AI Tools and Their Effect on Higher Education

Contributed by Izaak Diefenbach, Instructional Designer I (COE)

In recent years, there has been an increase in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education. This is due to the many benefits that AI can offer to both students and educators. Some of the ways in which AI is being used in higher education include:

1. Online learning: AI can be used to create personalized learning experiences for students. For example, the edX platform uses AI to provide students with customized recommendations for further study based on their previous performance.
2. Assessment: AI can be used to automate the grading of student essays and other assignments. This can save educators a significant amount of time and allow them to provide more detailed feedback to students.
3. Research: AI can be used to help researchers identify relevant papers, find new patterns, and make predictions. For example, the Google Scholar search engine uses AI to rank search results by relevance.
4. Administration: AI can be used to automate administrative tasks such as scheduling and emailing. This can free up time for educators so that they can focus on more important tasks. Overall, the use of AI in higher education can provide many benefits to both students and educators. It can help to improve learning outcomes, save time, and make the overall educational process more efficient.

Before I go any further, I have to make an admission: this is the first sentence I wrote for this article. Everything above was written by an AI tool called GPT-3, part of the OpenAI project, a set of open-source tools that allow users to build AI applications. To generate the text, I set a few parameters in the tool and entered an eleven-word prompt: “Write an article on the use of AI in higher education.” Once I clicked submit, I had about 250 words in just a few seconds. I could have generated a much longer paper with just a few clicks.

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article titled “Will Artificial Intelligence Kill College Writing?” Jeff Schatten discusses the effect AI tools such as GPT-3 will have on higher education and what it will mean for the future. At present, the tools are good, but not great. On some topics, GPT-3 can generate a pretty good paper, but others give questionable results. However, results are improving at a very fast rate.

One immediate concern for many instructors will be that these tools generate original writing; they are not plagiarizing from other sources, meaning that anti-plagiarism tools cannot detect an AI-generated paper. Another concern is that these tools are available at almost no cost to users, making them accessible to most students.

The initial reaction to this will be to panic. If we can’t detect when students are turning in work they didn’t actually do, how do we assess their work? In the end, as with all technological advances, it will mean a change of approach in how we teach students. Instead of saying, “How can we fight this?” we need to ask, “How can we use this?” That’s where innovation will be essential. AI is just a tool. How can we use that tool to enhance instruction and better serve our students? This is just one of the areas the Instructional Design and Technology team is following so we can help our instructors help our students.

September is National Preparedness Month: Are You Academically Prepared?

Contributed by Henry Newkirk, Instructional Designer II (HSH)

Hello everyone, and congratulations on getting the semester off to a great start! As we forge ahead, remember that September is National Preparedness Month and that September is the peak of the hurricane season along the Texas gulf coast. Have you considered how you might prepare for campus closures due to the weather? What is your plan as an instructor? If you have not taken the time to think about an instructional continuity plan for your class(es), please consider making a simple plan now. Let’s review some essential preparation tips faculty can use to make up lost instructional contact hours for their face-to-face, web-supported, or partially online classes.

The great news is that, especially after two or more years of “emergency online” teaching, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, let’s examine how you can use the wheel to your advantage. There are several essential elements you should know how to do to prepare your Blackboard shell for an emergency. You may find the information in our Disaster Recovery – Blackboard Basics document to be a useful starting point.

Please note that you already have a blackboard shell for all your courses. Once you log into Blackboard there are several resource links that I would like to bring to your attention.

 

The first resource option is the UHCL Faculty Blackboard Support link. Click this link to access several categories of resources to support your teaching.

One link on the Blackboard Faculty Support page leads to a link named Instructional Continuity, where you will find a variety of information, text, and video instructions on operating under extreme conditions. Here is a sampling of resource links from that page:
Blackboard-Specific Resources

• Document: Disaster Recovery Basics
• Video: Post-Disaster Blackboard Basics [9:44]
• Video: Create an Announcement [2:34]
• Video: Upload a Syllabus (or other documents/files) [2:29]
• Video: Using Course Messages [1:35]
• Web Page: Using Online Discussions
• Video: Create Assignment Drop Box [2:32]
• Video: Grading Assignments [1:17]
• Video: Creating an Online Test [1:41]

The final resource we will discuss is the OIT Instructional Design and Technology Blog. There are well over 223 archived blog training and support items we’ve posted over the past several years, including the team’s newsletters and our “Crash Course” videos. You can search for specific items by keyword or select from the list of topic-specific labels to find the information most useful to you.

In conclusion, we hope that these resources will support your efforts to maintain instructional continuity in the event of a campus closure. The following planning list includes critical items you may want to consider as you craft your personalized emergency plan.

1. What tools will you use to communicate with students?
2. Post an updated syllabus in each course.
3. How will you provide documents, videos, readings, and other content to students?
4. How will you collect student work?
5. How will you establish and maintain class interactions between yourself and your students and among the students themselves?
6. Do you know how to use Zoom or Microsoft teams for web-conferencing so that you could host virtual classes? Consider recording class sessions.
7. Think about how you will assess student learning and what adjustments you might make if on-campus attendance were suspended.
8. Familiarize yourself with instructor tools in Blackboard for grading student work and providing feedback via text, audio, and video.

The above items were adapted from the Continuity Planning Checklist. If you have all the items above planned for, you are well on your way to being prepared. If you need assistance in planning, please contact the Support Center and one of the IDT team’s staff members will be assigned to assist you.

Editing Time Zone for Zoom in Blackboard

Contributed by Jenn Ray, Learning Technology Administrator

Since we began using the Zoom integration in Blackboard we have received occasional reports that meeting times are showing the wrong time zone. This has been reported by both Students and Faculty alike. Our UHCL Zoom account is set to the Central time zone, but the display on the Blackboard/Zoom integration page doesn’t always sync with the time zone the meetings are created for. Users can change their time zone on the Zoom LTI integration page by following the steps below:

Click the Zoom link in your Course Menu.

On the Zoom LTI page, click the pencil icon next to the current time zone.

Click the arrow for the time zone drop-down in the resulting window and select the US Central time zone (or preferred time zone).

After selecting the correct time zone, click Update.

Meetings should now display with the correct time on the Zoom LTI integration page. NOTE: This change doesn’t seem to transfer between devices/browsers. If you use multiple browsers, you will need to make the change in each browser.

Start-of-Semester Common Faculty/Staff Questions and Answers

Contributed by Jenni Willis-Opalenik, Ph.D., Director - Technology Learning Services

As an FYI for next term, here are a few significant inquiries that our team receives and some responses and reminders.

Can you please merge my Blackboard courses together (after the semester has started)?

Although it is possible to merge courses together once the semester begins, doing so is inherently a destructive effort that will delete any work or communication your students in the classes have submitted thus far. In addition, if you have already put content in the shells that will be merged, we can only copy over content from one of the existing shells, but not both. We strongly recommend that instructors submit merge requests at least a week before classes are made available to students.

We just hired a new instructor. Can you please give them access to the Blackboard shell(s) for their classes?

Instructor and student enrollments in Blackboard shells are based on multiple automated processes that run between eServices/PeopleSoft, Blackboard, and other local applications. As a result, we cannot manually add either new instructors or newly added students to credit course Blackboard shells. We also have to manual mechanism by which to expedite this automation. The automated processes begin only AFTER the hiring college/program/department enters the new faulty member as a primary instructor of record. Once the new instructor is in the schedule, they will have access to their Blackboard shell(s) within 72 hours. This same timeline applies to student enrollments after their schedule change/add is entered into eServices/PeopleSoft.

My TA keeps losing access to my class(es). How can we fix this?

It is CRITICAL that students serving as TAs do not enroll in the course(s) for which they will serve as TAs. Doing so will make it impossible for the IDT team to manually add the student's PCLAB account as a TA in the course(s). The student will need to have and use a UHCL staff computer account as a TA, instead of their student/PCLAB credentials. The TA's staff computer account should be automatically created within 48 hours of when their employment record is created or updated in eServices/PeopleSoft.

IDT Crash Course Video Library (Aug 31, 2022 Newsletter Article)

Contributed by Jenni Willis-Opalenik, Ph.D., Director - Technology Learning Services

Have you heard about the IDT team's "Crash Course" Videos? In recent semesters, our team has created an expanding library of short (typically 5-10 minute long) videos on a variety of instructional technology tools. You may access the full library in our blog post, "Crash Course" Video Library.

Our latest additions include the following:

• Accessing Echo360 in Bb [8:18]
• Importing Existing Zoom Meetings to Bb [2:38]
• Zoom in Blackboard - FA22 [4:00]

A few of our older videos that faculty have used in these early weeks of the new semester include the following:

• Rally/PTZ Cameras and Zoom: A Brief Tutorial [2:24]
• Rally/PTZ Classroom Cameras Overview [4:26]
• Embedded Questions in Videos [6:03]
• Automatic Transcripts and Closed Captions in Echo360 [4:29]
• Setting Zoom to Work with Echo360 [2:55]
• Providing Audio and Video Feedback to Students [1:46]

Do you have ideas for new "crash course" videos? The IDT team is standing by for your requests and suggestions for new short videos that meet your just-in-time needs. Please email us at IDT@uhcl.edu with your requests, and we'll get a new video made, send you a link, and make the link available to others via our blog page and weekly newsletter!

Tips for Creating Effective and Engaging Videos

Contributed by Izaak Diefenbach, Instructional Designer I (COE)

Video content is an important component in online course design. Videos can be as simple as a lecture in front of a whiteboard or as sophisticated as an interactive “how-to” demonstration. In this article, I am going to discuss a few tips to make your videos more effective and engaging for your students.

First, you need to decide on the objective of your video. It is important to focus on one concept. If the unit you are teaching is complex, divide the content into multiple videos. Studies have shown that student engagement drops significantly after about ten minutes, so try to keep your videos between five and ten minutes long.

Before you start shooting your video, make a plan. It can be as simple as an outline or as sophisticated as a storyboard. Think about what kind of video you are making. If it is a simple lecture or PowerPoint presentation, an outline should be fine. If you are going to present a complex demonstration or similar type of lesson, a storyboard can be a big help. Even if you are not a great artist, simple sketches can help you visualize what you want to shoot.

Once you have developed your plan, write a script. Try to keep the language natural. Be yourself. Try not to sound like you are reading from a book. Make sure to rehearse your script as well. Rehearsal will help your speech flow naturally and help you eliminate “ums”, pauses, and mistakes that can distract from your lesson. Also, include instructions for yourself. If there is something you need to trigger in your PowerPoint, or you need to switch to a different application for part of a demonstration, include those instructions in your script.

When you are ready to start shooting, you need to think about some of the behind-the-scenes aspects, such as your “studio.” Your studio can be any space you have available, such as your office, a classroom, your living room at home, or even outside, but there are a few things you want to think about as you are setting it up. First, what is going to be behind you? Try not to shoot in front of a blank wall, but also try to avoid an area that is too busy, which can be a distraction. Also, if you are shooting at home, make sure that there is nothing in your shot that you don’t want to be seen on camera.

Next, you want to think about your lighting. Avoid overly bright lighting, particularly from behind you. Bright lighting can wash you out and make other things in the shot, like a whiteboard, hard to see. Bright backlighting will cause you to be a silhouette on camera. You also want to avoid a room that is too dark. If you need to add lighting, there are many affordable video lighting options available on Amazon and other online sites. Another good investment is an external microphone. While the microphones built into devices will work, an external microphone will provide greatly improved recording quality and help ensure that you can be heard clearly.

It is important to show yourself on camera, at least occasionally. Even if your video is a simple PowerPoint, show yourself on camera, even if it is just at the beginning and end of your video. Student engagement is improved when the instructor appears in the video. When you are on camera, be yourself. Relax. Your students want to see you, and it is OK not to be perfect. Resist the urge to go back and edit out all the mistakes. Correct yourself and move on. Students like to know you are not perfect. Also, if you have the space, move around. Don’t just stand in one place throughout the whole video.

Another way to keep students engaged in your video is to incorporate images, animation, and video. Even if the images are decorative, they can still help keep students interested. There are some great online tools that can help you create simple animated demonstrations. Even the incorporation of short video sequences can have a dramatic effect on your video. As you are creating your video try to keep in mind that students may be viewing your video on a wide range of devices, from a cell phone to a big-screen TV. Make sure your graphics and animation will look good by previewing your video on a variety of devices.

Maybe the most important tip for creating an effective video is to create opportunities for student interaction. There are a number of ways to do this. One suggestion is to use Echo360 to incorporate questions into your videos for students to answer. It will also allow them to submit questions they may have for you and allows them to pin the question to the specific point in the video where the question came to them. Another suggestion is to have them answer questions about the video in a Blackboard discussion board post for discussion with other students.

If you have any questions or would like some help creating videos for your courses, please contact OIT's Support Center. A member of the center's staff will create a help ticket and route it to your designated Instructional Designer.

Seeking Quality Matters Cohort Volunteers

Contributed by Jenni Willis-Opalenik, Ph.D., Director - Technology Learning Services

As described in our February 2022 virtual presentation, the IDT team is bringing Quality Matters (QM) to UHCL. Our staff is currently completing a suite of Quality Matters training sessions and certifications in preparation to launch QM. However, before going farther, we are seeking 8-10 faculty to join our inaugural QM Cohort.

What Will Cohort Members Do?

• Complete QM's online training, Applying the Quality Matters Rubric (APPQMR) and, if interested, the online QM Peer Reviewer Course (PRC). NOTE: If you completed the APPQMR at another institution, you do not need to retake the training to participate in UHCL's cohort. Ask us about how to update your existing QM profile to indicate your presence at UHCL.
• Meet with the IDT team monthly to provide input and guidance on how our team can most effectively communicate about Quality Matters with faculty (including Faculty Senate) and the campus at large. Our team is committed to an active collaboration with faculty, especially as we begin planning this project.
• [Optional] Once you've completed APPQMR and PRC, faculty have the option of serving as local (UHCL only) or official Quality Matters course reviewers in the Peer Review process.
• [Optional] Once you've completed APPQMR, you are invited to develop a new online course or prepare an existing online course for local (UHCL online) or official submission for Peer Review. Courses submitted for an official QM Peer Review will be recognized by Quality Matters as "QM Certified" of once they meet required standards as evaluated by a three-member QM Peer Review team.

We hope that this will be the start of many QM Cohorts to come, and we invite interested faculty to join us to lay the foundation for Quality Matters at UHCL. If you would like to participate, please send an email to IDT@uhcl.edu before Friday, September 23, 2022. We plan to finalize the cohort and host an kick off meeting in the first week of October.