aha! welcome back to the blog. we left off last time looking at an article on BCcampus on AI empathy by Gwen Nguyen. this ended with an overall verdict, “instead of making the AI more human like, teach us to understand their faults”.
today, i’m going to continue looking at sources from BCcampus, but this time i’m taking a look at how educators are and or planning to teach such a thing. the first source i’ve stumbled upon is a micro-course from late 2024 called “FLO MicroCourse: Embracing Emotional Intelligence and AI for Inclusive Education“. this course is aimed toward students, faculty members, and staff, where they’ll “explore various aspects of EI and GenAI, focusing on emotional growth, empathy development, and creating a more supportive and inclusive university environment.”.
the learning outcomes for this course are as follows:
- develop empathy and communication through AI-driven activities.
- learn conflict resolution and ethical leadership with GenAI support.
- using GenAI tools for mental health and resilience, creating personal growth plans.
- assessing ethical use of GenAI in enhancing EI for responsible communication and personal development.
all served asynchronously online.
additionally, i was able to find the actual unlocked course through scope, feel free to check it out! here’s a quick breakdown of the day to day of the course:
- day 1: self-awareness and emotional regulation. it introduces the concepts of emotional intelligence and actually has students use genai to reflect on their own self awareness through journaling.
- day 2: empathy development and communication. this day focuses on teaching that empathy is more than just sympathy; it requires active listening and acknowledging feelings.
- day 3: conflict resolution and mediation. students explore how ai can provide unbiased data and simulations to help resolve disputes, while identifying the limitations of ai when managing complex emotional dynamics.
- day 4: ethical leadership. this module shifts to decision-making, focusing on how to lead with integrity, trust, and transparency when integrating ai into higher education.
- day 5: personal well-being and resilience. students look at the societal impacts of ai and evaluate both the benefits and limitations of using ai for mental and physical health.
- day 6: community building. focuses on using ai to allow peer mentoring, and establish trust and inclusive community connections.
- day 7: wrap-up and reflection. a final summary and discussion forum to tie all the learning activities together.
a course like this, to me, seems to be a great fit in order to setup not only students but educators with a good understanding of ai, and ai empathy.
but, its one thing to just make these students, educators, etc, take this course; they also need to have real experience with these AIs, be it nonsense or not. so why not also ask participants to just jump in the fire and play around and experiment without any pressure of grades. allow them to understand them in their own sense, and then maybe guide them through the course. who knows, i’m not an educator; but its something to think about.
overall, i think something like this; play around in a sandbox like experience, no pressure, no grades, and then run them through a course similar to this to gain a better understanding, is a perfect path that maybe someplace like UVIC should take. i recall Dr. Irvine discussing a mandatory ai course in her recent guest lecture; i don’t know much about it, but i’d hope some of this type of content would make it.
anyways, thanks for reading!