MSU Teaching Scholars program to focus on AI

BOZEMAN, Mont. — Two faculty members from Montana State University Library and one from Gallatin College MSU were named 2024 Montana University System Teaching Scholars.

The program's primary goal is to apply innovative artificial intelligence insights in the classroom.

The program will specifically help students understand how generative AI relates to and effects research.

The group will also work to create a student help guide on the MSU Library website.

Montana State University sent out the following:

Two faculty members from the Montana State University Library and one from Gallatin College MSU will work to provide insights into artificial intelligence in the classroom after having been named 2024 Montana University System Teaching Scholars.

Jason Clark, professor and head of research optimization, analytics and data services with the MSU Library; Taylor Moorman, assistant professor and instructional technology librarian with the MSU Library; and Kyndra Campbell, head of the Writing and Developmental Humanities program at Gallatin College MSU, were selected in March for the Teaching Scholars program. The program recognizes innovative approaches to teaching and commitment to leading other faculty in excellence in the classroom. The three are among 15 faculty members from around the state honored this year as MUS Teaching Scholars.

Each year, the MUS Teaching Scholars program focuses on a selected theme that highlights innovative approaches to teaching and that aligns with Montana University System teaching and learning priorities. This year, the program is focused on the use of generative artificial intelligence, or AI, and large language models in the classroom.

The announcement for this year’s program noted that in higher education, AI has and will continue to change how students learn, how faculty teach, the workforce students will enter, and the world students will engage in as they are tasked with solving society’s most pressing challenges and pursuing its most promising opportunities.

“Throughout the process of (applying), I realized how much of an impact this can have on our university system and teachers,” Moorman said. “I’m so excited about it.”

One of the main components of the MUS Teaching Scholars program is the development of faculty learning communities. During the spring semester, each teaching scholar leads faculty at their home campus in creating innovative and effective teaching strategies.

Clark and Moorman’s joint proposal, “Modeling Transparency: Designing Model Cards for Responsible Generative AI Assignments,” focuses on addressing the question of responsible and equitable AI for teachers and students through the creation of assignment templates and student guides.

“We know that teachers and students are experimenting with this emerging technology and finding exciting learning opportunities,” Moorman and Clark wrote in their proposal. “We also know it can be a struggle to create and assess equitable and explainable implementations of this technology in courses and coursework.”

To address that need, Clark and Moorman’s faculty learning community will work to create examples of assignments that teachers could use in classrooms and develop a framework to build responsible AI for instruction.

Specifically, their aim is to create a collection of assignment templates that will help students understand how generative AI relates to authority, credibility and responsible research. As open educational resources, or OER, those templates will be available for free for anyone to use, including any faculty member from any MUS campus. The pair also plans to produce a student-focused guide on the MSU Library website that includes information on using, examining and citing generative AI systems, along with links to instructional content that will be open for anyone to use. Finally, Clark and Moorman plan to research the process of convening a faculty learning community on this topic and describe best practices for assignment design and templates.

Moorman noted that the two are intent on the project resulting in practical tools to share with teachers and students.

“I keep coming back to the hands-on component,” she said. “We want to provide resources so that teachers and students can critically examine the (AI) tools and then take those skills and the knowledge of how to use them, or how not to use them, into their profession and feel comfortable and confident engaging.

“We really are trying to plug into a unique moment in time,” she added. “We’re aware it’s changing very rapidly.”

Clark said that as librarians, he and Moorman may have a unique perspective to offer.

“We both see the library as having a really important role here,” Clark said. “Part of our professional work is understanding information literacy and ways that new tools come into environments. How do we learn about them, teach them, integrate them? How do we do that responsibly? Both of us came to this idea that there is an AI literacy moment that we can embrace.”

Campbell’s project will explore how AI might be used thoughtfully in student writing processes and writing assignments in first-year composition programs, developmental writing programs and across the curriculum.

“First-year composition and development writing programs could be the space in which we give dedicated time for students to explore both the product of writing with the use of careful AI work to improve their delivery of thought, but also with adequate time to explore their processes of writing and therefore their processes of learning,” Campbell wrote in her project proposal.

Campbell’s faculty learning community learning outcomes include rethinking how instructors discuss AI and writing by researching how students could benefit from its strategic use; identifying ways that AI could better inform student writing processes and products; designing writing assignments that effectively use AI; modifying programs’ current learning outcomes to include the recent development of AI and its responsible use; researching how students could benefit from the strategic use of AI in their writing; and developing curriculum models for assignments tailored to learners at different levels.

Campbell said that she believes the faculty learning community’s work will advance the MUS’s understanding of the intersection of AI and teaching and learning.

“By shifting our thinking from a culture of fear and hesitation about the use of AI and student work to a culture of innovation and possibility, we will better prepare students to use this new technology in ethical ways that improve their writing confidence, abilities and, in turn, better prepare them for their careers,” she wrote.

Now in its fourth year, the MUS Teaching Scholars program was created to elevate excellent teaching and learning and to help high-quality teaching impact all students, according to a release announcing this year’s recipients. The program recognizes faculty members who have made exemplary contributions to teaching and learning at their institutions and supports these faculty in leading their peers to further advance excellence in teaching.

To learn more about the MUS Teaching Scholars program, visit mus.edu/che/arsa/mus-teaching-scholars/.