Ongoing Sources of AI Professional Development

A Short List for Higher Education

The programs and resources below may be useful either as direct sources of professional development or as models.

Programs (robust, multi-week or multi-module)

• AAC&U Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum: An eight-month, fully online institute where campus teams craft a strategic AI action plan with coaching, peer feedback, and monthly workshops.

• Playlab AI Design Sprint & Critical Creator PLC: Customizable 12-day design sprints and a four-session PLC where educators prototype and showcase their own AI tools; materials are free to remix, or Playlab can facilitate for a fee.

• Relay GSE Playlab "AI for Educators" Micro-Credential in collaboration with PlayLab Three virtual workshops (intro to prompt engineering, collaborative tool-building, showcase) culminating in a micro-credential in AI Tool Design & Prompt Engineering; no coding experience required.

• ISTE "AI Explorations for Educators": 15-hour, self-paced course delivered over an eight-week window with instructor support; scholarships available and completion counts toward ISTE U badges.

• Leon Furze's "Practical AI Strategies": Six self-paced modules that pair ethics with workflow demos (text, image, multimodal) plus optional micro-courses on deepfakes and assessment redesign.

• Auburn University Canvas Course: A self-paced 5-7 hour Canvas course from Auburn's Biggio Center that guides higher-ed instructors through AI basics, assignment design, ethical use, and policy writing; badge on completion. Institutional licenses available.

Free and sliding scale webinars and workshops

• California Virtual Campus Online Network of Educators (CVC @ONE) offers a webinar series each fall and spring and keeps a YouTube playlist of past AI-related webinars

• American Association of Colleges & Universities (AACU) "AI Week" Webinar Series: Four no-cost webinars each spring on leadership strategy, policy, and teaching with AI, featuring national experts.

• CVC @ONE Generative AI-1 Free, 2-week, self-paced course for faculty to draft AI policies and design AI-enhanced assignments; occasional facilitated cohorts add live discussion.

• The ASCCC OER Initiative hosts regular webinars open to all that often focus on AI from specific disciplinary perspectives as well as addressing intellectual property and licensing questions.

• MyFest (Equity Unbound) AI Track: A summer sliding scale "choose-your-own-journey" festival; the AI strand mixes critical literacy conversations with hands-on tool labs, modeling equitable, care-based pedagogy.

• PlayLab: A platform where educators create and share custom chatbots. PlayLab offers community-run workshop series where educators prototype AI tools for their own classrooms, share experiments, and get feedback; sessions range from 90-minute labs to multi-week cohorts.

Adaptable PD materials

• Stanford Teaching Commons Artificial Intelligence Teaching Guide (+ DIY workshop kits) Six modular lessons (AI literacy, course policy, assignment design, etc.) plus ready-made slide decks and facilitator notes you can remix for local workshops.

• TeachAI "AI Guidance for Schools" Presentation — Customisable Google Slides deck that walks faculty or leadership teams through AI basics, benefits/risks, seven guiding principles, and an implementation roadmap.

Podcasts

• Future Trends Forum — Weekly live video-podcast hosted by futurist Bryan Alexander; regular AI episodes with audience Q&A and campus case studies.

• Teaching in Higher Ed – AI Category — Interviews on AI ethics, assessment, and course design, each with transcripts and show notes to spark PD discussions.

• AI in Education Podcast — Weekly chat (Ray Fleming & Dan Bowen) on practical classroom uses of AI, with guest teachers and developers.

• EdSurge — Ed-tech reporters dig into policy shifts, teaching experiments, and AI tools reshaping higher ed.

• Shifting Schools — K-12-oriented show whose "AI in Education" arc gives admin-friendly takes on policy, PD culture shift, and equity. Includes PD guides to accompany episodes and stimulate discussion.

• Hard Fork — NYT journalist Kevin Roose & tech reporter Casey Newton parse the week's AI news with educator-friendly analogies.

• Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 — Emily Bender & Alex Hanna debunk AI hype and discuss implications for ethics, policy, and pedagogy.

• My Robot Teacher — a playful and entertaining podcast where a humanist (Sarah Senk, PhD) and a mathematician (Taiyo Inoue, PhD) lean toward AI enthusiasm but question many aspects of it as they interview a range of guests.

Listservs and Social Media Resources

• AI in Education Google group

• Higher Ed discussions of AI writing & use Facebook group

• Assignments and Assessments in the age of GenAI Facebook group

• The #CCCAILearn hashtag on LinkedIn. Started by Michelle Pacansky-Brock, this hashtag is intended to help educators find useful AI PD posts. Bookmark it or search on it periodically.

• AI and writing, AI in education, AI regulation Part 1 and Part 2 Bluesky starter packs: Two follow-lists from Anna Mills that auto-populate your Bluesky feed with diverse voices discussing AI.

• A few educators worth following for their frequent posts on AI on LinkedIn: Leon Furze, Ethan Mollick, Lance Eaton, Maha Bali, Marc Watkins, Jose Antonio Bowen, Laura Dumin, Tricia Bertram Gallant, Philip Dawson, Kimberly Pace Becker, Annette Vee, Bryan Alexander, Eric Martinsen, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, Fabiola Torres, Dayamudra Dennehy Jon Ippolito Jason Gulya

Websites (reference hubs & toolkits)

• AI Pedagogy Project (metaLAB @ Harvard) — Assignment bank, starter guide, and policy examples for creative / critical engagement with AI.

• Learning With AI Toolkit (Jon Ippolito) — 300-plus crowdsourced strategies plus the IMPACT RISK framework for teaching AI's downsides.

• TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies — An open, ongoing peer-reviewed assignment bank with reflections on tested pedagogical approaches.

• Exploring AI Pedagogy: A Community Collection of Teaching Reflections — A searchable, open collection of short reflections on teaching experiments involving or responding to AI. Hosted by the Modern Language Association.