9:30 - 9:50AM

Welcome and Introduction

9:50 - 10:50AM

Panel 

AI in Action: Using AI in Higher Education Assessment & Pedagogy

Panelists:

Chadd Engel, Sr. Outcomes Assessment Coordinator, Waubonsee Community College and Teaching Fellow, DePaul University

Mike Perkins, Head of the Centre for Research & Innovation, British University of Vietnam

Joseph Reilly, Assistant Teaching Professor, MPS in Analytics, Northeastern University

Margaret Schedel, Professor of Music and core faculty of the Institute of Advanced Computational Science, Stony Brook University

Daniel Serig, Assistant Teaching Professor, Graduate School of Education, Northeastern University

Kick off the NEean Dialogues with a forward-looking panel on how AI is reshaping assessment and pedagogy in higher education.  Panelists will explore real-world applications of AI in rubric creation, grading, and assessment design, as well as the ethical, equity, and institutional challenges that come with adoption.  The session will also address how faculty and institutions can build readiness and confidence in using AI responsibly.  Whether you're just beginning or already integrating AI, this session offers practical insights and inspiration for the path ahead.

10:50 - 11:20AM

Q&A Session with the Panelists

11:20 - 11:35AM

Break

11:35AM - 12:35PM

Concurrent Workshops

Controlling AI in Instruction - A Toolkit for Establishing an Entry Point for AI Integration

Presented by: Steve Covello, Sr. Instructional Designer/Sr. Adjunct Online Faculty, University of New Hampshire

The current landscape of AI innovations can be overwhelming: AI tools are evolving every day and use cases in education are rapidly accumulating. Faculty need an easy entry point for making decisions about the use of AI - even if the answer is not to use it. This session begins with a heuristic method designed to guide faculty and their instructional design partners in conversations about the use of AI at the root level - in assignments and activities. A model for AI-infused activity design is presented, followed by a peer-reviewed resource for articulating the "rules of the road" for students for the use of AI in the course. Field-based examples will be shown along with student feedback. The workshop will include participants offering a case example to openly try out the toolkit. The toolkit is available as an OER e-book.

Ethical AI Integration in Higher Education Pedagogy

Presented by: Daniel Serig, Assistant Teaching Professor, Graduate School of Education, Northeastern University

This session explores the critical intersection of artificial intelligence and educational ethics. This interactive session addresses the challenges and opportunities presented by AI in teaching and assessment at the doctoral level. Participants will engage in discussions and activities centered around four key areas: establishing guidelines for appropriate AI use, addressing equity and access issues, developing AI literacy, and balancing AI efficiency with academic integrity. Drawing from real-world experiences and current research, the session will provide a collaborative space for educators to critically examine the ethical implications of AI integration in higher education. Through guided discussions, small group activities, and case study analyses, participants will develop strategies for responsible AI implementation in their institutions. Attendees will leave with actionable insights and a framework for ethical AI integration that can be adapted to their specific institutional contexts.

12:40 - 1:20PM

Lunch Break

1:20 - 2:20PM

Concurrent Workshops

AI as Discussion Evaluator: Assessing Ethical Reasoning in the Classroom

Presented by: Balazs Szelenyi, Associate Teaching Professor and Director of Faculty at NU Global, Northeastern University

This workshop explores how AI can be used to assess student discussions and video reflections, particularly in courses dealing with ethics and philosophy. Drawing on the Breakout Learning model and the classic “Trolley Dilemma,” we examine how AI evaluates participation, reasoning, and relevance in real-time discussions. We’ll also look at how tools like ChatGPT and YouTube summarizers can support assessment of student reflections, and how faculty can adapt assignment design in response. The session raises key questions about reliability, equity, and the evolving role of AI in assessment.

Using Generative AI for Institutional and Program Assessment

Presented by: Craig Pepin, Professor and David F. Finney Chair for the Future of Professional Education, Champlain College and Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin, Professor, College of Education, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Institutional assessment can be time consuming and complex particularly with respect to analyzing student work (e.g., essays, project reports, and presentations) and connecting them back to learning outcomes. Generative AI offers exciting new possibilities for analyzing student work as part of the institutional and program level assessment process. This workshop will present an example of how Champlain College is starting to use one LLM (from Anthropic) to generate evidence about student progress on our College Competencies (institutional learning outcomes). Through this example, we will examine how to implement such systems, how to engineer prompts and assessment parameters in an LLM environment, and many of the legal and ethical considerations to take into account, including FERPA.

2:30 - 3:00PM

Networking and Closing