NCC Receives Award for Excellence in eLearning

Six faculty and staff members at Northampton Community College (NCC), Abigail Michelini, Beth Ritter-Guth, Gina Turner, Sam Chen, Maria Ortiz-Cintron, and Melenese Sivells, earned the 2024 Award for Excellence in eLearning in AI Innovation in eLearning from the Instructional Technology Council (ITC). The award recognizes instructors who integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into eLearning environments, focusing on the unique and innovative features the technology brings to student performance and personalized learning experiences.  

The team of six instructors created and held an “AI Teach-in” this past fall, an event in which faculty and students were able to learn more about how AI can impact the learning environment. The focus of this teach-in was to help students and faculty recognize false news and bias in AI-created content while recognizing the positive influences AI can have in sharing information with broad audiences. The event offered students and faculty ways to think critically about information that they encounter. 

Overseen by the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the diverse team met throughout the fall 2024 semester to build the teach-in content. All of the materials created by the team were shared through a Creative Commons license so others can adopt and adapt the information for their spaces. Additionally, the professors incorporate AI as a part of their curriculum.  

“I have students in my writing courses critique generative AI writing and create comparative analyses of AI versus human writing. It is important that they know how to navigate the world of writing now that it contains generative AI, whether we like it or not. Overall, students have impressed me with their ability to differentiate between AI and human writing, and in their creative approach to multimodal (text and images) writing in this new AI-centric world,” said Michelini. 

The ITC is a national organization with a mission to, “convene and develop innovators who propel community colleges forward in the use of technology to help more students achieve their goals.” Congratulations to the NCC team on receiving this award.