Academic Technology Solutions (ATS) Blog
The latest news on teaching with technology
Promote AI-Discerning Students in the New Academic Year, Pt 4: Demystifying Experiences to Mitigate AI
"...AI mirrors amplify and normalize our biases, reinforce our most polarizing opinions and most aggressive stances, and boost the visibility of our most uninformed "hot takes:' In doing so they reflect back to us images of human civic agency so distorted in their...
Ed Discussion Now Supports an AI Chatbot
With the new optional Bots++ feature, you can now add an AI-powered chatbot to your course in Ed Discussion. This bot can be customized to your specific course materials and approach, helping streamline communication and assistance to your students. The bot currently...
Building Classroom Trust with Technology: Set Clear Expectations with an Evolving Syllabus
In building an atmosphere of trust between instructors and students, it is vital to set clear expectations. Research bears this out: a 2025 survey of students carried out by Inside Higher Ed found that 34% of respondents considered “clear, consistent expectations” to...
Track Attendance in Your Courses with Poll Everywhere!
If you're looking for a seamless way to track class attendance while enhancing student engagement, Poll Everywhere offers robust features specifically designed for higher education environments. We have outlined several strategies you can use with Poll Everywhere to...
Promote AI-Discerning Students in the New Academic Year, Pt 3: Experiment with (and Scrutinize) AI Together
"A computing system that permits the asking of only certain kinds of questions, that accepts only certain kinds of 'data,' and that cannot even in principle be understood by those who rely on it, such a computing system has effectively closed many doors that were open...
Use the New Files Interface in Your Canvas Course Site
Canvas has recently debuted a new interface in the Files section of course sites. This interface is more intuitive and makes it easier for you to carry out commonly used functions when managing your course files. When you click on the Files tab, you will no longer see...
Enhance Student Learning with Poll Everywhere: Faculty Perspectives
Introduction Poll Everywhere has emerged as a versatile tool across classrooms of different disciplines at the University of Chicago. This blog post presents feedback from a group of instructors who shared how they are leveraging this technology to enhance classroom...
Building Classroom Trust with Technology: Connect to Your Students with Video Announcements
Introduction to This Blog Series Few aspects of teaching are as vital to your course’s success as classroom trust. For your students to remain engaged with your subject matter, they need to know that you see them as people and that you’re genuinely invested in their...
Specifications Grading: A Powerful Way to Reflect What Students Learn
Linda Nilson argues that our current grading system is fundamentally broken—it fails to reflect what students actually learn, burdens faculty with time-consuming and subjective decisions, and fuels stress and grade disputes. In Specifications Grading (2014), she...
Promote AI-Discerning Students in the New Academic Year, Pt 2: Start with a Conversation
Faculty Interviewer: “How attractive, as a student, is it if all of these readings you get in a class you could, yourself, just put them into a podcast and listen to a five or ten minute podcast rather than reading the papers?” Undergraduate Student: “Oh, it’s very...
Subscribe by Email
This form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
