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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
For me, it's like, how do I provide a toolset and the training needed so that people can solve their own problems in a way that sort of lives within our like, that protects the data that we have.
Narrator:This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles have our first interview in our AI Literacy Series with Dr. Jodie Penrod, who's the Chief Information Officer at Marshall University.
Ryan:Thanks for joining us.
Jared:Well, Rob, we are continuing our series on, AI literacy and, we've been talking to some professionals in the field and we've talked to, some educators as well, and we want to get perspectives from all over. As you know, we've been doing this and, I thought who better to talk to than someone that we have talked to previously several times about different topics, one of them being, generative AI. So with that, we bring back our friend, CIO at Marshall University, Jodie Penrod. Welcome back, Jodie.
Jodie Penrod:Good to be back.
Rob:There's been a lot of water under the bridge since last we talked. Yeah. And a lot of it has been AI, of course. And as Jared said, we're we're really looking into this AI, and we talked about digital literacy, but but I think most importantly, AI literacy. I was just down that way in your neck of the woods just a couple of weeks ago and happened to go by the new Cybersecurity Building that's going up down there in Huntington.
Rob:So I know there's a lot going on at Marshall, but I was just kind of wondering if maybe you could talk to us about what's going on with with A. I. Literacy, you know, in at Marshall and how essential do you think it's going to be for your school and also for students? That's really our main focus is students and teachers. And how important is this AI literacy thing?
Jodie Penrod:Well, I think it's very important because I think that we, our world has changed. You know, I think with COVID the world changed. And I think now with the onset of AI, the world is changing again, only it's doing it much, much faster. AI is on the brink of really changing the way we work. And if it already hasn't changed the way we work, think it's gonna have even more impact as we move forward.
Jodie Penrod:And I saw, I was at a conference, I think it was a Gartner conference about a month or six weeks ago. And I saw a slide on one of the PowerPoints of just the capability of AI is like on a graph is like up here. And then like the skill set of how to use that capability is here. And so there's this enormous gap between the skill versus the capacity. And the capacity just keeps growing exponentially, right?
Jodie Penrod:I mean, I think we just continue like every day I'm getting news about new functionality, new agentic capabilities. And I think that we're I'm having a hard time keeping up. I don't know about you all, but I'm having a hard time keeping up with it all, as a CIO. And so I think at at the end of the day, like, it's so important to start trying things out yourself, even if you're there is like, as far as literacy goes, I think we have a digital literacy problem in of itself, not even AI literacy on top of that, especially on areas where Marshall University serves, just having students understand how to use Microsoft Word or send an email. I mean, they're still figuring that part out.
Jodie Penrod:And so I think people are using AI and they don't know they're using AI at this So I think that's that's another sort of thing that we're taking for granted at this point. The workforce is going to change. And I think that the moral of the story is this, however, whether you like it or not, whether you know, you could have feelings about AI at this point and you should have feelings about it. However, you can't ignore it. So it's important that you still educate yourself about it rather than just completely shut it out.
Rob:So I want to go back to something you said. You were explaining to us the gap between AI's abilities or capabilities and the skill level at which we're using it. For our listeners who can't see the gap between your hands, would you be able to quantify that gap? I mean, can you give it some sort of a number that would make sense or give us a word picture that might quantify that gap?
Jodie Penrod:I can. All I can say is it's a huge gap. The skill level is close to zero. Plus if you're looking at, if it's zero and a 100, right? Like the skill level is, I wanna say 10% and the capability level is probably like a 100%.
Jodie Penrod:And thank you for reminding me that people can't see my hands. That was helpful. But that's the gap. There's just this enormous gap between skill versus capability. And frankly, I would say that it's even much more now from on an exponential level.
Jodie Penrod:I mean, just in the ways that I'm personally using AI, I know that I can do way more, but it's taking the time to do it and teaching myself how to do it correctly in a way that's meaningful. Sometimes it's just making yourself change your behavior in ways that you can put in the time and the effort it takes to sort of make the AI useful for you and then, and then have it happen.
Jared:If it's growing and at such an exponential rate, and it is, what are, what is Marshall or what are you focusing on as far as getting a handle on it? Where I think we're getting away from the, well, if you want to, like, there's still stuff all over social media and even on LinkedIn about, use Chad GPT for this, use Claude for this, use Gemini for this, or they're very specific into a certain model. But I feel like the trend now, because of the, how quickly everything changing and something you create and post and publish about using a certain model is going to become almost instantly outdated because of the rate at which these things are changing and advancing. So what are you focusing on for your students and educators beyond just kind of just figuring out how to use the tool itself?
Jodie Penrod:So for us, we're trying to provide access to multiple tools. Right? So we're trying to figure out like, and find partners where we can create a sandbox that have multiple different tools so that you can see which one fits what you're looking for better. I think a lot of schools, whenever AI first came out, I think a lot of schools were like, we're buying X amount of licenses to chat GBT and or whatever it might be, or copilot or whatever it might be. But I think at this point in time, like that's a really, I feel like that just silos you into one solution when there's so many different ones out there that are really good for different things.
Jodie Penrod:So we actually had an outage, one of our main systems, we had an outage this past week and it was amazing to watch my engineers use AI to help them troubleshoot and problem solve. I mean, just having that as a tool and they were using, you know, they use Amazon Cura a lot. They use Claude. So they're not using just one. They're using multiple different models.
Jodie Penrod:And I think that that's really amazing. And, you know, so for us at Marshall is we're really trying to focus on how can we provide the tools for people to create and innovate and do it in a way that provides some sort of guardrails. So we keep our information secure. Like we can't afford to buy licenses on several different platforms, but we can look for a sandbox that has connectivity to some of those open platforms and and, you know, provide access in that way. So we're we're working through that right now to identify, partners that can help us do that.
Jared:Are you I know, like, a a sandbox like BuddleBox exists. Are you doing something like that, or are you doing your own homegrown version?
Jodie Penrod:So we're we're actually working through, I've heard of Budapox before. We're actually working with a company right now called ibl dot ai. We're hoping to move that forward in the next several months. They've been partnering with Syracuse University and really their capability is phenomenal. And we're really excited about leveraging and working with them and partnering with them.
Jodie Penrod:So we're just in the middle of the, of the initial procurement stages of that. But, we believe that they're going to be really transformational in our journey.
Jared:So how has that, that initiative that you guys are doing, how is that coming into classroom? Like how are your faculty and your staff handling that idea?
Jodie Penrod:Well, I think like we haven't dictated how they're going to do it. I think that's up to them. Right? And that's- that's- you know, Marshall University is very much a shared governance, academic freedom supporting institution. So I think ultimately it's up to the faculty.
Jodie Penrod:However, with that being said, I think that the one thing that universities need to do better at is providing some sort of guidance to students on how and when they can use AI. So I think that once we solve that problem and then we partner with a toolset that, so essentially, you know, this would allow us to pipe into our LMS and that, faculty could use that directly with their course content. But that's not all it can do. I mean, it's essentially going to be able to expose. And I don't know if you all have heard of the MCP layer.
Jodie Penrod:That's something that is really exciting, I think, for me, especially as a CIO, because when you work in higher education, you know, the data is a problem. The data, we've been on a system for thirty five plus years. So being able to expose data in a way that is intentional and not just giving the LLM direct access to the database, I think is a game changer. So I think what we're going to see is that once we expose certain level of data to the MCP layer and then we work with the AI layer, then that's going to really be transformative for us. So faculty, I think as far as the things they're able to do, I think they're going be able to connect to their course content.
Jodie Penrod:I think they're going to be able to provide students more support, but really that's up to them because they're going to be able to build those things themselves.
Rob:Yeah. That that kind of goes to, you know, what we're talking about. Jodie, it's like you you said it. We you're you're in the business of providing the pipes, of providing the access, and you've had some good things to say about that and gave us another thing to look at, ibl.ai. But I think at the end of the day, comes down to what are faculty and students going to do with it?
Rob:And do they know how to do that? So can you speak to as well as things that maybe you know know that are going on at Marshall in terms of how they're trying to fit not only the supply that you bring to the table, but you know, and and Marshall's not a small school. And you serve quite a few people. So are there any efforts in that way to help with encouraging usage or having conversations around how it should be used?
Jodie Penrod:Yeah, I mean, I think that, well, you know, we've already started essentially with Adobe Acrobat AI, our partnership there. And, you know, we also have Copilot. So we already have a training and engagement program for those tools. So we're going to continue ramping that up as we get more tools available to our faculty, staff, and students. And it was really, I mean, the sky is the limit.
Jodie Penrod:There's like this saying about letting a thousand flowers bloom. And I think at this point, like I don't have an IT, I don't have the resources I need to go develop all of the AI solutions that people need. So I think what we're trying to do is figure out a way for people to do that themselves in a way that is scalable in an enterprise solution, right? So I think that, my job is really just trying to figure out one, here's your toolset and let me train you how to use this toolset so that you can start solving your own problems. Not that we won't be here to support them and to help them, but I think a lot of times, especially for me as the CIO, I've got like 60 projects on my plate at all times.
Jodie Penrod:So building a small AI solution for someone in a college isn't necessarily on the, it's not necessarily at the top of my list of things that I've got to get done, but I don't want to get in the way of them being able to do that themselves. So I think that's what's important for me is like, how do I provide a tool set and the training needed so that people can solve their own problems in a way that sort of lives within our, like that protects the data that we have? Those are the things that I definitely want to be mindful about.
Jared:I'm curious about what you think is coming down. You've been to these conferences. You shared with both of us some incredible insights of what's going, what's coming. So look in the crystal ball and tell me, I know w w I initially said a year from now, but I think we should do six months from now, six months from now. What do you see coming down the road as far as AI literacy or the use of generative AI in higher education?
Jodie Penrod:I mean, I tell everyone now that if the one thing that I would start schooling yourself on is agentic AI. I think agentic AI is like, that's gonna be transfer it's it's just huge. You know? It's gonna it's gonna transform the way the workforce demands. It's gonna transform what students should be taking as degree programs at this point.
Jodie Penrod:I mean, I don't know. And I'm using another visual here, so I'm trying to explain it. But you know how your hierarchical structure is a triangle right now? It's the top down approach. Right?
Jodie Penrod:With agentic AI, the people is it's gonna be like a diamond shape. And then and then the agents are gonna essentially fill out the rest of the triangle. So I'm already looking for ways where agents can be more impactful on my team and not have to hire somebody to do some of that manual work or busy type of work, you know? So I think in the next six months to a year, I think in in, you know, the private industry, think that's already Agentic AI is already hitting because we're seeing that, right, with the job economy right now. But I think as we move more into higher end, we're going to see much more of that Agentic capability.
Jodie Penrod:And we're going to see our tools, the tools that we use, have that built in. And then obviously some people might be building that stuff themselves now.
Jared:Right.
Jodie Penrod:So if I were anybody in higher ed, I'd start learning more and more about AgenTic AI and then thinking about how AgenTic AI can help you.
Rob:I really appreciated the pitch on AgenTic. I mean, that's something that that we've been doing here. I'm just curious if if, know, on your side, if you're looking at edge case inference or edge inference on the AgenTex side where you're orchestrating using like, laptops and things that you already have that could could do, like, local open models? Are you guys doing any of that? Or you just right at the edge of Agintic?
Jodie Penrod:Yeah. I mean, I would say like right now we're playing with AgenTic, like I'm playing with AgenTic for my personal stuff. Right? Like I am finding more and more on how to use AgenTic AI. I don't know if you all have access to CoPilot, but if you have the Co Copilot Pro license, there's an agent in there called Cowork.
Jodie Penrod:It's awesome. Like it's a really great way to start using AgenTik AI in your personal productivity. So I would, and that's the thing, like I would highly suggest that if you have any sort of that capability with where you work, you should start thinking about like answering a question or asking yourself question every time you're like going to do something that requires some tedious or the thing that you've been leaving until the very end to do, just think how could I potentially use AI to do this? Right? And see if it will try it, you know, see if a prompt and, you know, just see if it will.
Jodie Penrod:I can tell you, like for a professional association, I had to review an Excel spreadsheet and I had to review different things and rate and then provide comments. And I just, I did a prompt based on how I wanted to review it and my methodology and just said, go do it. And it would have taken me hours to do it. It took like less than ten minutes to do. So, you know, another thing that we were looking at, all of the different suppliers that we use at the university.
Jodie Penrod:And we were looking at if any of those suppliers are part of a cooperative, Instead of somebody looking at the list and looking at the cooperative and tying those two things together, I added all that into an agent and produced a report. And then it also looked at how much money we were spending with each supplier and gave opportunities for how you might change that. Right? So it's like, if you can start thinking about ways that it might be helpful and then just try it, you will be shocked at how much it helps you. It brings up things that I would have never thought about to think about, which I think is a really, really cool thing.
Jared:You mentioned, the job market being as it is now where that jobs are being eliminated. Right? Because of the tedious work that AgenTic AI can now fill. Right? Like doing the, you know, the the small quote unquote menial tasks.
Jared:Do you see a pivot to not necessarily job deletion, but more job creation in a different way. Whereas, like, when, you know, when you and I were just finished college, we in the job market, it was always like, must be proficient in Microsoft Office. And then we'd be able to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, stuff like that. That's still in there, but pretty much this is probably a huge assumption, but most people know how to do that. It's just always been in there now.
Jared:Do you see there being more of a AI skills being must be proficient in prompting, critically evaluating output from generative AI, regardless of what it is. Do you see that being the next quote unquote Microsoft Office proficiency that's needed?
Jodie Penrod:Yes. But I don't know that it's like using the AI. I think it's much more on the experience on the quality assurance and validation side And I think that's really tough because, I mean, you all know as well as I do, you don't really gain that knowledge until you've been through the experience to gain that knowledge. And I think that that's like sort of that critical conversation is like, how do we get? And I know you all and we all went through our early careers.
Jodie Penrod:Like that's where we gained that experience. Right. So we could develop those critical thinking skills. Like that's not something that you just learn off of reading a textbook and getting a lecture. You learn that through experience.
Jodie Penrod:And I think that that's the one thing that I think is really hard now is that all of that being automated with AI, how are they going to, how are new graduates going to get that experience in order to make, to have that level of critical thinking and analysis and validation? So that's why I think it's fundamentally important that in higher education now that we move much more to an experiential learning model than just the old fashioned pedagogy. I think that that's going to be critically important as we move forward.
Jared:Creating a sandbox or a playground in a safe space to Yeah. Figure it That's great.
Jodie Penrod:Figure out, make mistakes, Learn. Figure out how to do better. You know?
Rob:Simulations are also gonna be really, really powerful, I think, with that. And we'll be able to use ChatGPT or or AI, generative AI, to to help simulate some of those things.
Jared:Doctor. Jodie Penrod, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Your insights are always invaluable and they really push us in new directions and help us think more. So we're very thankful that you're always willing to come on and help us out.
Jodie Penrod:Thank Take care. Good to see you.
Ryan:Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments about our conversation with Doctor. Penrod, feel free to email us at ctlpodcastcedarville dot edu. You can also connect with us or message us on LinkedIn. And finally, don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog.
Ryan:Thanks for listening.