Notre Dame Learning

How do you help students engage in collaborative innovation with project partners who are more than 8,000 miles away? For University of Notre Dame - Mendoza College of Business Professor Wendy Angst, the Digital Learning Sprints program offered by our Office of Digital Learning (ODL) gave her the chance to explore a cutting-edge answer. Wendy, who directs the Powerful Means Initiative in Mendoza, worked with the ODL to create an extended reality experience, delivered via headsets, that would bring the initiative’s work with Saint Bakhita Vocational Training Center in Northern Uganda to students here on campus. “The core of design thinking is gaining empathy and understanding for the customers’ needs, wants, and context, which is made tougher when working with contextually distant customers and populations,” Wendy writes in a post for the Notre Dame Learning website. “We believe that XR technologies have the potential for impactfully and sustainably bridging the gap between the client and designers—in this case, students—enabling a deeper understanding of customer needs and better collaboration outcomes.” To read Wendy’s full piece, titled “Extended Reality Advances Goals of Design Thinking Course by Letting Students Experience Uganda,” visit https://lnkd.in/g7RxrmjS

It can be easy to view course syllabi as not much more than means to convey information. However, after participating in our Kaneb Center Course Design Academy, Tetyana Shlikhar, an assistant teaching professor and director of undergraduate studies in Russian in Notre Dame’s Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures, started to think of these documents as “‘living constitutions’ within the classroom.” “I realized that rather than creating a syllabus consisting of standard academic policies and rules written in a punitive language that students never read,” Tetyana writes on our website, “it is much more beneficial to create a human-centered syllabus.” To read how she did that, check out her full post on “Reimagining the Syllabus: Embracing Human-Centered Design and Inclusivity” at https://lnkd.in/ghJPEzFh

The internet is awash with misrepresentation, outright lies, and subtle ploys for attention. How do you use the web without falling prey to such deception? sam wineburg, co-author of Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online, offered?tips and strategies in an interview with Matthew Rascoff, vice provost for digital education at Stanford University, on Oct. 9. Their conversation touched on: ?? Healthy habits, such as lateral reading, that can save time and grief by helping us understand sources of information ?? Why Wikipedia is more useful as a frame of reference than an organization’s “About” page ?? The emptiness of dot org versus dot com in signaling reliability ?? Education as a powerful tool for understanding how the internet operates ?? Why cynicism can be as dangerous as naivete ?? How to conserve your attention in spaces that would monetize and market it Access the recording and transcript: https://lnkd.in/gNStkF5j Wineburg, professor emeritus at Stanford University Graduate School of Education, is founder of the Digital Inquiry Group (formerly the Stanford History Education Group), which shares lesson plans, exercises, and assessments on its website. He wrote the book Verified with Michael Caulfield. This conversation is part of the Academic Innovation #forthePublicGood series co-organized by Stanford Digital Education and Trinity College-Hartford. Program partners include the The Badavas Center at Bentley University: Innovation in Teaching & Learning, Brown University School of Professional Studies, Dartmouth College, Mount Holyoke College, Notre Dame Learning, Penn’s Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Innovation, and University of Michigan - Center for Academic Innovation.

Listen to Kristi Rudenga, director of our Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence, on the latest episode of the Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning podcast from the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning.

Talking with students about AI isn’t just for computer scientists. In this semester’s final installment of our AI for Teaching and Learning video series, Karla Badillo-Urquiola, Ph.D., Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Notre Dame, discusses the importance of faculty from a wide range of disciplines cultivating AI literacy among their students. She notes that the use of AI is no longer reserved for tech enthusiasts, emphasizing that it can be leveraged by faculty and students from all academic backgrounds. Possessing basic #AIliteracy also empowers students to understand how these technologies are affecting the information they consume and the decisions made by companies and governments. Finding ways to engage with students about AI so that they can critically assess it, consider its ethical implications, and understand its societal impacts is therefore essential. For all the #videos in our #AI for #Teaching and #Learning series, visit https://lnkd.in/gjxZVp_E

Our Office of Digital Learning has been proud to contribute to this effort. #VeteransDay

We're very excited to be able to bring you this new podcast with Jim Lang! Stay tuned …

Keeping up with a fast-paced lecture on a subject you’re encountering for the first time can be intimidating. “Students often initially struggle with approaching practice problems for this material, even after hearing a lecture on the subject,” Rachel Cliburn Branco writes in a new piece for the Notre Dame Learning website about her introductory Molecular Neuroscience course. An associate teaching professor in the University of Notre Dame - College of Science's Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Rachel has been working with our Office of Digital Learning (ODL) to produce video lectures for her students to watch in advance of class. “By shifting the lecture to a video format, we will have the class time to do guided practice problems together, modeling the new ways of thinking represented by this academic field,” she says. To read Rachel’s full piece and learn more about the ODL’s Digital Learning Sprints program that made the project possible, go to https://lnkd.in/gnqdbuKv

Notre Dame Learning's Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence is #hiring! This fantastic new position will play a key role in?designing and driving University strategy for assessment of student?learning. Applications will be accepted through November 24. Please spread the word, and reach out with any questions - we would love to hear from you. To learn more, visit: https://lnkd.in/gMArvJ77 #NotreDame #NDjobs #highered #assessment

AI’s implications for the honest completion of coursework are top of mind for many instructors, but knowing where to start a conversation with students can be difficult. In this installment of our AI for Teaching and Learning video series, Ardea Russo, director of the Office of Academic Standards at Notre Dame, highlights the importance of academic integrity in the era of generative AI. Directed toward students, the video stresses the need for them to build foundational knowledge and evaluate AI outputs critically. Ardea notes that Notre Dame’s policy prohibits submitting AI-generated or modified work unless explicitly allowed by professors. While AI can support learning, it should not replace personal effort, and she emphasizes that maintaining integrity and developing knowledge are essential for future success in both academics and professional life. This video is framed specifically in the context of Notre Dame’s honor code, but it can be a useful reference for instructors elsewhere, as well. To see all the #videos in our #AI for #Teaching and #Learning series, visit https://lnkd.in/gjxZVp_E