Teaching the Students We Have

Plenary Session

• Opening Prayer, by Pastor Jim Wetzstein
• Welcome and Remarks, by Provost Eric Johnson 
• Who are the students we have? By Margarita Rayzberg 
• Report out from Student Expectations Task Force, by Anne Raich and Craig Clark, co-chairs

Psalm 36, from the Darkling Psalter
by Andy Patton

Psalm 36 is the psalm from which our university motto, “In thy light, we see light,” is drawn. The Darkling Psalter is a project to make creative, poetic renditions of all 150 Psalms. Patton’s poems take their direction from a particular psalm and present that psalm’s meaning and content in a way that is specifically adapted to the English of contemporary society. Patton’s rendition does not, in fact, contain the Valpo’s motto, but we believe that you’ll find Patton’s poetry compelling in its own right.
The Darkling Psalter, Psalm 36

Plenary Session:
Who are the Students We Have? 

Plenary Session: Who are the Students We Have?

Plenary Session:
Report from Student Expectations Task Force

Plenary Session: Report from Student Expectations Task Force

• Kelly Belanger, University Director of Writing
• Carter Hanson, English
• Betsy Burow-Flak, English

As AI use increases among college students,some faculty are guiding students to use AI responsibly by incorporating it into the writing process. Kelly Belanger and Carter Hanson will talk about piloting some use of AI and student research about AI in a writing class this spring. Betsy Burow-Flak will discuss how she uses an “AI Café” to promote both academic integrity and playful learning in her writing course.

AI Cafe Scenarios &
Activities, Betsy Burow-Flak

AI Café Scenarios and Activities

A Chat with ChatGPT, Kelly Belanger

I answered a question and made a point in our AI breakout session today that I think is important for faculty and students to know about AI use. Afterward, I used ChatGPT to double check what I said in the workshop, which I think was correct based on my understanding of how AI works and was confirmed by my double checking. People also wondered how to cite AI and below is an example of how to get AI to do it for us. 

Here is a record of my search that might be helpful to include in the materials you are collecting from today:

Kelly Said: 

Is it accurate to say that because of how ChatGPT works, it will not be able to provide accurate direct quotations from texts that it was trained on. My understanding is that generative AI works by predicting statistical probabilities not finding whole texts in its training dataset

ChatGPT said:

Yes, you’re essentially correct — and you’re articulating a key limitation of how large language models like ChatGPT work.

Here’s a more precise explanation:

• ChatGPT does not store or retrieve full texts from its training data. It was trained on a mixture of licensed data, publicly available data, and data from human interactions, but it doesn’t have access to full copyrighted books, articles, or proprietary materials unless they were part of the public web at the time of training.
• Instead of recalling whole passages, ChatGPT generates text based on patterns in language it learned during training. It predicts what comes next in a sentence based on the context you provide and the statistical patterns it has seen.
• This means that “direct quotations” are unreliable unless they are very commonly cited or formulaic (like Shakespeare quotes, famous speeches, or widely available public domain content). Even then, it might paraphrase them or get details slightly wrong.
• So yes, if you need verbatim quotes from a source, ChatGPT should not be relied on. The better practice is to consult the original text directly and quote from it yourself.

Kelly Said: Give me an MLA citation for this search

ChatGPT said:

Sure! Here’s an MLA-style citation for information sourced from ChatGPT in response to your query:

OpenAI. ChatGPT, 12 May 2025, chat.openai.com/chat. Response to “Is it accurate to say that because of how ChatGPT works, it will not be able to provide accurate direct quotations from texts that it was trained on.” Accessed 12 May 2025.

• Mandy Brobst-Renaud, Theology
• Lucas Kelly, History  
• Ben Brobst-Renaud, Communication & Visual Art  

Over the past few years, research on the role of play in learning—not only for children, but for adults—has increased. This session will engage various examples of how activities such as role playing and class organization can provide deep learning opportunities for students. Mandy will share how a roleplay activity at the beginning of the semester remains with the students even at the end of the semester. Ben will describe his experiments with rearranging art history courses from chronological and centered on memorization to thematic and centered on conversation. Lucas will share his experience leading students through a role- playing game about the Constitutional Convention. For five weeks, students take on the role of an attendee at the Convention, and advocate for his perspective throughout the game. Information about this Reacting to the Past game can be found here.

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Life with the Romans is (Not) a Game,
Amanda Brobst-Renaud

Life with the Romans Life with the Romans is (Not) a Game (Doc)

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Constitutional Convention Game,
Lucas Kelley

Constitutional Convention Game, Lucas Kelley (pptx)

Luke Venstrom, Mechanical Engineering & Bioengineering

Jesse Sestito, Mechanical Engineering & Bioengineering

Kristi Bugajski, Biology

Several Valpo faculty are increasing student engagement in their classes by creating more hands-on projects and assessments. In lieu of a traditional research paper, Kristi Bugjaski assigns a “Choose Your Own Adventure Project” in which students are free to be creative and take ownership of their project. Jesse Sestito converted a programming course into a mastery-based course in which students are assigned a grade based on how many topics they “master.” Mastered topics require a 100% on the in-class quiz and out-of-class assignment.  Luke Venstrom implemented a competency-based approach to assessment in a first-year engineering course in which students are given multiple attempts to prove mastery of a topic.  The overarching goal of mastery-based or competency-based approaches is to make it safe for students to fail and encourage persistence to a full understanding of material before continuing in the course and/or degree program.

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Competency-based Assessment,
Luke Venstrom

Competency-based Assessment, Luke Venstrom

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Mastery Learning in ME125,

Jesse Sestito

Mastery Learning in ME125, Jesse Sestito

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Choose Your Own Adventure
Project, Kristi Bugjaski

NS 101 Choose Your Own Adventure Project Description 
Choose Your Own Adventure Project Guidelines 
Choose Your Own Adventure Project first draft Rubric 
Choose Your Own Adventure Final Project Rubric

• Christina Hearne, Director,  AARC
• Ed Finn, Executive DIrector, CITAL

In this session, we will provide a brief overview of the value of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and multimodal approaches to teaching and learning. Participants will be provided with statistics that demonstrate how UDL increases student engagement, knowledge of material, and overall retention. Supplemental resources and a guided activity will be provided to facilitate discussion in small groups and for use after the session.

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Universal Design, Christina Hearne

UDL Guidelines & Webinars 

Removing Barriers with Assignment Design 
A Data-Driven UDL Approach to Student Retention and Engagement

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Multi-modal Learning, Ed Finn

Practical Strategies for Multimodal Teaching 
Multimodality in the Writing Classroom (Boston University) 
Advancing multimodal teaching: a bibliometric and content analysis of trends, influences, and future directions 
Multisensory vs. Multimodal Literacy Instruction: What’s the Difference? 
Advances in multimodal learning: pedagogies, technologies, and analytics 
Using Multimodal Instruction to Enhance Student Understanding 
Multimodal Learning With Transformers: A Survey