Transcript
Speaker: Hey, welcome everyone to the Getting Stuff Done in Higher Education podcast. I'm Kelvin. I'm with Fritz today. ah Kevin is out of the office, but we are very excited to have Dr. Gloria Niles, Chief Academic Technology Innovation Officer for the University of Hawaii system.
Speaker: Gloria brings expertise in digital learning, neurodivergent learning, and the practical work of turning institutional strategy into meaningful change across a 10 campus system.
Speaker: Her contributions include advancing policies on micro-credentials and the ethical use of artificial intelligence, areas as we know are that are reshaping how higher education prepares and supports learners.
Speaker: In 2025, Gloria became the inaugural recipient of WCET's Russ Poulin Award for Excellence in Digital Learning Policy, recognizing her leadership in connecting innovation, access, and student success.
Speaker: Gloria, welcome. Thank you. Happy to be here. Now we're we're we're really excited. Thank you also for getting up super early because again, you are on Hawaii time. And so it is much earlier there than it is here on um in Texas. And of course, Fritz is in Minnesota. So thanks again for being with us. um Again, before we dive in, congratulations on your WCET award. I was on LinkedIn, I believe, when I saw a post about that. And so, again, it's just a testament to your for many years in digital learning and academic innovation.
Speaker: So again, we're really excited to have you. For our listeners, what we like to do with our particular podcast is really allow each host to i mean each guest to tell us more about their background. We would love to learn more about What led you to your current role? And of course, people who don't know you as well as I do, obviously, you also have had many years in terms of being a vanguard in online learning. So could you let's take a walk together? Sure. of our time with you today. And we'd love to learn again more about like how you got started professionally, those initial roles, and then gradually over time, what led you to your most current role within the University of Hawaii system.
Speaker: Okay. Happy to do that. What most people find interesting is that my first career, i was a doctor of chiropractic. um And so when I graduated with a my chiropractic degree, I began teaching in medical assisting colleges part time.
Speaker: And I also um had a lot of questions about the science of chiropractic care. So I did a postdoctoral program in neurology and became ah a chiropractic neurologist. um But that that part-time teaching in a medical assisting program led to my alma mater, the chiropractic college that I graduated from, asking me to teach neuro neuroanatomy and neurophysiology for a summer because they had ah a neuroscience PhD faculty member who left. But chiropractic students tend to go to school year round. They're on the quarter system and the summer quarter is just like the fall
Speaker: winter or spring. So they needed somebody right away to teach neuroanatomy and physiology. And I thought, well, that teaching that for the summer would be a great way to prepare for my neuro boards that were coming up.
Speaker: But that summer of teaching in chiropractic colleges, teaching neuro sciences, turned into about a 10 year teaching career as a full time faculty member at that particular institution. And that led into administrative roles. So I was in California where I was born and raised at the time when I did that 10 year stint in teaching neurosciences.
Speaker: But moving into ah academia in chiropractic colleges moved me around to several different chiropractic colleges across the country, first in Iowa and then to open a branch campus in Chicago.
Speaker: Central Florida, where I spent another decade. But during that decade, I went there to open this branch campus of a chiropractic college as ah the dean of academic affairs and the interim senior campus administrator and found that my career was getting very ah administrative and less in the education part of education and that I had resigned myself that I was and I was pursuing a career in education and probably should get additional degrees in education. So I did a master's in education. This was when I was still in California and Cal State Hayward at the time, now Cal State East Bay, offered a
Speaker: a master's degree in education that was in online learning, which this was the late 90s. So that that was
Speaker: innovative at the time. And I said, oh, well, this is this is an interesting master's program. I can still work full-time, be a a full-time parent and be a full-time student and pursue a master's degree. And this seems like where education may be going.
Speaker: um And so it was pretty much the early stages of an instructional design um program. So I completed that program, but i during the two, two and a half years that I was in that master's program, I went from living very close to Cal State East Bay, passing by the campus on on the highway on my way to work every day and and thinking to myself, like, hmm, I'm doing a degree program at that university, but i never actually go there.
Speaker: But my administrative career took me from California to Iowa to Florida while I was still in that same program and never missed a beat. um So that really um planted the seed of what the possibilities of online education could do for students. So I had the the master's degree in in online learning as I was doing administrative roles in chiropractic colleges.
Speaker: And after I completed that master's program, i I really felt like I wanted to explore education more. So I went into pre-K-12, P-12 teaching.
Speaker: um And with my neurology background, as I was pursuing acquiring a teaching credential to do that,
Speaker: ah As I was interviewing in K-12 schools, of course, they said, you you your background in neuro, you really should teach in special education and specifically students with autism.
Speaker: So that led to another 10 years in K-12 of teaching mostly and designing um programs for specifically for students with autism.
Speaker: um but While I was in K-12, I knew that I would eventually come back to higher ed. So i while my doctor of chiropractic degree and postdoctoral certifications in neurology were fine for teaching in chiropractic colleges, I wanted to expand that. So I did a PhD in education while I was in the K-12 world.
Speaker: world and Once I finished that, I decided that I wasn't going to just take the first full-time faculty position wherever it was in the country, as as many new newly minted PhD students do. I was going to stay in K-12 until a a position opened up where I was wanted to ride out the rest of my career.
Speaker: And so that led me to Hawaii um to start a special education program. at the University of Hawaii, West Oahu. Three years into that tenureship, they needed a director of distance education at that campus. And so I shifted into that role.
Speaker: And then in 2022, they needed a similar role at the system level across all 10 of our campuses. And I shifted again to overseeing online education at the system level.
Speaker: January 2025, we had a new president of the system come in very much with a strategic initiative around AI. So that got added to my portfolio. And that's how I landed where I am today.
Speaker: Wow. I feel like there's um there's a book that needs to come from you at some point, Gloria. almost It should be called like Gloria to the Rescue, right? Because it seems as if you know those 10-year stints, right? Yeah, decades. Right. Where they're like, hey, Gloria, we we need... a special ed teacher. Hey, Gloria, we need you to, you know, to shift gears and and and do these other things. And so it's yeah's it's great that you were very flexible.
Speaker: Let's go back just a little bit. I'm i'm curious, like, given that you you went to chiropractor school, of course, someone could easily just ask you, so what, um I mean, were you, um um practicing chiropractic like at the same time that you were teaching in the first 10 years?
Speaker: And if not, what drew what drew you more to the teaching side versus the the clinical side of you know of your of your background?
Speaker: Yeah, great question. So when I first graduated, when I was in the postdoctoral program in neurology, I was ah practicing at the time.
Speaker: and teaching part-time at the medical assisting college as I was getting my practice up and running. um And actually, it was the combination of practice, starting a business, ah teaching part-time, and parenting, um because my children were young at the time. And so I i have three children who are all five years apart. And I kept thinking like, I'll go back into clinical practice when this one gets into school, into kindergarten. Then there was another one. And and so after about the second, by the time the third was born, 10 years after the first, i that's when I said, okay, this career really is an education. I don't think I'm going back into clinical practice. But from a clinical side, it was really those questions that I had about chiropractic care and
Speaker: what's actually happening when you do an adjustment or how often, you know, what's the scientific background between how often a patient should come in. All of those types of questions that led me to do the postdoctoral um training in neurology is really what set me on the path into education.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that that's that's that's really great. And, you know, um You and and several of my other colleagues who have struck a balance between family life and then also you know holding down a full-time job, going back to school, i just have such respect for adult learners like you, because I remember when I went to graduate school, that that was the only thing that I had to worry about, right? Like, I mean, I had a ah part-time, you know, teaching initially a TA, and then I did some, I had an RA, I think, at some point as well, but mostly TAs to kind of fund my education. Right.
Speaker: But you know I wasn't juggling all the various things that you were juggling, which is a good thing to kind of for us to highlight in this conversation because obviously, you know as you were holding down a family, again, different priorities, right? And of course, time is shifting.
Speaker: And then you are also, you know you're evolving as well, right? In terms of the things that you that you were interested in. yeah When you were pursuing online learning,
Speaker: back in the 90s, or maybe a better question is, given that you were one of those early students you know in online learning, who then, of course, kind of leveraged that experience to to be an administrator of online learning, How has it changed? You know, what what are some things um that you are maybe noticing about the field, especially about leadership in the field? i think that might be also something listeners would be very interested to know, like, how has that changed, especially now that, you know, online learning is not necessarily the hot guy or hot girl at school anymore, with given that AI is also um more even more top of mind than
Speaker: kind of where we were, for example, with the pandemic and everyone moving toward ra remote instruction. Yeah. Um, how has it changed? i it I think it's changed in that it's evolved with technology. Um, like ah I remember the early days of, uh, you know, setting up programs before lms has had,
Speaker: WYSIWYG and you know I was doing HTML programming just to make things in bold font or format pages. So technology really has evolved to where um you know more faculty can can use an LMS, can set up a course.
Speaker: and can teach online. Of course, we know over the years we've seen across multiple institutions and you know that online classes tend to enroll faster than in-person classes. So there's been a student drive for the modality. But as far as the leadership of online learning, i what I've seen over uber you know a couple of decades now is it's really the people who are from multiple walks of of education, but are forward-looking and really see the potential um of what ah the doors that online learning can open for students who don't have, as you were saying, you're grad, that's all you had to do, where um in other situations where you're trying to fit in and your education into other life responsibilities, not everybody has that luxury of stopping life for a couple of years, you know being on campus. And really, that's the the main focus of my life, like our traditional undergraduates or a traditional grad student. um And so I think it's those people who are really looking at that forward looking, how do we expand access to education?
Speaker: to more people um that tend to find themselves in these types of leadership roles in online learning.
Speaker: Yeah, no, thanks thanks for sharing that as well. I mean, I think you know that that's one of the things that really struck me when I got into online learning for the first time, which was, man, that was what, 2001, working as kind of a project lead for a new online learning program at Northwestern State University. And I had never, had never been an online student before like you, um you know, had used Blackboard in my teaching, because similar to you, you know, to all of us, I think, you know, we've come, we've, we've, we,
Speaker: Gained experience being teachers first and online yeah as well, but for you also having that that student experience. But I just remember that when we advertise the Bachelor of Science program, um there were so many people who were just so thankful. They're like, oh, it would be it's it's great it's great that you're doing this because basically there would be no other way for me to complete this degree, especially in a timely manner, right? Like right being a part-time student, you can do that, but then it takes forever. ever then of course, there's so many other challenges where maybe that one capstone course is only taught once a year. because it's, you know, it's only one that particular faculty member. And oh, by the way, he's on sabbatical. So it's going to maybe even be longer before you graduate. so So I can definitely appreciate what you were saying there about um the importance of online learning back then, as well as now, toward being at times a much better fit for for students and not just adult students. I think
Speaker: you know many of our as we know many of our current undergraduate students are having to work um more and more hours to afford the rising cost of tuition so yeah you know gloria what you were saying about forward thinking leadership it made me think about the your path and then the path of other leaders
Speaker: What I hear did you saying was that you don't have to necessarily be ah domain expert in AI or ai or develop, you know, being a developer, or you don't have to be necessarily a technology expert, you often need um experience in the context. So whether it's teaching or research, and facility using those tools, but then a way to but then the vision and the imagination to see where they could go or what, where they could go in the path of The institutional context, maybe at the institution one is at or beyond. So I wonder if you could talk a little more about that, because I feel like that's an important it's an important concept for early to mid-career people out there who are thinking about how do i keep going in this path? Do I need to become...
Speaker: a developer to to speak with authority about AI? Or do I need to become a cloud expert or whatever? Because I think it's, there is no one path. There's not one answer. Right. right You are an example of a path.
Speaker: And so I'm going to just stop talking and let you respond. Okay. um So, you know, that that's, that's such a good point. um Because when I look back at and people always say, well, how did you get from being a doctor of chiropractic to being in technology. um And
Speaker: i think that the most one of the most critical points there was when I shifted in 2022. I moved from being a in academic affairs,
Speaker: pretty much my entire career to coming into information technology services. And when I started working in information technology services, I always had to preface when I was introducing myself or somebody, I was at an IT t conference and saying that I work in ITS, I prefaced it by saying that I am the resident academic in IT, that I'm bilingual. I speak enough tech speak to be in the room with the tech people and understand what they're talking about, contribute to the conversation. But at the same time, I can give them the perspective of an academic, of what the faculty are asking for or needing. And vice versa, I can be in you know faculty meetings and I can explain the tech
Speaker: you know what the tech people are trying to tell them about what why they can or can't do something. But that's been, you know curiosity really has been the driver of every pivot of my career. you know I was curious about learning more about education. And as I learned more about education, I became more interested in connecting my background in neuro to how the brain develops in learning and the science of teaching and learning and then how that affects young children. And so it, it's just been this curiosity, but also willingness to, to learn and because, you know, there was a huge learning curve when I came into technology, um you know, ah but that lifelong learning that, that you're willing to roll up your sleeves, but also having the confidence, like in an interview to like, you're an academic, why why should we hire you in in ITS? youre
Speaker: The confidence to explain how your background can contribute to um the position that you're interested in or um you know the role that you're seeking and using that forward thinking vision to say, you know my background in you know as a chiropractic neurologist, you know i I'm interested in teaching pre-K special ed students with autism, and this is how it connects. Because, you know, ah the hiring manager or you may not see, probably won't see that connection unless you have the confidence to really make that connection for them.
Speaker: So I'm going to ask a big, what I think is a big question, broad question. So when the three of us were early in our careers and seeing this landscape of online the role of technology teaching online education and related versions of that, it was very much an open, to me, it was, it seemed like ah it was a very open landscape.
Speaker: There were very few people who understood the connection between those things. ah And so when you signaled your interest in doing it,
Speaker: You didn't have to be a domain expert in like, i didn't I didn't say computer science. I was just really good in math as a history major of all things. right So ah found the entree, the the barriers to entry were pretty low.
Speaker: um are the Is it different now? so Because I feel like there's such a focus on Having a very straight line between credentials and professional ah professional landing spot.
Speaker: So whether, you know, I have to have an AI degree to get a job in AI. I mean, there's some things that you have. Like you want to chiropractor, you got to go to college of chiropractic. If you want doctor, you got to go to school. Right.
Speaker: But is there, for the world of online learning, and I suppose, you know, the AI in general is, it applies to lots of fields. ah Is there, so do you still see room where, you see do you see room for a path now, starting now, like the paths that we had then? That's a way of, if that's making sense.
Speaker: Yeah. ah You know, what it makes me think of is what we're, one of the, One of the many issues that we're grappling with in higher ed now, particularly with industry, with skills-based hiring and less emphasis on the credential.
Speaker: The employers are more interested in the skills that you have than they are in what particular credential that you have. um And i I see the same thing um in this situation.
Speaker: Being able to acquire, so and there's lots of ways to acquire skills, you know, to pursue the path that you that you want to go in. I've done many, ah you know, industry certifications to gain the skills in various areas of technology or in AI that I needed to pursue the the next path. It's that, and it's also being in the room, not being afraid to you know, sign up for a particular committee that you feel like maybe I don't have the expertise, but, but being in the room, willing to learn, willing to contribute in ways that you can. And I think it's those opportunities that open the pathways.
Speaker: This is a thing we've heard in other discussions with other guests that there's fearlessness or, um I think that's maybe the best word describe it. Just not being afraid to put yourself for in the room or seeking ways into the room, asking to be in the room, asking someone to be an advocate to get you in the room or get you in that space. So I appreciate you clearly describing that and citing it.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that is a ah great point. And, and of course, it always helps to have supervisors who are willing, right, to allow you to do that, right, professional development opportunities, or someone who, again, doesn't mind you spending a part of your day, you know getting a Google search in in AI, right or prompting skills, or or whatever it is. So that that helps a lot as well.
Speaker: you know We've we've been um but youve been talking about online learning for a bit. maybe we could shift gears a little bit and talk about, I'm very curious about your new role, but I would love to understand your role given maybe the greater context of how ai is impacting your system.
Speaker: um And maybe this part of the conversation would be helpful for all of us because, um again, I love, my family and I love to, when we when we have time, vacation Hawaii.
Speaker: um and But I don't think you and I have actually had like a very good, like a long-term conversation about the culture right of of higher education within that system and and how that might be also shaping your approach right to how you help prepare faculty and staff, students,
Speaker: to use AI effectively. So maybe you could walk us through that what that part of the journey has been like for you personally, but then also for your for your university system too.
Speaker: okay yeah. um So for me personally, um in my role as director of online learning,
Speaker: I was also responsible for all of the academic technology units within ITS. um So in November of 2022, when we all woke up and all of a sudden Chad GPT 3.5 was open to the world, I said, oh, I bet this is going to fall on my plate. We're going to have to figure out what we're going to do with this. And and And so that started the journey into um what i figured would become the next pivot in my career. And also figuring out how, like every other institution in the world, how are we going to address this? you know the The faculty up in arms of, you know,
Speaker: What am I going to do All of the papers that my students submit are going are now going to be generated by AI. And AI wasn't nearly as good as it is now then. um And so we we started I started learning and following AI um and have every day since since then, keeping up with the the tremendous pace of um the advancement out of the technology, but also
Speaker: ah thinking about how ah the institution, how the system was going to respond to that. And so we initially formed ah an AI steering committee that at that time was grappling with the should we have an AI policy itself on AI or should we adapt other policies to incorporate AI? And it was sort of a both and approach that came out. We do have an executive policy on AI now um and we have adapted other policies like student code of conduct to include AI.
Speaker: But from the cultural perspective, that's that's been an important part of the discussion. And and
Speaker: We know that all of our employees, our our staff, our faculty, our administration, and our students needed AI literacy. um But we found that um we needed an AI literacy course that was specific to the context of Hawaii. So we ended up creating our own called AI for Hawaii.
Speaker: That is a 12 chapter course now that um provides basic AI literacy um from a Hawaiian cultural perspective.
Speaker: um The first three chapters are are foundational. The second three are about stewardship or responsibility. um what we call kuleana in Hawaii, but responsibility of AI, your individual responsibility, your responsibility within a community and your responsibility to the environment, which is, you know, a crucial part of Hawaiian culture.
Speaker: And then the, the third set of chapters goes into AI, how AI is impacting education um and then how it,
Speaker: AI is impacting industry, but all done from um the context of the perspective of Hawaiian culture and our unique perspective from the islands.
Speaker: No, that' that's great. Such a valuable investment. um And I'm just wondering, you know obviously, when you when you take on this type of ah a project, right there's balance that you have to strike between or maybe among different stakeholders. right So making sure that different voices within your system are heard.
Speaker: faculty, staff, community leaders, employer partners, perhaps, to help you build out some of that content. and But then also making sure that you're not trapped in a bubble with just rightly their views, right? So also, um I'm imagining you did a lot of research to talk with your peers, or maybe you met some new people from different colleges and universities outside of the University of Hawaii.
Speaker: So ah what what was... what what hads or What was that process like for you to do that research both within, but then also to bring those stakeholders together I mean, to the balance between external voices versus internal voices, how did you grapple with all of that such that the the final product was a coherent way for your system to think about the use um um the use of AI you know as a system?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a great question. So for myself, um, I've been very involved nationally with a lot of organizations around the AI conversation, uh, you know, AAC and you Nash, um, EPSIA, um, WCET. Um, and, and so I've made a lot of connections with, you know people at other institutes, we're all trying to figure this out. Um, so, um,
Speaker: those connections of bringing in the the national perspective. We've also worked very closely with with um the vendors. We have a a good partnership with both Google and Microsoft. um And you we're in conversations always with OpenAI and Anthropic. And so bringing in you know the frontier model perspectives But also, we developed a very close partnership, particularly around ai with our State Workforce Development Council.
Speaker: And we've partnered on a lot of um their AI series. They've partnered on our AI series. And so to that helps us to have access to the broader industry connections through the State Workforce Development Council, as opposed to having to go to each sector individually, which we also do. Our Director of Workforce Development has those connections. But as far as the AI project, it really has been partnering with our State Workforce Development Council, um our vendors, and other institutions.
Speaker: No, that's great. I'm curious, Gloria, how do you, what do you listen to about AI? You know, there's so much, there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of hype, there's a lot of pessimism, a lot of over, over optimism.
Speaker: How do you find the center of all that to get really useful information about, about it from a big scale and also then apply it? Okay. How do I make sense of this to, to implement and help the university of Hawaii system manage this?
Speaker: Yeah. So yeah, I can't tell you the number of sub stacks and podcasts that I subscribe to, but I tend to, I tend to go back to, to the report. There's usually a report that ah causes, you know, the flood of conversation in both directions. um You know, the MIT report has been a ah recent one. um And I go back to,
Speaker: those are the original source of the reports and read the reports and then try to listen, um, or read both sides, you know, both extreme sides, the sides that AI is terrible and the dystopian aspects of it to the, you know, it's going to change the world or it already has changed the world. And, you know we're all going to be left behind if we don't jump jobless and wagon. Yeah. um
Speaker: And then try and, um you know, part of my job is to find space for all of those voices in the conversation within the university, but at the same time, find that balance. um our Our president was recently this week quoted in the New York times where she says, we can't say to ai But we also have to do it responsibly. you know we we have to We have to make spaces for all of the voices, but it's not a ah yes or no.
Speaker: So given what you just said there too about like, we can't say no, how, not to not to put you on the spot to talk about this, but I was just curious, like, have you been hearing any tensions among like, you know, faculty, let's say faculty wanting to go back to blue books, right? That tension between academic freedom, which then is also, you know, maybe also stirred up with a lot of anxiety and and the hand wringing Like how do you how do you tell a faculty member or or suggest to a faculty member that the answer can't be no, it can't be you're just gonna use blue books
Speaker: but also allowing the faculty member to take, to be with you in the car, to drive in a direction that means at least trying AI. Like how do you, how has your system kind of balanced that without, you know, overly stepping too hard on a faculty's claim to academic freedom?
Speaker: Yeah, the academic freedom, it has been it, um a major point in this, you know, we do still have the faculty who are, you know, very tunnel vision on and this is eroding my students, caught you know, their cognitive abilities are just going to shambles and they're never going to know how to critically think. And I said, well, you know, they've come with 12 or 13 years of education and you know their their brains are,
Speaker: able to think already, you know. um But i I tend to approach it um
Speaker: from a a neuroscience perspective. For example, let's use the Blue Book example. When the faculty are saying, you know I'm going back to Blue Books.
Speaker: um I'm going to have ah all of my online students come in and take an in-person exam, and they're going to have to write their essay in a Blue Book. um And i try and offer the perspective that, you know, just as you're concerned about the your students offloading their cognitive functions to an AI, think about the extraneous cognitive load that you're putting onto your students while you're trying to assess the learning the learning outcome of your course, you're asking them to take an example in a format that they probably have never done before.
Speaker: you know How many of our college age students now ever really wrote things in school? you know they were They grew up on keyboards, you know even through K-12.
Speaker: they wrote' They've always typed essays into a computer. um So to write something in longhand, you know i I bring that cognitive load approach back to them and say, you know are you really doing them? Are you really helping them in the way that you think you're helping them? Are you alleviating your own fears of your students use or what you perceive misuse of AI? And then we try and bring it back to the, how do we you revise assessments and look more at process than product?
Speaker: um And we have some ah some tools that we're using and we've incentivized faculty over the summer to revise assignments to be less prone to AI.
Speaker: So that's, yeah, that's been my approach. I suppose that's the big challenge is how do you help students make their way up Bloom's taxonomy without fragile crutches?
Speaker: Yes. Because really, and they get down to it, I mean, this i there was a Scott Galloway clip I saw, no, it was recent podcast where he was talking about his concerns about AI and the formation of knowledge and young learners And i'm I'm with them in that, you know, you, it can make experts better at what they do faster, more efficient, increase the scale, but you can't, you can't cheat or short run or end run that the climb up to expertise. Yeah, that productive struggle.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I feel like at some point, someone's going to somehow squirm their way into medical school using or an advanced degree program or a big high stakes interview using AI and something and they're going to fall flat and it's going to set them back.
Speaker: Yeah. Badly. So i get why the stakes are high for using it as a tool rather than as um a crutch.
Speaker: Yeah. So, but I hear you saying the same kind of thing is, you know, let's figure out a way to utilize it without, you know, how is somebody going where are you going to, if you're an online student in another state, how are you going to go take a blue book test?
Speaker: Right. and Yeah. You know, a lot of those ah testing centers that institutions use, they shuttered. We were talking about this at work a couple of weeks ago. Those are gone and they're expensive, you know, like who's going to pay for that? The university to pay for it, but et cetera. So,
Speaker: I hear what you're saying. And so I appreciate how you're saying it because, um you know, that's it's and it's but it's happening so fast. That's what I think terrifies and frustrates a lot of people. It's happening at a speed that is really hard to adapt to.
Speaker: Yes. Yes. And I think there's a a sense of vulnerability of our our faculty um with the speed, like how do I keep up with AI in my industry?
Speaker: among all the other things that I do as a faculty member. you know um When we're saying that you need to you know our students need to graduate prepared to enter into an AI-powered world, and so you need to integrate that information into your curriculum and into your courses and and teach them how to use AI responsibly, they're like, yeah, how do I do that? and And when do I do that, particularly with the pace?
Speaker: So, you know, as you're thinking about, you know, the work that you're currently doing um in terms of, you not just supporting your system's response to how everyone will use AI more responsibly um to also help further student success. You know, I'm also just curious too, like, um you know, as we're, as we're,
Speaker: talking about all these different things like what what do you see is like the next thing like what what are some things that you think within higher ed in general we need to be doing to um you know to help our students um in the classroom um as they get ready to enter the workforce um technology related but maybe also just like culturally related like you know in terms of change management um what are some recommendations that you would like to like for example if fritz and i were like uh had magic wands and can help you um maybe reimagine higher education in in key ways you know what are some things you would strongly recommend um that we do next
Speaker: One thing it it that comes to mind is really has little to do with technology. And it's part of the conversation that I have with faculty, particularly around this anxiety that we were just discussing of faculty, you know, feeling this pressure to keep up and frustration around how do i how do I do that? you know i I didn't become a subject matter expert with AI in this. and i just I need to teach my students the the fundamentals of this discipline.
Speaker: is And it goes back to the academic integrity question too. um And I really try to stress to faculty that your job really is to facilitate your students becoming curious about the subject matter that you're teaching.
Speaker: Because once they're curious, they will have the intrinsic motivation and they will have their own questions. And when they're curious and they have their own questions and they own the question that they're seeking answers to,
Speaker: it's it's theirs and they don't want to pass it off to AI to do. yeah But if their goal is just, I need to check this off because it's a gen ed requirement, it has nothing in their mind, has nothing to do with what I want to do as a career. I just have to pass this class to move on to the next semester. um Then using AI becomes a stepping stone to their goal.
Speaker: AI, All faculty. Substitute really. Right. Yeah. I said, all you, all you need to do in it and your curiosity or your enthusiasm is not their curiosity.
Speaker: I said, so your, your job is to help them to become curious about the subject matter, um, that, that you're teaching them in that course. And, and once they're curious,
Speaker: they and they see connections to themselves and to their own lives and their communities, they want those answers they want those answers and they own that. They own the question. Yeah, what i really like about how you've stated this is that becoming curious, then AI becomes a lever. It becomes a tool that yeah to to fuel furthering your curiosity. I mean, it's just like,
Speaker: Honestly, it's like how I deal with, I'm no expert in spreadsheets and statistics. It's just, i need I know where I need to go. Like I need to know how much this or that is happening. So I just, you know, I used to crawl through, what was it called? Stack overload. And just, you know, before AI was really showing me answers to coding questions or query questions, I would just find, you know, pieces. And so it becomes a tool rather than and rather than the crutch And a substitute for knowledge becomes a way like, okay, I need to get to this next step and maybe AI helps me because I might use this other program or tool. So i wrote that's that's a that's a key takeaway for me from our conversations today. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah And thank you for being such a great example.
Speaker: of someone who has been curious you know throughout their entire professional life, like always open to new things and exploring various ideas, different types of positions and role you know roles.
Speaker: So you definitely embody that. um so So again, just thank you so much for your time today. We've really enjoyed talking with you. I've enjoyed the conversation as well. Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker: Thank you so much. Yeah, and before we go, um how can people learn more about you and maybe some of the work that you are doing within the University of Hawaii system?
Speaker: um You can follow me on LinkedIn. um that That's definitely one place. um And for the University of Hawaii, we have the hawaii.edu slash one a i is our is our website if you want to follow what we're doing in AI.
Speaker: Great. We'll make sure to include those include those links in our show notes. But again, thanks again, Gloria. Again, it's always a pleasure. Yes, thank you.
