01/22/2025
MJC Faculty: Please join the L & LC and the Office of Instruction in a series of hands-on workshops centered around the work of José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson, from their 2024 publication, Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning. Dr. Bowen will lead each of the events.
FIRST ONE IS JANUARY 31, 2025, at 2:00 pm. Location/access info below.
Jan 31: Thinking and Working with AI (Keynote Address & Hands-on Workshop): AI is already changing human work and thinking. This workshop includes a general introduction into how AI works, what it can do, and some of the ethics, problems and costs. We will explore the AI ecosystem and practice using different frontier models to explore how AI is changing average. AI is a very different technology so it is critical to determine for which tasks it is useful and for which it is not. Equally, humans will need to understand where human expertise remains essential and where AI can do good enough. AI works best when we ask better questions and evaluate responses: extensions of the critical writing and thinking skills we already teach and value. BRING YOUR LAPTOP. CAT116 & ZOOM
March 7, 2025: AI Literacy, Tools & Techniques (Hands-on Workshop)
AI prompts need to provide more human context and be more literal than the ones we tend to use with a search engine. Since AI uses natural human language, it also needs human-level communication precision: prompt as if you were talking to smart but naïve interns. Prompting is not at all like engineering. In this interactive workshop, you will get to practice lots of techniques on a wide variety of rapidly-evolving AI and API tools. BRING YOUR LAPTOP. CAT116 & ZOOM
March 14, 2025: AI Cheating, Detection, Policies and Writing (Hands-on Workshop)
If an AI can produce consistent average work, then we need to update our policies around grading: why would an employer hire a “C” student if AI can do that level of work? We will investigate how students are cheating and what detectors do. Together, we will design new rubrics for an AI era that articulate how human ‘quality’ goes beyond AI. We will discuss what policies and practices improve motivation and decrease cheating, and why. We will examine new tools that can support both writing and cheating (Grammarly and Lex) and explore new writing post-AI writing assignments. BRING YOUR LAPTOP. CAT116 & ZOOM
March 21, 2025: AI Assignment and Assessments (Hands-on Workshop)
All assignments are now AI Assignments. In the same way that the ease of finding information on the internet forced faculty to rethink what homework students did and how we wanted them to do it, we will all need an AI strategy for assignments and assessment. Since most work will soon be AI-assisted work, we can help prepare students for the jobs of the future with assignments that require or suggest that students use AI to assist in completing them. Through a wide diversity of examples, we will also we how we can reducing cheating and raise standards. BRING YOUR LAPTOP. CAT116 & ZOOM
TIME FOR ALL: 2:00 - 3:30 p.m.
WHERE: Hybrid--In person CAT116. For online, Zoom links are available in VRC listing.
