Borisinkoff, Harmon earn AI professional development scholarships
MINOT, N.D. – Minot State University’s Evan Borisinkoff and Leisa Harmon were two of 15 North Dakota University System (NDUS) faculty members recently awarded $1,000 scholarships through the Dakota Digital Academy (DDA) to attend and participate in conferences or professional development experiences involving artificial intelligence (AI).
Borisinkoff is an associate professor in special education and the program director for associate, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees in disability human services. Harmon is an assistant professor in communication sciences and disorders and Minot State’s First-Year Experience director.
The scholarships were established to encourage professional learning and AI implementation in college classrooms.
“This is a great opportunity for our faculty members to learn more about AI and how it can be incorporated into their curriculums,” said NDUS Chancellor Mark Hagerott. “Higher education will be transformed over the next few years by these new technologies. It’s important that we immerse ourselves in AI now to discover best practices so we can better prepare our students for our future workforce, which also will see new innovations through AI and digitization.”
To be eligible to receive the scholarships, faculty members had to submit the name of a conference or type of professional development event they would like to attend. They also had to explain how they would use that information to enhance classroom teaching.
“Much of AI is new to me, so there’s still a great deal of me ‘not knowing what I don’t know,’ but that just fuels my desire to learn more,” Borisinkoff said. “Hopefully, the 39th Annual Assistive Technology Conference sponsored by California State University Northridge will provide me with valuable information I can share with my students and colleagues.
“I currently teach a graduate class on assistive technology and the conference program indicates several sessions that are directly in line with the course learning objectives. I would like to potentially add information on AI in a few of my undergraduate and graduate courses.”
“I tell students ‘fake it until you make it’ is junk advice. They need to ‘face it until they make it;’ hence, using generative AI without having sufficient background knowledge is simply faking it,” Harmon added. “But the truth is, every discipline will use AI in the very near future to do jobs better and faster to increase productivity.
“In preparing the future workforce, we owe it to students to give them the requisite knowledge and skills for their field while also teaching them how to use AI ethically and effectively. And there lies the challenge: what are the prerequisites students must master prior to relying on artificial intelligence capabilities? I look forward to exploring answers to this question at the Teaching and Learning with AI conference.”
Scholarship applicants represented a wide array of academic disciplines, including nursing, social and behavioral sciences, pharmacy, nutrition and dietetics, and agriculture, to name a few.
The Dakota Digital Academy assists students, businesses, industry, and government in North Dakota and across the upper Midwest by adapting and meeting the rapidly changing demands and opportunities for information technology and cyber sciences. Its mission is to provide access to digital-cyber oriented education, training, certificates, and knowledge produced by the collaborative North Dakota University System of 11 campuses, in partnership with select business and corporate partners.
About NDUS
The North Dakota University System is a unified system of higher education governed by the State Board of Higher Education. Organized in 1990, the system includes two research universities, four regional universities, and five community colleges.
About Minot State University
Minot State University is a public university dedicated to excellence in education, scholarship, and community engagement achieved through
rigorous academic experiences, active learning environments, commitment to public service, and a vibrant campus life.
Published: 02/23/24
