Advanced Generative AI for Teaching and Learning Fellowship
Exploring teaching with AI tools and techniques to increase student learning, engagement, and success
Lumen Circle’s Advanced Generative AI for Teaching and Learning fellowship explores the transformative power of using AI from a wide range of perspectives – from prompt engineering, to creating with images, audio, and video, to creating custom chatbots for your course. Throughout the fellowship, you will learn how AI tools can help you make learning more engaging, how you can save time on administrative and other tasks, and help students prepare for their future AI use in the workplace.
Benefits of Using AI in Teaching
- AI-powered tools can help personalize learning and engagement for students.
- AI has the potential to transform the teaching and learning experience, making it more effective and engaging for both students and instructors.
- AI can be used to create interactive and engaging learning experiences that keep students motivated and interested in the material.
Expected Outcomes of the Advanced Generative AI for Teaching and Learning Fellowship
Practice using a variety of Generative AI tools to create or remix text, audio, images, and video. Create a custom LLM-powered chatbot for your course.
Create a custom LLM-powered chatbot for your course.
Learn how to run Large Language Models on your desktop or laptop computer, ensuring your data stays private..
Experience how AI tools can personalize learning, enhance engagement, and give students valuable feedback..
Plan to seamlessly integrate generative AI into your existing curriculum to create effective learning experiences.
Engage in peer feedback and reflection sessions to improve your teaching practice and track your progress.
Increase students’ sense of belonging with activities that include prompts that promote representation and minoritized groups’ points of view.
Save time by using Generative AI tools, allowing you to spend more time engaging directly with your students.
Brief Overview of the Fellowship Curriculum
Complete your profile, familiarize yourself with the platform, your Circle mates, and the Circle focus. Meet with your facilitator and get ready to start your Circle.
Overview: Learn about the Lumen Reflective Practice model including using Appreciative Inquiry (a strength-based approach), CoP, and meet each other. Define Large Language Models (LLM’s) and create accounts in a few AI tools,. Write your first reflection and comment on your 2 assigned reflections and with the 2 fellows reviewing your reflection.
Prompt Engineering: Explore the different prompting models and practice using prompt examples with different AI tools to compare results. Then, experiment with planning a learning activity and report the inputs used and outputs generated. Report your findings and learnings in a reflection. Comment on your 2 assigned reflections and with the 2 fellows reviewing your reflection.
Chat with a Knowledge Base: Practice using Notebook LM and/or create a custom Chat GPT for your course to increase student engagement and learning. Create a plan in your reflection for using what you learned to enhance learning activities in your course. Comment on your 2 assigned reflections and interact with the 2 fellows reviewing your reflection.
Discussion: Join the Circle-wide discussion on topics related to generative AI in education that interest you and then talk with others about the topics that arise. Ask questions! Share resources! Add tools you use! Support, learn from, and interact with all of your Circle mates this week.
Creating Images and Audio: Experiment with creating images, spoken audio and voice cloning, and create music using various generative AI tools. Then, reflect on how you might or will use these tools to enhance student learning in your course. Comment on your 2 assigned reflections and with the 2 fellows reviewing your reflection.
Creating Videos: Discover how to use AI tools to create imaginative as well as “talking heads” videos. Learn how to livescreen video of your computer screen. Reflect on how you might or will incorporate what you learned into appropriate learning activities in your course, then comment on your 2 assigned reflections and interact with the 2 fellows reviewing your reflection.
Running LLMs Locally: Worried about student privacy and how LLM’s use your input as data? Learn about running a private generative AI program on your computer with LM Studio to keep all input and output private. Then, reflect on what you learned and how you might or will use LM Studio in your course. Comment on your 2 assigned reflections and with the 2 fellows reviewing your reflection.
Discussion: Join the Circle-wide discussion on topics related to generative AI in education that interest you and then talk with others about the topics that arise. Ask questions! Share resources! Add tools you use! Support, learn from, and interact with all of your Circle mates this week. Let this be a fun, dynamic interlude driven entirely by what you find meaningful.
Meta-Reflection: Reflect on your fellowship experience. What did you learn? What changes have you made in your teaching? What do you want to learn and do next? Write a reflection noting changes and growth in your teaching, new ideas and concepts you learned, and where you want to go next. Respond to your reviewers, and review your 2 assigned reflections. Celebrate finishing your fellowship!
Appropriate For:
Non-Teaching Faculty
Teaching Faculty
Instructional Designers
What are Lumen Circles?
Lumen Circles are professional development experiences that use virtual learning communities to connect faculty members with peers and help them hone their expertise as student-centered teachers.
Grounded in evidence-based teaching practices and self-reflection, Lumen Circles work well for any faculty member, in any discipline, and at any stage of career.
How Do Lumen Circles Work?
Set goals. Identify how you want to develop your teaching practice and pedagogical profile.
Build skills. Virtual, workshop-style learning opportunities expand your teaching repertory, help you work smarter through teaching “hacks,” and deepen your understanding of evidence-based practices.
Teach and reflect. Apply what you’re learning, consider how it’s working for your students and where to improve.
Share via virtual learning circles. Connect with peers, exchange feedback, and collect new ideas through expertly-facilitated learning circles. Our user-friendly platform makes it simple to connect and collaborate.
Recognize growth and progress. Track progress towards goals and see your teaching evolve as you incorporate new practices with students.
Pick the Offering that Works for You
We offer Lumen Circles experiences with different areas of focus, levels of depth, and duration.
- Lumen Circle Fellowships: Build skills in targeted areas, apply what you’re learning, and collaborate within a virtual learning circle
- Learn more about which fellowship suits you in a Lumen Circles: What to Expect Webinar.
What’s Your Role
Your connection with students is paramount to their success, but knowing how to reach them can be challenging. Lumen Circles provide opportunities to expand your teaching repertory in areas you want to grow. You can join colleagues to learn, share ideas, compare experiences, and be part of a thriving community focused on evidence-based teaching for today’s students.
Lumen Circles complement your center’s resources and priorities. Some centers offer a full menu of programs but struggle to generate meaningful evaluation data. Others cater to new faculty, but they sometimes overlook faculty who are later in their careers. Still others struggle to meet the needs of part-time faculty or graduate students. We can tailor offerings to fit the faculty members you want to reach with skill-building and professional growth focused on teaching practices that impact student success. We also offer flexible options around pricing and scale.
Recognizing student success is a result of faculty success, Lumen Circles can help you provide a broader foundation of faculty support to transform teaching and learning with a focus on evidence-based instructional practices. We can also help you track alignment and measure progress towards institutional and faculty goals for improving teaching practice.
Lumen Circles FAQs
Do you have a question we don’t answer here? Contact us or send a note to info@lumenlearning.com.
Lumen Circles’ evidence-based teaching framework uses a methodology and process originally adapted from research published in Taking College Teaching Seriously: Pedagogy Matters by Gail Mellow, Diana Woolis, Marisa Klages-Bombich and Susan Restler. In work funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lumen expanded the framework to add a “Belonging” theme that fully incorporates practices associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion into the Lumen Circles model. The framework identifies practices that increase student success, according to research evidence. Lumen Circles’ methodology guides faculty members through a process to recognize, explore and apply these effective practices in their teaching. It helps them become more aware and purposeful about making pedagogical choices that support student success.
Primary principles include:
- Self-reflection: Faculty fellows examine their own teaching practices to become more aware of pedagogical choices and their impact on student success.
- Appreciative Inquiry: This inquiry method invites educators to recognize and celebrate their strengths and what’s working in their teaching practice, and then using this as a foundation for self-directed growth and improvement.
- Evidence-based Instructional Principles: To help faculty make the learning environment more student-centered, we encourage them to explore and try out specific practices aligned in four distinct dimensions of teaching practice: Supportive, Challenging, Organized, and Varied.
- Pedagogical Analytics: As fellows progress through the Lumen Circles experience, we measure changes in faculty teaching patterns, progress towards their teaching goals, and how this aligns with institutional goals and changes in student outcomes.
We construct virtual learning circles with careful attention to the goals and context of faculty members participating in Lumen Circles fellowships. Learning circles always align with the theme of the fellowship to connect faculty with peers working to expand their teaching practice in similar directions. As a rule, learning circles include faculty from multiple institutions teaching in related disciplines, such as STEM or social sciences. We may make exceptions to this rule in order to support specific institutional objectives, such as learning circles to connect faculty with peers from their own institution.
We coordinate start and end dates for Lumen Circles fellowships and other professional development programs to align with the academic calendar and windows when the experience will be most productive for participating faculty members. Staggered start dates generally coincide with the start of term for spring (winter), summer, and fall. Depending on interest, faculty availability, and demand, we can add additional fellowship terms as needed.
Note the Lumen Circles experience does require that faculty are actively teaching during a majority of their fellowship term because reflective practice is most beneficial when there are immediate opportunities to consider teaching choices, evaluate what’s working and try out new pedagogical directions.