2:10—two articles with a read time of 10 minutes—is a communication series by Deputy Provost Renée Cramer sharing important scholarship, teaching, and development news and opportunities.

If you’re like me, you’ve watched your Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon and Post accounts explode, in the past few weeks, with concern about how to respond appropriately to the fact that  AI-generated essays can be so convincingly good.*  With faculty partners from our AI major, and our Writing Workshop, I’m hosting an “emergency” faculty development opportunity on Friday, February 3, from 11:30 – 1:00.  We’ll investigate some strategies we might employ as faculty to be sure we’re assessing student (not AI generated) work, and to begin a conversation about how academic integrity policies should look given this new way to generate responses to the questions we ask our students.  Please sign up here, we’ll provide lunch.   I’m collaborating with our writing faculty, our AI faculty, our ITS specialists, and our assessment specialists on this workshop – and I promise this will be a first cut, we’ll be returning to AI over the course of the semester, sharing resources in OnCampus and scheduling more opportunities for conversation.

While I’ve got you here … lured by a sensational headline … I want to alert you to other faculty development opportunities running this spring, and invite your participation.  Books for Breakfast will meet on February 7 and 21, from 8:30 – 9:30, to discuss the classic Courage to Teach, by Parker Palmer.  Sign up here to get a copy of the book, and so we know you’d like breakfast.

And, if you are working on a particular writing project this semester, and would like community, support, and strategies, please consider showing up for the Deputy Provost’s Writing Group – nine of your colleagues who have committed to 90 minutes of writing time at regular times throughout the spring semester. Email me (renee.cramer@drake.edu) and I’ll send you our schedule – I’ll ask that you use the time exclusively for making progress on a particular project, and that you commit to 4 or 5 sessions – but you can drop in on any of the 16 that I’ve got on the books.

*yes, a footnote: if you’re like me, you actually aren’t on Post, Mastadon, Twitter, and Facebook …. but …  you get the idea.  It was for dramatic effect.

— Renée Cramer, Deputy Provost