Evolving Issues
Asynchronous Session
Utilizing AI Chatbots in Higher Education Teaching and Learning View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Thomas D. Cox, James Rujimora, Laurie Campbell
With the rapid societal emergence of generative artificial intelligence chatbots, calls for responsible use of AI permeate public voices. Higher education is no exception. The Diffusion of Innovation Theory seeks to explain how technologies like generative AI large language models are being adopted. Instructors are faced with addressing AI in instruction as the use of generative AI chatbots is accelerating. Further, instructors are seeking to understand how generative AI can and currently is being utilized in teaching and learning. In this study, 25 graduate education learners discussed their current use and perceptions of AI chatbots. Most of these learners indicated they had utilized AI chatbots to support their personal and professional lives. Most learners indicated that they did not utilize generative AI for academic writing assignments but used it for other pursuits. Implications for teaching and learning include discussing with learners how, when, and if generative AI can be utilized in the classroom.
Intercultural Language Teaching in a Foreign Language Teacher Education Program: Redesigning Curriculum in a Colombian University
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alexander Ramirez Espinosa
This paper shares some preliminary results of a doctoral dissertation aimed at infusing an intercultural perspective in the curriculum of a Foreign Languages Teacher Education Program in Colombia. Current discourse about internationalization in higher education often use intercultural communication as a market-driven objective that can be solely met in establishing academic interchanges abroad, and through a foreign language. The research (a single-case study) started with establishing the faculty’s perceptions about curricular strengths, weakness and opportunities to develop an intercultural orientation in language teaching. Similarly, official documents and policies were analysed to ponder the same aspects. Finally, a Professional Learning Program was designed and conducted with faculty to jointly work on the renovation of the program curriculum. The study shows that interculturality is usually seen as a result of contact between foreign countries and languages, a vision often caused by market-driven discourses in higher education. However, the multilingualism, multiculturality, and the development of multiple identities that take place on campus constitute a rich and complex landscape of assets that can be utilized to foster intercultural competencies as well. Similarly, the study suggests that while intercultural aspects are deemed as paramount in language teaching, the faculty might lack conceptual understanding around interculturality, which hinders their good intentions to promote intercultural language teaching.
Digital Art as Pedagogy: Exploring the Potential of Digital Art Making to Deepen Understandings of Social Justice in an Online University Course
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anna Augusto Rodrigues
My study looks at the potential role digital art making may have in deepening student learning on issues of social justice in online university courses. My students created digital collages that visualized a social justice issue as an assignment for an online university course called Social Justice Issues in Education. The assignment gave students an opportunity to critically analyze concepts learned in the course as they applied their understandings of social justice to a digital work of art they created. Delivering course content that is framed through an equity lens has increasingly become important at Canadian universities. A literature review reveals a gap in studies that look at how digital art making can be leveraged to explore social justice themes in university courses. Drawing from critical arts pedagogy, an educational approach that looks at how art and artistic practices develop critical consciousness, I discuss my findings from a study that explores the pedagogical possibilities digital art making offers when learning about social justice issues in an online university course.
