Interested in learning more about AI and Generative AI? Check out the Digital Gardener AI/Gen AI webinar and workshop series, where participants can choose among a range of professional development events. Each webinar and workshop is designed to help further your AI journey. Sign up today!
This program features a set of webinars and online workshops designed to improve AI and Generative AI literacies across Indiana University. It is a virtual, professional development series consisting of online engagements intended to
familiarize participants with basic practices and considerations of Ai/Gen Ai,
develop creative confidence using various Ai/Gen Ai for personal, professional, and pedagogical purposes, and
explore critical issues through conversations with colleagues / collaborators.
The webinars will be open to both IU and the broader public, while the workshops will be open to only instructional faculty and staff from any IU campus, school, or regional center. Participants who participate in 6 or more engagements (including at least 2 workshops) and who submit at least one completed program challenge (introduced during the workshops) will earn a DGI AI/GenAI digital badge and receive an accompanying professional development letter of completion.
Each session is an hour long and will occur at 12:45pm ET on designated Mondays this semester. Programming will typically alternate between webinar and workshop events, with workshops offering hands-on extensions of the previous webinar conversations and considerations.
Sign up Below! Participants must register for each session individually: select a session and in the drop down content click the Registration button.
For content from last fall, go to the DGI archive.
Prompt Design: A Guide to Gen AI creation in Text and Image
In this workshop participants will learn strategies for successful prompt design (or prompt engineering) for both text-based Generative AI platforms like Microsoft Co-Pilot and image Generative AI platforms like Adobe Firefly.
What to Expect You will be guided through a set of critical and creative, hands-on engagements where you will produce prompts that result in more targeted content, learn to work iteratively as part of the generative AI process, and to utilize greater affordances of different platforms.
In this webinar particpants will be introduced to pedagogical guidelines and strategies for integrating AI / Generative AI into the classroom and hear from faculty who have used Generative AI successfully in their courses.
What to Expect Session hosts and guests presenters will highlight low-stakes and high-impact practices for bringing AI into your work with students and showcase several examples of different levels of integration.
Miranda Rodak is a Visiting Senior Lecturer in the Kelley School of Business at IU Bloomington and the former Director of IU’s system-wide faculty development program, the Mosaic Institute for Active Learning. Prior to Mosaic, she served as the Director of Undergraduate Teaching in the College of Arts & Sciences, where she directed multi-section writing courses annually serving 6,000 undergraduates and supporting 100+ SAAs with scaffolded professional development and teacher training. Her scholarship focuses on innovative pedagogies that promote AI and digital literacies, metacognitive learning, and inclusive, collaborative, high-impact practices.
Braddock is the STEM Coordinator with the Groups Scholars Program, a member of CITL’s AI Faculty Learning Community, and a 2025 IU Digital Gardener Faculty Fellow.
Ben has worn many hats over the course of his career in higher education (Positive Life Coach, Res Life, academic advisor, & instructor). He is not a “tech person” by training, but his passion for growth, development, and innovation in the field of education have led him on his own journey towards “AI literacy.” Ben is hoping to save you time by sharing some of the lessons he has learned along the way.
Scaffolding AI/GenAI into the Classroom
This workshop will guide participants through approaches for integrating AI / Generative AI into the classroom. It will build on the insights from the previous webinar and focus on integrating AI/GenAI as part of a unit or multi-unit plan.
What to Expect This session will present examples and considerations for how you might use AI/Generative AI platforms in your courses. It will feature options for getting students to use these tools critically and ethically and offer guidance on how to create activities and assignments for students: i.e., leveraging AI/Generative AI as part of active learning engagements, as part of an assignment or skill development sequence, and as potential collaborators for students when working on projects.
Miranda Rodak is a Visiting Senior Lecturer in the Kelley School of Business at IU Bloomington and the former Director of IU’s system-wide faculty development program, the Mosaic Institute for Active Learning. Prior to Mosaic, she served as the Director of Undergraduate Teaching in the College of Arts & Sciences, where she directed multi-section writing courses annually serving 6,000 undergraduates and supporting 100+ SAAs with scaffolded professional development and teacher training. Her scholarship focuses on innovative pedagogies that promote AI and digital literacies, metacognitive learning, and inclusive, collaborative, high-impact practices.
Meaningful Assessments in the Age of AI: Policy and Practice (Part 1)
This webinar session focuses on thinking through how to incorporate generative AI into your teaching and classroom and what that means for assessments.
What to Expect The session will begin by discussing why it is important to publish and remind students of your policy on AI and how that can also reflect a larger investment in transparency. One of the more research-supported concepts in Teaching and Learning, adding transparency supports more equitable teaching but can also benefit every student. This webinar will cover:
- What policies exist and why your classroom policy is important.
- The benefits of adding more transparency.
- How to TILT your assignments with AI in mind.
The session facilitators look forward to your participation and hearing your questions!
This session will feature co-facilitators: Instructional Technology Consultant Eric Brinkman (they/them) and Distance Learning Specialist Maggie Gilchrist (she/hers) from IU Bloomington's Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning.
In addition to playing a key role in the conversation, Brinkman and Gilchrist will highlight the core Canvas assets they’ve built around AI / Generative AI Assessment.
Meaningful Assignments in the Age of AI: Transparent Assignments (Part 2)
This workshop will explore Generative AI as a productivity tool in relation to teaching and learning. It will feature guides for using Gen AI to not only spark critical thinking but also to increase participants own capacities and efficiencies (especially related to teaching productivity).
What to Expect In this workshop the facilitators will demonstrate and guide you through using an AI prompt to suggest assignment designs. They will also show how to employ an AI prompt to help TILT an assignment. During the session you will learn to:
- Employ generative AI to spark creative assessment ideas.
- Use AI to support TILTing an assignment.
- Add transparency to improve learning outcomes and avoid academic misconduct issues.
This is intended to be a workshop, so be sure to have access to a device that can use Gen AI and be sure to bring an assignment description you might like to TILT.
The facilitators look forward to your participation and hearing your questions!
This session will feature co-facilitators: Instructional Technology Consultant Eric Brinkman (they/them) and Distance Learning Specialist Maggie Gilchrist (she/hers) from IU Bloomington's Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning.
In addition to playing a key role in the conversation, Brinkman and Gilchrist will highlight the core Canvas assets they’ve built around AI / Generative AI Assessment.
Career Readiness & Student Success with AI/GenAI
This webinar will feature a panel discussion exploring the way Gen AI is factoring into student success both in terms of learning and development as well as in relation to the college-to-career transition. engagement.
What to Expect This session will take a critical look at the ways in which GenAI is factoring into career readiness. Panelists will engage in conversations around the degree and depth to which GenAI literacies are becoming integral to not only the higher education learning experience but the expectations/needs of employers.
This workshop will offer guidance in how AI/GenAI can be used to aid in student learning. It will feature modules, practices, and considerations to better prepare students to leverage Gen AI in their own learning practices and situations.
What to Expect This session will explore existing student-focused modules in Canvas as well as emerging strategies with GenAI students can use to improve learning, engagement, and success in their courses. While it focuses on the student component, it will do so from a faculty/instructor professor: empowering educators, through resources and strategies, to help students leverage GenAI in critical and ethical ways as part of their learning journey.
Adam Maksl is a professor of journalism and media at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, Indiana. He teaches courses focused on digital journalism and researches news and media literacy. He is also Senior Faculty Fellow for GenAI Learning Innovation & Co-Director of the GenAI Learning Lab through UITS Learning Technologies, former Manager for eLearning Innovation within Indiana University’s eLearning Design & Services unit, and co-founder and former co-director of the Digital Gardener Initiative, IU's university-wide digital literacy initiative.
GenAI, Higher Ed, & Industry/Community Partners
This webinar will feature a panel conversation on current and coming state of the relationships between higher education and industry and/or community partners. Panelists will offer critical insights on how GenAI is influencing these key practices and partnerships.
What to Expect This session will bring together industry, community, and higher education experts to take a critical look at how the emergence of AI/GenAI platforms and related practices are impacting industry and higher education relationships as well as higher education and community practices.
The final workshop for this series will offer participants a range of use cases for academic uses of AI / Generative AI and situate strategies for employing these platforms in everyday scholarly practices.
What to Expect This session will feature experts demonstrating how they use Gen AI tools in their academic work and offering pragmatic approaches/insights across disciplinary frames. It will feature a refined exploration of Prompt Design and present additional strategies for critical and creative academic collaborations between human authors and Generative AI partners.
The core of this session is designed to help you identify and create customized strategies and uses for Gen AI specific to your area(s) of expertise.
Anne Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Ph.D., is the Barbara B. Jacobs Chair in Education and Technology. She is a professor of Instructional Systems Technology within the School of Education and an adjunct professor of Computer Science at Indiana University Bloomington. Dr. Leftwich’s expertise lies in the areas of the design of technology/computer science K-12 curriculum resources, and development/implementation of professional development for teachers and teacher educators. Dr. Leftwich investigates ways to teach computer science and ways to prepare preservice and inservice teachers to teach CS. She is a co-PI for the Expanding Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance, which seeks to broaden participation in computing at the K-16 levels. Her research focuses on the adoption and implementation of technology and computer science at the K-12 levels.
Kevin Jones, Ed.D. is an associate professor of management at Indiana University Columbus and the Director of the Indiana University Columbus, Center for Teaching and Learning. He is also an Indiana University Digital Gardener Fellow exploring ways to boost digital literacy among faculty and students. His professional work is dedicated to enhancing the results of organizations by applying organizational change practices to improve how individuals and teams perform, use technology optimally, and communicate effectively. His research interests cover various topics from leadership skills to ethical AI use.
Looking forward to Fall 2025: Some Future Considerations
This webinar will feature panelists engaging in reflective and projective practices. They will situate the current “state of things” with AI/Generative AI and higher education, and point to potential trends and emergent considerations for the coming academic year.
What to Expect This session will include a critical focus on trying to take what we've learned to this point in the AI/GenAI higher education journey and offer some insights and considerations for what the landscape might look like heading into Academic Year 2025-2026.
