University of Guelph-Humber

A Guelph-Humber professor is tackling the impacts of AI on how postsecondary institutions grade their students.

Dr. Matthew LaGrone, Program Head of Guelph-Humber’s Liberal Studies program, was recently awarded one of eight prestigious Teaching Leadership Fellows from the University of Guelph for 2023.

The project, which will be funded for three years, aims to address the growing gap between the capabilities of artificial intelligence and the current ways students are evaluated in higher education.

In addition to the fellowship, Dr. LaGrone has also received $30,000 to match the Fellowship funding from Guelph-Humber’s Research Grant Fund. All funding for the project is dedicated to student researchers.

Focusing on the potential benefits of AI, Dr. LaGrone’s research aims to enhance AI literacy among faculty, to create transformative teaching that incorporates AI tools such as text, image, video, and audio.

His interest started to increase around AI when it became more commonplace in people’s lives.

“In late 2021 when the first models of generative AI were created, acceleration in AI happened very fast and went from being on the margins of most people’s lives to being something much more central. Whether that is good, bad, or ambiguous still needs to be sorted out,” Dr. LaGrone explained.

Particularly interesting to Dr. LaGrone is the impacts it will have on post-secondary education.

“We don’t know how this is going to shape or not shape education—this is the biggest thing in my lifetime in terms of education and in terms of the level of disruption.”

The research project begins on July 1st and a team of six student researchers has been chosen, two University of Guelph graduate students and four Guelph-Humber students. The project is cross-disciplinary with Guelph-Humber students participating from the Business, Psychology, Kinesiology, Media and Communications and Justice Studies programs.

Throughout the project, small-scale experiments using AI tools will be used in assessment and evaluation to create practical applications and scenarios.

The hope is that the project will support faculty in developing new forms of assessment and evaluation for student work and help University leaders in shaping policy around AI tools.

“I’m very fortunate to be awarded this funding and it’s a great opportunity for our students,” Dr. LaGrone said, adding that the team will work with any interested faculty on their research.

The Teaching Leadership Fellows were established in 2022 and provides each Fellow with $30,000 over a three-year term. Each year the group that is awarded is a cross disciplinary community of educators who engage in educational leadership, research, advocacy, networking, service and mentoring to promote education excellence.

No matter the outcome of the team’s research Dr. LaGrone notes that AI will have impacts on the post-secondary landscape.

“It will for better or worse force us to raise our game- faculty, administrators, students- all of us.”