Campus Technology Insider Podcast February 2025
Rhea Kelly 21:33
Okay, so I have a question out of curiosity, which you can, you can opt out of answering, if you like. But have you tried using AI tools to help analyze data from the survey?
Jenay Robert 21:45
I have not. So our data policies at Educause actually would prohibit me using any of the tools at my disposal currently. But having said that, I will say that we're always trying to look for, what is that next step as a researcher, I'm very interested in figuring out what the future of research looks like, and specifically social science research, because that's what I do. And so always looking for those tools that, as they develop, walled garden tools, local tools that are stored in local drives, I think would be the way to go for me as a researcher, and certainly what most of my colleagues are using, but I just haven't explored that yet in practical terms. But I will also say I'm very excited about perhaps someday not needing to take three weeks to code all of the open-ended data that comes from the Horizon Report in particular. I know that's not the report we're talking about right now, but that is the research that's most time-intensive for me. So someday, if there's a tool that can do it well enough.
Rhea Kelly 22:52
That would be, that would be a good use case for generative AI, I feel like, but yeah, those open-ended questions are brutal. So final question, what recommendations should institutions walk away with from this study?
Jenay Robert 23:06
I'll beat the same drum that I have been for the last year since the previous study, and say, communicate, communicate, communicate. There's so much going on at our institutions, in pockets and in silos, and we're not necessarily reaching across those silos to communicate about the work that we're doing, the AI use cases that are popping up, communicating about how policies and guidelines support or prohibit some of those uses. So that is number one, communicate. Make sure that the right people are at the table when making decisions about AI. And this includes students. You hear this a little bit here and there, but it's hard sometimes to include students in those decision-making loops. So to the best of your ability. Some institutions, on Educause Shop Talk actually, but I think it's a few months ago now, we had a couple of folks from Penn State on there talking about how they had this AI Student Advisory Committee. So look for examples like that from the community and see what you can do to bring in the student voice as much as possible. I have a lot of people who say, I just don't know where to start. This is really interesting research, but I don't know anything about AI, and oftentimes they're talking about generative AI, but you know, the full umbrella of AI tools, and so for folks who are listening who are in that boat, I would say, start just by educating yourself about the technology. I've spent a lot of time over the last couple of months watching YouTube tutorials from faculty who teach classes on AI. How to, what even is an algorithm? Okay? You know, if that's a question you don't know the answer to, it's worth just googling AI 101, generative AI 101, something like that, and figuring out from there. Subscribe to one or two bite-size blogs or newsletters. Attend an AI Summit. I've been to a couple of AI summits over the last couple of years that are just phenomenal. And specifically, a couple, a week ago now maybe, I was at the AI2 Summit from University of Florida, and that's where you hear all sorts of amazing things that are happening on the ground, in the classroom, in research, research partnerships between colleagues at our institutions and colleagues in industry, training for faculty and staff that's happening in institutions. So you know, really trying to attend an AI summit would be something I would recommend. And then, of course, check out all the other Educause resources we have. There's events constantly. If you look for the Educause event finder, which is linked in the full report, there's always events coming up that are related to AI. There's an Educause library dedicated to AI. So all of the AI resources we have can be found in one easy place, so that you can just find that by googling Educause library artificial intelligence and it should come up. There's an incredible community group on the Educause Connect community platform, and they are constantly helping each other with troubleshooting and developing new tools and policies. Every, everything you can imagine is happening in there. We actually had a couple of the leaders from that community group on Educause shop talk recently, and just some amazing work that they're doing there. So, and, and reach out to me if you have more questions. I'm always happy to hear from our members.