We are excited to share that we have been awarded a $75,000 Fund for Excellence and Innovation grant from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

This cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary project aims to develop educational resources to support students and instructors in navigating the ethical integration of AI in postsecondary education, including actionable guidelines, pedagogical strategies, and policy recommendations. It will focus on the key areas of student onboarding, assignment design, assessment, personalized feedback, accessibility, and open educational resources (OER). The educational resources, developed by a team of faculty and staff from five institutions across the state – George Mason University, James Madison University, the University of Virginia, Roanoke College, and Bridgewater College – will be evidence-based, informed by cutting-edge pedagogical research on these topics conducted by graduate students, faculty, and staff across colleges and universities in Virginia, as well as the evolving scholarly literature. Findings from the team’s own research in this domain will be used to create faculty development materials to support synchronous and asynchronous workshops and learning opportunities for instructors across the state.

The project will leverage the networks and resources of the Virginia Educational Development Collaborative (VEDC), a network of faculty developers, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Collaboratory, a multi-institutional community of practice. Prior work of these two organizations, conducted in academic years (AY) 2020-2023, focused on developing a network of state-wide faculty development opportunities supporting transparent and equitable assignment design principles, and developing processes and best practices for supporting faculty in conducting scholarly inquiry into their teaching and their students’ learning (funded by a 4VA grant). With the rapid rise of interest in and use of AI tools in teaching and learning, efforts in AY 2023-2024 have focused on supporting the development of interdisciplinary, cross-institutional research teams to engage in inquiry about the impacts of AI on teaching and learning.

By bringing together experts across disciplines, including an advisory board of representatives from business and industry across the state, this project will create new and strengthen existing efforts in AI academic integration and student outreach in postsecondary education. It will empower students and instructors to harness the potential of AI while upholding principles of equity, transparency, and human dignity, so that students are equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world. The project will benefit instructors and students across the state by providing access to rigorous research and emerging insights on AI impacts on teaching and learning, open access repositories of AI integration resources, professional development workshops and training modules to increase knowledge and responsiveness. Key to each of these will be the input of employers across the state and across a variety of fields through the business/industry leaders advisory board and inviting industry leaders as co-facilitators of the workshop series, including the AI Career Pathways Showcase. Students will benefit through enhanced learning experiences and personalized supports, access to quality resources to support student understanding of AI capacities to aid learning, enhancement of AI literacy and critical evaluation skills for the emerging technologies shaping the workforce.