Nov 22, 2024, 12pm EST

Tufts AI Literacy Forums Fall 2024

• Has Perplexity become a secret friend you love to pester? Does ChatGPT feel like an evil robot overlord you’re not sure you can trust?
  
• Are you curious about how others at Tufts are using AI? Do you ever wonder if you’re the only one with mixed feelings about it?

Over the past two years, generative AI tools have found their way into the spaces where we learn, teach, and work. This series creates an opportunity to discuss the ethical and effective uses of AI and how we can define AI literacy in a way that supports our shared values.

Join a forum where students, faculty, and staff come together to discuss how generative AI is shaping life at Tufts—both inside and outside the classroom.

Online forum: Thursday, November 21, 2024, 12-1:30 p.m. via Zoom

In-person forum: Friday, November 22, 12-2 p.m. on the Medford/Somerville campus (with a lunch buffet)

Campus: Medford/Somerville campus
Open to Public: Yes
Primary Audience(s): Faculty, Postdoctoral Fellows, Staff, Students (Graduate), Students (Postdoctoral), Students (Undergraduate)
Event Type: Conference/Panel Event/Symposium, Lecture/Presentation/Seminar/Talk
Subject: Education
Event Sponsor Details: Tufts University
Event Contact Name: Carie Noel Cardamone
Event Contact Email: Carie.Cardamone@tufts.edu
Event Contact Phone: 6176270562
RSVP Information: forms.gle…
More info: forms.gle…

Cliff Sanders is Projects Manager for the Online Group, part of the University of Ulster's department of External Affairs. His duties include advising client departments on corporate Internet strategy and the overall development of the institution's web presence. Cliff began his employment career as a land surveyor and became increasingly involved in the use of IT for survey processing in the late 1980s. To further this interest, Cliff enrolled on the University of Ulster's BSc Hons Computing Science degree and graduated in 1998. On graduation, Cliff joined the Online Group and was promoted to his current position of Projects manager in June 2000.

Details of the dates of the parallel sessions were released. [2005-04-17]

Further information on travel details is now available.

The slides used in the "Lies, Damn Lies and Web Statistics", "WHS WEB S IT NEWY? - Including Mobile Phone Users in the Loop" and "How to Find a Needle in the Haystack" parallel sessions and the report from the South East regional group on CMSs are now available. [2005-07-13]

The slides used in the 'Democratising the Web: The Revenge of The Non-techie' and 'Inter-institutional Authorisation using Shibboleth: Myths, Lies and the Truth' parallel sessions and the report from the North West regional group meeting on CMS challenges are now available. [2005-07-15]

An audio recording in MP3 format of Stephen Emmott's talk on "Customers, Suppliers, and the Need for Partnerships" is now available. The accompanying PowerPoint file is also available, so that it should be possible to both listen to the talk and view the slides at the same time. It is left as an exercise to any motivated SMIL developer to create a SMIL presentation which automatically links the sound with the slides. [2005-07-18]

With the ever-increasing quality of third-party tools lowering the barriers for enthusiasts to provide Web-based services for their teams and departments, what's the point in having an insitutional Web development team? Can they provide anything that someone with the time, motivation and a decent tool can't? Should Web Services just be innovating on top of these services (and if so, how?), or should they be disbanded in favour of outsourcing? A short introductory presentation will be followed by a roundtable discussion with sweets on offer to keep our energy up! The session was facilitated by Phil Wilson and Tom Natt, University of Bath.

Web content is increasingly produced by authors without extensive web design skills - whether by staff using CMSs, VLEs and courseware or by students publishing their coursework online. The challenge of making sure this content is as accessible as possible becomes much more significant, and inevitably a burden on the individual or institution. The quality of the authoring tool in supporting accessible content creation becomes critical - however support for the W3C's Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) by authoring tool vendors seems to be seen as a specific (and usually low priority) customer request rather than a fundamental quality of the tool. For institutions considering selecting a VLE, CMS or other tool that supports web content publication, how can they best express accessibility requirements so that the tool takes its share of responsibility for accessible output? And if existing tools fall short of ATAG conformance, how can the effect of this on the accessibility of content best be managed? The session was facilitated by David Sloan, University of Dundee.

Matt Thrower, UKOLN, University of Bath will talk about UKOLN's Web site redesign and the problems involved. Come along and discuss how we solved these and other problems and what lessons could be learned for your institution.

Helen Sargan, University of Cambridge will show that there are several realistic alternatives to using a slide presentation tool such as Powerpoint or similar. she'll give an overview and demo of several Web-based alternatives with the pros and cons of using them, a profile of the constituencies who would benefit, and what skills and support they might need to succeed.

Stuart Smith, MIMAS considers that we live in a time in which a plethora of portable computing devices are available such as mobile phones, handheld computers, gaming devices and movie and music players. These devices offer powerful computing power, often on a par with desktop computers of only a few years ago. Additionally, they are increasingly have wireless connectivity to the Internet. These devices are in wide spread usage and are considered affordable by many students and academics. The array of portable computing power can be bewildering this session will look at options available and how they might used by institutions to increase the learning value for students.

Andrew Cormack, Richard Dunning and Andy Powell, Eduserv will investigate the relationships between institutional single sign-on, Athens, Shibboleth, the UK Access Management Federation and more recent developments like OpenID and CardSpace and will give participants an opportunity to ask questions of a panel of experts from the community.

A sponsors page containing details of the sponsorship packages available has now been set up. Interested parties should contact the organisers. [2006-08-24]

Information on the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 social events, the workshop dinner and a drinks reception at the National Railway Museum, are now available. [2007-03-26]

Alison Wildish has written a guest blog post for Brian Kelly's "UK Web Focus: Reflections On The Web" blog [2007-06-01]

Paul Boag has written a guest blog post for "Brian Kelly's UK Web Focus: Reflections On The Web" blog [2007-06-04]

Delegate information on venue, registration, travel, accommodation and other aspects of the workshop is now available. [2007-06-22]

Please note that registered delegates will receive a delegate bag when they register, provided courtesey of Interwoven, one of the event sponsors. [2007-06-22]

A photograph of the bag which will be provided to IWMW 2007 delegates is now available. [2007-07-12]

Brenda Lowndes, University of Liverpool, gave a talk entitled "WWW / Database Integration".

With the introduction of variable fees Universities have entered what education secretary Ruth Kelly called "a new era". Financial departments have had to find more creative ways to meet the sector's growing competitive demands and those working within universities have had to take a more business-like, customer-focused approach to many aspects of their work as they compete for students.

Paul Boag, from Headscape, considers how social participation is the cornerstone of the web 2.0 movement and has been spearheaded by sites such as digg.com. One of the underlying principles of these sites is that peer to peer recommendations carry more weight than those from either a search engine or from corporate advertising. The commercial sector has been quick to adopt this peer review mechanism with customer reviews and ratings. This talk proposes to explore how social participation can be applied to the process of recruiting new students and what lessons can be learnt from the approach adopted by the commercial sector. We will also look at what institutional barriers exist that prevent this approach and how these can be overcome.

Alison Wildish, Head of Web Services, Edge Hill University will talk about how Students are asking each other for help and advice rather than coming direct to our staff. These same students are advising our applicant community about University life and they're all doing it in an "informal" environment. These are all positive developments but it does mean we start to ask the question... if we're moving towards developing and nurturing students in these online communities and empowering them to help themselves, will we still need a "corporate" Web site in the future? Furthermore with the increase in "free" tools available such as email, file storage, blogs etc. - will Institutional systems be a thing of the past?

Chris Young, Netskills, University of Newcastle and Paul Trueman, Netskills, University of Newcastle will be looking at accreditation systems. You may be new to a Web-role or you may be more experienced, with a set of useful skills. Either way, increasingly there is a need for recognised individual development and accreditation in order to progress in within your organisation and with your own career.

Debbie Nicholson, Web Support Officer, University of Essex will show how putting quality measures in place can prevent getting a brief for a Web design job that reads "not blue, a bit random, and not too Scottish". Don't laugh, this actually happened! This hands on session will get participants thinking about how they can introduce quality assurance procedures within the web design process. It will cover establishing a 'quality loop', creating measurable standards and will introduce ways to enable clients to be better informed about what they want from their new Web site.

Rob Bristow, Information Services Manager, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol and Mark Lydon, i2a Consulting will look at Access Grid Node (AGN), an exciting area of development in communication within the academic, research and commercial worlds. Using open standards to transmit video and audio using IP Multicast networking, it is a type of video collaboration that allows a rich and immediate means of communicating with remote sites, while also being able to share presentations, data, complex visualizations and video. AGN is a technology that scales; from a single user node running with a Webcam on a laptop, up to a lecture theatre with multiple cameras and projectors. It also scales from one-to-one conversations to multi-site meetings, seminars and conferences.

Derrick McClure is a Senior Lecturer in the English School of Language & Literature at the University of Aberdeen. Derrick gave the opening address.

In previous IWMWs sessions have focussed on issues such as: Should we buy or build our CMS? Which CMS should we implement? How do we implement our CMS? How can we measure the impact of our CMS Implementation? And how do we address The CMS Challenge? But last year it was claimed that "There is no such thing as a silver bullet" and that a CMS will not solve all your problems. Has the CMS bubble bust? Has content management become content mis-management? In the light of new approaches, such as Web 2.0, and new 'ways of doing things' is there a feeling of disillusionment with 'ye old CMS'? Or does a CMS remain the backbone of a good institutional Web site? In this debate you will hear the arguments for and against content management systems and will have an opportunity to express your views.

Kate Forbes-Pitt, Systems Manager, Web Services, London School of Economics will talk about aims aims to problematise the document, asking the following questions: what is a document? How does it impart information to its reader? Can it be replicated on screen? It proposes answers using the arguments of Hughes and King (1993) who contend that the document is a layered social artifact that exists to 'wrap' content. This 'wrapping' provides the reader with the knowledge they need in order to apply social rules to their reading of the document, and so become able to interpret its content. Some information systems writers argue that the need for social knowledge in a task negates the possibility of its automation. Following the logic of this argument, delivering a document (a container of rule) through the existing set of social rules that govern Web interaction, means that the full function of the electronically reproduced document becomes masked or confused. At best this makes the role of the document superfluous to its content, making the content difficult to interpret. At worst it makes the content incomprehensible to the user. This raises a further question: what purpose is served by reproducing documents online? Following from the above arguments, it is possible to argue that 'pure' content, rather than the imitation of printed paper, is likely to be a more successful way of imparting information through the Web.

Universities undertake research through a mesh of partnerships, collaborations and contractual relationships. Major research funding bodies, such as government departments, are increasingly encouraging their contractors to adopt formal quality assurance standards - such as ISO 9001:2000. If you haven't come across this already, you are likely to see it very soon! In this talk John Gilbey, Institute QA Manager, IGER discussed the impact of quality standards on the way Web resources - internal and external - are defined, delivered, managed and reviewed in academic environments. An over-view of the quality requirement is presented, along with some pragmatic suggestions to help you deal with it.

Michael Webb, IT and Media Services Head, University of Wales, Newport gave a talk about how Web 2.0 technologies are changing the way our staff and students (potential, current and past) relate to one another and our Universities. Embracing these technologies provides a great opportunity to enhance the University experience, but also presents a number of risks and challenges. So how do Universities develop a strategic approach to embracing Web 2.0?

IWMW 12: Institutional Web Management 2008: The Great Debate, held at the University of Aberdeen on 22-24 July 2008