UNO Faculty,
We are pleased to share that UNO is preparing to launch an AI Learning Lab in the Fall 2024 semester. This will bring many exciting opportunities for the campus to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) in a coordinated capacity with plenty of support available to assist your efforts. We had the opportunity to share this with the Faculty Senate Officers last week, who gave us very positive feedback and encouraged us to broadly communicate with all faculty prior to the summer break.
UNO’s AI Learning Lab will have four main components:
First, the lab will facilitate an Open AI Challenge, an RFP for up to 1000 UNO faculty/staff/departments to gain access to Open AI for specific use cases. These use cases may include teaching and learning (for example, you might want to try out a Custom GPT to assist students in your class with studying and preparing for course activities and assessments, similar to a Teaching Assistant), operational efficiency (for example, you might want to deploy AI to answer common questions from prospective students), research, or other activities. We plan to open the RFP mid-June and submissions will be due late August for those seeking to gain Open AI access for the Fall semester. For most up-to-date information on the Open AI Challenge, visit innovate.unomaha.edu.
Second, the lab will support the UNO community with learning more about AI by hosting faculty development trainings/workshops, offering course/capstone course development grants, updating prompt books, and shaping microcredentials that help to educate and support our campus community and beyond. These workshops are a continuation of the eight AI-focused workshops the UNO Digital Learning team facilitated in 2023-24, and we were thrilled to see so much interest at these sessions the past year. The course and course capstone grants are designed to provide funds to faculty who want to infuse AI-related content into their courses to help prepare learners for using AI in their future careers.
Third, the lab will plan and implement the first UNO AI Learning Lab Summit in Spring 2025, an event designed to bring together campus leaders, faculty, staff, students, and community members. The Summit will feature individuals and departments selected through the RFP Challenge as speakers so that we can learn from one another, as well as from outside experts who will provide keynote and plenary sessions.
And finally, the lab will create a UNO Campus AI Consortium, a key group of stakeholders from each college, academic affairs, ITS, student success, ILCI, IESS, and other key units to help provide guidance and input to the campus and AI Learning Lab on all things related to AI. We know that this is a rapidly changing technology with a wide variety of factors for our UNO campus to consider, and we feel that having a dedicated committee to discuss AI and make related recommendations would help position our campus for long-term success. If you are interested in participating in this committee, please reach out to Myah Lanoux-Nguyen.
Day-to-day leadership for the lab will be provided by AVC Jaci Lindburg and Instructional Designer Cassie Mallette. If you have any questions at this time, please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of us.
As the Spring 2024 semester winds down and you submit your final grades, we want to wish you a relaxing and enjoyable summer ahead. Thank you for all you do in service to UNO and our great students.
Cordially,
Phil He, PhD, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Jaci Lindburg, PhD, Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovative & Learning-Centric Initiatives
