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Minding Machines is a podcast dedicated to fostering thoughtful, open dialogue about artificial intelligence. The show brings together educators, students, and practitioners to explore how these tools are changing the way we teach, work, and think. Our conversations focus on practical experiences, emerging questions, and diverse perspectives across disciplines rather than establishing rigid "right or wrong" answers or settling debates about AI.
Minding Machines is an independent podcast produced at Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin. The views expressed are those of the participants and do not represent the university.
Background music - Relaxing Light Background (short version) by AudioCoffee (https://freesound.org/s/725615/)
[00:00:00] (music)
[00:00:03] Abhishek: Hello and welcome to another episode of Minding Machines, a podcast dedicated to fostering thoughtful, open dialogue about artificial intelligence.
[00:00:13] Abhishek: The show brings together educators, students, and practitioners to explore how these tools are changing the way we teach, work, and think.
[00:00:21] Abhishek: Our conversations focus on practical experiences, emerging questions, and diverse perspectives across disciplines, rather than establishing rigid right or wrong answers or settling debates about AI.
[00:00:36] Abhishek: Thank you for listening. I'm your host, Abhishek Chakraborty, and I am an associate professor of statistics at Lawrence University.
[00:00:44] Abhishek: Our guest today is Jedidiah Rex. Welcome, Jedidiah. It's very good to have you in the show.
[00:00:51] Jedidiah: Thank you so much for having me, Abhishek. I'm Jedidiah Rex, Acting Director of Instructional Technology. In my role, I work with faculty to help them integrate technology into their courses. I support our learning management system, which is Canvas, and then other duties as assigned.
[00:01:14] Abhishek: Yeah, that's good to know. Thank you for sharing.
[00:01:16] Abhishek: Well, now is the time that you have to face our icebreaker question.
[00:01:21] Abhishek: Jedidiah, what's one thing that you would happily automate away forever and one thing that you would never automate, no matter how good technology gets?
[00:01:33] Jedidiah: So, so this is a challenging question because I'm not sure if there's anything that I would completely automate. I think I might use technology to enhance parts of my life, but not necessarily automate, because I'm a human being and I need and want to inhabit my life.
[00:01:57] Abhishek: So let's begin with our conversation. My first question is you mentioned you are the Acting Director of Instructional Technology, and you help and assist faculty designing things on Canvas.
[00:02:14] Abhishek: Canvas is the LLM that, sorry, Canvas is the LMS that Lawrence University uses.
[00:02:21] Abhishek: So could you tell us a little bit about what your role as the Acting Director of Instructional Technology or what does Instructional Designer actually mean? If you could expand on that.
[00:02:35] Jedidiah: Sure. So an Instructional Designer supports an instructor in the design and creation of learning artifacts like quizzes, modules, and multimedia. That's a little bit different than the specific work that I do.
[00:02:51] Jedidiah: But an Instructional Designer works with the instructor to create these things that the learning artifacts that are specifically tailored to the identified outcomes and objectives of the course.
[00:03:05] Jedidiah: They can also assist instructors in the assessment of learning. I'm going to have done some of that work when I was first brought on as an Instructional Designer as part of the Inclusive Pedagogy Grant.
[00:03:17] Jedidiah: So I have done some of that, but it's a little bit different than my current role.
[00:03:24] Abhishek: Okay. And since you mentioned Inclusive Pedagogy, are you still a member of that committee
[00:03:31] Jedidiah: I am, yes.
[00:03:32] Abhishek: Okay, cool. Nice.
[00:03:35] Abhishek: Related to your job, do you think it has changed? And if yes, how has it changed in this, like, AI age?
[00:03:43] Jedidiah: Yeah. So I think AI has impacted course design work by providing a tool that makes it easier to identify themes, to identify goals of a course, to draft language for specific artifacts.
[00:04:07] Jedidiah: AI tools can allow instructors to do more of the work that would traditionally be done by an instructional designer and an instructor in collaboration.
[00:04:22] Jedidiah: With the LLM, you can kind of use the LLM as your designer, as long as it's trained in the right ways, can provide some of that assistance.
[00:04:33] Abhishek: All right, and just to clarify for our listeners, do you ever work with students as part of your role?
[00:04:43] Jedidiah: Not primarily. I will provide workshops for students on specific technologies.
[00:04:49] Jedidiah: I've done, for instance, I've done workshops on creating podcasts with students, showing them the technology and talking through things related to that. But my primary focus is on supporting faculty.
[00:05:08] Abhishek: Oh, okay. Thank you. Let's dive a little bit more.
[00:05:10] Abhishek: So from your vantage point in instructional design and technology, have you seen any shifts in the general campus conversations? Are faculty coming more to you to talk about their ideas about AI? If you could talk more about that.
[00:05:33] Jedidiah: So in the beginning, I saw mostly fear, and it was, what is this thing and how is it going to change teaching and how is it going to subvert learning?
[00:05:42] Jedidiah: And I think some of that, I think that that perspective is still out there. But I am seeing a handful of instructors using AI for various purposes.
[00:05:56] Jedidiah: I think they're pockets of use, but I don't know that it's ubiquitous on our campus at all.
[00:06:01] Abhishek: All right, like, as a follow up to that, have you noticed any common threads emerging across the various departments we have at Lawrence, or are you noticing that, you know, one specific group of faculty, for example, AI is commonly associated with computer science-y stuff, but have you noticed any common thread?
[00:06:31] Jedidiah: To be honest, no. And I don't see it affecting or being used in any single department in any single way.
[00:06:43] Jedidiah: Like, I think, you know, I know of faculty from the Con who are using it, faculty in computer science who are using it, in philosophy who are using it.
[00:06:56] Jedidiah: So I don't know that there's really one department or one kind of discipline that is really using it or would be stereotypically using it, as it were.
[00:07:14] Abhishek: All right, I want to ask you about Canvas. That's the LMS that we use. And I genuinely think you are the best person to talk about the AI integrations that I've heard are coming up into Canvas.
[00:07:31] Abhishek: So could you tell us, from the very starting point, what are the things that we should watch out for? What is getting integrated into Canvas from your perspective? What are just marketing strategies? And tell us anything that you would find, you would want faculty to know about and they can find helpful.
[00:07:57] Jedidiah: Sure.
[00:07:58] Jedidiah: So Instructure is the company that owns Canvas and they recently updated their pricing model for Canvas to be comprised of three tiers, Core, Plus, and Next, and AI tools exist in each tier.
[00:08:16] Jedidiah: We currently subscribe to the Core tier with the addition of Canvas Studio, which is usually included in Plus.
[00:08:24] Jedidiah: So the AI tools that are included in Core are content authoring accessibility remediation. Basically, that is an accessibility checker tool that will look at your course content and note where you might make things more accessible.
[00:08:45] Jedidiah: There's a question authoring assistant for Quizzes. So that tool can help an instructor generate questions from course content.
[00:08:55] Jedidiah: And one thing I'll say about that is I don't have personal experience with this yet. I will, but I welcome people to test that out and try it out.
[00:09:05] Jedidiah: There's three more. The third one is search for courses. So rather than having to know the naming convention of courses and course numbers, you can use natural language to search for a course.
[00:09:22] Jedidiah: There's summaries for discussion, which identifies themes and takeaways. That tool in particular is only faculty facing, so you don't need to worry about your students seeing summaries of the discussions.
[00:09:36] Jedidiah: And then the last one is translations, and this is available in discussions and in inbox. So sorry, discussions, which includes course announcements and inbox.
[00:09:54] Jedidiah: So I see that last tool as being a benefit for students whose native language is not English and it is an opt in. So if an instructor, for instance, in a language class doesn't want their course page to be translated into another language, they don't have to enable that.
[00:10:18] Jedidiah: So you asked what's marketing and what's. I'm going to change that just a little bit and say and answer what's most useful or most beneficial and what's not.
[00:10:32] Jedidiah: To me, the search for courses isn't really that useful. People know what courses they have and, anyway.
[00:10:42] Abhishek: And just to jump in, these are courses just within Lawrence University?
[00:10:48] Jedidiah: Correct. Correct. Yes. Yeah. All within the context of Lawrence.
[00:10:53] Jedidiah: So of the, of the things that I, that I mentioned, I think the accessibility tool would be one that I would highly, highly recommend people use.
[00:11:03] Jedidiah: Being able to reduce barriers for everyone is a good thing.
[00:11:08] Jedidiah: I already invited people to try the question authoring and I would recommend that.
[00:11:15] Jedidiah: And then the summaries for discussions. I think using that tool is an easy way to see the kind of output that an LLM might generate for you and kind of the benefit of AI in general.
[00:11:29] Jedidiah: So that will take your discussion, your course discussion, and then like I said before, identify themes and then provide some takeaways that you as an instructor can then use to inform your discussion, further discussion with the students.
[00:11:48] Jedidiah: I guess the last one would be the translations for reducing language barriers. I think it's a great tool and I would recommend that people use it if they can.
[00:12:04] Abhishek: All right, that's very good to know. And just to summarize that, could you please list once again just the tools that you mentioned?
[00:12:14] Jedidiah: Yep. So the first one is the content authoring accessibility remediation. It's a mouthful, but basically it's an accessibility checker tool.
[00:12:23] Jedidiah: The next one is question authoring tool.
[00:12:28] Jedidiah: The third one is the discussion summaries and then the translations.
[00:12:34] Jedidiah: So those four, I think are the four that I would recommend for people.
[00:12:40] Abhishek: Great. And are all of these actually turned on in Canvas for us or is there any specific thing that faculty need to do to access these?
[00:12:55] Jedidiah: The accessibility is available to everyone. There's nothing you need to do to turn it on. In fact, I think most of these, they are in terms of Canvas, they are enabled, but they are unlocked, which means that they are available for people to turn on for their course.
[00:13:16] Jedidiah: But it's not forced. You can choose to use what you want to use and not use what you don't want to.
[00:13:23] Abhishek: And folks would enable these from the
[00:13:28] Jedidiah: The course settings.
[00:13:28] Abhishek: The course settings.
[00:13:28] Jedidiah: Yep, yeah.
[00:13:32] Abhishek: I think we will put some more information about these tools on our show notes, that I think
[00:13:39] Jedidiah: Sounds great!
[00:13:40] Abhishek: people find that helpful.
[00:13:41] Abhishek: And I also wanted to ask another follow up.
[00:13:44] Abhishek: What would be your recommendation if somebody, like, what is the lowest hanging fruit here? Like, if somebody wants to try out one of these tools, which one should they start with?
[00:14:02] Jedidiah: So it technically depends on what they're doing in a course. If I would say if they're using course discussions or Canvas discussions, that by far would be the easiest, the easiest to get into because it's a checkbox in the discussion that you enable and then it, it provides that for you after the discussion. So that would be the first one.
[00:14:28] Jedidiah: But if you're not using, if you're not using course discussions, then I would try the, the accessibility remediation tool, again with the goal of reducing barriers for everybody in your course. I think that's where I would start.
[00:14:45] Abhishek: All right, thank you so much. And again, following up on this, as well as the discussion on Canvas, recently, the world of AI and LLMs have shifted to these agentic tools.
[00:15:05] Abhishek: And is there any, any time in the near future that Canvas would integrate any of these agentic tools? And especially would you like, what would you want to say to our faculty?
[00:15:21] Abhishek: Some of them might be concerned about all these things being incorporated and we are not really technology specific in that respect, so.
[00:15:31] Jedidiah: Sure. So I mentioned the new pricing model, and, and the different tiers. So with Core, we don't have access to.. So Canvas does have, or Instructure does have a course agent that is available, but that is only available in the, the next tier, which we don't have, the highest tier, which we are not, we are not subscribed to.
[00:16:00] Jedidiah: So they currently offer something like that. There are also other tools, other, other platforms that offer tools like that that can integrate into Canvas and I'm generally reviewing those, but I don't know that there's.
[00:16:20] Jedidiah: So in my role, I really see instructional technology as a department being a support for faculty and being driven by faculty interest and desire.
[00:16:38] Jedidiah: So if the majority of faculty are not interested in a thing, then I probably will not be interested in a thing, vice versa.
[00:16:50] Jedidiah: On the other side of that, if the majority of faculty really want an agentic sort of course tutor with inside of Canvas, then I think that I would be the cheerleader for that and work to see what we could do to get something like that into Canvas.
[00:17:12] Jedidiah: So I don't know if that answers your question about.
[00:17:15] Abhishek: No, it does. I mean, right now the world is buzzing about agentic AI and I've heard some articles, I've seen in some articles, you know, Canvas and agentic AI and they're planning on doing these things. And I just wanted to ask, like, what's the status when it comes to Lawrence University faculty.
[00:17:37] Jedidiah: Sure. Yeah.
[00:17:39] Abhishek: Are you planning on having some workshops to let us know more or dive deep into these tools?
[00:17:49] Jedidiah: Yes. So I have some workshops set up for new faculty which are open to all faculty and I will be touching on, maybe not in depth, but I will be touching on the AI tools available in Canvas during my course overview session. And I can send that information to include in the show notes as well.
[00:18:12] Abhishek: Yes, that would be really great.
[00:18:14] Jedidiah: But then I think outside of those, I think it will be, they're not planned yet, but I will be having sessions specifically focused on Canvas and AI and the tools that are available in it.
[00:18:29] Abhishek: And the way you're saying it, I take it that these tools could possibly be very helpful when it comes to instructors teaching courses.
[00:18:39] Jedidiah: Yes, I think so.
[00:18:41] Abhishek: Do you think? I know when the conversation comes to AI, a common thing that I've heard is that it takes away the academic rigor in a course.
[00:18:55] Abhishek: Should we be concerned about these things when it comes to the AI integrations on Canvas?
[00:19:01] Jedidiah: So I think my short answer is no, but I want to follow up with why.
[00:19:09] Jedidiah: And I think the same, the same fear that people were having initially about AI and it's going to subvert learning and is the same kind of thing when you talk about AI making things less rigorous.
[00:19:31] Jedidiah: So I am all about using AI to, to be more efficient, to, to help reduce friction in, in different areas. But I don't, I don't think that AI should be a replacement for humanity.
[00:19:48] Jedidiah: And, and so I think as long as, as long as, and I, I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but, but I think as long as we use the tool as a tool and use it in such a way where we can not offload thinking, but offload tasks and then use the extra time to do more human things, deeper relationships, deeper thinking
[00:20:23] Abhishek: Absolutely.
[00:20:24] Jedidiah: Then, then I think it's, it's a good use. And, and I can't claim, I can't claim that idea.
[00:20:32] Jedidiah: I do want to shout out about a book that I'm currently reading called Wise AI by Paul Matthews and Daniel Sih. And this is kind of the main thrust of the book, which is how are we going to use AI tools wisely?
[00:20:47] Jedidiah: And their, their big idea is using the AI to yes, be more efficient, but not be more efficient to do more work necessarily, but to open up time to be more human, to be able to spend the time thinking deep things and having deeper relationships and resting when we need to rest.
[00:21:14] Jedidiah: We talk about Lawrence busy, and so I think if we can use AI in a good way, in a wise way, then I think it's a good thing.
[00:21:25] Abhishek: Yeah, of course. We will put a link to the book Jedidiah mentioned in our show notes as well.
[00:21:33] Abhishek: And I wanted to poke you a little bit about on the efficiency side of things that you mentioned.
[00:21:42] Abhishek: So one of the buzzwords has been efficiency when it comes to using AI tools.
[00:21:48] Abhishek: Have you found AI in your own work? Do you think it has made you more efficient?
[00:21:57] Jedidiah: Yes and no. And I have examples for each.
[00:22:52] Jedidiah: And so my example for yes is I was asked to create a document for my supervisor and it would have taken me a long time to generate this document just out of my brain.
[00:22:21] Jedidiah: But I had a lot of notes, I had a lot of background information that I needed to generate, I needed to create something that was a not a synopsis, but a cogent, cohesive thing.
[00:22:41] Jedidiah: And so I took all of that background information and I gave it to the AI tool, which in this case was Copilot, and said, I need an executive summary of this.
[00:22:54] Jedidiah: And it gave me something. And I didn't, but I didn't like it initially what it gave me, but after about 90 minutes of wordsmithing and a little bit back and forth with the AI and then wordsmithing on my own, I had something that I was proud of.
[00:23:17] Jedidiah: And while it was informed by AI, it was my words. And so that I think is a positive.
[00:23:26] Jedidiah: So instead of two or three hours, it was 90 minutes to create this thing.
[00:23:36] Jedidiah: The negative example, I was, so I had to create, well, I didn't have to, I wanted to create an Excel dashboard for my budget keeping.
[00:23:47] Jedidiah: And I asked the AI Copilot, also in this case to act as an Excel expert and generate this thing, which it did very quickly.
[00:24:01] Jedidiah: And I was off to the races and I had my formula, I had my Excel spreadsheet, and then something didn't work.
[00:24:08] Jedidiah: And because I didn't understand necessarily what the AI had generated, I wasn't able to fix it, and I spent more time trying to work with it and fix it than understanding Excel in the first place.
[00:24:26] Jedidiah: So that's, that's actually a caution that I would share with others, is that you should have some level of expertise about what you are asking the AI about.
[00:24:41] Jedidiah: And so I went a different direction with the Excel and it's working great and does what I need it to do, but that version is no longer being used.
[00:24:53] Abhishek: Yeah, I'm actually, well, glad to hear that, you know, your thing finally ended up working and you're in the right direction, but I do agree with you with the things that you mentioned, especially about expertise and working with an AI as an assistant.
[00:25:11] Abhishek: I have found in my own work that, I would like to believe I'm an expert in statistics and data science, so whenever I've used AI in those in that region, it has definitely helped, at least, at least being a brainstorming partner.
[00:25:33] Abhishek: But you know, a couple days back I was trying to learn a new tool and this is not related to statistics and data science, and I was trying to ask AI and figure that tool out and it took me longer, I guess, longer than what I would have if I just played around with the tool and I was trying to decide whether I should trust AI on, on the steps that it is showing and, you know, all these things.
[00:26:01] Abhishek: So I, I do do agree with you on that aspect.
[00:26:06] Abhishek: The reason why I asked that question, I should also mention that faculty are stressed about time. We have more things to do.
[00:26:17] Abhishek: I like the vision of AI improving or making us more efficient, but I genuinely want to know whether it's actually making us more efficient.
[00:26:32] Abhishek: Next up, I am going to ask you about a seemingly controversial topic.
[00:26:41] Abhishek: AI and the talk of AI in education brings, there has been a lot of discussion about AI detection tools.
[00:26:53] Abhishek: And, I have my own opinion about that, being, being an instructor.
[00:26:59] Abhishek: I wanted to know from the point of view of Canvas. Does Canvas have any AI detection tool or what does our subscription manage?
[00:27:15] Jedidiah: So our subscription is only for Canvas itself with the addition of Canvas Studio, the video and media tool.
[00:27:23] Jedidiah: There is no AI detection tool within Canvas.
[00:27:31] Jedidiah: And I would also disclaim this is my, my personal opinion about the tools. I don't think they are really worth the money or the effort and I think they can be a privacy concern. So I, I would not recommend their use.
[00:27:53] Jedidiah: The anecdotal things that I've seen about them is that they are very poor at really differentiating between human and AI generated.
[00:28:05] Abhishek: That's what I've read as well.
[00:28:06] Jedidiah: And so I have a hard time really recommending a tool that doesn't 100%, I mean, assessment is very important and we need to get it right. And that's part of, part of why I think assessment should be human and not, not machine.
[00:28:25] Jedidiah: And so, so yeah, I don't, we don't have any tools like that in Canvas or outside of Canvas.
[00:28:34] Jedidiah: They do exist. But my, my opinion is that we'd be better off just to assess on our own.
[00:28:45] Abhishek: Thank you for your answer. I hope that is assuring to some of our faculty colleagues and of course mainly our students who really put in an effort to, to perform in their classes.
[00:29:00] Abhishek: What are you watching out for next, when it comes to Canvas and specific integrations? Is there something coming up? I know people behind the scenes are always working on this and so what are you watching out for next and what should we as faculty watch out for?
[00:29:23] Jedidiah: Sure.
[00:29:25] Jedidiah: So I do think that I know Canvas currently has a course agent or a tutor, but that is one area that I would keep an eye on, not just from Instructure, but for other tools, because I think those sorts of tools can really lower barriers for students in finding information and or asking questions about course content.
[00:29:57] Jedidiah: And so be it Instructure's offering or some other, I think a tool like that could be beneficial in a lot of ways.
[00:30:09] Jedidiah: And so I'm just trying to be aware of what's going on in that.
[00:30:13] Abhishek: And remind me, did you say that it's already up or is it upcoming?
[00:30:23] Jedidiah: They currently have an AI tutor available in Canvas as part of the next tier.
[00:30:33] Abhishek: the next tier, which we.
[00:30:34] Jedidiah: is the top level tier, which we currently don't subscribe to.
[00:30:41] Jedidiah: So it would have to be an outside tool if we go that direction.
[00:30:46] Jedidiah: But like I mentioned before, that's not a decision that I would be able to make or would want to make on my own.
[00:30:53] Abhishek: Okay.
[00:30:51] Jedidiah: I really want it, if we do move in that direction, I would want it to be something that faculty can get behind.
[00:31:00] Abhishek: Yeah. From my reading of the recent articles, that is also one of the topics that is currently under a lot of discussion.
[00:31:10] Abhishek: People, there is a section of people that are really impressed by what it does, but also there is another group of people, like faculty colleagues and educators, who don't really appreciate the AI tutoring because it is a barrier for the human-human connection.
[00:31:28] Jedidiah: Sure, sure. Yeah.
[00:31:30] Abhishek: So that there is, there is a downside
[00:31:33] Jedidiah: Yes, yeah.
[00:31:34] Abhishek: to it as well.
[00:31:36] Abhishek: Before we close, Jedidiah, what's on your mind these days, in life,
[00:31:44] Jedidiah: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:31:45] Abhishek: in your work
[00:31:44] Jedidiah: Sure.
[00:31:47] Abhishek: whatever you want to share? What are you working on or what are you looking forward to in the next year?
[00:31:52] Jedidiah: So the space that we're currently in is the Humanities Lab, and we have a newly minted Humanities center. And so I am excited about, over this next year, seeing what kinds of projects faculty create and use this space to do.
[00:32:17] Jedidiah: So to that end, I've worked to organize a collaborative support, support group, for faculty who want to do things in the in the Humanities lab, and that is comprised of Becky Frank, Angela Vanden Elzen, and Colette Brautigam from the library and myself to support faculty and help them realize their project ideas through the Humanities lab.
[00:32:48] Abhishek: And I should also mention, just to add to what Jedidiah was saying, it's a very cool space.
[00:32:55] Jedidiah: Well, thank you.
[00:32:57] Abhishek: So if you are here on campus, you should, you should check it out, if you have access, of course.
[00:33:04] Abhishek: All right, Jedidiah, thank you so much for stepping into the booth with me for this episode and for sharing your expertise.
[00:33:13] Abhishek: I should also mention to our listeners that Jedidiah is also part of the podcast team, and he has been immensely helpful in launching this initiative. So many, many thanks to you and.
[00:33:27] Jedidiah: And thank you, Abhishek, for including me. I'm so excited about your vision for this and want to help see that realized in any way that I can. So, thank you.
[00:33:37] Abhishek: Thank you so much, Jedidiah.
[00:33:39] Abhishek: To our listeners, thank you for tuning into Minding Machines. Full show notes, resources mentioned in this episode, and a complete written transcript are available on our podcast page.
[00:33:50] Abhishek: If you have an idea for a future topic, a question you would like us to explore, or if you have suggestions for guests, whether they're educator, colleagues, or even students, please reach out through our feedback form linked in the show notes.
[00:34:04] Abhishek: Until next time, stay curious and keep prompting thoughtful questions.
[00:34:10] Abhishek: Minding Machines is an independent podcast produced at Lawrence University. The views expressed are those of the participants and do not represent the university. This podcast is also separate from my teaching and research roles at Lawrence.
[00:34:22] Abhishek: Thank you so much.