In April 2025, Academic Technology Support Services (ATSS), in collaboration with academic technology professionals across the University of Minnesota system, conducted a series of focus groups to understand instructor sentiments and address the complexities of integrating generative AI into higher education. Focus group participants included instructors from multiple University of Minnesota campuses. The goals were to gauge instructors' feelings about the value and applicability of these tools in and beyond the classroom, and to identify where common assumptions about generative AI break down across different disciplines. Note: throughout this post, “generative AI” and “AI” are both used to refer to the broad category of artificial intelligence that can produce content such as text, images, video, audio, and/or code. Focus group process ATSS partnered with Usability Services to establish the session goals, determine participant recruiting criteria, craft the interview protoco...

When creating instructional videos for your courses, accessibility should be a central consideration. This includes ensuring that videos meet visual contrast standards, that captions are accurate and properly synchronized, and — critically — that key visual content is accessible to learners with low vision through audio description. What is Audio Description? Audio description is the practice of narrating key visual elements to ensure that learners who are blind or have low vision can fully engage with educational content. However, its value extends far beyond accessibility for students with disabilities . Consider, for example, a student listening to a video lecture while commuting—without visual access to the screen, they miss important contextual cues. Similarly, a student watching a lecture on a small phone screen may struggle to discern critical visual details. In both cases, audio description can bridge the gap, providing access to integral information that might otherwise be ...