Maria Pares-Toral, the Associate Director of Faculty Development at Milwaukee School of Engineering, presented at the Quality Matters (QM) conference. They presented on “Advancing AI Literacy within your Institution.” At team on their campus was tasked with developing a plan for their university. This group included faculty collaborating across departments. Planning and implementation led to a three year strategy. The rAIder Strategy has three phases:
- Do Now: Planning and Initial Deployment
- Do Soon: Integration and Expansion
- Work Toward: Advancement and Continuous Improvement
For the “Do Now” stage, they designed student, faculty, and program director surveys. Pares-Toral explained that they also started a Community of Practice (CoP) on AI in higher education and an AI Literacy and Training Working Group. The surveys asked “where are we now?” in terms of knowledge, usage, integration in the curriculum, and infrastructure for AI. The surveys also asked “Where do we want to be?” For the Community of Practice, one of the goals was to test Microsoft CoPilot. Members of the Community of Practice tried and compared different AI tools and used templates for evaluation of the tools. Pares-Toral shared that the AI Literacy & Training Working Group identified a framework for adoption and measurement of AI skills. Pares-Toral also explained that they incorporated elements of the EDUCAUSE AI framework. The presentation included an activity in break out rooms with a “needs gap analysis” template. One participant shared what their breakout room discussed and noted that finances will be a challenge. The discussion also included mentions of larger scale implementation and AI interest student groups.
