This spring Extra Points will feature a series of conversations focused on how faculty and staff around the University of Minnesota are using generative AI to do University work.  Lauren Marsh ( Academic Technology Support Services ) and Bill Rozaitis ( Center for Educational Innovation ) interviewed Emerging Technologies Faculty Fellows Molly Vasich and Kris Cory , Associate Directors of First Year Writing, Writing Studies, in the College of Liberal Arts. The following has been revised for length and clarity. Tell us about your roles in First-Year Writing, and how that is informing your work. Molly Vasich: Kris and I are Associate Directors for First-Year Writing, a program housed in Writing Studies. We support 35 full-time faculty members and 15 graduate instructors who teach sections of First-Year Writing, the only universally required course for undergraduates across the Twin Cities campus. This semester, we have about 2,400 students taking First-Year Writing.  We h...

This fall and spring Extra Points will feature a series of conversations focused on how faculty and staff around the University of Minnesota are using generative AI to do University work.  Adam Brisk ( Information Technology Systems and Services) and Cody Hennesy (formerly with the University Libraries ), interviewed Emerging Technologies Faculty Fellow   Al Fattal Anas . He is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in Crookston’s Business Department. The following has been revised for length and clarity. Tell us about your role in the Business Department, and how that is informing your work with generative AI. Al Fattal Anas: I'm an assistant professor in Marketing, and I'm on a tenure track. I teach courses like principles of marketing, marketing research, consumer behavior and marketing strategies. Instead of thinking about generative AI as something working against you, I’ve been exploring using it as an ally. We need to redesign assignments and assessments and further ...

 This spring Extra Points will feature a series of conversations focused on how faculty and staff around the University of Minnesota are using generative AI to do University work.  Bill Rozaitis ( Center for Educational Innovation ) and Cody Hennesy ( University Libraries ) interviewed Emerging Technologies Faculty Fellow   Tim Doherty , Senior Lecturer of Chemistry at UMR’s Center for Learning Innovation. The following has been revised for length and clarity. Tell us about your roles in Chemistry and the Center for Learning Innovation at Rochester, and how those are informing your work with generative AI. Tim Doherty: I'm a chemistry instructor at the University of Minnesota, Rochester. In our lab courses, we teach students how to write lab reports. With the advent of large language models, it became clear that this is something we can’t ignore. We wanted to explore how AI could help students write lab reports. Since it’s such an emerging area, there wasn’t exactly a ...

This post summarizes the session, Create Accessible Canvas Content, from January 9, 2025. Session facilitators–DM Lavoie, from the Office of Digital Accessibility, and Rebecca George-Burrs, from Academic Technology Support Services–teamed up to demonstrate how to apply the 7 Core Skills of Digital Accessibility in the Canvas Rich Content Editor (RCE). Use the table of contents to navigate to each of the core skills in this article: Use Headings to Format Text Format Accessible Lists Use Accessible Color Contrast Write Accessible Link Text Create Accessible Tables Use Alternative Text (alt text) for all Images Use Accessible Media Overview In order to meet the expanded Title II of the ADA , the UMN community is working to make our digital content accessible. For those using Canvas, the RCE provides tools to create accessible Pages, Announcements, Discussions, Assignments and Quizzes throughout a course site. In fact, the RCE provides ways to use all 7 Core Skills of Accessib...

  This spring Extra Points will feature a series of conversations focused on how faculty and staff around the University of Minnesota are using generative AI to do University work.  Lauren Marsh and Sara Schoen ( Academic Technology Support Services ) interviewed Emerging Technologies Faculty Fellow Nicole Dillard from CEHD’s Organizational Leadership, Policy & Development department. The following has been revised for length and clarity. Tell us about your role in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD), and how this is informing your work with generative AI. Nicole Dillard: I'm a faculty member in the Human Resource Development program, which is part of the OLPD (Organizational Leadership, Policy & Development) department. I teach both undergraduate and graduate courses, and I'm piloting my project in my undergrad course OLPD 3310: Identities in the Workplace. Prior to the fellowship, I don't think my role was significantly influenced by my u...

  This spring Extra Points will feature a series of conversations focused on how faculty and staff around the University of Minnesota are using generative AI to do University work.  Lauren Marsh and Sara Schoen (Academic Technology Support Services) interviewed  Emerging Technologies Faculty Fellows Karin Quick and Kristin Shingler from the School of Dentistry. The following has been revised for length and clarity. Tell us about your roles in the School of Dentistry and how that is informing your work with generative AI. Karin Quick: I direct the division of dental public health in the School of Dentistry, and I also direct our global programs. The classroom part of our FFP project is embedded in the courses that I am responsible for and most of those I actually direct.   Kristin L Shingler: My PhD is actually in microbiology and immunology. In the School of Dentistry, I'm a teaching assistant professor, and I teach many of our basic science courses. I'm ...