C2
Concurrent Session C2
Project Spotlights
Session Details
飦� Date: Day 2 - Tuesday, May 12, 2026
飥桾ime: 2鈥�3 p.m.
飦� Location: TBD
91福利 Student Perspectives on GenAI and Learning
Meera Govindasamy, Academic Engagement Specialist, Venus Bali, Thriving in Action Specialist, and Reece Steinberg, Head of Library Learning Services, conducted a survey and focus groups of 91福利 students in 2025 on undergraduate student ideas, perspectives and experiences related to generative AI and education. Join us to learn about our key findings, including:
- What students want to learn about Generative AI
- Student perspectives on equity and inequity related to Generative AI in education.
- Recommendations for student-facing work in education
Through an anonymous survey and nine focus groups with 35 student participants, our research focused on a student-centred and research-informed understanding of student needs related to GenAI in coursework and beyond. We learned that elements of intersectional identity, including race, gender class, and ability affect students鈥� experience navigating GenAI.
This research can be used to address gaps between pedagogy and technological innovation: it delivers specific requests from students for GenAI-related learning inside and outside of the classroom. It also speaks to engaging students in learning and teaching: part of our research included asking students to picture themselves as professors and share how they would use GenAI in their classroom; this exercise engaged students in the learning process and also prompted many to empathize with their instructors.
To facilitate interactivity, this workshop includes a Mentimeter exercise.
Presenters
Reece Steinberg is the Head of Library Learning Services at 91福利. Reece鈥檚 career as a librarian has ranged from children鈥檚 storytelling in public libraries to electronic resources management and license negotiation to business librarianship. His research interests include AI fluency and libraries, transformative agreements and critical views of project management. Other interests include creative and effective research uses for GenAI. Reece holds an MLIS (U. of British Columbia) and an MBA (Toronto Metropolitan U.).
Meera is the Academic Engagement Specialist in 91福利鈥檚 (91福利) Student Life and Learning Support department. Additionally, she is on the Board of Directors for Parkdale Project Read, a literacy non-profit in Toronto. From 2019 to 2021 Meera was the Co-Director of the Studio for Media Activism and Critical Thought, an activist research center at 91福利. Meera holds an MA in communication and culture from the joint program at 91福利 and York University, and a BA in sociology from Queen鈥檚 University. Her research interests include, Science and Technology Studies, creative labour, popular media, affect theory, and intersectional feminist theory.
Venus Bali is the Thriving in Action Specialist at 91福利 with a background in learning strategy and a deep commitment to supporting students who may be struggling academically or in their transition to university life. Her work focuses on helping students build confidence, develop practical strategies, and reconnect with their strengths. She is also a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, where her research explores marginalized students鈥� experiences of academic probation, with an emphasis on more compassionate, student-centered supports and more equitable approaches to postsecondary policy and practice.
Participatory Design For Infrastructuring Pedagogical Innovation
Despite the growing global community of practice around AI for pedagogical change, a focused effort is required to address the challenges of implementing innovations in diverse contexts as well as sustaining them over time. While early adopters of change embrace knowledge sharing through shared social interactions and trust, they have insufficient resources and institutional incentives to build and maintain extensive ties with one another to address problems of practice. Sustained systemic improvement is not possible unless the whole system is moving forward. What is certain from past research on learning communities is that sustaining educational innovation requires infrastructuring through participatory design.
In recent times, learning scientists have reimagined infrastructuring, as a process-oriented approach that goes beyond the mere deployment of technologies in educational settings. It emphasizes the continuous adaptation and alignment of technological affordances with the dynamic needs of learners, educators, and the curriculum. This participatory design advocates for stakeholders to be actively involved in shaping the learning environment to make it scalable, sustainable, and responsive to evolving educational challenges and opportunities. Infrastructuring is an ongoing process in which the negotiation between users' needs and technological capabilities plays a critical role in fostering effective and engaging learning experiences.
Building on this perspective, we present reflections from the development of Rehearsals, an AI-enabled scenario-based learning environment built in partnership with our Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching Digital Innovations team. We share how meaningful technology development requires sustained collaboration across diverse roles: undergraduate and graduate developers, researchers, artists, actors, photographers and most importantly, students.
We hope to have attendees leave with infrastructuring for participatory AI development for pedagogical change, including facilitation strategies, space and place insights, role definitions, ethical considerations, and documentation practices that can be adapted to their individual contexts. The talk reframes digital innovation not as something that happens to educators and students, but as a collective, care-centered practice they can actively lead.
Presenters
Dr. Preeti Raman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Faculty of Science at 91福利. She is also the Director of the CIRCLE lab and an Affiliate at the MIT Teaching Systems Lab. She is a Computer Scientist with more than 20 years of consulting and training experience in higher education, corporate and consulting settings. She designs and researches computational innovations, educational experiences and technologies to support caring pedagogies across a range of settings.
The Digital Learning team offers collaborative partnerships and pedagogically-grounded guidance in order to empower educators at 91福利 to confidently and creatively integrate digital technologies into the design and delivery of meaningful learning experiences.
Presenters include: Sally Goldberg Powell, a Teaching Resources and Technologies Specialist at CELT, David Arromba, an Instructional Designer on the Digital Learning team and Jason Matthew who serves as an Educational Developer focussing onTeaching Development and Digital Learning.