2026 CSI Summer Conference: Teach Together

Please drop in for an informal Q & A Session with the Keynote speaker 

We’ve all seen classrooms that are 'friendly.' Students know each other’s names and the atmosphere is pleasant, but there’s a missing spark: that deeper level of academic engagement. It’s the difference between students simply liking each other and actually learning with each other. In this session, we’re going to use Émile Durkheim’s ideas on community and moral regulation to bridge that gap. We’ll look at how to design a classroom where students don't just feel comfortable, but feel essential. We will dive into three specific ways to make a student feel they truly belong: •    Feeling Known: Is their thinking visible to everyone, or are they just a face in the crowd? •    Feeling Valued: Is their reasoning taken seriously by their peers? •    Feeling Desired: Do they know that the community is actually better because they showed up?

I will be facilitating a game I've titled "Cards Against Campus Life," which is a spin on Cards Against Humanity. It will be specific to CSI faculty and staff using realistic campus and workplace scenarios. The game uses humor to respond to the scenarios, the purpose will be to get people talking through difficult or awkward situations, different perspectives, and possible ways to respond in a professional and supportive way.

It is now possible using AI to create web apps for any purpose that you can imagine. You don’t need any coding knowledge, just some imagination and a Google account. During the session, I’ll walk everyone through creating, publishing, and sharing a Web app with students, all while dealing with zero programming code. In the current parlance, this is called vibecoding. It’s very easy and non-technical.

At a recent panel of a state’s most widespread and prominent employers, all three of the participants stated that they would hire no college graduates, or no new hires at all, unless the applicants had relevant and practical generative AI experience. When one of the attendees, an instructor, noted that “you cannot really do that, students will have ethical concerns and will not want to use AI,” the panelists indicated that did not matter, that there were ethical ways to use AI, and they would use them, or would not be employed by those companies.  In light of this conversation, and similar ones throughout the world, the instructional design, education, and workplace communities must facilitate a dialogue with each other and their students about WHEN and HOW to incorporate AI tools into teaching and learning experiences. This discussion must be contextualized with the expectations of the fields into which students will be entering when they leave instructional environments.  Participants will discuss tools and resources,trends in the workplace regarding AI use, and then have the rest of the time for and open discussion about questions and issues raised during the first parts of the presentation.  Artificial intelligence will eventually be used in many fields, even in ways that are currently inconceivable. This session will be a discussion on helping students develop human-centered patterns and perspectives NOW so they can rely on them when they move to the workplace.  AI pervades the world whether or not we want it. It is in a variety of standalone products and is incorporated into previous “AI-free” products. We must acknowledge this reality and incorporate these tools where they are reliably productive. Centering work, school, or lives, on the other hand, on a tool that is relatively transitory and constantly updating means relying on something with variable access, which could drastically degrade in quality, or, worse, be completely shut down.  In order to prepare for a workplace that has the most appropriate and usable tools, learners should practice with the same tools that they will use in the workplace. There will be little use learning on ChatGPT or Grok, for instance, if the student is going to use Claude or Perplexity during work. There is no use, furthermore, in learning exclusively how to use AI tools to search, OR research, when they do not have the capacity to learn how to control for the issues of these technologies. At the same time, there will be little use in learning an AI-free method of doing a task when employers will be looking for workers who know how to use AI.  Instructional designers and educators are responsible for instructing students in the best practices of their fields, how to do things using their own skills, and then how to use technologies such as AI if those technologies have been prominently and solidly integrated into their fields' common practices.  In an ideal, human-centered, AI-optional world, a learner would not use an AI tool to create something or produce something or carry out a task until they have MASTERED that skill. In academic terms, this would be three things, POSSIBLY four:  1. A master’s student  2. A college graduate  3. Someone with equivalent work experience   4. A student in their LAST SEMESTER of undergraduate experience   More pragmatically, students should only use genAI tools in their course to produce something or follow a process until they have DONE THE TASK BY THEMSELVES, until they have learned ENOUGH about the process or product to be able to understand the theory and reasoning behind its existence, its nature.   This connects to the concept put forth by Neil Postman in his book TECHNOPOLY that EVERY TEACHER should be a history teacher; students must learn how to do things manually, and the theories and debates and propositions about the relevant problems, processes, solutions, etc. in the field, before they use any technology, AI or otherwise, to do that task.

Clear directions are one of the simplest ways to support student success, but writing them well takes time, intention, and a strong sense of where students may get stuck. In this session, we will introduce a Goblin.Tools, a simple FREE AI-powered tool that can help instructors turn assignments, activities, and expectations into clearer, more manageable directions.

We will also explore how students can use the tool to break large or confusing tasks into smaller steps, making it especially useful for learners who struggle with executive functioning, time management, or task initiation.
Participants will see practical examples of how Goblin.Tools can be used to revise assignment instructions, scaffold student work, and reduce overwhelm without lowering academic expectations. The session will focus on hands-on, realistic classroom uses and will invite participants to consider where this tool might support clarity, accessibility, and student persistence in their own courses.

New to Dual Credit with CSI? This session covers the essentials—from DualEnroll and student registration to instructor pay and key expectations. Come connect, ask questions, and get set up for a successful start.

Dual credit teaching is a messy middle. You're asked to deliver college rigor to teenagers with jobs, family responsibilities, and uneven preparation. Do problems like inconsistency, readiness, or communication appear in your classroom?

This session introduces a straightforward way of thinking about those problems: see them more clearly through your students' eyes, rephrase them into something you can influence, and sketch one small change you could try together next term.

Bring one real problem from your dual credit course. You'll leave with a clearer picture of what's happening and one concrete, student-facing experiment you're willing to try. No pedagogy 101, no promises to fix the system, just a thoughtful approach to working on the class with the people sitting in it.