Focus on Teaching and Technology Conference explores artificial intelligence and its place in higher education

by | Oct 10, 2024

Author and educator José Antonio Bowen delivered the keynote address during the 23rd annual conference, held virtually with an audience of more than 900 registrants.
José Antonio Bowen sitting and holding a microphone

José Antonio Bowen delivered the keynote address at the 23rd annual Focus on Teaching and Technology Conference, held virtually last week. (Photo courtesy of José Antonio Bowen)

Many in higher education have been hesitant to adopt artificial intelligence or prioritize teaching their students about its uses.

Concerns ranging from ethics, intellectual property, privacy, inaccuracy, bias and environmental costs, and, for some, even a fear of the technology becoming so powerful that it could take over civilization, have fed into that reluctance.

José Antonio Bowen wanted to assuage some of those worries as he began his keynote address on “The Frontier of Education: The Power of AI in Teaching” last Thursday morning at the opening of the 23rd annual Focus on Teaching and Technology Conference, hosted virtually by the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

He took a snap poll near of the more than 300 people who logged onto his presentation, so he could meet them head on.

“If you didn’t check a bunch of boxes, I guess, lucky you,” Bowen said. “But for most of us, we check every box or almost every box, and these are totally reasonable concerns. It would take me an entirely other keynote to talk about all of these.”

His focus, instead, was on discussing why it’s so important to bring AI into teaching despite those issues.

“All of this is problematic, and we’re going to have to work through all of this,” Bowen said. “But who better to do that than us – than faculty? We’re going to try to do a little bit of that today.”

Bowen has served on the faculty at institutions such as the University of Southampton, Georgetown University, Miami University and Southern Methodist University and is the former president of Goucher College in Maryland. He is also the co-author of the book “Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning,” released in April.

He gave his audience an overview of some of the more prominent AI tools available, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and GitHub Copilot, and encouraged those in attendance to experiment with each so that they could start to evaluate the differences between them and the value of output each produces.

There is no question the quality of those outputs has been improving.

“AI is getting better, really, really fast and all the time,” Bowen said.

He described how it is effectively raising the level of average work, even if it still cannot match the job done by leading experts in a particular field or discipline.

Bowen noted that all jobs are made up of a series of tasks. He referred to a study of 900 U.S. Labor Department jobs that showed that every one of them included at least one task that AI could already perform better and faster than its human counterparts.

“If you’re a doctor, maybe it’s insurance codes,” Bowen said. “If you’re a department chair, maybe it’s the department’s schedule. If you’re a product designer, maybe it’s product focus groups or something. There’s a task that you could do better or faster with AI, but the real question is which tasks. You have to understand this.”

That’s the key to unlocking the value of AI is recognizing how the tool can be used to improve the work product, maybe by increasing accuracy, efficiency or even creativity.

“AI is a quantity generator, right?” Bowen said. “Most of us come up with 2,000 ideas, which is what Stanford says you need for one successful product launch. But 2,000 is a lot. Not for AI.”

Businesses are increasingly expecting their employees to possess AI skills and deploy them to improve their work products. Bowen argued that one reason it’s important to teach AI so that students graduating are equipped to succeed in today’s workforce.

Jennifer McKanry, the assistant director of UMSL’s Center for Teaching and Learning, once again served as the chair of the Focus on Teaching and Technology Conference alongside Keeta Holmes, the assistant vice provost for academic innovation and the center’s director. They led a planning committee of 40 people hailing from 13 institutions throughout the region with help from even more volunteers in organizing the conference.

McKanry said they wanted to offer a discussion of AI because it currently at the forefront of so many people’s minds in education, and Bowen provided an ideal presenter to speak on the subject.

“He’s a well-known voice in the field, but he’s specifically really been focusing his efforts in the last couple years on AI,” she said “Not from a computer science kind of perspective of how it works, but really from the teaching perspective, how do we really integrate that? Rethinking what this means for how we teach in higher ed, rethinking what average is – one of his favorite statements to make. And he’s really introduced this concept of AI literacy and how we can really start to teach AI literacy.”

He was not the only voice talking about AI during the two-day conference. Vanguard University’s Bonni Stachowiak led a 90-minute session titled “Building Awareness and Action Through Reflective Practices and AI Tools,” and there were shorter sessions on “Integrating AI into Teaching: Opportunities and Challenges” and “AI and Academic Integrity,” as just a few examples.

The conference, which drew an audience of more than 900 registrants from around the globe, also offered sessions on a variety of other topics, including “Compassionate Teaching: Tools and Tips from Three Generations in Education,” and “How to Play Like A… : Concrete Ideas for Playful Pedagogy.”

This marked the fourth time in five years the Focus on Teaching and Technology Conference was held virtually. McKanry said conference organizers have decided to rotate between holding it in person and fully online in alternate years, so it is expected to be back in person next fall.

“There’s that amazing power that comes from being together in person that you just don’t get from attending an online conference,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of people say to me, ‘I’m just done with online conferences. I just can’t do it. I wind up multitasking and juggling things, so I just don’t get the depth of learning.’ We recognize that too. But we love the accessibility of the online conference. I don’t think we’ll ever have 900 registrants for an in-person conference, and we just have such a breadth of people that we can reach.”

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Steve Walentik

Steve Walentik