As the second round of eight-week courses arrive, the University of New Mexico Organization, Information, and Learning Sciences department offers an Artificial Intelligence literacy course titled Artificial Intelligence and Education: Future of Learning.
As AI becomes more common in society with it appearing in the film industry and applications like ChatGPT, Leo Lo – Dean/Professor of the College of University Libraries and Learning Services (CULLS) – wants to bring AI to students in the classroom to teach them about the technology and its uses now and in the future.
“We wanted to start a very experimental pilot course called AI Literacy to get students to learn a little bit more about what this technology is about … And also think about how they want to use it on their own, either studying or in the future for work,” Lo said.
Victor Law, future professor of the course, has the class curriculum mapped out to cover everything from AI basics to AI ethics, as well as the future of AI.
“This class is a one-credit class, but I am a little bit greedy,” Law said. “I want to squeeze a lot into it so that students can get as much out of this as possible.”
Lo wants AI education to go beyond that of the classroom and go university-wide, which is why he is leading an AI initiative.
"The AI empowerment initiative is to make sure that (AI) is equitable for everybody,” Lo said. “We don't (want to) create a wider digital divide (but) make sure that every student has access to the technology if it isn't required by a class.”
Over the next several months, Lo said he will work with a task force on AI academic honesty, a steering group and a working group to look into types of AI to utilize on campus and how to make it accessible for students.
Law and Lo believe that AI has a future on campus, and classes such as AI and Education: Future of Learning are only the start of AI in classrooms.
“Whatever things (students) learn in my class, they can apply immediately in other classes that they are taking,” Law said.
Lo hopes this AI literacy class can spark the development of other AI-related courses in other departments, such as AI for business and AI for education.
“Our intention is to work with different colleges and either have them develop their own courses or bring them into a course like this to give different perspectives to students,” Lo said. “There may be a lot of people interested in AI, but they're not engineers or computer science majors. They shouldn’t be left out. We want to create something for everybody, not just the really technical students.”
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The class AI and Education: Future of Learning, OILS 293, will be offered in the fall semester of 2023 for the second eight weeks. The class will be hybrid and scheduled for Tuesdays from 12-1:40.
Elizabeth Secor is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @esecor2003.
Elizabeth Secor is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted on Twitter @esecor2003
