AI Empowerment

AI Empowerment

Welcome to the AI Empowerment Series, where we unlock the potential of artificial intelligence to help your academic life. Our series is dedicated to providing educators, researchers, and academic professionals with advanced AI tools and strategies that enhance teaching effectiveness, streamline research processes, and simplify administrative duties. We aim to empower educators to achieve more in less time, fostering a balance between professional achievements and personal well-being. We are currently offering multiple webinars in the summer of 2024.

Webinar: AI for Academic Moms: Balancing Teaching, Research, and Life

FULL – Wednesday July 17, 2024 1pm-2:30pm Eastern, 10am-11:30am Pacific on Zoom.

OPEN – Wednesday August 7, 2024 1pm-2:30pm Eastern, 10am-11:30am Pacific on Zoom. Register HERE, $35USD

OPEN – Thursday August 29, 2024 1pm-2:30pm Eastern, 10am-11:30am Pacific on Zoom. Register HERE, $35USD

CAN’T MAKE THESE DATES/TIMES? Please fill out this form to be notified of future workshops.

Join me, a fellow professor and mom of three, for an empowering webinar tailored for professor moms* like us. Despite our efficiency and constant effort, finding time remains a perpetual challenge. In the last year and a half, the AI revolution has reshaped our professional landscapes—sometimes problematically due to misconduct—but I’ve harnessed AI’s potential to simplify numerous tedious tasks, “won” back so much time, and I want to share what I’ve learned with you.

This session is born from numerous discussions with friends and colleagues, all echoing the need for sharing practical AI applications. I’ll be diving into strategies from both my professional (teaching, research, service) and personal life, though the insights will be universally beneficial.

Webinar Highlights:

  • Understanding AI: You will learn the essentials of how AI operates and how to tailor it to your needs. I’ll be targeting people who are somewhat familiar with AI, but if you’re new to AI or experienced with AI, you will still benefit. 
  • AI Tools: We will explore the latest free and paid, (and possibly free through your university) AI tools and how to optimize them for your tasks.
  • Writing Techniques: We will learn how to train AI on your past writing (scholarly, personal, professional) to help draft documents or enhance your academic writing. Our group activity will be creating a recommendation letter bot based on your own writing. 
  • Teaching Enhancements: We will learn how to implement AI to organize notes, and create quizzes, essay prompts, and classroom activities. For me, this has been the area with the most time saved. We will also cover creating Dr. You or What Would Dr. You Do bots trained to guide your TAs.
  • Personal Life: While not our primary focus, we will discuss some uses of AI for travel planning, document management, managing tedious tasks like insurance claims, and more. 
  • Current Limitations: We will also discuss the current capabilities of AI in grading, data analysis, and literature reviews – spoiler alert – it is not quite there yet, but we will discuss what is possible now.
  • Ethical Considerations: Ethical use will be a part of every conversation. We will discuss questions like: What about FERPA? What happens with the material that you feed into these tools? Is it “wrong” to use AI to compose a recommendation letter based on your own writing (versus using the same Word doc and changing some details 😂)? Is it “cheating” to create classroom activities with AI? 

What We’ll Avoid:

  • We won’t dwell on student AI misconduct. Our focus is on proactive solutions, not the challenges we’re already familiar with.

This isn’t a formal professional development course; it’s a chance to connect with like-minded people striving for efficiency and balance in managing teaching, research, and family life. Let’s explore how AI can give us some of our precious time back. Join us for practical, real-world applications that resonate with our unique roles as professor moms*.

If registration exceeds 25, I will offer more sessions. At 25 people, it will be more intimate and interactive and people can get more specific feedback. If there are specific questions, concerns, or needs you have, please note them in the registration form.

About me: I’m an associate professor who studies communication technologies, a mom of 3, and in my pre-academic life, I worked in tech support at a university, a snowboard company, and I worked in international development designing technology programs for teachers and schools. So I am unusually qualified to help people understand how to use technology.

* Following social media convention, “mom” = anyone who identifies as a parent, step-parent, bonus parent, guardian, foster partner, etc. and also identifies as not a cis gendered man. The goal is to be inclusive while also providing a space for people who experience specific challenges within their careers and lives. Academic usually implies someone who is an instructor in higher education and this specific webinar will often focus on higher education classroom and mentoring needs. While some of this material may be useful to non-instructors, our initial offerings are tailored to this specific community.

Webinar: Balancing Act: AI Strategies for Academic Moms Managing ADHD

Thursday July 18, 2024 1pm-2:30pm Eastern, 10am-11:30am Pacific on Zoom.

Register HERE, USD$25 via PayPal

Join me, a fellow professor and mom of three, for an empowering webinar specially designed for academic moms* with ADHD. Despite our efficiency and constant effort, maintaining focus and managing time can be especially challenging. Over the last year and a half, I’ve explored how the AI revolution can not only reshape our professional landscapes but also help us navigate the unique challenges of ADHD by simplifying numerous tedious tasks and reclaiming valuable time. I’m eager to share these AI-driven strategies with you. This webinar is similar to the AI for Academic Moms: Balancing Teaching, Research, and Life webinar, but is tailored to ADHD-specific needs.

This session stems from numerous discussions with friends and colleagues who also juggle academia with ADHD, underscoring the need for practical, ADHD-friendly AI applications. We’ll explore how these tools can enhance both our professional roles (in teaching, research, service) and our personal lives, offering benefits that extend beyond our immediate needs.

Webinar Highlights:

  • Understanding AI: Gain insights into how AI functions and learn to customize it to support your ADHD needs, enhancing focus, memory, and productivity.
  • AI Tools: Discover the latest AI tools—both free and paid, potentially available through your university—that can help streamline your workflow and minimize distractions.
  • Writing Techniques: Learn how to use AI to manage your writing tasks by training it on your past academic and professional writings. Our interactive session will include creating a ‘recommendation letter bot’ from your own work to demonstrate the practical uses of AI in reducing writing-related stress.
  • Teaching Enhancements: Find out how AI can assist in organizing course materials and automating the creation of quizzes, essay prompts, and activities, which can be particularly helpful for managing ADHD-related challenges in maintaining organizational consistency.
  • Personal Life Applications: While our primary focus is on professional enhancement, we’ll also discuss how AI can simplify personal responsibilities like travel planning and document management, crucial for those with ADHD.
  • Current Limitations and Ethical Considerations: We’ll address the capabilities and ethical considerations of current AI technologies, ensuring you understand both the potential and the boundaries of these tools in academic settings.

Focus Areas We’ll Avoid:

  • We won’t focus on issues like student AI misconduct. Instead, our discussions will be geared towards proactive strategies that help you leverage AI effectively, acknowledging the ADHD perspective.

This isn’t just a formal professional development course; it’s an opportunity to connect with peers who face similar challenges, seeking efficiency and balance in their academic and personal lives. Let’s explore how AI can help us reclaim our focus and time. Join us for practical, real-world applications tailored to the unique needs of professor moms with ADHD.

If registration exceed 25 people, additional sessions will be offered. At 25 people, it will be more intimate and interactive and people can get more specific feedback. Please include any specific questions, concerns, or needs in the registration form to tailor the webinar to your interests.

About me: I’m an associate professor who studies communication technologies, a mom of 3, and in my pre-academic life, I worked in tech support at a university, a snowboard company, and I worked in international development designing technology programs for teachers and schools. So I am unusually qualified to help people understand how to use technology.

* Following social media convention, “mom” = anyone who identifies as a parent, step-parent, bonus parent, guardian, foster partner, etc. and also identifies as not a cis gendered man. The goal is to be inclusive while also providing a space for people who experience specific challenges within their careers and lives. Academic usually implies someone who is an instructor in higher education and this specific webinar will often focus on higher education classroom and mentoring needs. While some of this material may be useful to non-instructors or people who don’t identify as neurodivergent, our initial offerings are tailored to this specific community.