News and Events

Faculty Technology Day 2024 will be held on Wednesday, May 22nd at the Lincoln Center Campus.

RSVP! Teaching and AI: Preparing for an AI-Driven World

About Faculty Technology Day

On Faculty Technology Day, Fordham Information Technology brings faculty together to learn about new teaching and research strategies in a digital age. Faculty have the opportunity to discuss and share their interests and insights about technology.  The annual event includes workshops, exciting keynotes, and stimulating conversations about the future of teaching, technology, and research.

It's also a year-end event to celebrate Fordham University's faculty. Staff are also welcome.

Blackboard has now enabled the AI Design Assistant that you can use in your courses.  At all steps in the creation process, you’re able to adjust the complexity of content and customize everything that the AI Design Assistant generates. 

View the workshop recording:

For more information please see our Bb Mailbag blog post on the AI Design Assistant.

In this workshop, Dr. Amin discussed best practices for using generative AI both ethically and responsibly in educational settings. Drawing on his expertise in natural language processing and machine learning methods, Dr. Amin outlined the frameworks for ensuring the safety and fairness of AI systems, essential for maintaining trust and integrity in educational settings.

This workshop's goal was to equip attendees with strategies for fostering transparency and accountability, crucial elements for promoting responsible AI use. The workshop also covered recent advances in AI and prepared attendees to evaluate AI tools critically and implement them in pedagogically sound ways.

View the recording (note, you will need to sign in with your Fordham credentials to view)

In this webinar, Dr. Amin and his mentee, Innocent Ababio, reviewed and leveraged their experience developing their own large language model and instructed participants on current best practices for collecting quality datasets, choosing appropriate model architectures, training and fine-tuning parameters, evaluating output, and monitoring for issues like toxicity.

This webinar gave faculty firsthand experience building a small LLM while covering theoretical topics like self-supervision and transfer learning. Participants gained practical skills to apply in their own NLP and AI projects in academia.

View the recording (note, you will need to sign in with your Fordham credentials to view)

Faculty Technology Bootcamp: a week of workshops aimed at helping faculty leverage technology to enhance teaching, research, and student engagement by providing you with immediately applicable strategies to save time, boost productivity, and energize your classes.

Recordings, resources and more information

Some of you may remember Dr. Bowen as one of the most effective and well-received keynote speakers from our Faculty Technology Day events. He is a winner of the Stamford University Alumni Scholar Award, as well as the Ernest L. Boyer Award in 2018 by the New American Colleges and Universities. He is also currently writing a book on teaching with AI.

About the Session

The excitement (and panic) surrounding A.I. is shattering expectations around assignments, assessment, class preparation and attendance, while challenging us to build more future-proof and inclusive classrooms. AI is changing working and thinking: as jobs and the way humans do thinking tasks change, how will our curriculum respond? AI is also changing how we think about average. If ChatGPT can produce consistent "C" work, then we need to update our policies around grading. AI is even changing creativity. Together, we will examine the skills and content that will matter most in this new age, what policies and practices improve motivation and decrease cheating, and why articulation of ‘quality’ is essential. Focusing on the tangible, attendees will also learn techniques to transform assignments and assessments to motivate and engage students by placing greater emphasis on the process and experience of learning.

About the speaker

Dr. Jose Antonio Bowen
Senior Fellow, American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U)

Faculty Technology Day 2023
AI and the Future of Education
Wednesday, May 24, 2023, 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Costantino Hall, Fordham Law School, Lincoln Center campus

Faculty Technology Day is our annual conference where Fordham faculty discuss their interests and insights on technology and education. The day will include workshops, exciting keynotes, and stimulating conversations about the future of teaching, technology, and research. 

We will provide more information soon, including list of keynote speakers, and RSVP request.  If you are interested in presenting, please contact us at [email protected].

Artificial Intelligence's Impact on Education

Panel discussion about AI and the future of higher education featuring five Fordham faculty members from various departments. 

Introduction to OpenAI’s ChatGPT

Drs. Nicole Zeidan, Assistant Director of Emerging EdTech, and Steven D'Agustino, Director of Online Learning, explain ChatGPT, what is behind AI-powered emerging technologies, and the impact on higher education.

Threat or opportunity? The impact of AI on Education

Popular programs like ChatGPT can solve complex math problems, create original music and art, and write stories better than an actual person—and sound like one, too. This has triggered a big question among educators: How will AI affect assignments, assessments, and originality in the classroom? 

On Feb. 7, Fordham’s Graduate School of Education hosted a panel discussion at the Lincoln Center campus, “Threat or Opportunity? The Impact of AI on Education,” where five experts explored how AI can impact students at all grade levels—and why sometimes, we learn better without fancy chatbots. 

In today’s rapidly evolving world, closing the digital divide has become more crucial than ever, particularly for professionals in social work and health. Recognizing the urgency of this matter, the Fordham Institute of Women and Girls (FIWG) and the International Health Awareness Network (IHAN) recently organized the Closing the Digital Gap Conference on November 17, 2023. The insightful event brought together global speakers from diverse fields such as business, health, education, libraries, information technology (IT), and social work. Their goal? To shed light on the issue and propose practical solutions.

As technology advances, keeping abreast of digital advancements becomes essential. Kristen Treglia, a representative of Fordham Information Technology, spoke at this event and offered insights on innovations in technology that can help close the digital gap.

View the Fordham IT Blog post for more information, slides, video, and resources.

Bringing Learning To Life At LITE, Fordham’s Learning And Innovation Technology Environment

by Claire Curry, Michelle Miller, and Gabrielle Simonson for Fordham Business magazine (Fall 2023 issue)

Gabelli School of Business M.B.A. students investigate that question in the course Consumer Adoption of New Media taught by Assistant Clinical Professor Janet Gallent, Ed.D. With the support of Fordham University’s Learning and Innovation Technology Environment (LITE) center based on the Rose Hill Campus, Gallent was able to offer her students an engaging, hands-on learning opportunity so they could answer the question for themselves.

New LITE Center Brings Cutting-Edge Technology to Rose Hill

"LITE, which stands for Learning & Innovative Technology Environment, offers an array of cutting-edge educational technologies. It reflects a national trend toward learning commons, said Fleur Eshghi, Ed.D., associate vice president of educational technology research computing. Learning commons are shared collaborative spaces, usually located in libraries, where students, faculty, and staff can meet to brainstorm, socialize, research, and strategize, said Eshghi."

In Twice Over Podcast, President Tetlow Talks Leadership, Innovation, and Change

Working in collaboration with the Emerging Educational Technology team at the LITE center (Learning and Innovation Technology Environment), President Tania Tetlow joined the Twice Over podcast for a special episode. 

Hosted by Steven D’Agustino, director of online learning, and Anne Fernald, special advisor to the provost, Twice Over was developed to build connections through candid conversations about higher education. They conduct recording sessions in a sound-controlled studio within Info Tech's Learning, Innovation, Technology Environment, a tech center in the basement of Walsh Library where students, faculty, and administrators use cutting-edge technology for their research.