Behind the AI Stack

Sarah Buszka: Everyone, thank you so much for being with us live here in Nashville. Welcome to the EDUCAUSE Rising Voices podcast, where we amplify the voices of young professionals in higher education. My name is Sarah Buszka and I'm your co-host and I am joined today by a guest co-host, Chris Bradney, who currently chairs the YPAC.

Chris Bradney: Thanks for coming to us. Good afternoon, Sarah. Good to see you here.

Sarah Buszka: It's good to see you here too. Yes, yes. Although I would be remiss if I didn't mention our co-host, Wes Johnson, who couldn't be here in person today, but very much is here in spirit. We are all friends and members of the EDUCAUSE Young Professionals Advisory Committee. So I'm so thrilled today to be talking about our exciting topic on AI today with these incredible guests who we will introduce momentarily. We're talking about the AI tech stack. And I know if you look at your EDUCAUSE agenda, pretty much everything you see is on AI. And so guess what? We're talking about AI today. Our follow-up episode will be very interesting. It's going to be the other side of the coin of what we'll be talking about in today's session. So I'm going to give a plug to tune into some of our upcoming episodes where we're really going to be diving deep in AI related topics.

Sarah Buszka: So Chris, do you want to help set the stage for what we're talking about today?

Chris Bradney: Yeah, absolutely, Sarah. I mean, AI, you already mentioned AI is everywhere at the annual conference. I mean, we saw it just this morning with the EDUCAUSE Top 10. AI is threaded throughout, but I love the focus on the human aspect of AI and how it's on us to bring humanity to it, to make sure that we're thinking about it ethically and responsibly. So that's why I'm so excited to have our guests here today. And yeah, I mean, you can see it everywhere within the EDUCAUSE ecosystem. I mean, even in February, there is the EDUCAUSE AI landscape study. We're talking about the digital divide in AI. I mean, there's just content after content. So we don't want to be noise in that space. We really want to personalize and humanize this experience today with our guests and really leave our audience with something that's really special.

Sarah Buszka: We will certainly do that today.

Chris Bradney: Yeah. Do you

Sarah Buszka: Want to introduce our guests for teasing us so much?

Chris Bradney: Absolutely. Yeah. If you can't see them. Yeah. Today we're joined by two of our guests, both members of the YPAC right now. We've got Lori Robbins and Zach Lonsinger. Lori's an instructional technologist at Denison University, Dennison representing here at the conference. Yeah, leave. Where she leads campus-wide initiatives focused on AI literacy, instructional design and faculty development. With a background in international education and educational technology, she creates programs that helps students, faculty, and staff engaged critically and creatively with emerging tools. Lori is a frequent presenter about AI topics and higher education, serves on YPAC with us. So thank you, Lori, for your service and just helps shape conversations about the future of technology and leadership in higher education. Lori, we're so excited to have you here today.

Lori Robbins: Thank you.

Chris Bradney: Yeah. And then Zach, my best friend Zach here. We've been hanging out at the conference. It's been good to get to see him in person rather than just on little Zoom windows. Zach is a learning experience designer at Pennsylvania State University where he works with teaching and learning with technology to design interactive learning experience that fosters creativity, curiosity, and collaboration. With over a decade of experience in higher education, congratulations, including more than five years as an adjunct instructor. Zach blends instructional design, faculty development, and emerging technology to support meaningful learning. He also serves with me on YPAC leadership this year. He's our communications chair, and we're excited to have him on that committee for one more year. Yeah. Zach, welcome. Awesome. Thank you, Chris.

Sarah Buszka: Welcome you both. I'm so thrilled to have you. So folks who listen to our show know that we love to ask all of our guests what their superpower is. So without further ado, Zach, I'm going to start with you. In one minute, could you tell us what your superpower is?

Zach Lonsinger: Yes. So one minute. Okay. So my superpower, my answer changed for this question many times, but I think just recently I saw a video of a woman saying that she wished she could ask during interviews if people are long distance runners because they have this infinite game mindset, which comes from a book if you've ever read it by Simon Sinek.

Chris Bradney: Yeah. Great book.

Zach Lonsinger: Yes. So I haven't read the book yet, but I have purchased it because I'm like, I'm a long distance runner. What does this mean? So I started doing some digging. So when we play finite games, there's roles, there's key players and the goals to win, but in infinite games, the goal was to keep playing. And in this video I saw, she was talking about how long distance runners have just this ability to just live in discomfort. And I felt that because I can do that. And my goal is just keep going and playing. So I would say that is my superpower.

Sarah Buszka: So you like hard things and living in discomfort?

Zach Lonsinger: Yes. My wife would agree. I like hard challenges. You

Sarah Buszka: Love the pain. Yes. Hey, I'm from the Midwest. I get it. And Lori, in one minute, what is your superpower?

Lori Robbins: Not long distance running. Same. So there's that. No, I am a former high school Spanish teacher. So I would say my superpower is the ability to pivot. I think I really developed that skill as a teacher with unexpected fire drills and things like that. So I can pivot.

Sarah Buszka: That's great. Thank you so much.

Chris Bradney: Great for this podcast episode, because I don't know if we're just going to ask any of these questions now. No, we'll at least start there. We'll start there. Can you tell us a little bit about how your involvement in AI work has shaped the trajectory of your careers? Lori, I'm actually going to start with you. Sure. And again, to Zach.

Lori Robbins: No, that's great. So actually I can tell you about the very first time I ever heard about AI, generative AI in particular. And it was actually on my way to interview at Denison University to be an instructional technologist. What year was that? That was about two and a half years ago. So I was listening to this podcast and they were talking about this new tool called ChatGPT. And I was at the airport on this layover and I thought, "This sounds cool." So I downloaded it and played around with it. And when I got to my interview, they asked me a ton of questions about ChatGPT and generative AI. And because I listened to that podcast, I knew just enough to fake it till I made it. And so that was really great. For

Sarah Buszka: Interviewing.

Lori Robbins: Yes. Podcasts. Listen to podcasts, right?

Sarah Buszka: Shameless plug for this one.

Lori Robbins: And so yeah, I just really dove into the opportunity that AI afforded me with leveraging it, doing some workshops across campus. And I actually got promoted about a month ago and I'm now the head of AI strategy. So it's really cool to see it all started in an airport. And here I am now. I'll start in a podcast and look who you are

Sarah Buszka: Now on

Lori Robbins: A podcast.

Chris Bradney: That's what I'm learning, the value of podcast on your career trajectory.

Sarah Buszka: Full circle.

Chris Bradney: Zach, do you want to answer that question?

Zach Lonsinger: Yeah. So I also remember the first time I heard about generative AI and it was way back in November 2022. I think we all remember what happened that month. ChatGPT was released. And in my role at Penn State, we are always searching for whatever the next new thing is. So our team dove into ChatGPT trying to figure out what this was. And by February, we were doing presentations already on what this is. And I think before November of 22, I would say there was 0% of my job was AI. Today, I haven't done the math, but I would have to believe it's about 90, 95% is all AI, what I currently do. And I'm excited to share more about some of those projects on this podcast.

Sarah Buszka: Well, good thing I'll be asking you about it. So I want to kind of switch here and think about something that I've been hearing a lot as a very big theme, of course, at this conference, but also in my work, since I am the director of an applied AI lab and at a technical college as well. So we hear the topic of literacy a lot. Folks are kind of throwing out AI literacy, this, AI literacy, that. We have to be fluent. We have to understand what AI means. And I think that question can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And so I'm really curious from both of you, what does AI literacy mean to you? And do you think it varies between faculty, staff, students? So Laurie, I'm going to ask you first maybe in a minute or two, what do you think?

Lori Robbins: Yeah. For me, AI literacy isn't necessarily about the prompts. It's more about us. And can we learn enough about these tools that we can make good judgments about how or when or why to use these tools? I think a lot of it is also about being able to evaluate the outputs and think really critically about what it's telling you. As far as the differences between our students and faculty and staff, I think there might be different use cases within those groups, but I think that AI literacy is really just the through line. The limitations are going to be the limitations no matter who you are. Same with good practices are going to be the same no matter who you are. And so I think that it's more about us and learning about how to use these tools ethically and responsibly and less about the prompt itself.

Sarah Buszka: I want to actually dig down a little bit on this since you shared with everyone that you were former K-12 instructor, teaching Spanish. So you specialize in translating, right? Translating different language. Sure. Maybe share a little bit more to us about how you're translating what AI means and what AI literacy means on your campus at Denison. How do you adjust to different audiences and what are some of the key messages that you're sharing?

Lori Robbins: Ooh, great question. Yes. I think when I think about language, I think it's really important that when you're crafting an effective prompt and you're using it more conversationally, right? It's not like a vending machine where you put in the output, input, you take whatever it gives you and you run with it. You really want to have more of a conversation and a dialogue with these tools and go back and forth. And the better that you can communicate, those skills are so important. And so I think transferring that with these tools is just super valuable.

Sarah Buszka: I love that. What a sticky message with a vending machine example. I am going to use that. Thank you for sharing. I will be stealing that.

Chris Bradney: Great pivot. Great pivot. Oh,

Sarah Buszka: Yes. Well, Zach, I want to actually ask you the same question too. So in your experience at Penn State, I know you have a very large student base, R1 research institution, a lot swirling around there. What does AI literacy mean to you and are you seeing any differences with AI literacy when it comes to faculty, staff, and students?

Zach Lonsinger: Yes. Great question. So I would say with AI literacy, so my group has been doing literacy efforts for a while now when it was digital literacy, then technology literacy, now AI literacy. And shout out to the EDUCAUSE Top 10 for a fantastic Top 10. One of them that resonated a lot with me was technology literacy for the future workforce. And that's where my mind comes for this question is AI literacy is the current topic, but in maybe five or ten years, we're going to be back to technology literacy. And what that means to me is really just giving students or learners the skills and confidence to use these tools or use technology for future careers. And also, it's always not about the tools, but it's about teaching them how to keep learning as technology keeps evolving. And we have efforts at Penn State right now.

Zach Lonsinger: We're exploring AI literacy for faculty, staff, and students. And Penn State just launched a unified AI framework for faculty, staff and students. It is an adoption from Leo Lowe's, AI Literacy for All, and EDUCAUSE's ALTL framework. But we have four components. I just want to share what our definition of AI literacy is for faculty, staff, and students. One, technical knowledge. Two, ethical awareness and societal responsibility. Three, critical thinking, and four, practical use. So at Penn State, we're using this AI literacy framework for faculty, staff, and students, but we do feel it is how we deliver it and the content for each audience is going to be different. So we have three different task forces currently trying to figure out what that looks like, how do we deploy it, and how do we integrate it across all of Penn State, which is a fun challenge to have.

Chris Bradney: Thank you. I mean, that right there is gold for the podcast listeners. I mean, I'm stealing that. Maybe I'll give you credit, maybe I won't, but you heard it here. Just a phenomenal framework for how do you approach AI literacy, technical literacy. But kind of adjacent to literacy really is the question about the digital divide. And I've heard it said, right, there's the haves, the have nots and the have yachts, the people that have unlimited budget to spend on this thing. But the digital divide is a real issue for many of our students and many of our campuses. So can you talk about, I mean, you're at two very different institutions, two very different approaches to AI adoption. Talk to us about how you've approached the digital divide when it comes to AI.

Lori Robbins: So at Denison, to me, it's really interesting. So this digital divide that I'm seeing is less about access to the tools themselves and more about the confidence and people feeling comfortable when they're using these things. And so going back to your yacht comment, I hear over and over from people like, "I think I missed the AI boat. It's left me behind." It changes so fast that I can't catch up now. I didn't hop in. And to me, it's not a boat. To me, it's more like an e-bike. So it's like, when you're on an e-bike, you still have to do some work. You still have to pedal. You still have your hands on the handlebars and you're controlling the direction it's going to go and you can still crash, but having e-bikes helps you just to get over hills and hurdles much more quicker. And so I think that that's a lot like how I view generative AI.

Lori Robbins: It's like hopping on that bike, it's never too late to learn how to use these tools.

Sarah Buszka: I love that. I love the reference to vending machines and now e-bikes. Yeah.

Chris Bradney: Stealing

Sarah Buszka: That as well. Thank you.

Chris Bradney: Zach, how about you? Digital divide at Penn State?

Zach Lonsinger: Yeah. I feel like I need some cooler metaphors here because I don't have any vending machines or

Chris Bradney: E-bikes, but- I hear you can ask ChatGPT for good metaphors. Oh yeah,

Zach Lonsinger: One second. Okay. Yeah. So the digital divide at Penn State. So this is a great question and a great challenge. How do we provide equitable access to these AI tools? So Penn State is a Microsoft school. We currently have Copilot available for all faculty, staff and students. Also, we have Adobe Express available, but also at Penn State, we realize that there is no singular tool is good for every task. So we're currently searching for an AI toolkit, whether we adopt one or not. We're looking for ... We realize that not all models will produce the same results. So whether students use Perplexity or ChatGPT or Copilot, we're looking at, does it make sense to adopt something like an AI toolkit where students have access to multiple tools? And another initiative that we have created is one of our more creative solutions and something that our group owns.

Zach Lonsinger: We just launched this semester, the AI Arcade at Penn State. So what this is, is a physical space where students can come to experiment. They can play with AI tools, and we provide them premium subscriptions. So ChatGPT Pro, Suno Midjourney. Students don't have to pay those subscriptions. We pay for them and they can come and experiment and play in a safe place. We have also designed facilitated experiences that connect to those tools. So if they want to dig deeper, they can go through a self-guided activity that allows them to create AI video. It is only in person right now because of the limitations of the contracts and stuff, but I won't bore everybody with that because we're here to talk about the fun stuff, right?

Sarah Buszka: That's for the next episode. Yes, next episode. Or for a Q&A from the audience, yes. Yes. We're actually going to take

Lori Robbins: A field trip to Penn State to go see this arcade.

Zach Lonsinger: Please come visit.

Sarah Buszka: Yes. Well, actually, I want to ask if folks are interested in visiting you and seeing this arcade Zag, is that something you'd be open for folks contacting you about?

Zach Lonsinger: Absolutely. We're always looking to collaborate and share ideas. So definitely reach out to me or whoever, me first and I'll forward on. That sounds good. So we're always sharing and taking tours, so would love to share.

Sarah Buszka: Yeah.

Zach Lonsinger: Bring your quarters. Yes.

Sarah Buszka: I will be bringing my quarters, so thank you. Well, switching gears a little bit here, since we actually have all current or former YPAC members on stage right now. So I'm curious to really kind of get at the AI topic from the young professionals lens. So I think there's a lot of stereotypes around young professionals. I could talk forever about that, but I think, and what I hear in my work a lot too is folks saying, "Oh, well, younger folks, they just know how to use technology better." So they shouldn't have any issues with this technology or any new technology or especially around AI or generative AI. At least that's what I hear. I'm seeing nods here, so I'm thinking you're hearing similar things. So I'm kind of curious to flip that a little bit and ask you both, what opportunities have you seen AI create for young professionals within your institutions and perhaps across higher ed since you both are on the YPAC?

Sarah Buszka: Lori, I want to start with you maybe in two minutes. Sure. What have you seen?

Lori Robbins: Yeah. Look at me. I have a title that didn't exist just a few years ago. And so yes, I do think that now as young professionals, if you see an opportunity, take it and own it. And I would encourage folks to not let imposter syndrome get in their way. I do think everyone's kind of uncomfortable in this space. It's new for everyone, and it's okay. You still, you deserve to be there. You can show up and you can own it. At Denison, we have this wonderful AI student ambassador program. I'm learning so much from these students about how they're using AI to do really innovative things. We have a student who has used it to launch her own side business where she teaches people how to write and publish children's books using AI. And so she's doing some entrepreneurship workshops for our campus and other students are really interested in the environmental impact that it has.

Lori Robbins: And so they're doing some more deep research there. So I think take your passions and really lean into AI and see where you can go. I love that. Thank you.

Zach Lonsinger: Yeah. Zach? I love that. So what Lori mentioned just reminded me of a quote I heard earlier in this conference. I'm not sure where it came from, but someone said with disruptions come opportunities and it's up to us to seize them. But for my perspective on this question, I think also, look at me, but so something I mentioned before is the AI student task force. So we have three task forces, faculty, staff, and students. I'm on the student task force and it's a great opportunity for myself because I am surrounded by directors, AVPs and chancellors. I'm the only person on that task force in a non-managerial role. At first, I was intimidated, but now I'm humbled and I'm taking the opportunity and learning everything from them. But also I realized like my perspective has value too. So I'm adding my voice to the conversation. And I think that's where these opportunities are coming from is young professionals are being invited to the table earlier for these institutional strategic conversations.

Zach Lonsinger: One more initiative that I think I see a lot of opportunities for young professionals at Penn State is a community of practice called AI Horizons. So this is a space that we organically created way back in early 2023 as a space for faculty and staff to just ask questions about AI. Can we do this? Can we not do this? We now have over a thousand faculty and staff that we meet monthly to discuss what is happening around AI. And I am in charge of curating the speakers for this monthly meetup. Just last month, we had a graduate student present her AI research to a meeting of over 200 people. So opportunities are given to even graduate students through initiatives like this. So that's really cool to see that that happen as well.

Sarah Buszka: That's really exciting. And it's also great to hear just how your institution, I'm sensing this from both of you, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm kind of thinking in my mind, what are some of the best practices that we can give to our audience for how to do AI? And I know that's very high level and very loose, but we're all-

Chris Bradney: Can you just answer, solve that problem for everybody just three minutes or less.

Sarah Buszka: Right, right. But I'm thinking, I'm hearing some of those best practices come out. One of them, I think, which is really important to call out. And frankly, we've been advocating for that as the YPAC and young professionals for years now is having those diverse voices at the table. Zach, like you said, "Hey, I'm the only non-manager at the table and my voice is valid." Absolutely it is. Like that is helping get a pulse on what is coming so that you can best serve your audiences and your constituents as best as possible. That's your responsibility. So it's really exciting to hear that. And also giving an opportunity to a grad student to be able to share their research. I mean, I've been in higher ed for over fifteen years, and it's always shocked me how we don't even use the talent that's in our own backyard for help, right?

Sarah Buszka: Considering those grad students, considering undergraduate students who are incredible, right? Like that is something that I've started seeing personally more and I think it's really going to help us be a lot more successful in this AI era, if you will. So that was my soapbox moment.

Chris Bradney: Well, kind of building on that, something I heard somebody say at this conference for young professionals, and I'll bend it toward this AI conversation we're having is young professionals need to speak up and they need to show up, right? And you've both done that. Maybe real quick off script question. What advice would you give to young professionals who feel like they have a lot to say about AI and how our institutions approach it from a strategy perspective? How do they speak up and how do they show up? Either of you, this is off script, who wants to go first?

Lori Robbins: Yeah. I would say my advice would be sometimes the most innovative and transformative work doesn't even have a name yet. And so if you have an idea, if you have some conversations, I would encourage people reach out beyond just your own divisions at your institutions, find out what's happening across the campus, pull people together. And if you have an idea, take it to your supervisor and run with it. Try to experiment and see what happens.

Zach Lonsinger: Yeah. I would echo that, but also add sometimes we get lost in talking about the thing and thinking about the thing and sometimes we just have to do the thing, right? And for me, this was an important lesson I learned is I felt like early in my career, I was always waiting for people to give me the space to speak up. And I realized that no one was ever going to do that for me. So I had to create that space and realize my voice was valuable and start adding it to the conversation. And once I realized that, I started to gain more confidence and able to speak up and just start doing the thing. So I think that would be my piece of advice.

Sarah Buszka: All right, perfect. And I want to throw a little bit of a gauntlet down and like kind of look at this from the other side of the same coin. We're framing this as, okay, what can young professionals do? But there's a second part of this and that means leaders actually have to be willing to listen.

Lori Robbins: Yes.

Sarah Buszka: So I want to throw a gauntlet down for our listeners and folks in this room. If you are a leader or you are a manager, encourage folks to come to you and share things. Don't just talk about it, be about it. If one of your young professionals or frankly anyone in your organization is coming to tell you something, listen, you never know what you're going to learn. You can learn something from everyone. You might even learn what not to do, and that's still valuable too. All right, now that's my second soapbox.

Chris Bradney: All right. Well, Sarah, we've had a fantastic conversation with Zach and Laurie, but one of my favorite parts about doing a live podcast recording like this is we have a live audience here and we get the chance to have the audience ask our panelists a question. So I think Joseph's back there with a mic and ready to ask a question from the audience. So Joseph, I'll hand it to you.

Speaker 5: Sure. I've got Joel Broyles here from Mount Holyoke College.

Speaker 6: Hi there. Hi. My question is, whose job is it to lead the implementation of AI? Should it be an AI specific role at this point or should it be added as a digital work for existing roles? And I'm looking more at not just turning on Gemini or Copilot, but the more advanced where we're talking about chatbots and things like that. Thank you.

Lori Robbins: Lori, do you want to take this first? Yes. I think what's really important is when we're having conversations around AI, that there's not just one person making all of the decisions. It needs to be a collective conversation. And so look around the table when you're having these conversations to see who's there, but even more importantly, who's not at that table. I remember I was sitting at a table and we were talking about AI policy and what does that look like and looking around and it was like, there were no students. How can we pull in everyone on our campus to kind of help push these efforts along? I think it's really important to have a variety of voices. Yeah, absolutely. Zach, do you

Sarah Buszka: Want to add anything?

Zach Lonsinger: Yeah. So I want to echo what Lori said and also mentioned that advisory groups are a great piece for this. So piggybacking off what she said is we have a STAR group, we call it Student Technology Advisory. The R always alludes me, but it's STAR. So there are a way we can ask questions and they can give feedback to IT leaders at Penn State. So I would say, look at your students, but also look at your faculty too, ask them what they are thinking as well.

Sarah Buszka: I'm actually going to jump in and answer this because I actually had this exact conversation earlier today. So I just want to chime in and share what I've heard. I was talking to someone at a very large R1 research institution and they were saying that their leadership in central IT was kind of saying like, "Oh, well, we don't have to have one person own it. Just everyone should just know how to do the right thing." And so in concept and in theory, that sounds great, but that's really hoping that everyone does what you want them to do and hope is not a plan. I've said that on this show many times. And so accountability and responsibility, which are different, I think is essential. And I think giving that to if not one person, it might be a committee, it might be multiple committees, it might be a temporary tiger team that spins up.

Sarah Buszka: It might be multiple groups at different levels of an organization, but especially if you're really large R1 or even a small technical college like where I'm at, if you have some goals in mind and just hoping that folks are going to do the right thing, that's not setting up anyone for success. So personally what I'm seeing, I'm in a dedicated AI role with responsibility, accountability, budget authority, hiring authority, all those things. And that right now in this fast paced environment is necessary and urgent.

Chris Bradney: Let me add to that as well.

Sarah Buszka: Yeah. You've really opened up

Chris Bradney: A can of worms here. I don't think there's one answer, right? I think all of us have a responsibility to AI. I mean, it's irresponsible at this point to not spend time, invest, learn everything else.

Sarah Buszka: Right. Well, we have to give people the time to do that and

Chris Bradney: Resources support. Oh, absolutely.

Sarah Buszka: Yeah.

Chris Bradney: But I'll add to that that it's a spectrum, right? If you're early on in the journey, don't go invest in all the structure and the dedicated person and everything. Start. Start where you are, start today and evolve. Evolve that journey, see where it progresses, but you get to a place like Sarah and Lori, you're going to needed somebody who's going to dedicate their time and attention to it because it requires intentionality and thought and strategic leadership that doesn't happen organically.

Sarah Buszka: Nope.

Chris Bradney: But don't try to shortcut there. Start with where you're at.

Sarah Buszka: Exactly. Yes. Thank you. All right. Next question. Thank you, Joseph.

Speaker 5: All right. We have Calvin Groves from UNC Chapel Hill.

Speaker 7: Chris, I feel like you set me up for this question, but for those of us who have felt too busy to really dig too much into Gen AI, we've done a little bit, not a whole lot. Where would you suggest people start? And I'm really curious what some specific tasks you do in your daily work that you use AI to make easier.

Sarah Buszka: Thank you, Kelvin. That's so great. Lori, do you want to jump in?

Lori Robbins: I would say from an institutional level, look to institutions who are leading and see if you can set up a time to just kind of have some conversations with them about their journey and what works well and what were some of their challenges. I think that would be really helpful to kind of see from a strategic standpoint of what are other folks doing. I think community is super important in this time. And then as far as what tips do I have for people who are just using it? There are so many limitations with these tools. One thing is people constantly call me an AI hype girl. Truthfully, I would prefer to be like the AI literacy hype girl because yes, while these tools are so powerful, they have so many limitations. And one thing, if anybody asks, "What's your piece of advice?" Like I mentioned earlier, have more of a conversation, ask it to ask you questions.

Lori Robbins: Don't always go to it for the answers. You really want to engage more and go back and forth. So ask it like, "I want you to give me brutal, honest feedback." Watch how that changes the output just by giving it permission to shoot you straight. You These tools are sick offense. They're going to try to make you happy. They want to encourage you. And you might be going down a path that is quite frankly very dumb. I asked it one time, should I start a chicken clothing line? And it literally said, "Cluck. Yeah, Lori, that's brilliant." And then I did the same ... Cluck, yeah. I did the same prompt and I said, "Should I start a chicken clothing line? Give me brutal feedback. Is this good? Is this a good business model?" And it came back and said, "No, chickens don't need clothes." And the only thing that changed was my prompt and I gave it the permission to come back and challenge me.

Sarah Buszka: Cluck, yeah. Thank you for that answer. Zach, over to you.

Zach Lonsinger: Yeah. I would also add, if there's not a space at your institution to have conversations, I would say, can you create that space, whether it's an online community or a physical meetup? Is there a space for faculty and staff to come together and just start asking those questions? So start there. Also, I was talking to another school, this was a while ago, but they were determining whether they should put resources towards developing AI literacy content or integrating or implementing tools at their institution. And they couldn't do both. So they said, "If you can't do both, provide the tools." Because if you get the tools in people's hands and you just start using them, that will start to build comfort and maybe some AI literacy there, but start there as well.

Sarah Buszka: Thank you. Click, yeah. All right. Over to Joseph. Our third audience question.

Speaker 5: All right. We got one more here from Chad Capellman from Kalamuna.

Speaker 8: My favorite wings place is actually called Cluck U. There you go.

Sarah Buszka: Cluck you. Cluck, yeah. Clucks all around.

Speaker 8: This is my first EDUCAUSE. I've been at some really great sessions. One was a president talking about tracking students' entire life cycle from perspective to alumni giver. I was at another session where they talked about data governance has to be at the very beginning. And I kind of started to picture a steel cage match where you're trying to reconcile these two things. And then to your point about doing the right thing, I think that's a subjective thing too, right? Yeah. So I'm curious if that sort of ... These are high level departments and people with these goals. I was curious if you've run into that, how you handle that and any perspective you'd like to share in that space.

Sarah Buszka: Absolutely. Zach, do you want to dive in?

Zach Lonsinger: Yeah. So great question. Thank you. I would say for us at Penn State, it really comes down to communicating across departments. So our IT department, we have a centralized IT department, but we have, I think, twelve colleges at our main campus. And also each Commonwealth campus across the state of PA has their own IT group. So being able to communicate and everyone be on the same page, I feel like it's a crucial thing. Do you have anything to add to that, Rory?

Lori Robbins: Yes.

Lori Robbins: Yes. And one thing that I would recommend that you do, if you're just starting out, if your institution is just starting your AI journey, something that we did at Denison that really helped get the snowball to roll is we found out a lot of people across different divisions were using generative AI and we thought, let's pull them all together and have a staff collaborative. So once a month we met, we just talked about how is admissions using it. And they gave athletics ideas, HR. And you just found that there, even though while our goals might be slightly different and our tasks are too, there's so much overlap in the work that we're doing. And because of that staff collaborative, it also helped us decide we need to promote this across campus. So we started a staff certificate program and it's just been really helpful to, again, just having multiple perspectives and roles and people in the room.

Lori Robbins: Absolutely. Yeah.

Chris Bradney: I mean, just this morning we saw the new EDUCAUSE Top 10. Again, another reference to the top 10. They talked about knowledge management for Safer AI. This question of how do we data govern? How do we understand where our information is? And the question I love, what data should AI have and what data are we not going to give it? And that's an important question for us to all ask. And I think that's a whole nother podcast episode right there.

Sarah Buszka: It is. I can't wait to talk about it. But putting maybe a final bow on this one too. When I was at my previous institution at Stanford University, I worked on data management and data governance enterprise. And I can tell you, it's real easy to start boiling the ocean and then getting stuck

Sarah Buszka: Because everyone wants to get data governance right. Everyone wants to get data management practices right for obvious reasons. We're considering the challenges around AI, which we'll get to in one of our future episodes, but you think about bias, right? All of these potential risks that just start bubbling up and then all of a sudden you're freaked out, right? And then you keep coming back to, well, how are we going to get the data management piece, right? The data governance piece. Then legal comes in, then privacy. Then before you know it, everyone in the institution is freaking out and then you still have done nothing. So I guess my advice would be like, don't let great be the enemy of good. You have to be able to define some level of risk that you need to be willing to accept. We can't accept zero risk anymore.

Sarah Buszka: We don't live in that society at all. So talking more about, to Chris's point, like what we're willing to accept, what we're not, the level of risk, what kinds of risks, and then defining how we're mitigating and putting my cybersecurity hat on for my former life. That is really essential. Getting people to realize that something will go wrong. And we need to plan for it, plan for the worst, hope for the best, right? But we also can do hard things. We've gotten this far in this world in society. If something comes up, we know how to handle it. Absolutely. And just reminding people of that. A lot of what I do in my role is reminding people that we actually know how to interact with these tools. We've been evaluating things on the internet now for a while. We're now evaluating things that come out of these tools and we're still using the same skills.

Sarah Buszka: Let's not have aphasia about it, right? We know how to do this. Don't forget that.

Chris Bradney: A disciplined approach.

Sarah Buszka: A disciplined approach. Exactly. So with that, Joseph, do we have any more questions? No more. All right. Well, I have one final question then for both of our guests as we wrap the show up. So one thing we love to kind of ask our guests too is, hey, if there's any one final takeaway or nugget or lesson learned or piece of advice that you would like to impart on our guests or on our audience here and our listeners, when it comes to your experience implementing AI at your institutions, if there's nothing folks take away but this one nugget that you share, what do you want them to take away from this show and from your experience? I'll start with you, Zach. Yeah.

Zach Lonsinger: So I would say my one piece advice is while technology moves super fast, innovation moves at the speed of trust.

Zach Lonsinger: So this is something I learned early on is the quicker we start to listen to our faculty and staff, the faster we can start to move. And at Penn State, our faculty didn't need me coming at them pushing AI because they're getting that from every direction of their colleges, their departments, their students. So they really need someone to come at them and listen to their fears, their pressures and just understand. So if we can anchor AI as not disruptive, but as amplification of their work. So it can help us teach, it can help us create, it can help us do the research. I think that's how we can start innovating.

Chris Bradney: Well, Sarah, I know these mics can't drop, but innovation happens at the speed of trust. Phenomenal tagline, Zach. Just go ahead and drop your mic. I feel like mine has been dropping.

Sarah Buszka: I needed a prop want to drop. Yeah, we love doing mic drop things on the show.

Lori Robbins: No, I love that. And I would say Zach's absolutely right. You really need to listen. Although this technology is moving so quickly, it is okay to go slow and to have conversations. Again, this needs to be a community effort. And so whether that's on your own campuses, reaching across to different divisions and talking to people or going to other institutions. At Dennison, we hosted our first AI summit and it was really helpful to just bring other institutions to say like, "Okay, what are we doing? What are our common challenges and how can we solve those problems together?" And I think that's something really powerful about AI is we're all in having the same struggles and challenges and opportunities. And so let's try to find ways that we can build together. Cluck, yeah.

Chris Bradney: A perfect message for the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference right there. Exactly. All in it together.

Sarah Buszka: We're all in this together. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Zach and Laurie for being our guest on today's show. It's exciting to have you. And Chris, thank you so much for being our guest host for today.

Speaker 6: My pleasure, Sarah.

Sarah Buszka: Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for joining us and see you next time. Yeah. All right.

Speaker 6: Thank you.