Winterfest 2025
Winterfest 2025: GenerativeAI in teaching and learning
About
Winterfest 2025 is a Concordia University event showcasing the innovative ways its faculty and staff are integrating generative AI (GenAI) into education. Designed in collaboration with the Concordia community, the event showcases innovative approaches to GenAI-driven teaching, from curriculum design to practical applications like accessibility and personalized learning.
Session topics
Each session reflects the unique expertise and efforts of Concordia educators and staff, demonstrating how GenAI is being thoughtfully incorporated to address real-world challenges in education. By focusing on the university’s ongoing work, the event offers attendees an in-depth look at the possibilities and implications of GenAI in teaching and learning. The series concludes with reflections on key takeaways, setting the stage for Concordia’s continued leadership in this evolving field.
Winterfest will take place Wednesday, February 5 to Friday, February 21, 2025.
Schedule
Laying the Groundwork: Faculty and Staff Efforts on GenAI in Teaching at Concordia
Date: Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Time: 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
This session highlights the collaborative efforts that led to Winterfest 2025, including faculty interest group meetings, survey research, and the development of guidelines for generative AI in education. Presenters will share insights into how these efforts shaped the series' goals and provide context for the sessions ahead.
Speakers
- Mike Barcomb, Ph.D., Educational Technologist, Centre for Teaching and Learning
- John Paul Foxe, Ph.D., Senior Director, Centre for Teaching and Learning
AI Literacy in the Classroom: Leveraging the FUSION Skill-Development Curriculum
Date: Thursday, February 6, 2025
Time: 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
The FUSION Skill-Development Curriculum, launched by the Future Skills Innovation Network (FUSION) in 2020, empowers students to cultivate essential 21st-century skills, including AI Literacy. This session will provide an overview of the curriculum, with a focus on the AI Literacy module, and demonstrate how it can be effectively integrated into classroom teaching to enhance students' proficiency in AI-related competencies.
Speaker
- Megan Marcoux, Skills Innovation Lead, Office of the Provost
Double-Blind Peer Review in the First-Year Classroom
Date: Friday, February 7, 2025
Time: 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
In fall 2024, the protocols of scholarly peer review were used to create an experiential learning assessment intended to disincentivize the overreliance on generative AI for written work. This presentation will outline the results of this experiment, with plans to incorporate them into the course plan for the same class in fall 2025.
Speaker
- Stephen Yeager, Ph.D. | English Department
Creating Collaborative Digital Learning Environments
Date: Thursday, February 13, 2025
Time: 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
This workshop highlights how modern digital tools can transform classrooms into dynamic, interactive spaces that mirror real-world collaborative environments. By centralizing activities on platforms designed for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, instructors can utilize AI to foster deeper engagement, streamline feedback, and connect classroom lessons to practical skills. This approach supports continuous course improvement while bridging learning objectives with professional practices.
Speaker
- Charles Giddeon, Continuing Education
Teaching Students to Think Critically about Generative AI and Learning
Date: Friday, February 14, 2025
Time: 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
The rapid adoption of Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and others by students has forced educators to re-think what students should learn, how they should learn, and how their learning should be assessed. On one hand, it is important for educators to control the use of these tools by students, but on the other hand, students should learn to evaluate the use of Generative AI on their own.
The key goal of the introduction to Business Technology Management course discussed here is to teach students to think critically about their use Generative AI to support their learning. This interactive workshop will share the presenter’s experiences integrating Generative AI into teaching, including the use of Generative AI Learner Transparency Statements. Participants will be invited to reflect on and share how they might adapt their teaching in the era of Generative AI.
Speaker
- Tanya Giannelia, MBA, Supply Chain and Business Technology Management
Best Practices for Working with AI to Create Training
Date: Friday, February 14, 2025
Time: 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
Although some futurists predict that AI will replace jobs, more predict that people will work alongside AI as AI becomes more integrated into our daily work processes. This case study explores how the team that produced the eConcordia course, Introduction to Training and Development (EDUC 240) worked alongside AI to produce the course.
Specifically, AI was used to assist with a number of tasks: (1) to produce various segments of scenarios, which helped to introduce learning content and make the material more concreate and personal to the learners; (2) to assist with compliance with accessibility requirements, including various checks of accessibility and generating alt-text for visuals and transcriptions of videos; and (3) to generate tests and reports.
From this, the team has generated suggestions for best practices that others might follow when working with AI to create course materials, whether they work with an eConcordia course or work on their own within Concordia, which we share in this session for training professionals, pedagogical counselors, continuing education staff, and instructors.
Speakers
- Saul Carliner, Ph.D., Department of Education
- Vanessa McCance, eConcordia
- Ping Ng, eConcordia
Calculus Unlocked: Your Gen AI-Enhanced Personalized Approach to Learning in Problem-Solving Courses
Date: Monday, February 17, 2025
Time: 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
This session will present Calculus Unlocked, a Chat-GPT-enhanced virtual tutor designed to support students in the basic calculus course at Concordia University. It adapts to each student's individual learning progress and provides personalized assistance tailored to Concordia's specific curriculum. The tool offers real-time feedback, explanations, and practice problems, enhancing students' understanding of key calculus concepts. While initially developed for this course, the system's framework has the potential to be expanded to support other STEM courses.
Speakers
- Haleh Raissadat, Ph.D., Student Success Centre
- Margaret Colton, Student Success Centre
- Peter Howe, Math Tutor, Student Success Centre
A Small-Data Mindset for Generative AI Creative Work
Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Time: 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
This presentation will highlight how small-scale datasets are a valuable tool for increasing human influence over generative AI (GenAI) in creative work. By working with small-scale data, we can develop models that better support meaningful and personalized creative outputs. This approach is especially important in education, where encouraging originality and responsible use of data is key.
Speaker
- Gabriel Vigliensoni, Ph.D., Department of Design and Computation Arts
Rolling with The Punches: GenAI and Written Assignments
Date: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Time: 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
This talk will present an anecdotal account of “successes" and "lessons learned” from an undergraduate course wherein limited use of GenAI was allowed for written assignments. The talk will include examples of how students implemented and reported ChatGPT use in their assignments.
Speakers
- Narlon Silva, Ph.D., Department of Health, Kinesiology, and Applied Physiology
Sparking AI learning at Concordia
Date: Thursday, February 20, 2025
Time: 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
AI literacy refers to capabilities in understanding, evaluating, and responsibly interacting with AI systems and tools, and recognizing their capabilities, limitations, and ethical implications. This session discusses some of the Concordia Library’s approaches for fostering AI literacy in the Concordia community, including workshops for students, online modules for faculty, and resources for students that instructors can incorporate in their teaching. There will also be time for conversation about emerging AI literacy needs and how they can be addressed.
Speaker
- Megan Fitzgibbons, Acting Associate University Librarian, Teaching & Learning, Concordia Library
Charting the Path Forward: Perspectives and Reflections on GenAI in Teaching
Date: Friday, February 21, 2025
Time: 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Format: HyFlex (H-629 in-person and online)
Description
This session will begin with an activity where participants organize themselves based on their perspectives and beliefs about generative AI in education. Through this exercise, attendees will explore diverse viewpoints and identify their own perspectives. The session will conclude with collective reflections on key takeaways from Winterfest 2025, paving the way for continued exploration and innovation.
Speakers
- Mike Barcomb, Ph.D., Educational Technologist, Centre for Teaching and Learning
- Naj Sumar, MA, Inclusive Pedagogy Specialist, Centre for Teaching and Learning
- John Paul Foxe, Ph.D., Senior Director, Centre for Teaching and Learning