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.
Faculty Communities of Practice-Spring 2026
The Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning and Academic Technology invited faculty members to join Communities of Practice this spring 2026 semester.
Topics identified are:
a. Teaching research methods courses in the age of AI
b. Can AI help with instructional tasks?
c. Foundational knowledge about genAI and Critical AI Literacy that all faculty should know for teaching.
Community of Practice (CoP) members will meet weekly and spend 8-10 weeks researching and experimenting on one of the topics listed above. The CoP members will be paid a modest stipend.
By the end of the 10th week, the group will be expected to submit:
1. Written recommendations and best practice suggestions for the courses you teach
2. Examples of experimentations (in and out of class) with self-reflections of what worked, what did not in written or video format.
3. Research articles and readings that influenced the FLC’s work
4. Assignments, lesson plans and instructor reflections to share with colleagues
Use of AI in Research Methods Courses
Anisha Singh, Rick Harvey, Janey Wang, Alexis Martinez, Bob Bierman
Use of AI in Instructional Tasks
Carina Gallo, Ashmi Desai, Baligh Ben Taleb, Eugene Young, Meredith Eliasson, Zhaoshuo Jiang, Yikuan Lee, Scott Siegel
Critical AI Literacy for Faculty
Fatima Alaoui, Aiko Yoshino, Masahiko Minami, Mihaela Mihailova, Rachel Flynn
AI Teaching Squares- Fall 2025
Faculty joined three to five teaching colleagues to form a supportive, non-evaluative “teaching square,” to share AI readiness, teaching practices with AI and learn from each other throughout the engagement period. Based on their goals, Teaching Square members ultimately determined the activities they collectively engaged in to meet them, with an expected minimum engagement of 10 hours each.
Faculty met from October 1 to December 2, 2025 and spent about 10 hours on this activity. They were paid a stipend of $500.
Scaffolding was provided through a Canvas course and a GenAI Readiness Toolkit.
Activities included:
- Engaging in a minimum of 6 hours of activity with your Teaching Square group in whatever ways best meet your goals
- Reflecting on their own teaching practice and professional learning for 4 hours
- Offering support to their group by celebrating successes and sharing course materials, teaching strategies, and approaches with gen AI
- Sharing artifacts and reflections with the Learning Lab team.
- AI Syllabus Policies shared by Faculty in Teaching Squares: This provides examples of approaches taken by faculty with respect to GenAI in the classroom.
Coming Soon
Needs Assessment- Spring 2025
Goal was to engage with academic departments and faculty to build campus AI readiness and understand the needs for our campus.
We interviewed & surveyed 21 chairs and leaders.
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Many faculty have experimented with and educated themselves about AI
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Wide range from enthusiastic to skepticism (general resistance, concerns about how to protect longstanding academic and pedagogical values and student learning loss, critiques of the technology’s limitations and ethical implications)
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Core academic skills, especially writing and critical thinking, are perceived to be important to protect, and most likely to be undermined, by GenAI.
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Pedagogical complexities with lack of time and resources may explain why faculty adoption has been slow.
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Faculty see the need for curricular integration, strategies and tools including teaching with AI to support student workforce readiness
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Curricular integration at SF State has been overshadowed by the need for faculty to respond and adapt to budget and resource issues.
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Mixed reaction to the system-wide purchase of ChatGPT- why now, who asked for this, what’s in it for us?
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Wide range of responses to what are faculty teaching students about AI, where in the curriculum should it take place and what training have faculty taken
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.
