San Francisco State University has engaged the campus with GenAI programming delivered under the theme of “Sensemaking through Community.” Our bottom-up approach has been successful at creating awareness and campus discussion about GenAI while highlighting pockets of effective GenAI uses in the classroom. Led by the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEETL) and Academic Technology (AT), a series of workshops, individual and department consultations, support materials, campus guidance & policy, and a central website were produced last year.
We believe that department-level engagement is key for our campus to building AI literacy and preparedness for ongoing AI discoveries. We also believe that building guidance from the ground-up through our community sense making approach can be a national model for campuses like ours, where budgets are tight and teaching loads are high.
In this study, we propose to do a needs assessment to determine levels of faculty preparedness for GenAI at SF State. Interview data from department chairs will help us build an AI readiness audit tool. One can find many such tools for the technology sector but none exist for higher education yet. This tool would then enable departments and individual faculty to pilot, assess, and identify needs for the use of GenAI tools within their courses and curriculum with a critical and responsible-use lens. The audit tool will provide the scaffolding for a canvas-based course shell, which will be used by faculty participating in teaching squares.
Through the teaching squares, faculty will come together in groups of their choice: departmental, interdisciplinary, or area-focused (such as writing, coding or critical thinking). Teaching squares will also provide a space and structure for faculty to engage in pedagogical exercises, develop student guidance on GenAI, revise curriculum, and investigate discipline impacts and workforce preparation needs for their majors.
Findings from this study will help us create professional development tool kits, ongoing trainings, and workshops as well as an AI-readiness methodology for faculty, departments, and academic organizational structures. It will also help build a critical mass of academic departments on our campus that can harness and benefit from GenAI applications in teaching and learning.
The Logic model provides the project plan, deliverables and short term and long-term outcomes.
AI Teaching Squares Fall 2025
Academic Technology (AT) and the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEETL) invite participation in GenAI teaching squares for fall 2025 that will provide opportunities for small groups of faculty to collaborate in the following activities:
- Reflect on a Self-assessment of AI Readiness
- Seek and Share AI literacy trainings and resources
- Create and share course and curriculum materials
- Reflect on the use of AI in community with colleagues
We would like to meet faculty where they are. We do not suggest that faculty use or not use AI in their teaching and learning. We just ask faculty to take this opportunity to educate themselves, learn in community, and develop well-reasoned and ethical uses of AI in teaching and learning. Thus, we encourage AI-enthusiasts as well as AI-skeptics to join the squares.
All lecturer faculty and tenure/tenured track faculty are eligible to participate in a GenAI teaching square. GenAI teaching square participants receive a $500 stipend for completing the teaching square and meeting expectations.
For more details, go to the Registration Form.
We had an overwhelmingly positive response and have closed the registration for teaching squares. Please email us at ceetl@sfsu.edu if you are still interested. It will help us plan the next round of engagement.
Team
Goals
This study is funded by the California Education Learning Lab through an AI FAST Challenge: Funding for Accelerated Study and Transformation
To remain at the cutting edge of teaching, learning, and workforce development in this age of GenAI, San Francisco State University, a minority-serving institution located in the heart of the AI revolution, will use this AI Fast Challenge grant to facilitate faculty development and academic department readiness, by supporting inter-faculty and inter and intra-department collaborations, leading to the discovery and development of necessary processes, policies, curriculum, pedagogical support, tools, and technical training, with a critical, equitable and ethical lens.
