Teaching and Technology Summit 2025
Thursday, March 20 and Friday, March 21, 2025
8:30 a.m. - Noon (Eastern), both days
Virtual via Zoom
Access tHE SUMMIT Recordings
Hosted by the Division of Online and Strategic Learning.
The Teaching and Technology Summit showcases innovative work in teaching and its intersections with technology. Connect with colleagues and share creative ways to use technology to enhance teaching and learning.
The engaging and informal sessions at the Summit range from quick hits (5 minutes) to deeper dives (20 minutes), meaning you can fit them into your schedule.
All sessions will be recorded and made available for 90 days following the Summit. Chat and Q&A will not be recorded.
Opening Keynote: Jon Ippolito
Thinking or Shrinking? AI and Post-Citation Scholarship
8:30 a.m. Thursday, March 20, 2025
Citing sources has been fundamental to information literacy long before the Internet existed. But what happens to scholarly attribution if the wellspring of knowledge production shifts from the archive to AI? This talk looks at generative AI as a compression format for the Internet, forecasting how scholarship and creative activity could change for faculty and their students if generation replaces discovery. To understand this potential shift, it helps to forego animistic metaphors like a growing child or parrot in favor of mechanistic analogues like a compression algorithm (like JPEG) and thermodynamic system (like a cup of coffee).
This talk explains how mathematical properties that large language models share with these stochastic systems seek an equilibrium that fills in gaps in missing data, enabling LLMs to summarize and even find new correlations in existing knowledge. But compression comes at a cost. When we turn to AI for facts and photos instead of the world at large, we smooth away outliers, noise, or surprises in the name of efficiency. The talk concludes with implications for integrating this compression algorithm for human knowledge into our classrooms, syllabi, and lives.
Jon Ippolito is an artist, writer, and curator who teaches New Media and Digital Curation at the University of Maine. Winner of Tiffany, Lannan, American Foundation, and Thoma awards, Ippolito is co-founder of the Variable Media Network for preserving new media art, UMaine's Digital Curation and Just-in-Time Learning programs, and Learning With AI, a toolkit for educators and students that makes it easy to filter for AI assignments and resources by discipline or purpose. Ippolito has given over 200 presentations, co-authored the books At the Edge of Art and Re-collection: Art, New Media, and Social Memory, and published 80 chapters and articles in periodicals from Artforum to the Washington Post. His AI focus is creators--writers programmers and media makers--and how the technical, aesthetic, and legal ramifications of generative AI empower and frustrate them.
Closing Keynote: Dr. Chin-Sook Pak
The Power of Community-Centered Learning: Building Relationships that Matter
11 a.m. Friday, March 21, 2025
As educators, we find joy when our students engage, thrive, and grow. While many strategies foster engagement and active learning, this presentation highlights the power of relationship-building and community-centered learning. In his Parting Prescription for America, former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy argues that rebuilding community through relationships, service, and purpose is key to cultivating health, happiness, and fulfillment in society. Drawing on over 25 years of collaborative projects with students, instructors, and community partners both on and off-campus, Dr. Pak will share reflections from former students and insights from her learning community—showing the impact building a sense of community has on learning, teaching, productivity, and well-being.
For 25 years, Dr. Chin-Sook Pak has integrated community-based learning into Spanish language, content, and interdisciplinary honors colloquium courses. This work has led to numerous publications, workshops, and collaborations that promote language learning, diversity, intercultural humility, and advocacy for Latinx access to higher education. She is the recipient of the Immersive Learning Outstanding Faculty Award (2024), Outstanding Diversity Advocate Award (2023), Outstanding Teaching Award, the Brian Douglas Hiltunen Faculty Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Scholarship of Engagement (Indiana Campus Compact), and the 2022 AATSP (American Association for Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese) Outstanding Scholarship Publication Award for her article on the long-term effects of service-learning for students of Spanish.
Here’s what previous attendees loved about the Teaching and Technology Summit
“This was a great experience. I have so many ideas to work on over the summer as I improve my courses for the fall.”
“There's a lot of other faculty doing cool things and working hard to create meaningful experiences for our students. I made a bunch of notes on stuff to try or learn more about.”
“I thought it was extremely well organized and I loved how engaging the presenters were. They all did an amazing job with this offering!”
“I liked how short the presentations were and that you could pop in and out. I loved having the resources available for later.”
“The entire event was incredibly well managed, promoted, and executed […] a perfect example of experience design in practice.”
This event is coordinated by the Division of Online and Strategic Learning. Our mission is to serve Ball State students, faculty and staff by pursuing, developing, and implementing best practices in teaching, learning, and student support services. We do this through an adaptive culture of rigorous assessment and evaluation of techniques and approaches that benefit Ball State students both near and far.