This conversation session will describe a series of interactive data dashboards that make it easy to see the extent to which equity gaps exist at the course, program, or campus level. Data visualizations were used to plot potential gaps over time and come with a variety of pre-defined equity comparisons, including several with an intersectional focus. The dashboards were made available widely to faculty and administrators and have helped to start conversations about how to address the gaps. Insights gained from the dashboards have been used by faculty in efforts to redesign their courses, and instructional designers have been consulting the dashboards as well as they assist faculty in identifying and addressing equity gaps. Ultimately the goal is to facilitate the design of inclusive pedagogy informed by timely data.

Scott Heil, Assistant Vice Chancellor, Institutional Research, University of California, Riverside

All around us we see amazing and unbelievable applications of Artificial Intelligence from identifying a better operating procedure, in real time, for a doctor while he/she has a scalpel in hand ready to begin an operation, to making a famous movie actor look 20 years younger, to showing us what famous people like Genghis Khan, or Cleopatra really looked like. While there are fears that AI will students to cheat and allow scholars to use AI to do their research and write their books, AI has also proven it is smart enough to help in detecting instances of plagiarism or academic dishonesty by comparing both students and faculty work against a vast database of existing sources. It is smart enough, however, to pass a law bar exam and score an “A” average on a semester at Harvard. Perhaps we should ask AI how it can be used to enhance academic assessment at colleges and universities.  When AI was asked that very question, here is a summary of how it replied. First, it states that AI can both enhance and improve higher education academic assessment programs by automating the grading process saving time for instructors and professors, while it can also analyze and evaluate student work to include providing instant feedback to the student and the instructor thus providing the student instant awareness of the student’s work and allowing the student to make immediate corrections in the student’s work and thus mastering it more effectively and quickly. In summation of the capabilities and potential of AI techniques and software will revolutionize academic assessment programs in higher education in all the ways noted above.

E. George Beckwith, Professor, Department of Teacher Education, Sanford College of Education, National University