide a means to respond emerging talent demand 

Description

Because no single Bay Area college has all of the courses necessary to prepare students to meet the demand of the growing virtual production industry, six colleges have come together to form the Regional Virtual Production Academy (RVPA) as a collaborative solution that will enable a timely response. The Academy will shorten the path to completion by providing students the flexibility to complete required coursework when and wherever it’s offered. This approach has a two-fold benefit. Students have greater access, which supports retention, completion, and equity. Colleges benefit from increased enrollments and decreased class cancellations due to not meeting minimum enrollment. As an outcome, students obtain their desired credential in less time, enabling a quick start on a high-wage, high-growth career path in virtual production.

A collaborative program is one in which one or more colleges rely on another college or colleges to offer some of the coursework required for an approved degree or certificate. Collaborating colleges may either be in reasonable proximity to permit students to take classroom-based courses or the courses may be offered online through distance education local or shared platforms.

Outcomes

• Identify barriers for students with disabilities in an online environment.

Description

Most see online learning as an equalizer that opens doors to all learners. Adults, individuals with disabilities, those without access to transportation, etc., are now able to learn from their own homes. However, most are not aware that a computer screen adds an additional hurdle for students with disabilities in receiving access and accommodations in an online learning environment. Even students with visible disabilities are now shielded from their needs being recognized unless they disclose the disability. If faculty are to create an inclusive and accessible learning environment when teaching online courses, they must be prepared to identify the barriers and know strategies to be inclusive of all students. Pascuala Herrera, a Latina immigrant woman with a physical disability due to childhood polio, and a retired faculty and accessibility specialist of a community college, and now a partner in Educators for Equity and Justice and an author of three books, will share her personal and professional insights that will give participants awareness of common disabilities and how to make simple changes that can increase the chances of success of these students. In this interactive presentation, Pascuala will address how online learning removes barriers and at the same time hinders access for students with disabilities who need it.

Strategies will include:

• How to develop relationships with students so that they feel comfortable disclosing their access needs,

• How to use available resources to support students in their access, and

• How to improve communication with all students so that barriers are removed.

Outcomes 

• Describe the role that higher education plays, and that you play, in the lives of students with disabilities. 

• Discover and discuss proven and tangible methods to apply universal design principals to course curriculum. 

• Identify ways to make courses and campuses more accessible, inclusive, and welcoming for students with disabilities will be shared and discussed.

Description

This discussion will be led by disabled community college student, Precious Golden. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that 26% of U.S. adults currently live with a disability, making persons with disabilities (PwD) the largest minority group. In 2023, only 21.3% of these individuals were employed (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), and The City of Portland reported that PwD make up 57% of Multnomah County’s houseless population (2015). Disability and inability are not synonymous. Quite the contrary. Given the direct link from disability to unemployment to houselessness, post-secondary education (PSE) has the potential to reverse this pattern by giving PwD an opportunity to get the training and education they need to work in a sustainable career.

In 2019 the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) found that “post-secondary education (PSE) programs that include students with disabilities may serve as an ‘upstream’ solution, connecting people with disabilities with education and employment, thereby reducing their risk for homelessness.” Further they reported that “these programs have been effective in placing over 75% of graduated students in gainful employment.” There are currently over 250 of these inclusive programs nationally, proving that PSE is an evidence-based, scalable solution to disability, unemployment, and houselessness. However, at the other 4,000+ U.S. colleges and universities, the environment isn’t inclusive at all.

Though institutional change is glacial, PSE instructors and staff hold the power to be the bridge between policy and practice today.

After a short presentation about academic access, attendees will discuss tangible, scalable solutions to make their courses and programs more accessible and inclusive.

Outcomes

• Identify tools for reviewing and redesigning instruction to increase equity

Description

The Academy for Teaching Excellence, Harper’s center for teaching and learning, has developed programs and tools to improve outcomes for all students with a sustained focus on reducing equity gaps. In this session, we present three overlapping initiatives the Academy has implemented: the Equity Teaching Academy, a three-course professional learning series; the Enacting Equity Guidelines, a rubric for self-reflection and review; and the Applying Equity Matrix (AEMy), an on-demand repository of inclusive teaching practices. We will explore the development, implementation, support, and evaluation of these initiatives and how the program continues to evolve.

Outcomes

• Discuss challenges incorporating socio-political events into curriculum

• Explore concepts from the Mahogany Legacy Project

• Discuss influence of politics in academia

Description

This discussion provides reflections of the current social and political environment which continues to manifest itself in student-instructor interaction, increase conflict from discussing diversity-related curricula, and preparing for additional anticipated attempts by numerous state legislation to limit conversations and programs associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion and its economic impact on affected communities. 

Outcomes 

• Gain an understanding of the ethical implications of using AI in education and how it may impact equity. 

• Explore positive and negative impacts of AI in education and identify potential strategies for leveraging AI to foster equity. 

• Develop a deeper understanding of the role of educators in fostering equity and promoting ethical AI practices in education. 

• Identify opportunities for meaningful collaboration and innovation in using AI to support equitable educational outcomes.

Description

Who doesn’t talk about artificial intelligence (AI) these days? With the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022, not a day goes by without new and fabulous ways of how AI can help us in all aspects of our lives. However, what if we take the rose tinted glasses off and look at AI a bit closer. Is everything as shiny as promised? Where do ethical practices come into the conversation? What do we as educators need to keep in mind (or even worry about)?

This session aims to add to the current conversation by looking at practices that foster equity in education and how they might be influenced by AI - both positively and negatively - and what possibilities there are to work with AI meaningfully. It is an opportunity for both facilitators and participants to add to their sense making in this space and where they want to go next.

Outcomes 

• Analyze critically several "dimensions" of the University of California DEI Rubric

• Identify familiar or current practices

• Suggest edits and additions to the rubric

Description

This Discussion Session will introduce participants to the University of California DEI Rubric which was developed to support mindful strategies for engaging UC faculty with DEI. The facilitators will briefly address the development process, the structure of the UC Rubric, and mention some UC use cases. Participants will be asked to analyze the UC Rubric for particular strengths and possible gaps in respect of the 8 dimensions and strategies in the tool. We will invite suggestions for on-going use and application of the Peralta Online Equity Rubric and the UC DEI Rubric.

Discussion Session structure:

• (2 min) Welcome and introductions

• (5 min) Background and development of the Rubric, acknowledging the inspiration drawn from the Peralta Online Equity Rubric;

• (5 min) The UC Rubric: introductory statement, dimensions, the three columns, associated resources in the Rubric google drive folder;

• (27 min) ANALYSE:

  • THINK: Individually, participants will analyze critically two "dimensions" of the rubric. Prompts: What’s familiar? What’s new? What might be missing in a particular dimension?

  • PAIR: In breakout groups, participants will discuss and write up in a google doc what they noticed in the selected dimension/s, guided by the 3 prompts;

  • SHARE: whole group discussion, focused on strengths and gaps or deficiencies, with reference to the google doc;

• (5 min) DISCUSSION and Q&A: reflection and sharing on the use and application of the Peralta Online Equity Rubric and the UC DEI Rubric) for improving student learning;

• (1 min) Close and thanks.

Outcomes 

• Increase understanding about how AI may impact programs and policies

Description

The Artificial Intelligence/Data Analytics (AIDA) Project to develop a center of excellence at Laney College has raised a stark awareness of how promising and disruptive AI is becoming. While AIDA is focused on meeting exponential labor demand with industry supported community college efforts, model curriculum and faculty professional development, the project has revealed a bigger picture, difficult to fathom. What are the expectations for ethics, social responsibility, and equity that must be built into what our programs produce? How can/should we use it for our productivity as educators and institutions? How can/should students us it for their productivity, growth, and access? What are the policy implications? These are just a few of the questions we want to bring to this conversation about the broad impact of AI on education and learning equity. 

Outcomes 

• Describe the basics of what AI is and isn't. 

• Examine and analyse the challenges and opportunity costs for students. 

• Explore how AI can be used in the classroom to support access and accessibility.

Description

AI seems to be everywhere these days. Depending on the product, its claims span the gamut from being able to write an A paper, help organize a busy to-do list and maybe even paint a house! The pace of change seems unstoppable. This discussion presentation will continue the conversation about how can we leverage this technology for good inside and outside of the classroom. What are the opportunity costs for students? How does technology shape our thinking about literature, the humanities, math, science and higher education in general? How can AI be used to create more space for equity, access and accessibility?