AI Day: Rethinking Teaching and Learning with AI

AI generated lightbulb wearing a graduation cap.

About

 Date: August 19, 2025

 Time: 9 a.m. - 3: 30 p.m.

 Location: Lister Conference Centre, U of A North Campus

Generative AI is sparking profound, generational shifts in how we approach teaching and learning. Where the use of GenAI aligns with learning objectives, it can enable new possibilities. But where it doesn’t align with objectives, it can be very difficult to contain.

Join us for AI Day on August 19th, where the U of A community will gather to explore the opportunities and challenges brought about by this rapidly advancing technology.

The day will include:

  • A keynote address from Simon Bates, Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President, Teaching and Learning at UBC

  • A panel of U of A experts from a cross-section of disciplines—chaired by Ali Shiri—will discuss the impacts they see GenAI having upon higher education, human capacities, and society more broadly

  • Hands-on demonstrations from your fellow U of A instructors who are applying GenAI in their teaching

  • Lunch will be provided.

Registration

This is an in-person event, open to current U of A faculty and staff. Recordings of presentational portions of the day will be made following the event for those who are unable to attend in person. Access details for these recordings will be provided at a later date.

 Registration for this event is now closed.

Event Schedule

Schedule of Events.
All sessions take place in the Maple Leaf Room, unless otherwise specified.
Time (MDT) Topic(s)
8:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.

Sign-in + networking
9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Opening remarks: Why we're here

Karsten Mündel, Vice-Provost Learning Initiatives, U of A
Orest Zwozdesky, Indigenous Cultural Attaché
Katie Tamsett, Vice President Academic, U of A Students’ Union
10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

Keynote Address

Simon Bates, Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President, Teaching and Learning, UBC
11:00 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. Break

11:15 a.m. - 11:40 p.m.

+

11:50 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

Interactive Breakouts

Presenters from the U of A community will give short, interactive presentations (25m) on ways that they are positioning generative AI in their classrooms, teaching workflows, and graduate student supervision.

Participants will choose from two of the following presentations:

  • Maple Leaf Room
    AI practices and possibilities to improve your workflows | Laura Velazquez & Jay Summach

    Laura and Jay will demonstrate some ways to use of Gemini and Notebook LM — two of the AI tools available to the entire U of A community — to enable efficiencies in some workflows common to teaching.

  • Aurora Room
    Supporting international student writing using AI as a learning tool |     Don Mason & Doris Abroampah

    Don and Doris will be describing how AI can be used for supporting and improving student writing by providing grammatical feedback (using standardized grammatical symbols), feedback on vocabulary and word choice, and feedback on content and the development of ideas using standardized scoring rubrics.

  • Prairie Room
    Impacts of GenAI on research and writing |     Ali Shiri

    Generative AI is transforming the landscape of research and writing. This presentation will provide a high-level, evidence-based overview of the latest developments in generative AI and large language models (LLMs). We'll explore how these tools are reshaping the ways in which we conduct research and create written work, and we will introduce examples of new research and writing applications. The presentation will cover:

    • Emergence of Generative AI and LLMs: A brief look at the variety of available tools and their capabilities.

    • Transforming Research and Writing: How LLMs are changing traditional methods.

    • Risks and Challenges: A discussion of the potential risks, ethical concerns, and implications for academic integrity.

    • Practical Applications: Specific use case examples for research purposes.

    • Considerations for Graduate and Postdoctoral Researchers: Guidance and implications for research and writing at the graduate level.
12:15 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Lunch and networking

1:00 p.m. - 1:25 p.m.

+

1:35 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Interactive Breakouts

Presenters from the U of A community will give short, interactive presentations (25m) on ways that they are positioning generative AI in their classrooms and teaching workflows.

Participants will choose from two of the following presentations:

  • Maple Leaf Room
    Interactive case studies with GPTs: Bringing family business scenarios to life |     Matt Knight

    Matt will demonstrate how he uses a GPT loaded with interviews, DISC profiles, and personas to create engaging, interactive family business case studies. Participants will interact with the GPT, seeing how LLMs can transform static case materials into dynamic simulations where students engage with realistic business family characters, and discover practical tips for building similar adaptive learning tools while managing privacy and access considerations.

  • Aurora Room
    Creating AI guidelines with students |     Nancy Bray

    Nancy will demonstrate a series of activities designed to develop a course or assignment-level guidelines for using Generative AI with students. The activities move from exploring big-picture essential questions about the relationship between Generative AI and human writing, to determining scenarios of where and when students find using Generative AI appropriate or not appropriate, to developing community guidelines for the use of Generative AI. These activities can be used by instructors to help students develop value-based decision-making skills about the use of Generative AI in their lives.

  • Prairie Room
    Gamifying with AI for Active Learning |     Gordon Gow

    Gordon’s presentation demonstrates how AI can be used as a creative partner in designing active learning experiences. Drawing on a graduate program with mid-career professionals, he will show how AI helped transform role-playing exercises on the social construction of technology into a gamified classroom activity. Through iterative prompting, AI generated role profiles, game rules, cards, and even draft board designs, which were then refined for classroom use. The session highlights both the opportunities and limits of AI in educational design, emphasizing how it can lower barriers to innovation, accelerate prototyping, and support engaging, participatory learning.
2:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. Break
2:15 p.m. - 3:25 p.m.

Panel: The AI inflection point. What is the future for disciplines, higher education, and society?

A closing panel drawn from the three U of A colleges will explore the changes that they foresee AI ushering in for disciplines, higher education, and society in general.

Chair: Ali Shiri, Vice Dean, Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies, U of A

Geoffrey Rockwell, Media Tech Studies and Philosophy, U of A

Carrie Demmans Epp, Computing Science, U of A

Gillian Lemermeyer, Nursing, U of A
3:30 p.m. Closing remarks


Presenter Biographies

Keynote Address

Simon Bates

Simon Bates


Simon Bates is Vice-Provost and Associate Vice President, Teaching and Learning at the University of British Columbia and a tenured Professor of Teaching in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Following graduate and postdoctoral work at the interface of computational physics and theoretical chemistry, he has 25 years’ experience working in the area of technology-led educational enhancement and research. As well as overseeing UBC’s Academic Integrity Hub he is academic lead for the institutional response to integrating generative AI tools into academic offerings. Over the past 2 years, he has been involved in a number of networks and collaborations considering some of the benefits and challenges these tools pose within Higher Education, including contributing to a pan-Canadian network of institutions and as Academic Lead for the APRU ‘Generative AI in Education’ project.

 

Panel Members

Ali Shiri
Ali Shiri is a Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies in the Faculty of Education and the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at the 天涯社区. He received his PhD in Information Science from the University of Strathclyde Department of Computer and Information Sciences in Scotland. Ali has been teaching, researching, and writing about digital information interaction and retrieval, Inuvialuit digital cultural heritage, data and learning analytics, and more recently generative AI in research and higher education. Ali was a member of the 天涯社区 Provost’s Taskforce on AI and the Learning Environment and is currently co-chairing the AI in Teaching and Learning Sub-committee at the 天涯社区. He has been leading several AI literacy initiatives for the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and graduate supervisors, and has published and presented on AI literacy, AI in universities, generative AI and academic integrity, and AI and interdisciplinarity.
Geoffrey Rockwell
Dr. Geoffrey Martin Rockwell is a Professor of Philosophy and Digital Humanities at the 天涯社区. He presently holds a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto and has published on subjects such as artificial intelligence and ethics, philosophical dialogue, textual visualization and analysis, digital humanities, instructional technology, computer games and multimedia. His books include Defining Dialogue: From Socrates to the Internet (Humanity Books, 2003) and Hermeneutica, co-authored with Stéfan Sinclair (MIT Press, 2016). Hermeneutica is part of a hybrid text and tool project with Voyant Tools (voyant-tools.org), an award-winning suite of analytical tools. He recently co-edited Right Research: Modelling Sustainable Research Practices in the Anthropocene (Open Book Publishers, 2021) and On Making in the Digital Humanities (UCL Press, 2023).
Carrie Demmans Epp

Carrie DEMMANS EPP is a Killam Fellow and Associate Professor in the Department of Computing Science at the 天涯社区, where she teaches courses on human-computer interaction, natural language processing, and the use of artificial intelligence in educational applications. She is also a fellow with the Alberta machine intelligence institute (amii). Before moving to Alberta, Carrie held a joint postdoctoral researcher position with the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Learning Research and Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh.

Her core research has two streams. One focuses on using analytics and other methods to understand how people use educational technologies so that these technologies and their use can be improved. The other focuses on developing adaptive educational technologies and reporting systems to support learning across a variety of contexts.

Gillian Lemermeyer
Gillian Lemermeyer, PhD, RN is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the 天涯社区. Gillian’s research employs phenomenological methods to explore questions situated in the embodied encounters between nurses and other healthcare practitioners with the people in their care. Her focus is on themes of relational ethics, embodied knowing, and the ethics of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Recent and on-going projects include investigating the ethics and effects of AI and other digital technologies in K-12 education and the technoethics of electronic health record systems and AI scribes. She is the co-lead of the AI and Health research Hub at the 天涯社区, Associate Director of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, and adjunct core faculty with the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre.

Interactive Breakout Presenters

Laura Velazquez Velazquez

Instructional Designer, Center for Teaching and Learning

Laura supports instructors in developing inclusive, research-informed teaching practices and integrating emerging AI technologies into their assessment and instructional strategies.

Jay Summach

Associate Director, Center for Teaching and Learning

Prior to joining the CTL, Jay worked with Amiii (Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute) where he consulted with health and life science organizations on applied AI projects.

Matt Knight

Executive Director, Alberta Business Family Institute & Lecturer, Strategy Entrepreneurship & Management, Alberta School of Business

Matt Knight leads research, education, and community engagement initiatives for Canada's business family ecosystem at ABFI and the 天涯社区. He teaches executive education and undergraduate and MBA courses in family business, governance, and strategy and supports translating research into actionable content and exploring how AI can enhance family business.

Nancy Bray

Associate Lecturer, English and Film Studies (Writing Studies), Faculty of Arts

Dr. Nancy Bray is an Associate Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts (Department of English and Film Studies / Writing Studies), specializing in writing and communication. Her teaching pedagogy challenges students to explore the human impact of their words. She is the author of the open educational resource , which focuses on the social and rhetorical aspects of academic writing in the age of Generative AI.

Ali Shiri

Professor, School of Library and Information Studies and Vice Dean, Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies

Ali received his PhD in Information Science from the University of Strathclyde Department of Computer and Information Sciences in Scotland. He has been teaching, researching, and writing about digital information interaction and retrieval, Inuvialuit digital cultural heritage, data and learning analytics, and more recently generative AI in research and higher education. Ali was a member of the 天涯社区 Provost’s Taskforce on AI and the Learning Environment and is currently co-chairing the AI in Teaching and Learning Sub-committee at the 天涯社区. He has been leading several AI literacy initiatives for the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and graduate supervisors, and has published and presented on AI literacy, AI in universities, generative AI and academic integrity, and AI and interdisciplinarity.

Gordon Gow

Director of Media and Technology Studies in the Faculty of Arts.

Gordon specializes in researching and teaching the social impact of digital media and technology, with expertise spanning digital leadership, community informatics, and communication policy. His research includes international collaborations, particularly in the Global South, through partnerships in Sri Lanka and Trinidad. Currently, Dr. Gow is exploring the expanding role of AI in both humanities pedagogy and the creative industries.

Don Mason

Director, English Language School

Don Mason is the Director the English Language School. He been with the ELS since 2006. The ELS provides courses to support undergraduate and, starting this year, graduate students to improve their writing skills.

Doris Abroampah

PhD student, Faculty of Education

Doris Abroampah is a PhD student in Measurement, Evaluation, and Data Science in the Faculty of Education. She has been working for the past year to support the use of AI in the English Language School. She has been a junior and senior high school mathematics teacher for over 10 years.