As higher education institutions transition into the AI age, campuses are looking to revolutionize education across multiple disciplines. They aim to empower students and faculty by equipping them with digital fluency, an essential skill in today’s workplace.
The Adobe Education Executive Roundtable series, Creativity and AI: Unlocking Student Success and Preparing Students for the Future, features in-person roundtable events with higher education leaders to discuss the importance of digital fluency and the profound implications generative AI has on post-secondary education and society.
Below, you will find a recap of our recent event in Houston hosted on February 1, 2024.
“We are absolutely not the experts on generative AI, but we know that we need to inspire use and curiosity around the technology. Our faculty feel that vibe and want to engage.” — Melissa Vito, Vice Provost for Academic Innovation, USTA
Key takeaways from the event
Throughout the day, common threads emerged in the speaker presentations and the informal discussions over lunch and breaks. Reflecting on the event, here are the common themes that were discussed throughout the day:
- The rapid advent of generative AI gives higher education institutions a unique opportunity to help students build critical skills as they evaluate outputs and work to harness both the possibilities and limitations of the tools.
- Faculty have the biggest impact on student experience and outcomes, so educators need to implement programs to help them understand generative AI, do hands-on work to create their own stories with the tools, and reimagine assignments to get students engaged. Across the group, there was a consensus that institutions can explore low-lift, high-impact experiential learning practices to help faculty find ways to incorporate the tools into their teaching.
- Institutions can ensure educational equity by making creative and generative AI tools accessible to all students by incorporating digital literacy into core courses. Tools like Adobe Express can offer an accessible, affordable, scalable, and responsible way to put generative AI in the hands of all students.
- Institution leaders should be strategic and thoughtful about implementing generative AI, but they should also approach it with curiosity and a sense of fun.
Setting the stage
The event featured a panel of speakers including academic leaders who covered the following topics:
- Digital fluency and access: best practices to ensure that all students have ethical and equal access to the generative AI creativity tools they need in today's digital-first world.
- Student engagement: how authentic assessment, digital storytelling, and generative AI can foster engagement, connecting faculty and students regardless of location, time, or device.
- Bridging education and industry: role of higher education in building a robust bridge to the professional world — all based on the skills students' future employers are actively seeking.
Opening comments on generative AI
Todd Taylor, Adobe Pedagogical Evangelist and English Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, kicked off the event proceedings by welcoming attendees and conducting an icebreaker to introduce them.
Todd began the event by recapping recent milestones in the development of generative AI, from the appearance of ChatGPT to the release of Adobe Firefly in Adobe Express and Creative Cloud. He encouraged the group to have conversations, work collaboratively, and respond with agility to help students develop the skills to succeed in this new landscape.
Innovative learning and emerging technologies
Professor Michael Griffith, Director of the Innovative Learning Center at Tulane University, kicked off the sessions by acknowledging the growing pains around generative AI. He shared how his team hopes to achieve a balance between what the tools can do and how students can effectively work alongside them by the time this year’s incoming class graduates.
Drilling down to find out more about how a thought was developed and expressed — this is a critical skill universities need to give our students,” Professor Griffith said. “Whatever we do with machine learning, we need to augment human intellect, not replace it.”
At Tulane University, faculty and administrators are creating tactical responses as well as strategic plans in the following areas:
- Pedagogy, or how to approach the use of AI in class and for assignments
- Guidance and policy, especially how to shape policy so it doesn’t immediately become obsolete as AI evolves
- Physical spaces where students can learn to collaborate effectively with generative AI, using it as a partner or interlocutor
Professor Griffith noted that while we might be tempted to ascribe thought to generative AI tools, they simply take questions and use predictive modeling to provide best-guess answers. So, we need to encourage students to think about intentionality and help them understand the origins of the output they get so they can interpret and apply it effectively and appropriately.
Transformation and student success in the age of AI
Next, Melissa Vito, Vice Provost for Academic Innovation at the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA), shared how her team has tackled Generative AI and enabled UTSA to transform the student experience. She said that when it comes to helping students engage and succeed, “We’ve got to get back to the classroom and think about faculty impacts on students.”
Citing a Civitas Learning study showing that students perform better academically when they use Adobe Creative Cloud as part of their coursework, she said, “There’s something magical when we give students different ways to do an assignment. They have agency. They can convey their ideas or research in ways that are meaningful to them.”
In early 2023, she and her team began hosting generative AI webinars for faculty. They created a cross-departmental faculty champions group and an innovation fund. “This was like putting out an APB saying, ‘Generative AI is a big deal, let’s jump in, understand where faculty are, and develop opportunities to learn,’” Vito said.
Melissa attributes USTA’s success to the fact that everyone approaches AI with curiosity and a focus on teaching, learning, and the student experience. So far, generative AI has been embedded in communication, math, and the writing program, and faculty are looking at ways to integrate it into health sciences, business, and other areas.
Preparing students to be creative and collaborative
Kyle Dickson, Professor in the Department of Languages and Literature at Abilene Christine University presented next to share how his team is rethinking creative initiatives at their institution. He shared that the book Creativity, Inc. inspired him to explore new ways to tap into the power of creativity on campus. His efforts led to creativity workshops for faculty and course redesign initiatives. He even collaborated on a film, Assembly Required: Building the Creative Team, which he excerpted for the roundtable audience.
In the film, moviemakers, fashion designers, and others in creative industries discuss the idea that a team is the key unit of innovation. Professor Dickson said that this concept is critical for university leaders and faculty to understand because they are producing graduates who will spend their workdays creating in different capacities.
The creative professionals in the film talk about the importance of listening, improvisation, trust, diversity, and failure. Professor Dickson shared that we need to build spaces on our campuses to foster these values to teach students to create successfully.
Student perspectives on digital storytelling and generative AI
The event concluded with a presentation from Keshawna Fields, who recently received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Occupational Therapy from Winston-Salem State University, the first HBCU to become an Adobe Creative Campus. She shared that in her final semester of coursework, she was asked to create a digital story. While other students focused on straightforward healthcare topics, her professor gave her free reign to do something more personally meaningful: connect an aspect of occupational therapy to a story about being a step-parent.
Keshawna shared a portfolio with the audience of how she paired graphics, animation, sound, and voiceover to create a digital story, ultimately winning her the top prize in the Adobe Digital Edge Awards. As a student, she wasn’t familiar with generative AI tools early on, but as she thought more about them and even used Adobe Firefly to create a social media graphic for a book club, Keshawna shared how she learned to understand the advantages of generative AI with attendees.
We have access to these products and tools that can help you, that can push you a mile further, that can give you that extra boost, that can level you up, that can do all of these things just to make the products you’re creating bigger and better.”
Adobe's commitment to foster Digital Literacy, Access, and Equity
Education thought leaders believe that student success today hinges on becoming critical, ethical, agile, life-long learners of emerging information technologies – and that the best way to do so across every discipline and career path is for students to have access to these tools to enable them to learn by application and creative problem solving – to learn by making and creating solutions to pressing problems.
Adobe has long been on a mission to help institutions ensure student success by increasing student engagement, enabling career readiness, and driving digital transformation for institutional success.
The Adobe Creative Campus program recognizes colleges and universities worldwide that have empowered students in all disciplines with the opportunity to learn essential digital skills to succeed in the classroom and beyond.
What's new with Adobe
Resources
- Learn more about Adobe AI (Sensei & Firefly)
- Get inspired by the amazing projects students are creating across majors.
- Join our Digital Literacy Cafe Webinar series to enhance your digital skills and learn about the power of AI in the classroom.
Let's talk about how you can empower your students and faculty
The changing education landscape and rise of generative AI tools provide institutions with a unique opportunity to reimagine how they teach, operate, and conduct research. By fostering a culture of innovation, higher education institutions can strengthen students' creativity and encourage them to be forward-thinking.
Contact us about your institution's opportunities and needs so we can explore solutions tailored to your vision.