By Doug Ward

Teaching tools in Copilot

Microsoft has recently added Copilot tools specifically for teachers.

By Doug Ward

Research about learning and artificial intelligence mostly reinforces what instructors had suspected: Generative AI can extend students’ abilities, but it can’t replace the hard work of learning. Students who use generative AI to avoid early course material eventually struggle with deeper learning and more complex tasks. 

On the other hand, AI can improve learning among motivated students, it can assist creativity, and it can help students accomplish tasks they might never have tried on their own.

By Doug Ward

A few eye-popping statistics help demonstrate the growing reach of generative AI:

By Doug Ward

The KU version of Copilot now allows the creation of agents, which means you can customize Copilot and give it instructions on what you want it to do, how you want it to respond, and what format its output should follow. 

By Doug Ward

Adapting colleges and universities to generative artificial intelligence was never going to be easy. Surveys released over the past two weeks provide evidence of just how difficult that adaptation will be, though.

Here’s a summary of what I'm seeing in the results:

Faculty: We lack the time, understanding, and resources to revamp classes to an AI age. A few of us have been experimenting, but many of us don’t see a need to change.

By Doug Ward

The shock has worn off, but the questions about how to handle generative artificial intelligence in teaching and learning seem only to grow.
Those questions lack easy answers, but there are concrete steps you can take as we head into the third year of a ChatGPT world:

By Doug Ward

Kansas ranks near the bottom in the percentage of schools offering foundational computer science education, according to a study by Code.org, the Computer Science Teacher Association, and the Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance.

By Doug Ward

As I prepared to speak to undergraduates about generative artificial intelligence last October, I struggled with analogies to explain large language models.

By Doug Ward

Canvas will soon be absorbed by KKR, one of the world’s largest investment firms.

That is unlikely to have any immediate effect on Canvas users. The longer-term effects – and costs – are impossible to predict, though.

A provision in the tax bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday has the potential to upend graduate education.

The bill would force graduate students to pay taxes on tuition waivers they routinely receive as part of their appointments. That would raise the cost of graduate education substantially and could easily drive away potential students.