Grant recipients tackle integrating AI in the classroom

For artist and designer Randy Fernando, harnessing AI to sharpen pedagogy and curriculum in architecture means a lot more than beefing up teaching methods or expanding our notions of digital literacy. Rather, he says, “it’s a transformative journey into the future of architecture, where our students are not just learners but innovators shaping the spaces of tomorrow.”

Fernando, adjunct instructor in the Department of Architecture, School of Architecture and Planning, is testing out these expansive ideas in a research project entitled “Integrating Generative AI for Architectural Excellence.” It’s part of a seed grant initiative in which he and nine other faculty members received $5,000 individual awards from UB to spur development of instructional text, imagery, audio or synthetic data using a revolutionary technology that’s profoundly affecting our world.

 “As the university continues to be recognized as a leader in AI research and development, it is important that we also provide our faculty with opportunities to discover new ways to integrate AI into classroom instruction,” says Graham Hammill, vice provost for academic affairs and dean of the Graduate School.

Artificial intelligence, evolving so quickly, “will change the way we live, work, communicate and design,” Fernando says. Thus, it will have a deep impact on how students learn. AI-driven tools, he explains, enable “a unique symbiosis between digital innovation and traditional architectural practices, paving the way for groundbreaking designs that address real-world challenges.” Students will not only be investigating workflows in architectural visualization (virtual reality/augmented reality) and concept ideation, he adds, but also in AI-assisted digital fabrication, such as 3D-printing and robot milling.

For her part, Carol Van Zile-Tamsen, director of the Office of Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation (CATT), which is overseeing the AI grant program, says the focus of the grants is to encourage faculty to identify innovative ways to incorporate AI into teaching to promote meaningful instruction. “AI is everywhere. The seed grant recipients, through their projects, will provide important information on the ways that we can leverage AI to better facilitate student learning.”

Indeed, AI has the potential to help students and professors do their work with increased effectiveness, gathering material at a speed heretofore unthinkable. For instance, a student of David Wack, associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Medicine, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (whose seed project is entitled “Large Language Models for Medical Imaging Education”), marveled at the scope of AI’s capacity for pedagogical assistance after she used ChatGPT in an assignment.

“I found it to be more accessible than I anticipated and was impressed by its ability to read, analyze and produce such content at a remarkable rate and with little required help from its user,” the student wrote. “I can see how this advancement has applicative value in many areas of study, from code to reading medical images, as it is able to quickly take in data and provide a logical and reasonable answer or solution.”

Another theme among seed grant projects is how to best employ generative AI to help students enhance their critical abilities. “Obviously, faculty don’t want students to use something like ChatGPT to write their papers,” Van Zile-Tamsen notes. “But it can be used in a variety of ways. For example, when you put in an essay prompt or a paper prompt, ChatGPT can provide a whole paper. But this can be a way to help students learn how to critique information that comes from the internet because not all that information is going to be current or factual.”

Along these lines, Jaekyung Lee, professor in the Department of Counseling, School and Educational Counseling, Graduate School of Education, is using his grant to help students thoughtfully use ChatGPT in his seminar course, in a project he calls “The Synergy of Socrates and ChatGPT.”

“If students are not given proper guidance,” Lee says, “there’s a higher risk of them resorting to plagiarism and misusing the tool. Therefore, faculty should provide guidelines for ethical and effective uses of AI technology in such ways that help students brainstorm ideas and evaluate the accuracy and authenticity of AI-generated products. It is crucial to do fact/bias checks and train AI chatbots like human interns for personalized assistance by giving them appropriate human values, context and framework to draw upon and apply.”

Beginning to explore these ideas together, grant recipients had two introductory meetings at the close of the fall semester and will participate in a community of practice (COP) this spring. These COP sessions are being used to assess how their projects can impact student learning, teaching efficiency and other factors related to purposeful instruction using AI. In addition to the decanal units named above, faculty who were awarded grants represent the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Management and School of Dental Medicine. Faculty receiving these grants include those at all instructional levels, from adjuncts to full professors, and their projects encompass both undergraduate and graduate education.

“During the COP sessions, we’re discussing the implementation of projects and any challenges the faculty are encountering,” says Daniel Kelly, director of administration and strategy in CATT. “What can they learn from each other? What can we provide them with in terms of more themed or thematic approaches to the meetings, while addressing issues of pedagogy and assessment? Ultimately, by April, we’ll ask them to present to us, and to each other, on the implementation of their projects, their results and any challenges they encountered.”

Kelly adds that the funded investigations reveal a high degree of specialization within each discipline; AI projects are correspondingly field-specific. “It really provides you with a snapshot or snapshots of the institution. You wouldn’t have necessarily seen it before, but you’re seeing it now through the lens of AI — how diverse and multifaceted are the relative AI needs within courses.”

As an example of this disciplinary precision, Kevin Cleary’s project — “Visualizing the Guts of Generative Pre-Transforms (GPTs) and Large Language Models (LLMs)” — focuses on AI literacy pieces that he’s already incorporated into coursework for students in the Information Technology and Management program. Cleary, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Management Science and Systems, School of Management, says he wants “to help demystify what is really going on under the hood of these generative AI tools, and teach students what appropriate and responsible use of AI looks like.”

He adds: “The seed funding will help me to build a more digital and interactive view of what’s going on inside the LLM, in real time. The more we can help students to conceptualize that much of generative AI is just math and statistics, the more they can then understand where its strengths and weaknesses lie and apply use cases, appropriately.”

Eventually, Van Zile-Tamsen says, the effects of the grantees’ generative AI research can spread in beneficial ways to their academic colleagues. “The disciplines have such specific pedagogical practices. This multidisciplinary pool of seed grant recipients will help them, and us, provide examples to other faculty in similar disciplines of how this research can be leveraged for good, and to promote meaningful learning.”

A full listing of the grantees and their AI projects can be found at on the CATT website.