| | SEPTEMBER 20258IN MY OPINION BUILDING AI LITERACY, ONE CAMPUS AT A TIMEBy Melanie Hibbert, Director of Academic Technologies and Sloate Media Center, Barnard CollegeMy first job out of college was an Alaska Teaching Fellow in Nulato, Alaska. I worked in a school in a Koyukon-Athabascan native village on the Yukon River, only accessible by airplane. I was one of three high school teachers and while the experience overall was life-changing, my first year was a bit of a disaster. Before my second year of teaching, our school had a new computer lab installed with scanners and digital cameras and I started incorporating a lot of technology and media and other computer literacy skills into my teaching. While there was still a lot of room for improvement, it was transformative; that is, it was (slightly) less of a disaster and led me to question how technology (and media) can intersect with learning, literacy and education. These questions led me to a doctoral program in education and technology at Columbia University.For the past ten years, I have been at Barnard College, Columbia University mainly in a Director role, where I have continued working on these themes around technology and media and education. One particularly transformative leadership experience was leading the overnight shift to remote learning during COVID-19 in March 2020 at my institution. It is one example (of a few) I have been through where there is no playbook; you just have to do it and figure things out along the way, have resilience and collaborate with people and other departments. I think humility is very important as a leader, as well as adaptability and maintaining a sense of humor. I believe management is a service role - you are there to support and mentor your team. The COVID time also taught me the necessities of work-life balance and how to manage time effectively and practice self-care like exercise, because otherwise you will burnout. AI Literacy Framework Elevates Campus LearningArtificial intelligence is a big deal, in my opinion. There may be over-hype, but I do think it is possibly on the same scale as the Industrial Revolution. At Barnard, my colleagues and I started approaching AI with different approaches and at different levels, starting in 2023 ­ workshops, open labs, events, etc. It became clear that we needed a broader way to think about AI literacy efforts, which became an Educause article we co-authored in 2024, "A Framework for AI Literacy". This framework is based on Bloom's Taxonomy and is a pyramid that conceptualizes AI literacy in different levels. The first level is based on definitional and foundational ideas of AI and the top level is around building and creating AI. While I would say that our primary focus is on the first level of the pyramid, Barnard is doing things at all levels. Melanie Hibbert
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