Artificial Intelligence Playdates

UM will host two AI Playdates (People Learning and Asking “Y” – Digital Age Teacher Exploration), designed for educators at all levels, schools, and institutions. The playdates aim to foster a presenter-free environment where participants can explore, collaborate, and develop enthusiasm for AI. At these Informal and approachable events, experts will “play” and learn alongside the interested and curious in a supportive, positive environment.

College of Business AI Proposal

The College of Business will develop a process to demonstrate the use of AI in strengthening the curriculum, bolstering student success, and enhancing faculty collaboration and research. A committee, already established within the College, will use the funds to support faculty research and teaching grants and faculty workshops on the use of AI in research and teaching. They will also use a portion of the funds to purchase AI tools and subscriptions for use by the faculty

Enhance Mental Health Care Efficiency

Curry Health Center will deploy the use of DAX Co-pilot, an AI-powered voice enabled solution that automatically documents patient encounters immediately after the patient visit. 40% of the provider’s time is dedicated to documentation and chart completion, and the use of DAX by Curry’s sole psychiatric nurse practitioner will alleviate burnout and increase capacity to see more students.

Exploration of Generative AI in the Classroom and How It Affects Creativity, Problem Solving, and Mindfulness

A group of interdisciplinary faculty in the College of Arts and Media will develop a course where students will explore their use of AI as artists, storytellers, and creative problem solvers. During and after the course, the faculty will consider the course design, the integration of generative AI into the curriculum, and the student outcomes associated with their exploration. The faculty will present their preliminary findings at the a2ru 2024 National Conference (“Generate/Integrate: Technology, the Arts, and Design”) in November and prepare a final white paper in January to share their findings with the UM community. The Flagship Funds will support licenses for AI tools for students to use in the course.

Integrating AI to Bridge Biology and Computer Science Education

This project seeks to better understand how AI can be used to bridge the educational gap between graduate students in cell biology and computer science. The first phase of the project involves two graduate students working together on a summer project with a dataset of mutual interest. By studying how the students make use of an AI assistant and how they use AI to improve their final results, the faculty will design a set of best practices for the use of AI as a personal tutor in interdisciplinary research. They will then utilize these best practices in CSCI 558, a computational biology course in Fall 2024 that enrolls both computer science and biology students and observe if and how students are able to use AI to push their course projects further than they could by simply relying on their own knowledge or skills. 

Additional Investments

One of the goals of the Flagship Fund is to elevate good ideas, to foster collaboration, and to seek support from a variety of sources. While they did not receive Flagship Fund investments, as a result of their involvement in this process, several other proposals have been connected with other funding opportunities and/or with others doing similar work at UM.