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Pacific Oaks' Approach to AI

May 21, 202538 minEp. 394
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Episode description

Generative AI tools are challenging traditional models of college instruction. In this episode, Camille Huggins, Yolanda Carlos, and Orlando Saiz join us to discuss how Pacific Oaks College is working to use these tools to more effectively support student learning. Camille, Yolanda, and Orlando were participants in an AI Institute offered at Pacific Oaks College this year. 

A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

Transcript

Generative AI tools are challenging traditional  models of college instruction. In this episode, we examine how one college is responding to  more effectively support student learning. Thanks for joining us for Tea for  Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices  in teaching and learning. This podcast series is hosted by  John Kane, an economist...

...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer... ...and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more  inclusive and supportive of all learners. Our guests today are faculty and administrators  at Pacific Oaks College. Since we have several guests participating today, we'll have  each of our guests introduce themselves, describe their role at the institution, and  state what type of tea they are drinking.

My name is Camille Huggins. I am a core faculty at  the Pacific Oaks College for the last five years, and I'm Caribbean, so I like that strong Lipton  yellow label tea. It has a lot of caffeine to it, it's a good little balance with the  lemon. New Yorkers, we love a lemon, no milk, so that's what I'm doing today. Sounds good. Camille, my name is Yolanda

Carlos. I'm core faculty at Pacific Oaks  College. I'm over at the BA and MA Early Childhood Education degree program, and  I love Earl Grey with a bit of milk. My name is Orlando Saiz. I'm an administrative  faculty and Director of Research at Pacific Oaks College in the EdD Early Childhood Education  program. I normally drink coffee, but today I'm having the loose-leaf spearmint tea. Very nice. Yeah, some yummy tea choices for sure.  John, are you drinking any tea today?

I am drinking a ginger peach green tea today. Nice, John. I've switched things up, John, I have chai today. That's been a while. I know, I know. We’ve invited you here today to discuss the AI initiatives that  you've been working on at Pacific Oaks, located in Pasadena, California, where it's much  warmer than it is here today. So first though, could you tell us a little bit about Pacific  Oaks College and its institutional mission?

Sure, I'd be happy to. So yes, you're right.  The weather here in Pasadena, year round, is beautiful, and the Pasadena Children's School  began in Pasadena, California in 1945. It was started by six local families as a children's  school, which believed that each individual possessed an inner light worth nurturing. It later  became a teacher training institution founded on Quaker values of community, equality, and peace,  which would offer a progressive education that

would help the world heal. Pacific Oaks College  was established in 1958. The mission of the college is to train future professionals to be of  service and positively impact their communities, to help, and not harm them. Presently, the college  is focused on building competent professionals who are culturally aware, respectful of the  communities they serve, open and willing advocates focused on justice, fairness, and prepared  to advance or lead in their profession.

Our institution has a somewhat similar  history in that it started off as a teacher prep institution as well. That's kind of fun to  hear a related story. Can you talk a little bit about the student population at Pacific Oaks? So we have a majority is online. 80% of our school is online right now. So we have a combination  of asynchronous, synchronous courses. We still have some on the ground students, because we  transitioned from on the ground to online during

the pandemic. So around 2022, 2023 it became that  perhaps this works better, because our students were more interested in doing online courses  than on the ground courses. Our typical student body… we are a Hispanic-serving institution…. are  Latino middle-aged women in their 30s to 40s. They are working, they have children, they're married.  So sometimes English is not their first language. They have maybe went to school. If they went to  our bachelor's program, they may have had some

remedial courses or whatever. But if they are  in our master's degree courses, which is a lot of our courses, they would have gone to college,  but they've maybe had a gap between bachelor's and master's about eight to 10 years. So the academic  acumen is the issue when they first get to school. So we have to spend a lot of time really trying to  hone in on their learning abilities and basically help them get themselves to match what the rigor  of the program is. But yeah, we love these kind

of women. They are in the trenches. They are not  into lofty ideas. They're into really learning the skill sets that they are basically trying to gain  because of our programming, which is marriage and family therapy and social work and education.  It's a very professions-based kind of school, so they spend a lot of time really getting skill  sets, being practical. They're very practical in understanding what they need to know, and we  really help them with their skill sets.

In November of 2022, ChatGPT appeared right  before finals at the end of the fall semester, and it resulted in some fairly  significant effects on higher ed, how did faculty at your institution respond? Some instructors embraced ChatGPT initially quite readily, and others even used AI apps for  assignments to enhance them. Other faculty

were hesitant and wanted more information.  P.O. is a smaller higher ed institution, and with that being said, we have the ability to  be nimble and to add changes to our assignments as needed and to keep up with best practices. P.O. is  part of The Community Solution (the TCS) system. It's a centralized infrastructure and culture that  supports six higher ed education institutions. In the spring of 2023, TCS provided a conference  space for our system faculty to showcase AI,

living out the mission of embracing a culture  of learning. So faculty across the institutions presented and all worked collaboratively in  experiencing AI in a variety of modalities at our central location in Chicago. So I think, how did we embrace it Is that, for the students, we kind of looked at it as  a plagiarism kind of situation… so punitive, this is going to stop them from learning blah,  blah, blah. And as we got into the AI Institute

for the AACU we discovered that this can really  help the students. We said our student body is first-generation women, mostly Spanish-speaking,  different languages, and so forth. So AI can help them with writing. AI can help them getting their  thoughts in order. A lot of times, these students ask, “How do you want this assignment to go?  How do you want this assignment to look?” And I thought, AI can help them in that avenue as well.  The more you saw a lot of these applications come

in ChatGPT starts it off, but then you got Deep  Seek, you got Claude. You have a lot of different platforms. You realize that this can really  be used to help them educationally. So for us, as faculty, we maybe have been using it secretly.  I started using it just to do emails, you know, “write this nicer, put my thoughts and write  it nicer,” but we started to not look at it as

a negative, but this can be the mechanism of the  future. It's like autocorrect. I can barely spell, but autocorrect makes me look as though  I'm passing national spelling bees.

I'm relatively new to the institution, so I wasn't  around in 2022, I was working at a different institution, but right away, I was invited to join  the AI committee at our school, and I found it very interesting the tools that were available  that I was completely unaware of, and just to see how there's certain programs and GPTs where  they can serve as a tutorial and be of service to students, faculty, it's just amazing. I'm very  much looking forward to what the future holds.

So you've kind of given us a little bit of a  base for how folks were initially responding to AI. Can you talk a little bit about ways  that faculty are now using AI to support the educational mission, whether that's in curriculum  or educational activities or other uses? Recently, I've been focused on the basic  logistics in application of AI, student use to complete assignments or to create assignments.  And so, for example, there is in one class a poem

they have to develop. And with that, I used  an AI tool for them to download, a free use, to put in their poem, and this AI app creates a  video with music, with words and with pictures, and it brings to life their poem. And the  students were really excited about that.

It really helped to bring that assignment to the  next level and then at the institutional level, our Pacific Oaks college AI team has been working  on developing the institutional policy for AI usage, for students, faculty, and our community,  for example, we believe that it's important for students to submit their assignments and documents  in a format that can be screened for AI usage by the systems that are made available to faculties  for screening Word documents. For example,

we use Turnitin. We want students to be able to  generate and create their own content and use AI as a support for developing ideas, not writing  their papers for them. So as an institution, we've been engaged in critical discussions and in  planning around the use of AI in the classroom, and then also distinguishing the human element,  or the connection, versus automated AI machinery, tools, and apps. We encourage the using  of AI for brainstorming, creating ideas.

This should always be followed by student-created  content, rather than the use of AI tools and prompting to create or develop assignments. To add to that, I'm the chair of the Faculty Council for our college. On a macro level, we  basically engaged in a lot of conversations. We've had a lot of staff meetings with the adjunct  faculty as well as regular faculty, about AI and

how to engage with it for ourselves, as well  as for our students. Another thing we did was, as Yolanda said, we are part of a larger system  of six universities, we invited the larger system to come in and do a two-day training on UDL  (universal design for learning) and then AI. And we've been looking at making collaborative  initiatives between the UDL and the AI systems to

basically incorporate it in our classes as well.  Another thing we're doing is working on a policy, it's a working policy, as Yolanda situated, but  also we have not really introduced it to our students. So that's our next part of our journey  is basically how to appropriately engage students and basically give them a demonstration. I think  students really benefit from a demonstration. They definitely, when in online schools, they  really benefit from one one-on-one personal

interaction via Zoom. They really like it. So  that's what we've been working on as well. Just to add to that, in advising doctoral  research students, some of my students are using AI platforms to organize their  sources. They can engage in mind mapping, and I think it's a helpful tool for the literature  search, even though I don't think it's a good idea for them to fully rely on that. I think a good  mixture of human capacity versus AI platforms and

tools to complement each other are important. Let's go back to the use of AI to support UDL. Could you talk a little bit more about how AI  tools are being used to support a universal design for learning approach in the course? So UDL has a lot of different facets to it, audio, visual. What I've really been looking  at is the growth mindset piece, because what we've noticed with some of our students, I've  been doing some one one-on-one. We're gearing

up to do focus groups with them. We got a small  grant to basically implement UDL in the entire college. And so what I noticed with our particular  students is that they don't want to necessarily identify as having a learning disability. That's  just not their thing. But what they talked about, in a very roundabout way, was the lack of  confidence, the lack of really being scared

to look for assistance. So I was thinking that  we need to implement a growth mindset kind of component into our teaching modes, as well as,  and AI can help with that, because it can help give you courage to ask questions. You can ask  AI to look at how we can integrate: “I'm having difficulty understanding this assignment, I'm  having difficulty understanding this article. Can you break it down for me so that you can make more  sense?” So integrating an AI component with the

UDL will help enhance their learning abilities.  So that's what we've been kind of structuring. And I heard from the students that they really  were having issues with just self confidence, which makes a lot of sense based on the fact  that they haven't been in school in years, and everything is just moving at lightning space  as far as learning acumen. So that is one way. One of the things you mentioned earlier was  that students come in with fairly differentiated

backgrounds in terms of their prior knowledge,  and they have to get up to speed. Have they been using AI to help fill some of the gaps they may  have had in their prior learning experiences. I've noticed it in their assignments, yes, but  what I'm learning is also they just put in the assignment, but they don't put in the reading  material. So the assignments come across very superficial and not necessarily depth of critical  thinking or any kind of reflection of the reading.

So the AI won't even put in references in  it, so the references won't match what's in the coursework. So getting them to not use  it in the underhanded way… You're using AI, I have no problem with you using it,  but it has to be used to assist you, not do the work for you, and that has been  the bridge that we're trying to cross.

You mentioned the large percentage of your  coursework being online, and I know that faculty, in a lot of our conversations around AI, have  been really concerned about using AI in online environments, because it's a little bit harder  to distinguish the human from machine-generated. Can you talk a little bit more about ways that  you're helping students move in the direction of the assisting and not doing it for them, so  where it's not an academic integrity issue?

So, what I've been using is what's called the AI  sandwich. I've been working with students to help them understand how they can use AI like, for  example, if they have a topic, but it's really broad, to helping them brainstorm using AI to  narrow down their topic or to develop ideas for topics, and to help them to create and understand  how to develop a good, concise thesis statement

for their topic. And then, with that being  said, the next step is how to gather their data, so using AI to create questions for interviews,  for surveys, and then methods for data collection for their action research project. But with that  being said, then I go into the humanization of AI,

and I shift the focus to our model for P.O. It's  the head, heart, and hands model. I talk to them about, when we're completing assignments, it's not  just to complete the assignment, but it's to gain that knowledge, not just to regurgitate it, but to  have that passion, because then it's in the heart. So it's the knowledge in the head, the passion  in the heart, then our practices, our hands, that comes forth in our practices, and that sets  us apart from others, and that's something that

AI cannot do for us. That's something that we as  the human, that's how we humanize the use of AI, but the human-to-human, I talk to them about  how AI has helped you generate these questions, these surveys, but you're going to be conducting  these interviews, you're going to be writing the anecdotal records. You're going to be taking  the raw notes and submitting those, perhaps maybe taking voice recordings or video, but then  we can take AI to help organize those for them,

so that then they can maybe create their outline,  and then they can submit their papers. How I do it is they submit it in chunks, and then I review and  we're in revision state, and I provide feedback. The feedback I provide is using a tool called  VoiceThread where I provide specific assignment feedback using what's called VoiceThreads, where  they can see me, they can hear me, and if they need to, they can also see the wording as well.  So it touches upon all learning modalities.

I have used VoiceThread in the past, and I've  really enjoyed it. I had to drop it because my classes were large, and just listening to all  the audio responses took far too many hours. I know Orlando, you did some AI stuff. You've  been doing it in your doctoral program. Yes, just thinking about most of the students  that I teach are at the doctoral level, and most

of them are engaging in doctoral research. So if  you consider that traditional approaches versus futuristic or current approaches, most of the  material that students are engaging in at that level is meant to be challenging. They need  to learn research and it’s important to learn statistics and different methodologies. So I'm  super open to new tools that they can use, but it's difficult to substitute AI tools with general  educational tasks that are meant to help students

advance and to gain a wealth of skills. But some  of the newer tools that I'm becoming aware of, and that I've noticed could be helpful as a  tutorial for statistics and for research methods, even research design. There's one called Julius  AI, where you could drop your data in there and it can spit out a result. If it doesn't spit out the  right prompt for you, you can re-prompt it until it gives you what you want. I've tried it with  simple data that I've had, running a correlation.

It gives you everything you need. So I mean, if  students are struggling with conceptualization or just to have the right terminology, because  it is important to verbalize your research in a way that's accurate and specific. So I  think the AI tools could truly help for that, as well as general organizational tools. NVivo  is another research tool that students are

using. I've used it in the past as well. It is  fueled by machine learning now, so creating those hand-coded or manual themes that was done in the  past is probably going to fall a little bit by the wayside, but I still think there's some value  for students to learn the traditional way and to mind the author's recommendations from grounded  theory and from phenomenology. I think there's

some real value in that, and they could really  showcase the ideas that they have. My exposure to AI is relatively new, and it started when I began  teaching here at Pacific Oaks and I joined the AI committee. My doctoral program is very new. This  is an inaugural class, and previous development of the doctoral research manual included a passage  for plagiarism, to guard against plagiarism. After

reading some material, particularly AI for  Teachers, by Jose Antonio Bowen. I noticed the finding in there that faculty generally do not  do well recognizing AI passages versus AI itself. So I thought this is something that I need to step  up, and it has to do with academic integrity. So I

wrote a follow-up passage to that where students’  work will be detected for AI passages. It doesn't say how many passages or the percentage, but I  think it's going to be important for students to understand that they can't just copy and  paste their whole doctoral dissertation and that be acceptable, and there has to be some  systems in place to guard against that.

So you've mentioned using Turnitin and tools  like that to detect AI. Can you talk a little bit about ways that you're managing false  accusations or false positives on AI use? So I don't really trust Turnitin. Let me  just put it out there as a misnomer. I feel as though sometimes they see as plagiarism,  and when I actually look at the paperwork, it's like they use the same word the 10 million  times and it's been picked up. So I don't know

if I don't trust Turnitin or I don't know how to  use it properly. We put it out there like that, and so I don't really rely on it as much,  especially for those who English is not their first language. What I'm looking for is  execution of how they write. When I did my PhD, I wished there was a ChatGPT back then, I had  to hire an editor who was from another country, and that scared me. I was like, I'm paying you,  and I was born in America and speak English,

and I'm paying you… she was like from Ukraine or  Russia… to edit my paperwork. So because of that, I had to learn how to write. Something about  that was not sitting well with me. So I had to learn how to write. And I felt as though  ChatGPT and one of these things can help you to learn how to write. In Spanish, the adjective  comes after the actual noun, whereas in English, it comes before. And so I thought that this  would help them. If, in fact, they can learn

how to write, I can overlook plagiarism. What I  can't overlook is them not using the readings and the learning resources that I provide for them. I  grade on how they write, and that's really good, but I also grade on use of learning resources,  and I think that that was more important to me than the other thing. Another thing is a lot  of them don't know how to use it properly, so they don't even see the attachment upload  document to put in their articles. So that tells

you that maybe sometimes they're just cutting and  pastes. And if you've never noticed in ChatGPT, they'll say the same thing different ways, and  it's up to you to pick up on which way to say it. So me catching them there has been very helpful.  Orlando's correct. Sometimes you can't tell, but then that's good, because then you're learning how  it's supposed to be written in the first place, and then ChatGPT also has a lot of spaces in  between, so I'm teaching them not to cut and

paste. I want to teach them how to use it in  a sense that it can craft a paragraph for you, as opposed to you just cutting and pasting. So  catching them in that area has been helpful to me. But again, I will say I don't know much  about Turnitin. I don't trust your plagiarism readability. So I go in that direction. I agree Camille. They also have a disclaimer

in there, so it kind of is a little bit on the  nebulous side. And typically, when I go in and I look, because I think that's a humanization  of anything that we're going to be using, it still requires us to take that step, to go in,  to look at, and to make sense of the meaning of what has been submitted. And then I agree with  you. We're looking for content. Do they really understand this content, and can they apply  what they've learned? Are they applying this

in a real case scenario. But when I'm looking  at Turnitin, it flags references, and that tends to be the large chunk of it. When I can see that  it's flagged references. And I'm looking to see, are they in seventh APA edition? Yeah, they are.  It's flagging them because they have submitted this in the revision before this. And so those are  things to keep in mind as well. Nothing's perfect, but it's learning how to use the tools that we  do have available to us that's important.

So you've all talked a little bit about how  students are using AI, and Camille mentioned how she's used it to help shape emails. Are many  faculty using AI to help develop curriculum, to help develop learning activities,  to create various scenarios or other ways in supporting their instruction. It has really helped me, and I think other people are doing it too. I'm in the social work  department. My other faculty have not caught on as

much as I have, but it really helps me with case  studies, because my classes are more applied. It helped me develop case studies that make sense.  They have better characterizations, like they'll sit there and say, identify mental health symptoms  and then identify environmental stressors. And I was like, “Yeah, I never thought about creating  it in that way.” So I think that has been very helpful. It has helped me create quizzes, exams in  a lot of ways. So I'm in love. I've subscribed to

ChatGPT as well as Claude. I've been trying out  Deep Seek and you know, the platforms can go on and on and on. We were just told that there's an  AI for curriculum development that’s specific for lesson plans and so forth. So I'm going to look  into that as well if there's a free trial. So I'm into it big time, my colleagues, not quite yet,  I don't think. And I'm also a writer, so it helps me with contextualizing ideas and in figuring out  what's out there right now, and so I can look at

different articles. I think Deep Seek is pretty  good when it comes to accuracy and references, because I check it constantly against what's in  there and what's outside. But I love it, and I think this AI Institute really opened my eyes to  the vast applications that are out there that I think we all should know and not get overwhelmed  by. It's like Bitcoin. You don't know what's going on, but I'm really excited about it. Yeah, for myself, I tend to use Copilot.

I think it's helpful, since it's kind of  integrated into the browser that I use, and it's helpful to summarize long passages,  to bullet point them. But also, as a writer, I use it if I'm struggling to find a source. I'll  just drop a prompt in there, and it'll help me to generate a few more sources that I wasn't aware  of. But at first I was a little resistant. I was

just unaware of how it worked and how it operates.  But I'm starting to learn more and more, and I do still have a concern about privacy, so I won't  drop students’ whole papers in there, just because it's not my work. It's something that I'm not in  charge of, and is not my property. So I’d rather just kind of use it in a broader sense, just to  kind of quicken my pace in the work that I do. I just want to put it that a student told me  about ChatGPT. That's how I first learned about

this whole thing in the first place. And I always  say I talk to young people because they know and keeping up with them. I'm 53 and I officially have  no idea what's hot anymore, what's happening. I'll have to admit it, but this student was like,  “Why aren't you using ChatGPT?” and I'm like, “What are you talking about?” And when it came I  was like, “Whoa, this is just next place to go.” So I'm open to it, because the young people  know about it, and I'm glad that they have it,

because it makes life easier. But you have to know  how to prompt. I think that was the biggest thing. Learning how to prompt it and yield it to what  you need is what been the biggest challenge. For me, I have mainly used the app. So  initially I discussed how I used one for a poem, and it was Lumen5. It's an animated avatar  video program that they download for free, and they're able to create this beautiful  video with the poem that they developed and

they created. What's really cool about it is that  they get excited about an assignment that before was just something that they just went through  and they just jumped through the hoops. Well, now with that Lumen5, it's just kind of has  brought things to the next level, and I also use ITSE standards for educators. It's how to  use AI and AI tools for educational purposes. So that's something that I do and use, and I'm  stretching and finding new apps at different

times, and then having students go in. I use it  as kind of like a pilot program. I'll pull it in, and I'll say, “Well, this time, we're going to  use this.” And I'll say, “it's not mandatory. Those that you want to use it can use it. Those  that don't want to use it can use the regular standard assignment.” And it's amazing to see that  the majority of them choose to use the AI tool. It also creates flyers, if you do that. And it  has helped me with ethics applications. So, yeah,

it's a part of my life. It's on all my laptops  and my computers. It's kind of embarrassing now, but people say, “Oh, you're leaning on it too  much. And if you lean on it too much, it becomes they take over your ability.” But I'm directing  this. I'm still involved. I'm the creative director of what I will use and what I won't use,  and I'm still a part of the equation. They haven't taken me over, have they?. This is the kind of  philosophical questions you ask yourself.

Amen, that's the humanization of AI. I think one of the things that I've heard you all talk about today is that the AI Institute  gave you some concentrated time to practice and explore and learn, and kind of set that time aside  so that you had the time to do that. I think often it's one of those add-ons, like in my free time  that none of us have, that we might explore these things. So it seems like that dedicated time was a  really valuable and important investment for each

of you to really integrate it into your work. Yeah, we had a staff meeting because, you know, again, our Senior Vice-President of Academic  Affairs, he's really interested in it to kind of go, how can it be used for our professional  use? And I remember my colleague and I, we created a case note: “How to Write a Case  Note through AI.” And I think that just was, like, blown away. The other faculty were like,  “Wow.” If you know anything about social work,

you could write it as a SOAP note, which is  a subjective objective assessment plan. You can use it as a DAP note, which is a diagnostic  assessment plan. So we used it as a demonstration about all the different ways you can write case  notes. Now there are AI systems to help with case notes in social work agencies which Is like:  you put the paperwork in, put the information in,

and they will create yourself an intervention  plan. So I think that's the good thing about Pacific Oaks College, because we're such a  profession-based kind of college, you’re teaching Marriage and Family Therapy. It's one of the  biggest marriage and family therapy schools on the West Coast. And then social work we just  got basically a couple of years ago, using AI to

help with you as a professional, I think has  been great. So doing it with the teachers was the first thing, faculty, and now we're going to  try to see if we can do it with the students. So you all participated in the institute.  What proportion of the faculty participated in the institute? And do you still have some  faculty who are resistant to trying AI? For the Institute, it was seven of us. Three of  us showed up today, but the seven of us. One,

the Dea,n has moved on to another position, but  everyone else has maintained. has stayed. More and more people are interested because of the  fact that we've been doing staff meetings. And I was very surprised, because when I set up the  TCS, which is the system-wide AI and UDL classes, it was like three hours of their time Monday and  Tuesday, and everyone showed up. Everyone showed up. Everyone's interested. And every time we  do it, they're like, “Wow.” Every time you see

in the chat, “This is mind blowing.” So I think  they're interested. But we haven't done anything formal to basically quantify how interested  they've been and how involved they've been, but we've shown to them, AI is here to stay, it  is valuable, and it can be used by anyone. I believe we have developed a survey tool that  we're going to be sending out to faculty. So that's something that we're going to  be looking at, gathering the data of

their familiarity with the use of AI. And then I  think we're going to do a pre- and then a post-, and then we'll probably then follow up on  that, because that will denote the need. I think, as well, at other larger institutions,  that have decided on a specific platform to use, as far as AI, and how to integrate that into  the school's existing tools. We're still in the process of deciding about that. I know some of  the schools, they use a paid version of ChatGPT

or CoPilot. We're still in the phase of selecting  the best platform, but I know there's some good options out there, and I think it really will add  to and cause us to progress in our programming. So we always wrap up by asking: what's next? So preparing for the unknown. What I would say, first is we need to focus on relationships,  the ability to connect with others, so that they can collaborate and work in teams together,  because this is the 21st century workforce need.

Second is helping our students with resiliency,  I also like to call it flexibility, because the one thing that is constant in life is change.  That's the one thing that we can depend on, is change. And resiliency is the ability to push  through obstacles and to have the confidence to act on the new knowledge that they have to create  the change they want to see in the world. And then lastly, this is a P.O. core value is reflection.  All of our assignments generally have a reflection

piece that's weaved in there for them to reflect  upon. So I always tell them it's important to stay humble enough to reflect upon changes that need  to be made, and then the courage to act on the next steps that need to take place. What's next? Institutionally speaking, what I like is the fact, though we are a part of a  system which is TCS and the six universities, the

wisdom of the President was that he didn't want  a uniform AI platform for each school. He thought that we have a law school, we have a medical  school, they're going to need different kind of AI platforms than us. So we have been given the  authority to autonomously pick our own AI platform that will work best for our particular students.  We are keeping our students heavily in mind. We want to make sure that AI is used ethically and  with integrity, but while being helpful to them.

So we're rolling out a policy that's going to help  them in that sort of way. We are also redoing our plagiarism handbook and basically incorporating  AI and making sure that that kind of meets and it's more seamless. We are definitely trying to  pick a platform that kind of works for education, marriage and family, and social work, three  different distinct professions, but yet very similar in a lot of ways. We're also working on an  AI manual, to some degree, to basically figure out

how all the different components that come with  AI, rethinking it and reshaping it. We have not done a review of our faculty manual in about  10 years, so that's also being incorporated. We're in the midst of change at Pacific Oaks,  so AI came perfectly so they can be instituted in our paperwork and our regulations. As an institution, I think we'll continue to serve as possibly thought leaders for the topic of  AI. A lot of us are integrating it into our work,

and I can see that continuing in the future. I  think we all have a great idea about responsible use of AI, and I think that will definitely  continue. Personally, I'm working on writing another book chapter. Most of my materials have  been on doctoral researchers. So this new chapter is about doctoral research agency, where it's  based on a lot of material I've been looking into.

Part of that should be focused on helping students  to adapt and prepare for the future. As Yolanda noted, I think the skills of adaptation and  integration are important, and AI could definitely help with that process. And yes, overall, just  using AI to help prepare students for the future, whether it's in the job market or for personal  enhancement. I think that's all important, and we could definitely motivate students in that  way and help them to navigate that process.

Well, thanks for joining us. It's nice to  have a little case study of how a particular institution is working through AI. And this is an issue that all campuses are facing. So it's great to hear how  you've been addressing it. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you so much. I hope that we  were informative. We're trying to move to cutting edge while keeping  our tradition and our principles. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please  subscribe and leave a review on iTunes

or your favorite podcast service.  To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com.  Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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