The GenAI Quickstart: Foundations for Faculty project brings new resources to Concordia and beyond
Since the launch of the GenAI Quickstart: Foundations for Faculty project in October, there have been several new developments.
Last year, Concordia and McGill libraries joined forces with eConcordia to develop a short training program for faculty that provides a foundational understanding of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Expertise was also contributed to the project by Mike Barcomb, educational technologist at the Centre for Teaching and Learning, and Paul Fournier, director of the Digital Transformation Office. Nine short online micromodules were created that present common topics, questions and use cases tailored to the needs and concerns of professors.
French modules now available
The GenAI Quickstart project was funded by Quebec’s Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, through the Canada-Quebec Agreement on Minority-Language Education and Second-Language Instruction (Entente Canada-Québec pour l’enseignement dans la langue de la minorité et des langues secondes). Concordia Library and the project’s collaborators received a grant of $290,000 to cover the costs of developing the modules.
Now, French versions of the GenAI modules are available on Concordia Library’s website. The French site, Exploration rapide de l’IAG : Les essentiels pour le corps professoral, features the GenAI modules on its homepage. Faculty can easily select the French site from the GenAI Quickstart homepage on the English side as well.
The Generative AI Lens is also a new addition to the GenAI Quickstart project. It’s a short interactive activity that prompts faculty to reflect on their concerns, interests and priorities when thinking about GenAI and its future role in their work.
“Faculty are provided with multiple pairings of topics and ideas related to GenAI and are asked to select the topic that aligns most with their current interests or concerns,” explains Megan Fitzgibbons, acting associate university librarian for teaching and learning at Concordia.
“After considering the relative importance of different topics selected by faculty, the activity provides a high-level summary of their overall domain of interest, which may prompt them to learn more.”
The GenAI Lens is a self-reflective survey — available in English and French — intended to engage faculty’s interest in GenAI topics. And they can redo this activity at a later date to find out if their GenAI priorities have changed.
Making GenAI resources widely accessible
The GenAI micromodules were developed as educational resources that can be used and adapted by other universities. As such, the English and French files of the GenAI Quickstart site are hosted on the Concordia Library website and available for download for integration into other websites. McGill Libraries have also made the GenAI Quickstart modules available on their site.
Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) packages that include the modules are also available for use in learning management systems like Moodle. And a link to the web file packages can be found on the OER Commons website to promote their wider use.
As GenAI is rapidly transforming many sectors and fields, including education, library teaching and learning staff are working more closely with the academic community to navigate an increasing array of GenAI tools safely and efficiently.
Last December, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) hosted a webinar, “There is No (A)I in team: Creating and sharing teaching and learning resources for AI skills development,” about the GenAI Quickstart project and the micromodules.
The CARL webinar featured collaborators from Concordia and McGill libraries who introduced the modules and discussed the genesis of the project. As one of the webinar’s collaborators, Fitzgibbons notes that there was great interest in the content and its origins in the Canadian higher-education context.
“The webinar was well attended with 200 people registered and about 90 people participating live,” Fitzgibbons shares.
“It was a great opportunity to discuss the importance of sharing resources like this, that have wide relevance to the higher-education community. We took a lot of care to ensure that the content of the GenAI micromodules meets the needs of our faculty at Concordia and McGill, while ensuring the format could be repurposed by other institutions.
“We are all working with limited resources, so it's important that when one institution is able to create something like this that they make it available for reuse by others. We hope that the webinar will inspire others to create a resource for a different audience or on a different angle of this important topic that they will share with the community.”
Explore the French micromodules and try the short GenAI Lens interactive activity on Concordia Library’s GenAI Quickstart: Foundations for Faculty project page.
