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Call for Participation: ASIS&T Workshop on Generative AI and the Future of Information Science Education

Join us for the interactive workshop, "Generative AI and the Future of Information Science Education" at ASIS&T 2024 in Calgary on October 26, 2024! Deadline for expression of interest is August 1, 2024. The workshop will be hosted by Bryce Newell, University of Oregon, and  Nicholas Proferes, Arizona State University.

Background
The educational enterprise is entering a new chapter. Universities are partnering with artificial intelligence (AI) companies such as OpenAI (e.g., https://ai.asu.edu/openAI) and trying to navigate the role this technology will play in the future of higher ed. There are significant practical and ethical questions facing educators, including how and whether to integrate these tools into their pedagogical practices; how to prepare students to work with or alongside AI; and how to prepare students to confront the ethical, legal, and social questions that follow the ubiquity of generative AI within educational and professional contexts. Some of these questions are not new to information science educators, who have been at the forefront of training students to think about the roles and impact of technology and information in contemporary life, and the triadic relationships between information, technology, and people that define the information sciences. In many ways, information scientists are perhaps the most well equipped to deal with fundamental questions about information ontology and its intersections with authority, power, and technical systems.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together scholars who are confronting the question of what it means to be an information scientist and educator in the zeitgeist of generative AI and to explore and examine the (potential) futures of information science education. It will be highly interactive, involving all the participants in active forms of brainstorming and collaboration to imagine and conceptualize possible futures and to grapple with how faculty instructors ought to respond to, or even build, these futures to improve information science education in the years to come.

The workshop format will be based on an interactive Futures Workshop model (Kensing and Madsen, 1991; Lauttamäki, 2014). This workshop model is specifically useful "when seeking answers to practical questions (e.g. future of an industry) and devising action plans for achieving desired future at a one-day workshop" (Lauttamäki, 2014, p. 2). Through this interactive format, the workshop seeks to build a network of information science scholars confronting issues around AI and education at their own institutions, and to provide a space for researchers who have early projects on understanding AI's impact on teaching and research to share their work and findings. We aim to provide an opportunity for participants to refine their work, build collaborative relationships with one another, and explore the possible futures for AI and information science in academe.

Call for Participants and Attendance: Pre-Requisites
We invite participants to join us for a full-day workshop that seeks to bring together researchers who are seeking to understand the role of AI, broadly construed, in the context of information science education, the threats and opportunities it poses, and how effective policies, approaches, and responses might be crafted to address them. We ask interested participants to submit a 500-word statement of interest to bcnewell@uoregon.edu and nicholas.proferes@asu.edu.

The statement of interest should explain the author's interest in the issues relevant to the workshop (that is, why are you interested in participating?), and also may describe or propose any of the following (not an exclusive list) for potential discussion at the workshop:

  • A short narrative vignette that highlights the AI-related issues you are interested in;
  • A potential empirical study of the impact of AI technology in an educational context;
  • A conceptual exploration of different possible futures for AI-enabled education;
  • An analysis of how AI tools may change how we teach information science related subjects or methods;
  •  An exploration of the ethical, environmental, regulatory, or justice related problems generative AI raises in the higher education context;
  • Digital divides in the use of AI technology in information science education; or
  • Critical and/or political-economic analysis of AI technologies or the practices that surround them in the context of information science education.

We are specifically seeking early work that may benefit from feedback from other researchers who are confronting the adoption of AI in information science and how it is changing practices.

Participants are not bounded by a specific methodological approach, nor publication type. Creative projects are welcome. We anticipate accepting no more than 25 participants for the workshop to maintain the appropriate interactivity envisioned in the Futures Workshop model.

Workshop Structure

9:00 – 9:30 AM   Workshop Welcome and Overview
9:30 – 11:00 AM  Participant Lightning Presentations (~3 minutes each)
11:00 – 11:15 AM  Coffee Break
11:15 – 12:15 PM  Futures Workshop, Phase 1: Critique
12:15 – 1:15 PM    Lunch Break
1:15 – 2:15 PM     Futures Workshop, Phase 2: Fantasy/Imagination
2:15 – 3:15 PM    Futures Workshop, Phase 3: Implementation
3:15 – 3:30 PM   Coffee Break
3:30 – 4:30 PM   Planning, Writing, and Collaboration
4:30 – 5:00 PM   Summary and Discussion of Next Steps

About the Workshop Facilitators
Bryce Newell (PhD, Information Science, Washington) is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon and serves on a faculty committee organized by the UO Provost's Office to inform UO leadership about the impacts of AI on Teaching at UO.

Nicholas Proferes (PhD, Information Studies, UW-Milwaukee) is an Associate Professor at the Arizona State University and serves on a faculty task force designed to inform ASU leadership on issues related to its development of AI literacy in university-wide curriculum.

References
Kensing, F., & K.H. Madsen. (1991). Generating Visions: Future Workshops and Metaphorical Design. In J. Greenbaum & M. Kyng (Eds.), Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems (pp. 155–168). Hillsdale N.J.: Erlbaum.

Lauttamäki, V. (2014). Practical Guide for Facilitating a Futures Workshop. Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku.

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