Faculty Track Sessions
Faculty Session 1
10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m
Choose between the following two sessions:
Common Ground Collective Listening Session: Concerns About Recent Policy Changes
Oak RoomPresenter: Dr. Tom James, Director of Common Ground Collective, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Description: There are many recent changes at the federal, state, and local level impacting working conditions and created uncertainty. We invite faculty, graduate students, and staff to share and discuss your experiences and concerns about teaching, research, and other academic activities in a supportive space.
Designing Safe and Transparent AI for Children and Families
Walnut RoomPresenter: Dr. Cici Ling, Assistant Professor, Informatics; Dr. Kaiwen Sun, Assistant Professor, Informatics
Description: This workshop explores the ethics of generative and interactive AI for children and families. We will move from discussing key challenges, such as safety, bias and transparency, to interdisciplinary idea generation. Through guided hands-on activities, participants will collaborate to imagine and pitch human-centered AI design solutions that address the unique cultural and pedagogical needs of young users.
Faculty Session 2
11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
Choose between the following two sessions:
- Integrating AI Tools into Students’ Learning: Panelist Experiences
Oak Room
Presenters: Dr. Akesha Horton, Luddy Director of Academic Engagement and Learning; Dr. Shabnam Kavousian, Associate Chair, Informatics; Dr. Olgun Sadik, Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering; Dr. Kurt Seiffert, Luddy Computer Science Lecturer; Dr. Ali Ghazinejad, Luddy Information Science Lecturer
Description: This panel brings together Luddy School instructors from diverse disciplines to share their experiences integrating generative AI tools into their teaching and students’ learning. Through interactive audience engagement, panelists will discuss the opportunities, challenges, and tensions that arise when using AI in higher education.
Topics will include how generative AI is shaping teaching practices, assessment strategies, and student learning behaviors. Panelists will reflect on key moments that influenced their approach to generative AI, offer insights into responsible and effective use, and explore what a healthy relationship with these tools might look like for both instructors and students.
Audience members will participate in a brief activity to share their perceptions of generative AI and engage in a reflective discussion with the panel.
Join us for an open and thoughtful conversation about the evolving role of AI in education and what it means for the future of teaching and learning. - AI-Assisted Literature Discovery Tools: Which One(s) Should I Use?
Walnut Room
Presenters: Dr. Anna Marie Johnson, Research and Learning Services; Meggan Press, Teaching and Learning Engagement, IU Libraries
Description: AI-Assisted Literature Discovery tools are popping up everywhere. Maybe you heard about one from a colleague who claimed it was a "game-changer" or a particular tool was recommended on a professional listserv. Names like Elicit, Scite, Consensus, Research Rabbit, LitMaps, ConnectedPapers may have flashed past on a Youtube ad even.
But you have questions! Which of these tools should you use? Which should you avoid? How are these tools different than a library database like JSTOR or Scopus and how are they similar or different to using a large language model like Claude or ChatGPT to search for literature? How are these tools actually searching? What part of the scholarly literature are they searching? What other types of sources of information might or might not be included? How do you know if you are getting the best or most relevant papers?
Attendees will be guided through a searching exercise with several tools, including library database tools and will walk away with confidence in articulating how AI literature discovery tools differ from library databases, the pros and cons of these tools, and knowing who to ask if they have questions about them.
Faculty Plenary Luncheon
12:30 - 2:00 p.m.
Amusing Ourselves to Death: AI, Society and Where We Might Go from Here
Frangipani Room
Presenter: Dr. Angie Raymond, Kelley School of Business
Description: We are living the future Neil Postman warned us about. Decades ago, Postman’s landmark work, Amusing Ourselves to Death, argued that television was transforming public discourse into a form of show business, leaving us not oppressed by fear (like Orwell’s 1984), but tranquilized by pleasure (like Huxley’s Brave New World). Today, our digital screens—from smartphones to social media feeds—have fulfilled that prophecy, evolving the spectacle of television into an all-consuming, addictive, and fragmented digital ecology. However, the current crisis moves beyond mere distraction. We are no longer simply being amused to death; we are surrendering our culture to the sovereignty of technology.
In his book, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Postman defines this state as one where the culture seeks its authorization, satisfaction, and orders in technology. We have moved from a tool-using culture that employed technology to solve practical problems, to a Technopoly that believes every human problem—from unhappiness to ethical ambiguity—can be solved by more information, faster algorithms, and better technical processes.
This surrender shows up in our everyday lives: from losing authority to dealing with information overload, our lives seem to be in a constant march toward what Neil Postman warned us about. The challenge isn't to ban technology, but to re-establish a set of non-technical values that guide how technology serves humanity, rather than how humanity submits to technique.
Join us to explore how we can stop our cultural slide toward surrender and reclaim our collective capacity for deep thinking, purpose, and self-governance.