News & Events
The Teaching & Learning Lab is now accepting applications for the "Critical Thinking & Making with AI" (CTMAI) Faculty 2025 Summer Institute. The institute will take place at the Teaching & Learning Lab in person from August 20 to August 22, 2025.
Open to RISD Faculty. Application deadline: August 15, 5 PM.
Learn more about the CTMAI Summer Institute.
Image credit: Hanna Barakat & Archival Images of AI + AIxDESIGN
The Teaching & Learning Lab was recently awarded a grant by the Davis Educational Foundation to expand its reach and capacity in advancing equitable access to learning and inclusive teaching strategies for RISD faculty and students.
Faculty Workshop Series
Syllabus Swap: Strategies for Inclusive Teaching
The "Syllabus Swap" sessions provide space, time, and tools for reflection on, peer-to-peer review of, and revision of syllabus and course components that center inclusive teaching and learning. The workshops aim to help faculty:
- get access to tools and insights for reflective teaching
- “audit” the accessibility and diversity of course components and materials and identify areas for improvement
- identify strategies and practical steps for inclusive feedback and critique, classroom/studio interactions, and grading and assessment
- review and redesign syllabus statements, course policies, and teaching strategies
Inclusive Critique and Feedback
The "Inclusive Critique and Feedback" discussion-based sessions are open to all faculty interested in sharing insights and experiences on the ways they define and use inclusive critique and feedback methods.
Syllabi and Course Design in the Age of AI
These workshops address different approaches, challenges, possibilities and types of digital labor involved in designing a syllabus in our age of born-digital, machine readable, or machine generated content. AI, seen by many as a major disruptive force in higher education pedagogy, has already triggered a wide range of responses from strong skepticism to excitement. Despite valid concerns and criticism, the emergence of new AI tools is the latest, and clearest, signal of transitioning to a new digital environment for producing course content and, more broadly, types of knowledge that cannot be ignored by teachers. This new condition invites reflection on the function and purpose of what we call a “syllabus” but also presents some new possibilities in designing a course that are worth exploring. What should a syllabus look like? What are its key components? How can we build a machine-readable syllabus? Should we redesign assignments or rethink assessment in light of machine-generated content? How do we account for and communicate the ethical issues and questions of accessibility, labor, time, and workload involved in designing course content both for faculty and students?
