Building AI Initiatives with Bottom-Up Champions

When ChatGPT gained widespread attention in November 2022, many colleges and universities had not yet developed guidance for generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Faculty and students were already experimenting with AI tools, but institutional policies were inconsistent, and faculty AI fluency varied. On the University of Central Florida (UCF) campus, guidance from central leadership on GenAI development was slow to emerge amid other competing priorities, though student and faculty use of GenAI was increasing. As a result, staff in the faculty support offices saw a need to create resources and programming without waiting for an administrative directive. Several directors from two faculty support units informally took the lead in promoting AI literacy and developing guidance for faculty. As it turned out, this willingness to take the initiative was recognized by senior leaders as exactly what was needed, showing that institutional change can be driven from the bottom up.^Footnote1

Bringing Together Campus Partners

During the 2022 winter break, the UCF Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning (FCTL) built a faculty-facing webpage to explain how large language models (LLMs) function, including specific guidance and suggestions for addressing student use of AI.^Footnote2 Recognizing the varied faculty responses to GenAI, the webpage has expanded over time to offer guidance on ethical use and undisclosed use policies, as well as how to integrate LLMs into assignments. The webpage covers specific models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, CoPilot, and Claude, prompt engineering, assessment, and lesson planning alterations. It covers multimedia GenAI tools (including digital accessibility), interactive teaching tools, discipline-specific AI support for students and faculty, and AI fluency instruction. The expanded webpage now includes sample syllabus policies, a glossary, and information about UCF's official AI platform.

The UCF Division of Digital Learning (DDL) supports online and blended instruction across the university. When ChatGPT entered the national conversation, DDL staff were already examining GenAI tools to support the development of online instructional resources and faculty who teach online and blended courses. In addition to engaging external experts and consulting with faculty who were early adopters of these technologies, DDL convened its inaugural division-level AI retreat in the fall of 2023. This event set the stage for investigating the influence of GenAI on digital learning, evaluating opportunities to optimize operational processes, and strengthening faculty support services for GenAI use.

DDL and FCTL partnered to provide GenAI instructional support to faculty, initially sharing GenAI discoveries and news articles. By early 2023, this collaboration had grown into an AI Community of Practice of approximately fifty faculty and staff members. Community members met monthly in a virtual meeting space, sharing knowledge and links to relevant news stories between group meetings. Early conversations reflected significant concern about the disruptive implications of LLMs, particularly for take-home writing assignments. Throughout 2023, those concerns gradually gave way to more productive conversations about how to promote the ethical use of LLMs in the classroom and improve students' AI fluency. The collaboration among DDL, FCTL, faculty, and staff also helped connect professionals across multiple disciplines and campuses, bringing together colleagues who might otherwise not interact.

Telegraphing Institutional Support

Task Force

By summer 2023, the UCF provost created a task force to address how the university could move quickly to teach students appropriate AI knowledge and provide guidance to faculty. The task force was charged with proposing professional development, faculty support structures, and campus-wide investment recommendations, with findings due in the fall of 2023. The task force also focused on helping faculty integrate AI into research and teaching, as well as identifying the AI knowledge students need to be prepared for their respective fields. The university procured Microsoft Copilot as the campus-wide enterprise AI platform, providing a protected environment for AI use.

Workshops

To prepare faculty to confidently address the opportunities and challenges posed by GenAI tools, FCTL and DDL cohosted a series of workshops designed to help faculty reconsider assessment strategies. An early challenge was responding to faculty requests for guidance on mitigating students' unauthorized use of GenAI, which was and remains an evolving technological target. These workshops were well attended: the first online AI workshop had two hundred faculty registrations.

Campus Outreach

Additional efforts were made to publicize the institutional support available to faculty. FCTL staff also offered to attend monthly academic department meetings to present a brief overview of the opportunities and challenges associated with AI and answer faculty questions in person. Approximately 75 percent of departments responded favorably to the offer, indicating growing concerns about unauthorized student use of AI on campus. FCTL also sent an email to all faculty members highlighting AI resources at UCF before the start of each semester. The message was strategically timed to allow faculty to adjust their syllabi to inform students about institutional AI policies and classroom use. A similar email was sent to students through the Division of Student Success and Well-Being.

Growing AI Expertise

Amid all this activity, the FCTL and DDL teams were determined to learn from other institutions facing similar challenges, specifically noting the forward-thinking response of UCF's neighbor, the University of Florida (UF), with its Artificial Intelligence initiative.^Footnote3 Among other things, the teams learned that UF had hired faculty members with advanced AI skills, mapped AI leadership to its institutional strategic plan, and selected a vice president to lead and track campus AI efforts. Their approach offers one model other colleges and universities could emulate, particularly in instances where AI research is a priority.

Teaching and Learning with AI

The FCTL and DDL teams also attended webinars to hear ideas from others. In 2023, the teams participated in the Global Research Alliance for AI in Learning and Education (GRAILE) seminar on AI, hosted by the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET). However, the speed at which AI was evolving made it difficult to keep up with ongoing tips, suggestions, and workarounds addressing increasing faculty concerns about AI. To address this issue, the FCTL and DDL teams launched a new national conference— Teaching and Learning with AI (TLWAI)—to crowdsource solutions and share best practices and emerging research. The inaugural TLWAI conference, held in September 2023, included 120 presentations and 504 participants. By summer 2025, attendance at the annual conference had grown to over 950 participants from forty-three states and nineteen countries. Subsequent growth and global participation confirmed the need for a sustained forum to share practices, research, and emerging challenges related to AI in teaching and learning, leading to the planned launch of a second annual European event in fall 2026. Since 2024, the UCF Libraries have partnered with FCTL and DDL as cohosts of the conference.

Following the announcement of the inaugural TLWAI conference, FCTL, with support from DDL, began drafting a short book to share faculty ideas on how to infuse LLMs into assignments—ChatGPT Assignments to Use in Your Classroom Today. The book was printed privately, and copies were distributed to 2023 TLWAI attendees. It was later published digitally and made available through the online, open-access Showcase of Text, Archives, Research, and Scholarship (STARS)repository at UCF. Within the first two years, this free resource had been downloaded over 30,000 times. The FCTL team released AI Hacks for Educators for TLWAI 2024 and Coach for the Approach: The Educator's New Role in the Age of AI for TLWAI 2025. AI Hacks offers ideas for using AI to make faculty work more efficient, and Coach for the Approach provides guidance on adjusting assignments, syllabi, and student activities to discourage inappropriate or unethical use of GenAI.^Footnote4 All three books are accessible through the STARS repository.

At the 2024 TLWAI conference, DDL also launched the Teaching Repository of AI-Infused Learning (TRAIIL), a peer-reviewed collection of strategies for using GenAI tools to enhance instruction in higher education, and recruited an editorial board to support it. Existing online resources, such as the Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository (TOPR) and the Teaching Online Preparation Toolkit (TOPkit),were updated with new GenAI content, and annual events hosted by DDL, such as the Florida Online Innovation Summit and UCF Digital Learning Day, experienced an influx of presentation proposals specific to teaching with GenAI.

Florida AI Learning Consortium

TLWAI 2023 had state-wide impact. An open forum on ideas for supporting and learning at the conference led to creation of the Florida AI Learning Consortium (FALCON). FALCON is structured around special interest groups across the state. Group leaders meet quarterly to share updates and resources. The consortium aims to support ethical, equitable, and effective integration of AI across teaching, learning, and research.

Expanding AI Training Resources

Over time at UCF, the need for faculty AI training extended far beyond what could be supported through a standalone AI resource webpage. In response, the FCTL created a preliminary, asynchronous online course to introduce faculty to GenAI—what it is, how it works, when and how to use it in the classroom, and the ethical considerations surrounding its use. It was designed to be skimmed quickly and includes links for those who want to learn more about specific topics. This preliminary AI web course was followed by a longer, more in-depth course created by DDL for faculty AI training, as well as a companion web course for students. The faculty course, Generative AI for Innovative Teaching and Learning, was eventually made free and publicly available through UCF Continuing Education. The student course, Generative AI for Students: Applications and Advice, joined the roster of other orientation modules that students are automatically enrolled in and encouraged to complete upon matriculation.

Recognizing that some faculty prefer a face-to-face learning experience, FCTL also designed a six-week AI fundamentals course that meets for two hours a week. The course covers comparing AI tools, writing effective prompts, using AI image-generation tools, generating teaching materials with AI, using AI tools for research, creating AI-infused assignments, and developing AI course policies. Together with DDL, FCTL also offered a one-day "holiday retreat" deep dive into AI workshop. The retreat took place immediately after the fall 2023 semester to give faculty time to incorporate the information into their spring semester courses.

To provide a hands-on, guided exploration of GenAI tools, FCTL and DDL developed an AI playground, where faculty members could browse a collection of tools. The initiative launched in early 2024 with a facilitated open-house model that allowed faculty to explore tools at their own pace with staff guidance. A member of the FCTL or DDL staff would give a brief demonstration and then guide participants as they entered their own AI prompts. The event attracted ninety-seven participants, and the center continues to offer a smaller-scale AI playground five days a week, with staff available to answer questions.

In fall 2024, DDL launched an ongoing effort aimed at helping division staff use GenAI tools to improve operational efficiency. As part of this initiative, the AI Solutions for Technology Advancement and Review Team (AI START) developed recommendations for internal investments in AI tool subscriptions to support staff productivity and efficiency. The vice provost leading DDL funded these subscriptions for one year, with the option to renew or revise investments based on funding, technological advancements, and staff feedback.

To continue this work, DDL established its own AI task force with representatives from each functional team. Picking up where the AI START team left off, the task force compiles, explores, refines, and disseminates strategies, guidelines, and resources on the ethical use of GenAI tools in internal operations. This coordinated approach has increased AI adoption across departments and improved efficiency, accuracy, and focus on services provided to the university community.

Because DDL supports online and blended learning, its staff includes professionals across a wide range of roles, including instructional design, research, LMS support, media production, continuing education, web development, and programming. While the initiative initially focused on increasing internal efficiencies, it also enabled staff to develop deep expertise with AI tools—knowledge they now share with faculty and staff across the institution.

DDL has also incorporated AI best practices into its flagship online faculty development course, Interactive Distributed Learning, which is required for faculty to design and deliver online and blended courses at UCF. This course incorporates guidance on using Microsoft Copilot to promote creativity and efficiency in course design. During four live sessions (two in-person and two virtual), faculty participants learn from experienced colleagues who are using AI to support their teaching. Additionally, DDL instructional designers work with faculty to help them redesign or rethink assessment in the age of AI.

To further support faculty development, DDL created Generative AI for Innovative Teaching and Learning, a Canvas course that supports AI skills in course development across modalities, including AI prompts to extend lesson concepts. For example, the section on universal design for learning (UDL) includes a customized AI prompt to generate strategies that support UDL principles of engagement, representation, and action/expression.

Finally, DDL's Faculty Seminars in Online Teaching provide an outlet for faculty and instructional designers to collaboratively discuss the impact of GenAI on teaching, including topics like fostering academic integrity and critical thinking in online assessment.

Interest in the AI training opportunities offered by DDL extended beyond academic units, with several campus departments requesting customized sessions focused on productivity and process improvement.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of AI Tools and Resources

In the summer of 2024, the DDL Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness (RITE) team began a pilot program to document and evaluate faculty and student experiences, readiness, and overall feedback regarding the use of GenAI tools in teaching and learning. DDL is collecting survey data, which is being tracked over time. Faculty and student data was used to develop the Generative AI for Innovative Teaching and Learning faculty-facing web course and Generative AI for Students: Applications and Advice student-facing web course. Some of the survey questions were also used as pre- and post-tests for those courses. In addition, RITE researchers have presented survey results at the TLWAI conference, the UCF Innovation Summit, and the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Accelerate conference.

Building New AI Tools, Launching New Initiatives

In addition to pilot testing new commercial educational technology tools, DDL developed several new AI-based tools. A team of DDL developers built an Intelligent Course Search tool that allows students to quickly locate specific course information in the LMS. The developers integrated Canvas Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) into the LMS to enable instructors to easily deploy courses. They updated the open-source, DDL-developed Materia app to support rapid development of interactive widgets powered by AI-generated content. DDL also developed VPAT Evaluator, a tool that uses GenAI to evaluate the accessibility of educational technologies. At the time of publication, the VPAT Evaluator has received over 430 requests from ninety institutions. A similar tool is being developed to analyze Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit (HECVAT) documentation to evaluate security risks associated with educational technology.

In summer 2025, UCF launched an Artificial Intelligence for All initiative, which aims to increase student AI fluency, promote efficiency and accuracy in faculty and staff AI use, and support enhanced research centered around disciplinary AI uses. Guided by UCF's responsible AI use guidelines, the initiative emphasizes ethical, transparent, and disclosed use of AI that supports learning, research, and productivity without compromising human judgment, data privacy, or academic integrity.

Since spring 2025, FCTL and DDL (together with staff from UCF Libraries) have hosted an AI Day every semester. Each AI Day has a different target audience (faculty, staff, or students) and focus to help the UCF community explore AI and its applications. For instance, the fall 2025 AI Day focused primarily on employer desires for AI fluency, though workshops on AI basics, ethics, and tool demonstrations via an AI playground were also offered.

Conclusion

The initial investment in AI resources and development for students, faculty, and staff has evolved into a foundation of campus-wide pedagogical support for teaching and learning with AI and has established DDL and FCTL staff as campus experts in the area. The AI for All Initiative connected FCTL and DDL resources and expertise with existing AI research, including the UCF Institute of Artificial Intelligence, which was established in 2025. Under the leadership of Mubarak Shah, trustee chair professor of computer science and founding director of the Center for Research in Computer Vision at UCF, the Institute aims to advance cutting-edge research and expand areas of excellence. It prepares students to lead in a technology-driven future, supporting the UCF goal of becoming the premier engineering and technology university in Florida.

While individual FCTL and DDL champions helped initiate work devoted to teaching and learning with AI prior to receiving a charge to do so, sustained progress depended on coordinated, action-oriented implementation. The bottom-up approach used by the DDL and FCTL to kick-start the development of resources and programming on AI use in teaching and learning has evolved into a strong foundation of faculty support for this rapidly advancing technology. The collaboration between FCTL and DDL resulted in a shared vision for faculty support that continues to grow, building momentum toward a campus-wide focus on AI in teaching and learning.

Notes

1. Adrianna Kezar and Jaime Lester, Enhancing Campus Capacity for Leadership: An Examination of Grassroots Leaders in Higher Education (Stanford University Press, 2011).Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.↩
2. "Artificial Intelligence," Faculty Center, University of Central Florida, accessed November 17, 2025.Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.↩
3. "UF Artificial Intelligence," University of Florida, accessed December 31, 2025.Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.↩
4. Kevin Yee et al., AI Hacks for Educators (University of Central Florida, 2024); Yee et al., Coach for the Approach: The Educator's New Role in the Age of AI (University of Central Florida, 2025). Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.↩

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Kevin Yee is Director of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning and the University of Central Florida.

Wendy Howard is Director of the Pegasus Innovation Lab at the University of Central Florida.

Patsy Moskal is Director of the Digital Learning Impact Evaluation at the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Central Florida.

Shelly Wyatt is an Instructional Designer at the University of Central Florida.