UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT), part of Penn State University Libraries, has welcomed five University instructors across three campuses into its Faculty Fellows cohort for 2024-26 and started collaborating on a new collection of projects. Faculty chosen for the Faculty Fellows program team up with TLT on innovative technology projects, with past endeavors spanning a broad spectrum from learning spaces to virtual reality/immersive experiences to data-empowered learning.

The newest Faculty Fellows cohort for 2024-2026 — Samantha Beebe, Kyle Chalupczynski, Andjela Kaur, Mariah Kupfner and Tiffany Petricini — will focus on at least one of the following themes:

• Generative AI in Higher Education — This theme delves into the transformative potential of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize learning environments and enhance student experiences.

• Tech for Togetherness — This theme explores instructional technology’s role to foster student connection and belonging by bridging social gaps through virtual communities and collaborative platforms.

• Digital Fluency: A Sense of Wonder for Curiosity and Creativity — This theme is dedicated to students building the essential skills for tomorrow, empowering them to navigate confidently and be inspired by digital complexities along with sparking curiosity and creativity to prepare students for adaptable and innovative futures.

The fellows will work with a team of TLT staff on their projects, which are influenced by each instructor's discipline and background.

“The Faculty Fellows program is a cornerstone of our commitment to fostering innovation and collaboration, enhancing faculty growth, and advancing our mission to deliver cutting-edge educational experiences within our academic community,” said Crystal Ramsay, senior director of TLT.

The new Faculty Fellows will embark on the following projects:

Andjela Kaur and Samantha Beebe — Adventures in Disability Culture

Andjela Kaur, assistant professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State Lehigh Valley, and Samantha Beebe, associate teaching professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State Lehigh Valley, are using their project to reimagine the way disability culture is taught and experienced in the classroom. By creating a 12-chapter, cutting-edge technology e-book, Kaur and Beebe intend to provide an immersive, multimedia experience. Each chapter of the e-book will offer various pathways, allowing students to explore topics, such as disability poetry or visual arts, in a highly interactive manner.

“While disability culture is a lively and an ever-present phenomenon, teaching and learning of it is often organized in ways that separate the learner from a cultural experience of disability,” Kaur said. To address the problem, the project will prioritize being a “multimedial gateway into the experience of disability culture for those who wish to learn, teach or engage with disability experience through disability art, disability history and disability theory.”

This project not only supports Penn State’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion but also promotes the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) to make learning accessible to a broad audience.

Kyle Chalupczynski — PALS: Personalized AI Learning Simulations

Kyle Chalupczynski, lecturer in management information systems at Penn State Behrend, intends to integrate advanced AI models and custom-built agents in educational settings with a focus on development of communication and reasoning skills. Using collaborative AI platforms, Chalupczynski’s project aims to foster critical-thinking, problem-solving, and iterative design skills among students through hands-on experience in building and refining AI agents. An additional goal is to enhance student learning and personalized support by providing interactive virtual AI tutors and supplemental instruction.

“By equipping students with hands-on experience in working with cutting-edge AI tools and developing their own agents, this project will foster valuable skills in problem-solving, critical thinking and iterative design,” Chalupczynski said. “By preparing students for success in an AI-driven world and equipping them with in-demand skills, this project contributes to the development of a highly skilled workforce that can drive economic growth and innovation.”

The project also includes a comparative aspect to assess the effectiveness of AI tools in improving learning outcomes. The insights gained from this research will contribute to the broader discourse on AI in education and guide future implementations among faculty colleagues.

Mariah Kupfner — Making Virtual Space and Expanding the VR World: 3D Scanning, Virtual Museums and Design Thinking

Mariah Kupfner, assistant professor of American studies and public heritage at Penn State Harrisburg, aims to bring virtual reality (VR) into the humanities classroom. One of the project’s major goals is to get students to think rigorously about embodied space and audience. To accomplish this, students will build sophisticated VR museum spaces and design their own museum exhibitions. The focus is to encourage students to move from consumers to creators of digital content — fostering critical thinking and digital fluency — and become skilled in spatial storytelling that showcases an object’s history and meaning.

This project is “offering students the opportunity to apply their learning in an active, creative capacity,” said Kupfner. “Students will be empowered to build exhibitions in virtual reality, using 3D scans of objects encountered in their own lives. Students will not only construct exhibitions that include images and text, but they will have the tools to design and construct holistic environments. Their virtual museums will not simply house materials but foster experiences.”

The use of virtual reality in the class setting will help increase the availability of museums to a wider audience and students will be encouraged to focus on how to make their VR spaces welcoming to a wide array of audiences.

Tiffany Petricini — Embedding AI Literacy within the Communication Basic Course

Tiffany Petricini, associate teaching professor of communication at Penn State Behrend, is focusing on how best to integrate AI literacy into Penn State’s foundational communication course, CAS 100: Effective Speech. Petricini intends to follow an AI literacy framework to create a series of learning modules that can be easily embedded in all CAS 100 courses by all instructors who choose to do so.

“Instilling student generative AI literacy is an essential objective that Penn State has committed to in the future. Doing so will make students more successful academically, more career ready and more successful in their future careers,” Petricini said. “Doing so early in a course students typically take during their freshman year can provide more meaningful interactions with these tools in their discipline-specific classes.”

Using a scaffolded approach, the project’s focus will be for students to understand basic concepts about AI use, apply knowledge about AI, evaluate and create products using generative AI tools, and articulate ethical concerns related to generative AI tool use, particularly for AI’s role in modern communication.

TLT’s Faculty Fellows are selected biannually around cutting-edge themes of technology in higher education. To learn more about the Faculty Fellows, email tltfellows@psu.edu.