May 21, 2025 • 37 mins
Generative AI tools are challenging traditional models of college instruction. In this episode, Camille Huggins, Yolanda Carlos, and Orlando Saiz join us to discuss how Pacific Oaks College is working to use these tools to more effectively support student learning. Camille, Yolanda, and Orlando were participants in an AI Institute offered at Pacific Oaks College this year.
A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.
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Generative AI tools are challenging traditional models of college instruction. In this episode,
we examine how one college is responding to more effectively support student learning.
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of
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innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist...
...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer......and features guests doing important research
and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
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Our guests today are faculty and administrators at Pacific Oaks College. Since we have several
guests participating today, we'll have each of our guests introduce themselves,
describe their role at the institution, and state what type of tea they are drinking.
My name is Camille Huggins. I am a core faculty at the Pacific Oaks College for the last five years,
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and I'm Caribbean, so I like that strong Lipton yellow label tea. It has a lot of caffeine to it,
it's a good little balance with the lemon. New Yorkers, we love a lemon,
no milk, so that's what I'm doing today.Sounds good. Camille, my name is Yolanda
Carlos. I'm core faculty at Pacific Oaks College. I'm over at the BA and MA Early
Childhood Education degree program, and I love Earl Grey with a bit of milk.
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My name is Orlando Saiz. I'm an administrative faculty and Director of Research at Pacific Oaks
College in the EdD Early Childhood Education program. I normally drink coffee, but today I'm
having the loose-leaf spearmint tea. Very nice.
Yeah, some yummy tea choices for sure. John, are you drinking any tea today?
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I am drinking a ginger peach green tea today.Nice, John. I've switched things up, John,
I have chai today. That's been a while.
I know, I know. We’ve invited you here
today to discuss the AI initiatives that you've been working on at Pacific Oaks,
located in Pasadena, California, where it's much warmer than it is here today. So first though,
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could you tell us a little bit about Pacific Oaks College and its institutional mission?
Sure, I'd be happy to. So yes, you're right. The weather here in Pasadena, year round,
is beautiful, and the Pasadena Children's School began in Pasadena, California in 1945. It was
started by six local families as a children's school, which believed that each individual
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possessed an inner light worth nurturing. It later became a teacher training institution founded on
Quaker values of community, equality, and peace, which would offer a progressive education that
would help the world heal. Pacific Oaks College was established in 1958. The mission of the
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college is to train future professionals to be of service and positively impact their communities,
to help, and not harm them. Presently, the college is focused on building competent professionals
who are culturally aware, respectful of the communities they serve, open and willing advocates
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focused on justice, fairness, and prepared to advance or lead in their profession.
Our institution has a somewhat similar history in that it started off as a teacher
prep institution as well. That's kind of fun to hear a related story. Can you talk a little bit
about the student population at Pacific Oaks? So we have a majority is online. 80% of our school
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is online right now. So we have a combination of asynchronous, synchronous courses. We still
have some on the ground students, because we transitioned from on the ground to online during
the pandemic. So around 2022, 2023 it became that perhaps this works better, because our students
were more interested in doing online courses than on the ground courses. Our typical student
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body… we are a Hispanic-serving institution…. are Latino middle-aged women in their 30s to 40s. They
are working, they have children, they're married. So sometimes English is not their first language.
They have maybe went to school. If they went to our bachelor's program, they may have had some
remedial courses or whatever. But if they are in our master's degree courses, which is a lot
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of our courses, they would have gone to college, but they've maybe had a gap between bachelor's and
master's about eight to 10 years. So the academic acumen is the issue when they first get to school.
So we have to spend a lot of time really trying to hone in on their learning abilities and basically
help them get themselves to match what the rigor of the program is. But yeah, we love these kind
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of women. They are in the trenches. They are not into lofty ideas. They're into really learning the
skill sets that they are basically trying to gain because of our programming, which is marriage and
family therapy and social work and education. It's a very professions-based kind of school,
so they spend a lot of time really getting skill sets, being practical. They're very practical in
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understanding what they need to know, and we really help them with their skill sets.
In November of 2022, ChatGPT appeared right before finals at the end of the fall semester,
and it resulted in some fairly significant effects on higher ed,
how did faculty at your institution respond?Some instructors embraced ChatGPT initially quite
readily, and others even used AI apps for assignments to enhance them. Other faculty
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were hesitant and wanted more information. P.O. is a smaller higher ed institution,
and with that being said, we have the ability to be nimble and to add changes to our assignments as
needed and to keep up with best practices. P.O. is part of The Community Solution (the TCS) system.
It's a centralized infrastructure and culture that supports six higher ed education institutions.
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In the spring of 2023, TCS provided a conference space for our system faculty to showcase AI,
living out the mission of embracing a culture of learning. So faculty across the institutions
presented and all worked collaboratively in experiencing AI in a variety of modalities
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at our central location in Chicago.So I think, how did we embrace it Is that,
for the students, we kind of looked at it as a plagiarism kind of situation… so punitive,
this is going to stop them from learning blah, blah, blah. And as we got into the AI Institute
for the AACU we discovered that this can really help the students. We said our student body is
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first-generation women, mostly Spanish-speaking, different languages, and so forth. So AI can help
them with writing. AI can help them getting their thoughts in order. A lot of times, these students
ask, “How do you want this assignment to go? How do you want this assignment to look?” And I
thought, AI can help them in that avenue as well. The more you saw a lot of these applications come
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in ChatGPT starts it off, but then you got Deep Seek, you got Claude. You have a lot of different
platforms. You realize that this can really be used to help them educationally. So for us,
as faculty, we maybe have been using it secretly. I started using it just to do emails, you know,
“write this nicer, put my thoughts and write it nicer,” but we started to not look at it as
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a negative, but this can be the mechanism of the future. It's like autocorrect. I can barely spell,
but autocorrect makes me look as though I'm passing national spelling bees.
I'm relatively new to the institution, so I wasn't around in 2022, I was working at a different
institution, but right away, I was invited to join the AI committee at our school, and I found it
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very interesting the tools that were available that I was completely unaware of, and just to
see how there's certain programs and GPTs where they can serve as a tutorial and be of service
to students, faculty, it's just amazing. I'm very much looking forward to what the future holds.
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So you've kind of given us a little bit of a base for how folks were initially responding
to AI. Can you talk a little bit about ways that faculty are now using AI to support the
educational mission, whether that's in curriculum or educational activities or other uses?
Recently, I've been focused on the basic logistics in application of AI, student use
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to complete assignments or to create assignments. And so, for example, there is in one class a poem
they have to develop. And with that, I used an AI tool for them to download, a free use,
to put in their poem, and this AI app creates a video with music, with words and with pictures,
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and it brings to life their poem. And the students were really excited about that.
It really helped to bring that assignment to the next level and then at the institutional level,
our Pacific Oaks college AI team has been working on developing the institutional policy for AI
usage, for students, faculty, and our community, for example, we believe that it's important for
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students to submit their assignments and documents in a format that can be screened for AI usage by
the systems that are made available to faculties for screening Word documents. For example,
we use Turnitin. We want students to be able to generate and create their own content and use AI
as a support for developing ideas, not writing their papers for them. So as an institution,
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we've been engaged in critical discussions and in planning around the use of AI in the classroom,
and then also distinguishing the human element, or the connection, versus automated AI machinery,
tools, and apps. We encourage the using of AI for brainstorming, creating ideas.
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This should always be followed by student-created content, rather than the use of AI tools and
prompting to create or develop assignments. To add to that, I'm the chair of the Faculty
Council for our college. On a macro level, we basically engaged in a lot of conversations.
We've had a lot of staff meetings with the adjunct faculty as well as regular faculty, about AI and
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how to engage with it for ourselves, as well as for our students. Another thing we did was,
as Yolanda said, we are part of a larger system of six universities, we invited the larger system
to come in and do a two-day training on UDL (universal design for learning) and then AI.
And we've been looking at making collaborative initiatives between the UDL and the AI systems to
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basically incorporate it in our classes as well. Another thing we're doing is working on a policy,
it's a working policy, as Yolanda situated, but also we have not really introduced it to our
students. So that's our next part of our journey is basically how to appropriately engage students
and basically give them a demonstration. I think students really benefit from a demonstration.
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They definitely, when in online schools, they really benefit from one one-on-one personal
interaction via Zoom. They really like it. So that's what we've been working on as well.
Just to add to that, in advising doctoral research students, some of my students
are using AI platforms to organize their sources. They can engage in mind mapping,
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and I think it's a helpful tool for the literature search, even though I don't think it's a good idea
for them to fully rely on that. I think a good mixture of human capacity versus AI platforms and
tools to complement each other are important.Let's go back to the use of AI to support UDL.
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Could you talk a little bit more about how AI tools are being used to support a universal
design for learning approach in the course?So UDL has a lot of different facets to it,
audio, visual. What I've really been looking at is the growth mindset piece, because what
we've noticed with some of our students, I've been doing some one one-on-one. We're gearing
up to do focus groups with them. We got a small grant to basically implement UDL in the entire
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college. And so what I noticed with our particular students is that they don't want to necessarily
identify as having a learning disability. That's just not their thing. But what they talked about,
in a very roundabout way, was the lack of confidence, the lack of really being scared
to look for assistance. So I was thinking that we need to implement a growth mindset kind of
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component into our teaching modes, as well as, and AI can help with that, because it can help
give you courage to ask questions. You can ask AI to look at how we can integrate: “I'm having
difficulty understanding this assignment, I'm having difficulty understanding this article. Can
you break it down for me so that you can make more sense?” So integrating an AI component with the
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UDL will help enhance their learning abilities. So that's what we've been kind of structuring.
And I heard from the students that they really were having issues with just self confidence,
which makes a lot of sense based on the fact that they haven't been in school in years,
and everything is just moving at lightning space as far as learning acumen. So that is one way.
One of the things you mentioned earlier was that students come in with fairly differentiated
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backgrounds in terms of their prior knowledge, and they have to get up to speed. Have they been
using AI to help fill some of the gaps they may have had in their prior learning experiences.
I've noticed it in their assignments, yes, but what I'm learning is also they just put in the
assignment, but they don't put in the reading material. So the assignments come across very
superficial and not necessarily depth of critical thinking or any kind of reflection of the reading.
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So the AI won't even put in references in it, so the references won't match what's
in the coursework. So getting them to not use it in the underhanded way… You're using AI,
I have no problem with you using it, but it has to be used to assist you,
not do the work for you, and that has been the bridge that we're trying to cross.
You mentioned the large percentage of your coursework being online, and I know that faculty,
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in a lot of our conversations around AI, have been really concerned about using AI in online
environments, because it's a little bit harder to distinguish the human from machine-generated.
Can you talk a little bit more about ways that you're helping students move in the direction
of the assisting and not doing it for them, so where it's not an academic integrity issue?
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So, what I've been using is what's called the AI sandwich. I've been working with students to help
them understand how they can use AI like, for example, if they have a topic, but it's really
broad, to helping them brainstorm using AI to narrow down their topic or to develop ideas for
topics, and to help them to create and understand how to develop a good, concise thesis statement
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for their topic. And then, with that being said, the next step is how to gather their data,
so using AI to create questions for interviews, for surveys, and then methods for data collection
for their action research project. But with that being said, then I go into the humanization of AI,
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and I shift the focus to our model for P.O. It's the head, heart, and hands model. I talk to them
about, when we're completing assignments, it's not just to complete the assignment, but it's to gain
that knowledge, not just to regurgitate it, but to have that passion, because then it's in the heart.
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So it's the knowledge in the head, the passion in the heart, then our practices, our hands,
that comes forth in our practices, and that sets us apart from others, and that's something that
AI cannot do for us. That's something that we as the human, that's how we humanize the use of AI,
but the human-to-human, I talk to them about how AI has helped you generate these questions,
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these surveys, but you're going to be conducting these interviews, you're going to be writing the
anecdotal records. You're going to be taking the raw notes and submitting those, perhaps
maybe taking voice recordings or video, but then we can take AI to help organize those for them,
so that then they can maybe create their outline, and then they can submit their papers. How I do it
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is they submit it in chunks, and then I review and we're in revision state, and I provide feedback.
The feedback I provide is using a tool called VoiceThread where I provide specific assignment
feedback using what's called VoiceThreads, where they can see me, they can hear me, and if they
need to, they can also see the wording as well. So it touches upon all learning modalities.
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I have used VoiceThread in the past, and I've really enjoyed it. I had to drop it because my
classes were large, and just listening to all the audio responses took far too many hours.
I know Orlando, you did some AI stuff. You've been doing it in your doctoral program.
Yes, just thinking about most of the students that I teach are at the doctoral level, and most
of them are engaging in doctoral research. So if you consider that traditional approaches versus
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futuristic or current approaches, most of the material that students are engaging in at that
level is meant to be challenging. They need to learn research and it’s important to learn
statistics and different methodologies. So I'm super open to new tools that they can use, but
it's difficult to substitute AI tools with general educational tasks that are meant to help students
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advance and to gain a wealth of skills. But some of the newer tools that I'm becoming aware of,
and that I've noticed could be helpful as a tutorial for statistics and for research methods,
even research design. There's one called Julius AI, where you could drop your data in there and it
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can spit out a result. If it doesn't spit out the right prompt for you, you can re-prompt it until
it gives you what you want. I've tried it with simple data that I've had, running a correlation.
It gives you everything you need. So I mean, if students are struggling with conceptualization or
just to have the right terminology, because it is important to verbalize your research
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in a way that's accurate and specific. So I think the AI tools could truly help for that,
as well as general organizational tools. NVivo is another research tool that students are
using. I've used it in the past as well. It is fueled by machine learning now, so creating those
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hand-coded or manual themes that was done in the past is probably going to fall a little bit by
the wayside, but I still think there's some value for students to learn the traditional way and to
mind the author's recommendations from grounded theory and from phenomenology. I think there's
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some real value in that, and they could really showcase the ideas that they have. My exposure to
AI is relatively new, and it started when I began teaching here at Pacific Oaks and I joined the AI
committee. My doctoral program is very new. This is an inaugural class, and previous development
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of the doctoral research manual included a passage for plagiarism, to guard against plagiarism. After
reading some material, particularly AI for Teachers, by Jose Antonio Bowen. I noticed
the finding in there that faculty generally do not do well recognizing AI passages versus AI itself.
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So I thought this is something that I need to step up, and it has to do with academic integrity. So I
wrote a follow-up passage to that where students’ work will be detected for AI passages. It doesn't
say how many passages or the percentage, but I think it's going to be important for students
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to understand that they can't just copy and paste their whole doctoral dissertation and
that be acceptable, and there has to be some systems in place to guard against that.
So you've mentioned using Turnitin and tools like that to detect AI. Can you talk a little
bit about ways that you're managing false accusations or false positives on AI use?
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So I don't really trust Turnitin. Let me just put it out there as a misnomer. I feel
as though sometimes they see as plagiarism, and when I actually look at the paperwork,
it's like they use the same word the 10 million times and it's been picked up. So I don't know
if I don't trust Turnitin or I don't know how to use it properly. We put it out there like that,
and so I don't really rely on it as much, especially for those who English is not
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their first language. What I'm looking for is execution of how they write. When I did my PhD,
I wished there was a ChatGPT back then, I had to hire an editor who was from another country,
and that scared me. I was like, I'm paying you, and I was born in America and speak English,
and I'm paying you… she was like from Ukraine or Russia… to edit my paperwork. So because of that,
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I had to learn how to write. Something about that was not sitting well with me. So I had
to learn how to write. And I felt as though ChatGPT and one of these things can help you
to learn how to write. In Spanish, the adjective comes after the actual noun, whereas in English,
it comes before. And so I thought that this would help them. If, in fact, they can learn
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how to write, I can overlook plagiarism. What I can't overlook is them not using the readings and
the learning resources that I provide for them. I grade on how they write, and that's really good,
but I also grade on use of learning resources, and I think that that was more important to me
than the other thing. Another thing is a lot of them don't know how to use it properly,
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so they don't even see the attachment upload document to put in their articles. So that tells
you that maybe sometimes they're just cutting and pastes. And if you've never noticed in ChatGPT,
they'll say the same thing different ways, and it's up to you to pick up on which way to say it.
So me catching them there has been very helpful. Orlando's correct. Sometimes you can't tell, but
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then that's good, because then you're learning how it's supposed to be written in the first place,
and then ChatGPT also has a lot of spaces in between, so I'm teaching them not to cut and
paste. I want to teach them how to use it in a sense that it can craft a paragraph for you,
as opposed to you just cutting and pasting. So catching them in that area has been helpful to
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me. But again, I will say I don't know much about Turnitin. I don't trust your plagiarism
readability. So I go in that direction.I agree Camille. They also have a disclaimer
in there, so it kind of is a little bit on the nebulous side. And typically, when I go in and I
look, because I think that's a humanization of anything that we're going to be using,
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it still requires us to take that step, to go in, to look at, and to make sense of the meaning of
what has been submitted. And then I agree with you. We're looking for content. Do they really
understand this content, and can they apply what they've learned? Are they applying this
in a real case scenario. But when I'm looking at Turnitin, it flags references, and that tends
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to be the large chunk of it. When I can see that it's flagged references. And I'm looking to see,
are they in seventh APA edition? Yeah, they are. It's flagging them because they have submitted
this in the revision before this. And so those are things to keep in mind as well. Nothing's perfect,
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but it's learning how to use the tools that we do have available to us that's important.
So you've all talked a little bit about how students are using AI, and Camille mentioned
how she's used it to help shape emails. Are many faculty using AI to help develop curriculum,
to help develop learning activities, to create various scenarios or other
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ways in supporting their instruction.It has really helped me, and I think other
people are doing it too. I'm in the social work department. My other faculty have not caught on as
much as I have, but it really helps me with case studies, because my classes are more applied. It
helped me develop case studies that make sense. They have better characterizations, like they'll
sit there and say, identify mental health symptoms and then identify environmental stressors. And I
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was like, “Yeah, I never thought about creating it in that way.” So I think that has been very
helpful. It has helped me create quizzes, exams in a lot of ways. So I'm in love. I've subscribed to
ChatGPT as well as Claude. I've been trying out Deep Seek and you know, the platforms can go on
and on and on. We were just told that there's an AI for curriculum development that’s specific for
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lesson plans and so forth. So I'm going to look into that as well if there's a free trial. So I'm
into it big time, my colleagues, not quite yet, I don't think. And I'm also a writer, so it helps
me with contextualizing ideas and in figuring out what's out there right now, and so I can look at
different articles. I think Deep Seek is pretty good when it comes to accuracy and references,
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because I check it constantly against what's in there and what's outside. But I love it, and I
think this AI Institute really opened my eyes to the vast applications that are out there that I
think we all should know and not get overwhelmed by. It's like Bitcoin. You don't know what's going
on, but I'm really excited about it.Yeah, for myself, I tend to use Copilot.
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I think it's helpful, since it's kind of integrated into the browser that I use,
and it's helpful to summarize long passages, to bullet point them. But also, as a writer,
I use it if I'm struggling to find a source. I'll just drop a prompt in there, and it'll help me to
generate a few more sources that I wasn't aware of. But at first I was a little resistant. I was
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just unaware of how it worked and how it operates. But I'm starting to learn more and more, and I
do still have a concern about privacy, so I won't drop students’ whole papers in there, just because
it's not my work. It's something that I'm not in charge of, and is not my property. So I’d rather
just kind of use it in a broader sense, just to kind of quicken my pace in the work that I do.
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I just want to put it that a student told me about ChatGPT. That's how I first learned about
this whole thing in the first place. And I always say I talk to young people because they know and
keeping up with them. I'm 53 and I officially have no idea what's hot anymore, what's happening. I'll
have to admit it, but this student was like, “Why aren't you using ChatGPT?” and I'm like,
“What are you talking about?” And when it came I was like, “Whoa, this is just next place to go.”
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So I'm open to it, because the young people know about it, and I'm glad that they have it,
because it makes life easier. But you have to know how to prompt. I think that was the biggest thing.
Learning how to prompt it and yield it to what you need is what been the biggest challenge.
For me, I have mainly used the app. So initially I discussed how I used one for a poem,
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and it was Lumen5. It's an animated avatar video program that they download for free,
and they're able to create this beautiful video with the poem that they developed and
they created. What's really cool about it is that they get excited about an assignment that before
was just something that they just went through and they just jumped through the hoops. Well,
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now with that Lumen5, it's just kind of has brought things to the next level, and I also
use ITSE standards for educators. It's how to use AI and AI tools for educational purposes.
So that's something that I do and use, and I'm stretching and finding new apps at different
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times, and then having students go in. I use it as kind of like a pilot program. I'll pull it in,
and I'll say, “Well, this time, we're going to use this.” And I'll say, “it's not mandatory.
Those that you want to use it can use it. Those that don't want to use it can use the regular
standard assignment.” And it's amazing to see that the majority of them choose to use the AI tool.
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It also creates flyers, if you do that. And it has helped me with ethics applications. So, yeah,
it's a part of my life. It's on all my laptops and my computers. It's kind of embarrassing now,
but people say, “Oh, you're leaning on it too much. And if you lean on it too much, it becomes
they take over your ability.” But I'm directing this. I'm still involved. I'm the creative
director of what I will use and what I won't use, and I'm still a part of the equation. They haven't
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taken me over, have they?. This is the kind of philosophical questions you ask yourself.
Amen, that's the humanization of AI.I think one of the things that I've heard
you all talk about today is that the AI Institute gave you some concentrated time to practice and
explore and learn, and kind of set that time aside so that you had the time to do that. I think often
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it's one of those add-ons, like in my free time that none of us have, that we might explore these
things. So it seems like that dedicated time was a really valuable and important investment for each
of you to really integrate it into your work.Yeah, we had a staff meeting because, you know,
again, our Senior Vice-President of Academic Affairs, he's really interested in it to kind of
go, how can it be used for our professional use? And I remember my colleague and I,
we created a case note (30:04):
“How to Write a Case Note through AI.” And I think that just was,
like, blown away. The other faculty were like, “Wow.” If you know anything about social work,
you could write it as a SOAP note, which is a subjective objective assessment plan. You
can use it as a DAP note, which is a diagnostic assessment plan. So we used it as a demonstration
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about all the different ways you can write case notes. Now there are AI systems to help with
case notes in social work agencies which Is like: you put the paperwork in, put the information in, (30:30):
undefined
and they will create yourself an intervention plan. So I think that's the good thing about
Pacific Oaks College, because we're such a profession-based kind of college, you’re teaching
Marriage and Family Therapy. It's one of the biggest marriage and family therapy schools
on the West Coast. And then social work we just got basically a couple of years ago, using AI to
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help with you as a professional, I think has been great. So doing it with the teachers was
the first thing, faculty, and now we're going to try to see if we can do it with the students.
So you all participated in the institute. What proportion of the faculty participated
in the institute? And do you still have some faculty who are resistant to trying AI?
For the Institute, it was seven of us. Three of us showed up today, but the seven of us. One,
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the Dea,n has moved on to another position, but everyone else has maintained. has stayed. More
and more people are interested because of the fact that we've been doing staff meetings. And
I was very surprised, because when I set up the TCS, which is the system-wide AI and UDL classes,
it was like three hours of their time Monday and Tuesday, and everyone showed up. Everyone showed
up. Everyone's interested. And every time we do it, they're like, “Wow.” Every time you see
(31:42):
in the chat, “This is mind blowing.” So I think they're interested. But we haven't done anything
formal to basically quantify how interested they've been and how involved they've been,
but we've shown to them, AI is here to stay, it is valuable, and it can be used by anyone.
I believe we have developed a survey tool that we're going to be sending out to faculty. So
(32:05):
that's something that we're going to be looking at, gathering the data of
their familiarity with the use of AI. And then I think we're going to do a pre- and then a post-,
and then we'll probably then follow up on that, because that will denote the need.
I think, as well, at other larger institutions, that have decided on a specific platform to use,
(32:26):
as far as AI, and how to integrate that into the school's existing tools. We're still in the
process of deciding about that. I know some of the schools, they use a paid version of ChatGPT
or CoPilot. We're still in the phase of selecting the best platform, but I know there's some good
options out there, and I think it really will add to and cause us to progress in our programming.
So we always wrap up by asking (32:52):
what's next? So preparing for the unknown. What I would say,
first is we need to focus on relationships, the ability to connect with others, so that
they can collaborate and work in teams together, because this is the 21st century workforce need.
Second is helping our students with resiliency, I also like to call it flexibility, because the
(33:15):
one thing that is constant in life is change. That's the one thing that we can depend on,
is change. And resiliency is the ability to push through obstacles and to have the confidence to
act on the new knowledge that they have to create the change they want to see in the world. And then
lastly, this is a P.O. core value is reflection. All of our assignments generally have a reflection
(33:40):
piece that's weaved in there for them to reflect upon. So I always tell them it's important to stay
humble enough to reflect upon changes that need to be made, and then the courage to act on the
next steps that need to take place. What's next? Institutionally speaking,
what I like is the fact, though we are a part of a system which is TCS and the six universities, the
(34:04):
wisdom of the President was that he didn't want a uniform AI platform for each school. He thought
that we have a law school, we have a medical school, they're going to need different kind
of AI platforms than us. So we have been given the authority to autonomously pick our own AI platform
that will work best for our particular students. We are keeping our students heavily in mind. We
(34:24):
want to make sure that AI is used ethically and with integrity, but while being helpful to them.
So we're rolling out a policy that's going to help them in that sort of way. We are also redoing our
plagiarism handbook and basically incorporating AI and making sure that that kind of meets and
it's more seamless. We are definitely trying to pick a platform that kind of works for education,
(34:45):
marriage and family, and social work, three different distinct professions, but yet very
similar in a lot of ways. We're also working on an AI manual, to some degree, to basically figure out
how all the different components that come with AI, rethinking it and reshaping it. We have not
done a review of our faculty manual in about 10 years, so that's also being incorporated.
(35:06):
We're in the midst of change at Pacific Oaks, so AI came perfectly so they can be instituted
in our paperwork and our regulations.As an institution, I think we'll continue to
serve as possibly thought leaders for the topic of AI. A lot of us are integrating it into our work,
and I can see that continuing in the future. I think we all have a great idea about responsible
(35:31):
use of AI, and I think that will definitely continue. Personally, I'm working on writing
another book chapter. Most of my materials have been on doctoral researchers. So this new chapter
is about doctoral research agency, where it's based on a lot of material I've been looking into.
Part of that should be focused on helping students to adapt and prepare for the future. As Yolanda
(35:58):
noted, I think the skills of adaptation and integration are important, and AI could definitely
help with that process. And yes, overall, just using AI to help prepare students for the future,
whether it's in the job market or for personal enhancement. I think that's all important,
(36:19):
and we could definitely motivate students in that way and help them to navigate that process.
Well, thanks for joining us. It's nice to have a little case study of how a particular
institution is working through AI.And this is an issue that all campuses
are facing. So it's great to hear how you've been addressing it. Thank you.
Thank you for having us. Thank you.
(36:39):
Thank you so much. I hope that we were informative. We're trying to
move to cutting edge while keeping our tradition and our principles.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes
or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join
(37:02):
us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and other
materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
Generative AI tools are challenging traditional models of college instruction. In this episode,
we examine how one college is responding to more effectively support student learning.
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of
(00:22):
innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist...
...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer......and features guests doing important research
and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
(00:48):
Our guests today are faculty and administrators at Pacific Oaks College. Since we have several
guests participating today, we'll have each of our guests introduce themselves,
describe their role at the institution, and state what type of tea they are drinking.
My name is Camille Huggins. I am a core faculty at the Pacific Oaks College for the last five years,
(01:08):
and I'm Caribbean, so I like that strong Lipton yellow label tea. It has a lot of caffeine to it,
it's a good little balance with the lemon. New Yorkers, we love a lemon,
no milk, so that's what I'm doing today.Sounds good. Camille, my name is Yolanda
Carlos. I'm core faculty at Pacific Oaks College. I'm over at the BA and MA Early
Childhood Education degree program, and I love Earl Grey with a bit of milk.
(01:33):
My name is Orlando Saiz. I'm an administrative faculty and Director of Research at Pacific Oaks
College in the EdD Early Childhood Education program. I normally drink coffee, but today I'm
having the loose-leaf spearmint tea. Very nice.
Yeah, some yummy tea choices for sure. John, are you drinking any tea today?
(01:54):
I am drinking a ginger peach green tea today.Nice, John. I've switched things up, John,
I have chai today. That's been a while.
I know, I know. We’ve invited you here
today to discuss the AI initiatives that you've been working on at Pacific Oaks,
located in Pasadena, California, where it's much warmer than it is here today. So first though,
(02:15):
could you tell us a little bit about Pacific Oaks College and its institutional mission?
Sure, I'd be happy to. So yes, you're right. The weather here in Pasadena, year round,
is beautiful, and the Pasadena Children's School began in Pasadena, California in 1945. It was
started by six local families as a children's school, which believed that each individual
(02:38):
possessed an inner light worth nurturing. It later became a teacher training institution founded on
Quaker values of community, equality, and peace, which would offer a progressive education that
would help the world heal. Pacific Oaks College was established in 1958. The mission of the
(03:00):
college is to train future professionals to be of service and positively impact their communities,
to help, and not harm them. Presently, the college is focused on building competent professionals
who are culturally aware, respectful of the communities they serve, open and willing advocates
(03:21):
focused on justice, fairness, and prepared to advance or lead in their profession.
Our institution has a somewhat similar history in that it started off as a teacher
prep institution as well. That's kind of fun to hear a related story. Can you talk a little bit
about the student population at Pacific Oaks? So we have a majority is online. 80% of our school
(03:44):
is online right now. So we have a combination of asynchronous, synchronous courses. We still
have some on the ground students, because we transitioned from on the ground to online during
the pandemic. So around 2022, 2023 it became that perhaps this works better, because our students
were more interested in doing online courses than on the ground courses. Our typical student
(04:05):
body… we are a Hispanic-serving institution…. are Latino middle-aged women in their 30s to 40s. They
are working, they have children, they're married. So sometimes English is not their first language.
They have maybe went to school. If they went to our bachelor's program, they may have had some
remedial courses or whatever. But if they are in our master's degree courses, which is a lot
(04:28):
of our courses, they would have gone to college, but they've maybe had a gap between bachelor's and
master's about eight to 10 years. So the academic acumen is the issue when they first get to school.
So we have to spend a lot of time really trying to hone in on their learning abilities and basically
help them get themselves to match what the rigor of the program is. But yeah, we love these kind
(04:49):
of women. They are in the trenches. They are not into lofty ideas. They're into really learning the
skill sets that they are basically trying to gain because of our programming, which is marriage and
family therapy and social work and education. It's a very professions-based kind of school,
so they spend a lot of time really getting skill sets, being practical. They're very practical in
(05:12):
understanding what they need to know, and we really help them with their skill sets.
In November of 2022, ChatGPT appeared right before finals at the end of the fall semester,
and it resulted in some fairly significant effects on higher ed,
how did faculty at your institution respond?Some instructors embraced ChatGPT initially quite
readily, and others even used AI apps for assignments to enhance them. Other faculty
(05:37):
were hesitant and wanted more information. P.O. is a smaller higher ed institution,
and with that being said, we have the ability to be nimble and to add changes to our assignments as
needed and to keep up with best practices. P.O. is part of The Community Solution (the TCS) system.
It's a centralized infrastructure and culture that supports six higher ed education institutions.
(06:02):
In the spring of 2023, TCS provided a conference space for our system faculty to showcase AI,
living out the mission of embracing a culture of learning. So faculty across the institutions
presented and all worked collaboratively in experiencing AI in a variety of modalities
(06:23):
at our central location in Chicago.So I think, how did we embrace it Is that,
for the students, we kind of looked at it as a plagiarism kind of situation… so punitive,
this is going to stop them from learning blah, blah, blah. And as we got into the AI Institute
for the AACU we discovered that this can really help the students. We said our student body is
(06:46):
first-generation women, mostly Spanish-speaking, different languages, and so forth. So AI can help
them with writing. AI can help them getting their thoughts in order. A lot of times, these students
ask, “How do you want this assignment to go? How do you want this assignment to look?” And I
thought, AI can help them in that avenue as well. The more you saw a lot of these applications come
(07:07):
in ChatGPT starts it off, but then you got Deep Seek, you got Claude. You have a lot of different
platforms. You realize that this can really be used to help them educationally. So for us,
as faculty, we maybe have been using it secretly. I started using it just to do emails, you know,
“write this nicer, put my thoughts and write it nicer,” but we started to not look at it as
(07:27):
a negative, but this can be the mechanism of the future. It's like autocorrect. I can barely spell,
but autocorrect makes me look as though I'm passing national spelling bees.
I'm relatively new to the institution, so I wasn't around in 2022, I was working at a different
institution, but right away, I was invited to join the AI committee at our school, and I found it
(07:49):
very interesting the tools that were available that I was completely unaware of, and just to
see how there's certain programs and GPTs where they can serve as a tutorial and be of service
to students, faculty, it's just amazing. I'm very much looking forward to what the future holds.
(08:09):
So you've kind of given us a little bit of a base for how folks were initially responding
to AI. Can you talk a little bit about ways that faculty are now using AI to support the
educational mission, whether that's in curriculum or educational activities or other uses?
Recently, I've been focused on the basic logistics in application of AI, student use
(08:33):
to complete assignments or to create assignments. And so, for example, there is in one class a poem
they have to develop. And with that, I used an AI tool for them to download, a free use,
to put in their poem, and this AI app creates a video with music, with words and with pictures,
(09:01):
and it brings to life their poem. And the students were really excited about that.
It really helped to bring that assignment to the next level and then at the institutional level,
our Pacific Oaks college AI team has been working on developing the institutional policy for AI
usage, for students, faculty, and our community, for example, we believe that it's important for
(09:25):
students to submit their assignments and documents in a format that can be screened for AI usage by
the systems that are made available to faculties for screening Word documents. For example,
we use Turnitin. We want students to be able to generate and create their own content and use AI
as a support for developing ideas, not writing their papers for them. So as an institution,
(09:51):
we've been engaged in critical discussions and in planning around the use of AI in the classroom,
and then also distinguishing the human element, or the connection, versus automated AI machinery,
tools, and apps. We encourage the using of AI for brainstorming, creating ideas.
(10:13):
This should always be followed by student-created content, rather than the use of AI tools and
prompting to create or develop assignments. To add to that, I'm the chair of the Faculty
Council for our college. On a macro level, we basically engaged in a lot of conversations.
We've had a lot of staff meetings with the adjunct faculty as well as regular faculty, about AI and
(10:36):
how to engage with it for ourselves, as well as for our students. Another thing we did was,
as Yolanda said, we are part of a larger system of six universities, we invited the larger system
to come in and do a two-day training on UDL (universal design for learning) and then AI.
And we've been looking at making collaborative initiatives between the UDL and the AI systems to
(11:00):
basically incorporate it in our classes as well. Another thing we're doing is working on a policy,
it's a working policy, as Yolanda situated, but also we have not really introduced it to our
students. So that's our next part of our journey is basically how to appropriately engage students
and basically give them a demonstration. I think students really benefit from a demonstration.
(11:23):
They definitely, when in online schools, they really benefit from one one-on-one personal
interaction via Zoom. They really like it. So that's what we've been working on as well.
Just to add to that, in advising doctoral research students, some of my students
are using AI platforms to organize their sources. They can engage in mind mapping,
(11:44):
and I think it's a helpful tool for the literature search, even though I don't think it's a good idea
for them to fully rely on that. I think a good mixture of human capacity versus AI platforms and
tools to complement each other are important.Let's go back to the use of AI to support UDL.
(12:04):
Could you talk a little bit more about how AI tools are being used to support a universal
design for learning approach in the course?So UDL has a lot of different facets to it,
audio, visual. What I've really been looking at is the growth mindset piece, because what
we've noticed with some of our students, I've been doing some one one-on-one. We're gearing
up to do focus groups with them. We got a small grant to basically implement UDL in the entire
(12:28):
college. And so what I noticed with our particular students is that they don't want to necessarily
identify as having a learning disability. That's just not their thing. But what they talked about,
in a very roundabout way, was the lack of confidence, the lack of really being scared
to look for assistance. So I was thinking that we need to implement a growth mindset kind of
(12:50):
component into our teaching modes, as well as, and AI can help with that, because it can help
give you courage to ask questions. You can ask AI to look at how we can integrate: “I'm having
difficulty understanding this assignment, I'm having difficulty understanding this article. Can
you break it down for me so that you can make more sense?” So integrating an AI component with the
(13:12):
UDL will help enhance their learning abilities. So that's what we've been kind of structuring.
And I heard from the students that they really were having issues with just self confidence,
which makes a lot of sense based on the fact that they haven't been in school in years,
and everything is just moving at lightning space as far as learning acumen. So that is one way.
One of the things you mentioned earlier was that students come in with fairly differentiated
(13:36):
backgrounds in terms of their prior knowledge, and they have to get up to speed. Have they been
using AI to help fill some of the gaps they may have had in their prior learning experiences.
I've noticed it in their assignments, yes, but what I'm learning is also they just put in the
assignment, but they don't put in the reading material. So the assignments come across very
superficial and not necessarily depth of critical thinking or any kind of reflection of the reading.
(14:01):
So the AI won't even put in references in it, so the references won't match what's
in the coursework. So getting them to not use it in the underhanded way… You're using AI,
I have no problem with you using it, but it has to be used to assist you,
not do the work for you, and that has been the bridge that we're trying to cross.
You mentioned the large percentage of your coursework being online, and I know that faculty,
(14:26):
in a lot of our conversations around AI, have been really concerned about using AI in online
environments, because it's a little bit harder to distinguish the human from machine-generated.
Can you talk a little bit more about ways that you're helping students move in the direction
of the assisting and not doing it for them, so where it's not an academic integrity issue?
(14:49):
So, what I've been using is what's called the AI sandwich. I've been working with students to help
them understand how they can use AI like, for example, if they have a topic, but it's really
broad, to helping them brainstorm using AI to narrow down their topic or to develop ideas for
topics, and to help them to create and understand how to develop a good, concise thesis statement
(15:16):
for their topic. And then, with that being said, the next step is how to gather their data,
so using AI to create questions for interviews, for surveys, and then methods for data collection
for their action research project. But with that being said, then I go into the humanization of AI,
(15:36):
and I shift the focus to our model for P.O. It's the head, heart, and hands model. I talk to them
about, when we're completing assignments, it's not just to complete the assignment, but it's to gain
that knowledge, not just to regurgitate it, but to have that passion, because then it's in the heart.
(15:56):
So it's the knowledge in the head, the passion in the heart, then our practices, our hands,
that comes forth in our practices, and that sets us apart from others, and that's something that
AI cannot do for us. That's something that we as the human, that's how we humanize the use of AI,
but the human-to-human, I talk to them about how AI has helped you generate these questions,
(16:21):
these surveys, but you're going to be conducting these interviews, you're going to be writing the
anecdotal records. You're going to be taking the raw notes and submitting those, perhaps
maybe taking voice recordings or video, but then we can take AI to help organize those for them,
so that then they can maybe create their outline, and then they can submit their papers. How I do it
(16:46):
is they submit it in chunks, and then I review and we're in revision state, and I provide feedback.
The feedback I provide is using a tool called VoiceThread where I provide specific assignment
feedback using what's called VoiceThreads, where they can see me, they can hear me, and if they
need to, they can also see the wording as well. So it touches upon all learning modalities.
(17:11):
I have used VoiceThread in the past, and I've really enjoyed it. I had to drop it because my
classes were large, and just listening to all the audio responses took far too many hours.
I know Orlando, you did some AI stuff. You've been doing it in your doctoral program.
Yes, just thinking about most of the students that I teach are at the doctoral level, and most
of them are engaging in doctoral research. So if you consider that traditional approaches versus
(17:36):
futuristic or current approaches, most of the material that students are engaging in at that
level is meant to be challenging. They need to learn research and it’s important to learn
statistics and different methodologies. So I'm super open to new tools that they can use, but
it's difficult to substitute AI tools with general educational tasks that are meant to help students
(18:04):
advance and to gain a wealth of skills. But some of the newer tools that I'm becoming aware of,
and that I've noticed could be helpful as a tutorial for statistics and for research methods,
even research design. There's one called Julius AI, where you could drop your data in there and it
(18:25):
can spit out a result. If it doesn't spit out the right prompt for you, you can re-prompt it until
it gives you what you want. I've tried it with simple data that I've had, running a correlation.
It gives you everything you need. So I mean, if students are struggling with conceptualization or
just to have the right terminology, because it is important to verbalize your research
(18:50):
in a way that's accurate and specific. So I think the AI tools could truly help for that,
as well as general organizational tools. NVivo is another research tool that students are
using. I've used it in the past as well. It is fueled by machine learning now, so creating those
(19:10):
hand-coded or manual themes that was done in the past is probably going to fall a little bit by
the wayside, but I still think there's some value for students to learn the traditional way and to
mind the author's recommendations from grounded theory and from phenomenology. I think there's
(19:31):
some real value in that, and they could really showcase the ideas that they have. My exposure to
AI is relatively new, and it started when I began teaching here at Pacific Oaks and I joined the AI
committee. My doctoral program is very new. This is an inaugural class, and previous development
(19:52):
of the doctoral research manual included a passage for plagiarism, to guard against plagiarism. After
reading some material, particularly AI for Teachers, by Jose Antonio Bowen. I noticed
the finding in there that faculty generally do not do well recognizing AI passages versus AI itself.
(20:15):
So I thought this is something that I need to step up, and it has to do with academic integrity. So I
wrote a follow-up passage to that where students’ work will be detected for AI passages. It doesn't
say how many passages or the percentage, but I think it's going to be important for students
(20:36):
to understand that they can't just copy and paste their whole doctoral dissertation and
that be acceptable, and there has to be some systems in place to guard against that.
So you've mentioned using Turnitin and tools like that to detect AI. Can you talk a little
bit about ways that you're managing false accusations or false positives on AI use?
(21:00):
So I don't really trust Turnitin. Let me just put it out there as a misnomer. I feel
as though sometimes they see as plagiarism, and when I actually look at the paperwork,
it's like they use the same word the 10 million times and it's been picked up. So I don't know
if I don't trust Turnitin or I don't know how to use it properly. We put it out there like that,
and so I don't really rely on it as much, especially for those who English is not
(21:24):
their first language. What I'm looking for is execution of how they write. When I did my PhD,
I wished there was a ChatGPT back then, I had to hire an editor who was from another country,
and that scared me. I was like, I'm paying you, and I was born in America and speak English,
and I'm paying you… she was like from Ukraine or Russia… to edit my paperwork. So because of that,
(21:46):
I had to learn how to write. Something about that was not sitting well with me. So I had
to learn how to write. And I felt as though ChatGPT and one of these things can help you
to learn how to write. In Spanish, the adjective comes after the actual noun, whereas in English,
it comes before. And so I thought that this would help them. If, in fact, they can learn
(22:09):
how to write, I can overlook plagiarism. What I can't overlook is them not using the readings and
the learning resources that I provide for them. I grade on how they write, and that's really good,
but I also grade on use of learning resources, and I think that that was more important to me
than the other thing. Another thing is a lot of them don't know how to use it properly,
(22:32):
so they don't even see the attachment upload document to put in their articles. So that tells
you that maybe sometimes they're just cutting and pastes. And if you've never noticed in ChatGPT,
they'll say the same thing different ways, and it's up to you to pick up on which way to say it.
So me catching them there has been very helpful. Orlando's correct. Sometimes you can't tell, but
(22:53):
then that's good, because then you're learning how it's supposed to be written in the first place,
and then ChatGPT also has a lot of spaces in between, so I'm teaching them not to cut and
paste. I want to teach them how to use it in a sense that it can craft a paragraph for you,
as opposed to you just cutting and pasting. So catching them in that area has been helpful to
(23:14):
me. But again, I will say I don't know much about Turnitin. I don't trust your plagiarism
readability. So I go in that direction.I agree Camille. They also have a disclaimer
in there, so it kind of is a little bit on the nebulous side. And typically, when I go in and I
look, because I think that's a humanization of anything that we're going to be using,
(23:36):
it still requires us to take that step, to go in, to look at, and to make sense of the meaning of
what has been submitted. And then I agree with you. We're looking for content. Do they really
understand this content, and can they apply what they've learned? Are they applying this
in a real case scenario. But when I'm looking at Turnitin, it flags references, and that tends
(24:03):
to be the large chunk of it. When I can see that it's flagged references. And I'm looking to see,
are they in seventh APA edition? Yeah, they are. It's flagging them because they have submitted
this in the revision before this. And so those are things to keep in mind as well. Nothing's perfect,
(24:23):
but it's learning how to use the tools that we do have available to us that's important.
So you've all talked a little bit about how students are using AI, and Camille mentioned
how she's used it to help shape emails. Are many faculty using AI to help develop curriculum,
to help develop learning activities, to create various scenarios or other
(24:44):
ways in supporting their instruction.It has really helped me, and I think other
people are doing it too. I'm in the social work department. My other faculty have not caught on as
much as I have, but it really helps me with case studies, because my classes are more applied. It
helped me develop case studies that make sense. They have better characterizations, like they'll
sit there and say, identify mental health symptoms and then identify environmental stressors. And I
(25:08):
was like, “Yeah, I never thought about creating it in that way.” So I think that has been very
helpful. It has helped me create quizzes, exams in a lot of ways. So I'm in love. I've subscribed to
ChatGPT as well as Claude. I've been trying out Deep Seek and you know, the platforms can go on
and on and on. We were just told that there's an AI for curriculum development that’s specific for
(25:31):
lesson plans and so forth. So I'm going to look into that as well if there's a free trial. So I'm
into it big time, my colleagues, not quite yet, I don't think. And I'm also a writer, so it helps
me with contextualizing ideas and in figuring out what's out there right now, and so I can look at
different articles. I think Deep Seek is pretty good when it comes to accuracy and references,
(25:56):
because I check it constantly against what's in there and what's outside. But I love it, and I
think this AI Institute really opened my eyes to the vast applications that are out there that I
think we all should know and not get overwhelmed by. It's like Bitcoin. You don't know what's going
on, but I'm really excited about it.Yeah, for myself, I tend to use Copilot.
(26:18):
I think it's helpful, since it's kind of integrated into the browser that I use,
and it's helpful to summarize long passages, to bullet point them. But also, as a writer,
I use it if I'm struggling to find a source. I'll just drop a prompt in there, and it'll help me to
generate a few more sources that I wasn't aware of. But at first I was a little resistant. I was
(26:42):
just unaware of how it worked and how it operates. But I'm starting to learn more and more, and I
do still have a concern about privacy, so I won't drop students’ whole papers in there, just because
it's not my work. It's something that I'm not in charge of, and is not my property. So I’d rather
just kind of use it in a broader sense, just to kind of quicken my pace in the work that I do.
(27:07):
I just want to put it that a student told me about ChatGPT. That's how I first learned about
this whole thing in the first place. And I always say I talk to young people because they know and
keeping up with them. I'm 53 and I officially have no idea what's hot anymore, what's happening. I'll
have to admit it, but this student was like, “Why aren't you using ChatGPT?” and I'm like,
“What are you talking about?” And when it came I was like, “Whoa, this is just next place to go.”
(27:33):
So I'm open to it, because the young people know about it, and I'm glad that they have it,
because it makes life easier. But you have to know how to prompt. I think that was the biggest thing.
Learning how to prompt it and yield it to what you need is what been the biggest challenge.
For me, I have mainly used the app. So initially I discussed how I used one for a poem,
(27:54):
and it was Lumen5. It's an animated avatar video program that they download for free,
and they're able to create this beautiful video with the poem that they developed and
they created. What's really cool about it is that they get excited about an assignment that before
was just something that they just went through and they just jumped through the hoops. Well,
(28:15):
now with that Lumen5, it's just kind of has brought things to the next level, and I also
use ITSE standards for educators. It's how to use AI and AI tools for educational purposes.
So that's something that I do and use, and I'm stretching and finding new apps at different
(28:35):
times, and then having students go in. I use it as kind of like a pilot program. I'll pull it in,
and I'll say, “Well, this time, we're going to use this.” And I'll say, “it's not mandatory.
Those that you want to use it can use it. Those that don't want to use it can use the regular
standard assignment.” And it's amazing to see that the majority of them choose to use the AI tool.
(28:56):
It also creates flyers, if you do that. And it has helped me with ethics applications. So, yeah,
it's a part of my life. It's on all my laptops and my computers. It's kind of embarrassing now,
but people say, “Oh, you're leaning on it too much. And if you lean on it too much, it becomes
they take over your ability.” But I'm directing this. I'm still involved. I'm the creative
director of what I will use and what I won't use, and I'm still a part of the equation. They haven't
(29:19):
taken me over, have they?. This is the kind of philosophical questions you ask yourself.
Amen, that's the humanization of AI.I think one of the things that I've heard
you all talk about today is that the AI Institute gave you some concentrated time to practice and
explore and learn, and kind of set that time aside so that you had the time to do that. I think often
(29:41):
it's one of those add-ons, like in my free time that none of us have, that we might explore these
things. So it seems like that dedicated time was a really valuable and important investment for each
of you to really integrate it into your work.Yeah, we had a staff meeting because, you know,
again, our Senior Vice-President of Academic Affairs, he's really interested in it to kind of
go, how can it be used for our professional use? And I remember my colleague and I,
we created a case note (30:04):
“How to Write a Case Note through AI.” And I think that just was,
like, blown away. The other faculty were like, “Wow.” If you know anything about social work,
you could write it as a SOAP note, which is a subjective objective assessment plan. You
can use it as a DAP note, which is a diagnostic assessment plan. So we used it as a demonstration
(30:24):
about all the different ways you can write case notes. Now there are AI systems to help with
case notes in social work agencies which Is like: you put the paperwork in, put the information in, (30:30):
undefined
and they will create yourself an intervention plan. So I think that's the good thing about
Pacific Oaks College, because we're such a profession-based kind of college, you’re teaching
Marriage and Family Therapy. It's one of the biggest marriage and family therapy schools
on the West Coast. And then social work we just got basically a couple of years ago, using AI to
(30:54):
help with you as a professional, I think has been great. So doing it with the teachers was
the first thing, faculty, and now we're going to try to see if we can do it with the students.
So you all participated in the institute. What proportion of the faculty participated
in the institute? And do you still have some faculty who are resistant to trying AI?
For the Institute, it was seven of us. Three of us showed up today, but the seven of us. One,
(31:17):
the Dea,n has moved on to another position, but everyone else has maintained. has stayed. More
and more people are interested because of the fact that we've been doing staff meetings. And
I was very surprised, because when I set up the TCS, which is the system-wide AI and UDL classes,
it was like three hours of their time Monday and Tuesday, and everyone showed up. Everyone showed
up. Everyone's interested. And every time we do it, they're like, “Wow.” Every time you see
(31:42):
in the chat, “This is mind blowing.” So I think they're interested. But we haven't done anything
formal to basically quantify how interested they've been and how involved they've been,
but we've shown to them, AI is here to stay, it is valuable, and it can be used by anyone.
I believe we have developed a survey tool that we're going to be sending out to faculty. So
(32:05):
that's something that we're going to be looking at, gathering the data of
their familiarity with the use of AI. And then I think we're going to do a pre- and then a post-,
and then we'll probably then follow up on that, because that will denote the need.
I think, as well, at other larger institutions, that have decided on a specific platform to use,
(32:26):
as far as AI, and how to integrate that into the school's existing tools. We're still in the
process of deciding about that. I know some of the schools, they use a paid version of ChatGPT
or CoPilot. We're still in the phase of selecting the best platform, but I know there's some good
options out there, and I think it really will add to and cause us to progress in our programming.
So we always wrap up by asking (32:52):
what's next? So preparing for the unknown. What I would say,
first is we need to focus on relationships, the ability to connect with others, so that
they can collaborate and work in teams together, because this is the 21st century workforce need.
Second is helping our students with resiliency, I also like to call it flexibility, because the
(33:15):
one thing that is constant in life is change. That's the one thing that we can depend on,
is change. And resiliency is the ability to push through obstacles and to have the confidence to
act on the new knowledge that they have to create the change they want to see in the world. And then
lastly, this is a P.O. core value is reflection. All of our assignments generally have a reflection
(33:40):
piece that's weaved in there for them to reflect upon. So I always tell them it's important to stay
humble enough to reflect upon changes that need to be made, and then the courage to act on the
next steps that need to take place. What's next? Institutionally speaking,
what I like is the fact, though we are a part of a system which is TCS and the six universities, the
(34:04):
wisdom of the President was that he didn't want a uniform AI platform for each school. He thought
that we have a law school, we have a medical school, they're going to need different kind
of AI platforms than us. So we have been given the authority to autonomously pick our own AI platform
that will work best for our particular students. We are keeping our students heavily in mind. We
(34:24):
want to make sure that AI is used ethically and with integrity, but while being helpful to them.
So we're rolling out a policy that's going to help them in that sort of way. We are also redoing our
plagiarism handbook and basically incorporating AI and making sure that that kind of meets and
it's more seamless. We are definitely trying to pick a platform that kind of works for education,
(34:45):
marriage and family, and social work, three different distinct professions, but yet very
similar in a lot of ways. We're also working on an AI manual, to some degree, to basically figure out
how all the different components that come with AI, rethinking it and reshaping it. We have not
done a review of our faculty manual in about 10 years, so that's also being incorporated.
(35:06):
We're in the midst of change at Pacific Oaks, so AI came perfectly so they can be instituted
in our paperwork and our regulations.As an institution, I think we'll continue to
serve as possibly thought leaders for the topic of AI. A lot of us are integrating it into our work,
and I can see that continuing in the future. I think we all have a great idea about responsible
(35:31):
use of AI, and I think that will definitely continue. Personally, I'm working on writing
another book chapter. Most of my materials have been on doctoral researchers. So this new chapter
is about doctoral research agency, where it's based on a lot of material I've been looking into.
Part of that should be focused on helping students to adapt and prepare for the future. As Yolanda
(35:58):
noted, I think the skills of adaptation and integration are important, and AI could definitely
help with that process. And yes, overall, just using AI to help prepare students for the future,
whether it's in the job market or for personal enhancement. I think that's all important,
(36:19):
and we could definitely motivate students in that way and help them to navigate that process.
Well, thanks for joining us. It's nice to have a little case study of how a particular
institution is working through AI.And this is an issue that all campuses
are facing. So it's great to hear how you've been addressing it. Thank you.
Thank you for having us. Thank you.
(36:39):
Thank you so much. I hope that we were informative. We're trying to
move to cutting edge while keeping our tradition and our principles.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes
or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join
(37:02):
us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and other
materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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