AI Dialogues

Matt Sibbald, Associate Dean of McMaster's Undergraduate Medical Education (UGME) Program, joins me to talk about building program-level AI guidelines for medical education, and what it takes to translate institutional principles into a specific professional context.

 Kelly Webb-Davies, Lead Business Technologist at the University of Oxford’s AI Competency Centre, draws on her experiences as a neurodivergent educator in linguistics to offers a personal and practical perspective on accessibility, linguistic justice, and generative AI in higher education.

We talk about digital translanguaging, separating idea development from academic phrasing, and rethinking classroom time to foreground process as much as product.

After a longer than planned hiatus, I’m excited to kick things off again with a conversation with Professor Mollie Dollinger who’s the Director of Assessment 2030 at Curtin University. 

This special episode of AI Dialogues features a recently recorded Instructor Panel at McMaster University. The panel was moderated by Ben Lee Taylor, the Academic Skills Program Coordinator with the Student Success Centre, and brings together the following panelists who engages in writing instruction and support for students:

• Dr. Jonathan Cannon, Assistant Professor, Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour.
• Dr. Ayesha Khan, Associate Professor, Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior.
• Dr. Mayu Nishimura. Assistant Professor, Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour.
• Siddharth Raman, PhD candidate, Department of Philosophy; Writing Advisor, Student Success Centre.

Towards the end of the recording, I pose a question to the panel that challenges the commonly held assumption that using GenAI involves outsourcing your thinking to talk about whether these tools could potentially support the writing and thinking process.

In March 2025, the Higher Education Strategy Associates hosted the AI-Cademy conference, a Canadian AI summit for post-secondary education.

While I was at the conference, I interviewed 8 attendees to capture their perspectives on conference topics that resonated, things they'd be bringing back to their institutions, and gaps in the conversation.

Listen to insights from :

• Erin Aspenlieder, Associate Vice-Provost, Academic Quality & Teaching Innovation at Sheridan College
• Priya  Mouli, Director  of  IT  Security and Information  Security  Officer at Sheridan  College 
• Kate Bowers, Lead Learning Designer at Action Insight
• Cari Din, Associate Dean Academic in the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary
• Renato Bezerra, Educational Developer at the University of Manitoba
• Jonathan Stone, Learning  Specialist at Coast  Mountain  College
• Alan Amyotte, Director  of Internal Assurance at the University of British Columbia
• Sandrine Desforges, Research Associate with the Higher Education Strategy Associates

This podcast episode is focused on a project coming out of one of the AI expert panels at McMaster around AI futures.

 Shane  Saunderson, who  is an  assistant  professor in Information  Systems  in  the DeGroote  School  of Business and  a  member of the AI Research Expert  panel, talks about how the team plans to undertake this project using something called strategic foresight.

Learn about the change that's in store for season 3!

Sarah O’Byrne, Senior Legal Counsel at McMaster University, discusses the evolving legal landscape of Generative AI. We explore key issues like copyright, intellectual property, and data privacy, focusing on two pivotal Canadian cases about data scraping and AI authorship.

This special episode of AI Dialogues features a recently recorded Instructor Panel at McMaster University. The panel was moderated by Sam Scott (from S2 E7), and brings together four educators with different experiences and perspectives on using AI and generative AI for evaluation purposes. The panelists discuss advantages and disadvantages of automation in grading, how generative AI differs from previous applications of automated grading, and what this means for the future of assessment. 

The panelists are:

• Catherine Anderson, Associate Professor, Linguistics and Languages, and Director of the Gender and Social Justice program
• Ayesha Khan, Associate Professor, Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour
• Linda Davis, Level 1 Lab Coordinator in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
• Bruce Wainman, Professor, Pathology & Molecular Medicine

In this episode, Soroush Sabbaghan, an Associate Professor (Teaching) and the Director, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education, talks about engaging with generative AI through an EDI lens, highlighting the importance of human-centered design to mitigate bias, empower educators, and maintain transparency.

I’m joined by Susan McCahan, who’s the Vice-Provost of Academic Programs and Innovations in Undergraduate Education at the University of Toronto.  

I’m joined by two people from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), Alexandra McFarlane, who’s one of the Directors, and Ryan Tishchoff who works as a Researcher. 

Jeff Casello, the Associate Vice President of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs at the University of Waterloo, and chair of the Generative AI working group for the Ontario Council of Graduate Studies, talks about the impact of generative AI on graduate education, the role of supervisors and students in guiding GenAI usage, and the need for open conversations when integrating AI into research processes.

This is the second episode that delves into the use and disclosure of GenAI in teaching.

Marc Watkins, an Assistant Director of Academic Innovation and Lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi, talks about how to incentivize and recognize the professional development instructors need around Generative AI, how transparency in AI usage can help build trust, and the importance of ongoing dialogue with our students to understand the role of Generative AI in their learning environment. 

Mark Daley, Western University's Chief AI Officer, talks about the creation and role of his position. We talk about the importance of grassroots efforts to integrate AI effectively within the institution. We also get into humanistic questions and ethical considerations about AI and how technology can be used to enhance human potential and personal agency.

Learn about the change that's in store for season 2!

Faculty member and entrepreneur, Matthew Schonewille, talks about his motivations for creating GenAI  tools, how he's using them in his teaching, and his thoughts on disclosing use of GenAI as an instructor.

This will be 1 of 2 episodes focused on use and disclosure of GenAI in teaching.

Here are the links to a couple of the tools Matthew built and talks about:

Trudi Wright, Privacy Management Specialist, and Greg Atkinson, Senior Manager Cyber Security Systems & Information Security Officer, join me to talk about privacy and information security concerns and considerations around Generative AI and what this means for using these tools in practice.

Gayleen Gray, McMaster's Associate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer talks about IT governance and Generative AI and how this intersects with teaching and learning.

Career Counsellors, Kerri Latham and Jillian Perkins-Marsh, talk about how generative AI is starting to show up in the labour market and job search and recruitment processes, and what this might mean for students, both inside and outside the classroom.

Matt Sibbald, the Associate Dean of the DeGroote School of Medicine's undergraduate program at McMaster talks about generative AI in the context of medical education and what this means for assessments and teaching practices across a program. 

Helen Kula - the Associate University Librarian, Teaching and Learning at McMaster - talks about how the library intersects with conversations about Generative AI and the importance of AI literacy.

I'm joined by Director, Academic Integrity, Kim Mason, who describes how conversations around generative AI and academic integrity are playing out across campus and beyond McMaster. Kim also walks through what an instructor should do if they suspect GenAI was used inappropriately to complete an assessment.

I have a “conversation” with Chat GPT using the mobile app to demonstrate how it can be used to generate a reflection-type assignment, and offer some suggestions on how to approach reflection assignments differently.

In this episode, we explore a broader perspective on how Generative AI could fit into undergraduate education with Vice-Provost of Teaching and Learning, Kim Dej.

Julia Verhaeghe, from McMaster’s English Language Development Office, talks about some of the implications of Generative AI for English Language Learners.

I'm joined by sessional instructors Jessica Rodriguez and Luis Navarro from the Department of Communication and New Media Studies, who share their experience allowing students to use generative AI in their courses.

Mat Savelli, an Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Aging, and Society, brings a more critical perspective of Generative AI. We dig into some of the ethical implications of this technology.

Ian Steinberg, PhD candidate in communication, new media and cultural studies, shares some of his experiences with AI, how he's been using the technology to support his doctoral work, and why he's optimistic that AI can help deliver better student experiences.