D-E’s Profile of a Teacher states that “We continue to grow as professionals, deepening our knowledge and improving our practice at a pace consistent with our changing world.” To this end, in February D-E faculty and staff participated in a Professional Development Day focused on Artificial Intelligence in Education as the use of AI is only gaining momentum in our daily lives.

Topics of the PD sessions, facilitated by Chief Innovation Officer Diana Gross and the Technology Department, included a beginner’s guide to AI, thesis-writing with AI, combating deep fakes, and more.

Faculty and staff who already use AI in their classrooms and/or could provide assignment-specific guidance and guardrails led the majority of these sessions. But the conversations on AI in Education didn’t end there. As Ms. Gross noted, “Professional development can never effectively be a one-anddone experience because real learning takes time to reflect, re-engage, and apply. AI has only furthered this reality. Every sector is being advised to upskill their employees: education is no different.” Immediately following the PD Day, the Technology Department elicited feedback from teachers to design customized, crossdivisional workshops in the spring, driven by faculty interest. These workshops— on topics such as using AI to help teachers with daily work, identifying student use of AI, data privacy, and working with Flint K12 (a D-Eapproved multi-subject personalized learning tool)—were planned and led by Bill Campbell P ’21, Associate Director of Technology for Academics, with assistance from Ms. Gross and Systems Administrator Chris Fleischl.

The peer-led and participant-driven approach was inspired by Mr. Campbell’s work with Adrian Segar, a professional event planner who founded the annual edACCESS technology peer conference in 1992. Mr. Campbell attended the second edACCESS conference in 1993, resulting in his being a Steering Committee member for 15 years and serving as its Conference Coordinator for two years.

“I’m one of a few people [at D-E] whose work is focused on the adults in the school… to empower them… and to ensure they are well equipped to apply these lessons to improve student learning,” said Mr. Campbell, who has developed customized workshop events at D-E for seven years. In this time, he’s discovered that faculty want their choice in PD opportunities. Mr. Campbell said he’s found small group settings to be most beneficial for these workshops, and faculty have indicated they appreciate the hands-on approach that smaller groups provide. To maximize efficiency, workshop leaders are provided a roster in advance so they know which colleagues will be in the workshop. For workshops he leads, Mr. Campbell often asks attendees in advance what discipline they teach, what topics they’re interested in, and what questions they have going into a session in order to optimize the attendee experience. For the events he coordinates, he encourages other workshop leaders who are usually faculty or technology department staff to do the same. In addition, these tend not to be slide-heavy presentations, as “people want to see examples in action,” said Mr. Campbell.