Approaching Our Work with a Human Touch

When ChatGPT appeared on the scene in November 2022, the power of artificial intelligence (AI) moved from being a tool primarily used by techies, researchers and engineers into the hands of the everyday user. With this development, everyday discussions of AI began creeping into both personal and work conversations.  

While the average person may have found themselves experimenting with ChatGPT as a search engine, using it to help create an amusing image, draft an email for work, outline a paper for school, or even create a travel itinerary for a dream vacation, tech companies, wanting to be at the front of yet another technology race, rapidly began creating AI products and capabilities in their own product lines. Many of us may have eluded the early “ChatGPTs” of the world for a while, but thanks to AI’s pervasiveness, all of us have now experienced moments of “huh, where did that come from?” after software upgrades that brought us “features” clearly using AI technology — from our personal cellphones to the enterprise academic technologies that we use.  

In higher education, we have also found ourselves in continued conversations highlighting the general challenges of AI (including data bias, hallucinations, privacy, copyright issues, and more), as well as discussing opportunities that AI might bring into educational spaces, including the promise of ultra-personalized tutoring and chatbot support. We are all experiencing the typical “hype cycle” conversations that inevitably happen around any new emerging technology. There are real aspirations about how the new technology can help us, balanced with the disillusionment that occurs when an emerging technology doesn’t exactly live up to the initial hype. The products available are numerous (and sometimes expensive), policies and governance that guide usage are still evolving and need clarity, and the resources needed to put our arms around this emerging technology can feel scattered. It can be exhausting trying to keep up with this rapid technological change.

I sometimes find myself in meetings and at conferences where the terms “efficient and effective” are frequently used in conversations about AI; specifically, promising that AI technologies are going to make our work better, easier, more streamlined, less time-consuming, etc. In part, I think that has an element of truth, as there are many opportunities to use technology as an assistant to help us, and in an era of reduced resources, it is important for us to figure out how and where to optimize our resources and get the technology to work for us as much as possible. 

I also hear the hype around how AI will completely take over education, and there won’t be a need for lecture halls or even universities because AI will teach us all we need to know at our convenience. If you remember the hype cycle around MOOCs in 2012, there were similar conversations around how large, online classes could be efficient, effective and accessible by all and that only a few universities would ultimately survive the MOOC movement. At that time, universities partnered with vendors (such as Coursera) or created their own delivery mechanisms (think Harvard and MIT’s edX) to rapidly pursue new opportunities to expand large open online enrollment courses. These courses exist and continue to expand and grow today. Are MOOCs an important way for people to learn and grow? Absolutely — they fill a niche. Have they replaced higher education? No. Why? Because human interactions and relationships continue to matter. I would posit that those relationships are more important than ever.

I firmly believe that if we minimize human interaction in favor of letting technology lead us, we will find ourselves alienating our teams, our stakeholders, and our students as we drift into responding to needs in mechanized ways. In supporting excellent teaching and learning, and in considering the wider stressors directly impacting mental health, humanizing our work as much as possible and allowing individual voices to thrive remains important. The power of human interaction, care and collaboration in this age of AI becomes more important than ever. And while education will be continually influenced by AI and other emerging technologies, and we will see a future with the possibilities of hyper-personalized learning, AI tutors, and more access to extended reality environments and simulations that can augment education, we should always appreciate the power of interactions between instructors, staff and students that support mentoring, help enhance emotional intelligence and collaboration, and provide the warmth and support only a human interaction can provide.  

James A. Garfield, 20th president of the United States, reportedly said at an alumni dinner that “the ideal college is Mark Hopkins [president at the time of Williams College] on one end of a log and a student on the other.” As educators, I think we should lean into the truth of that remark in that the ideal educational experience is indeed the relationship between an instructor dedicated to passing on their knowledge, wisdom and experience to a student in an intentional way, and as institutions, we should be creating high impact experiences, opportunities for mentoring, and pathways in all degree programs that help students gain skills that help them be successful in the job market. Can technology assist with that? Sure! But should we remove the human from the educational loop and give up our actual intelligence? In my opinion, no.

Ensuring that we don’t let go of the importance of relationships and human touch, even when surrounded by technology, is a touchstone for me. Recently, one of my nephews graduated from NC State. He grew up in a small, rural community, attended the only high school in his county and did not have the same educational opportunities that students from Wake, Orange and Mecklenburg have. When he got to NC State, he sometimes felt behind and overwhelmed. As his aunt, I kept an eye on him (of course!); however, his graduation was made possible in part because of an NC State instructor who took the time to get to know him as a person, who encouraged him, worked with him in several courses, and believed in him. My nephew would be the first to tell you that without this instructor becoming someone that he could talk to and count on, he may not have graduated. My nephew is now thriving in his current job, enabled by what he learned at NC State. Having the technology that we need to support instruction is important, but let’s not ever forget the power of the human side of the work. 

This year, DELTA has made significant progress in supporting the integration of AI into teaching and learning, offering 25 AI-related workshops, updating knowledge base articles and leveraging AI in DELTA grants. Overall, we offered 147 total workshops/training sessions this year on a variety of topics, with 2,462 workshop participants (up from 810 last year) — reflecting the increased demand for training and support for instructors using new and emerging technologies (including AI) and working towards making courses accessible. 

In addition to figuring out how to use AI in teaching and learning, we are very aware of the cumulative load change facing our faculty and staff because of the additional requirements for our campus to meet the ADA Title II final rule that now takes effect in April 2027, and the significant work required for all of us to move forward with transitioning from Moodle to Canvas. Happening simultaneously, these challenges can create operational strain and change fatigue for both faculty and staff.  

With this in front of all of us, supporting faculty in meeting digital accessibility requirements continues to be a focus of our support. We hosted 479 attendees in our Digital Accessibility workshops and supported 5 Course Accessibility DELTA Express Grants this past year. We led campus AccessFest events for hands-on remediation support and offered personalized consultations with faculty on making course content more accessible. Partnering closely with OIT, OEO and the Libraries, we will continue to prepare the campus for this lift.

We have begun a multi-year transition of our learning management system, engaging stakeholders through multiple communication channels, gathering instructor and student feedback, and significantly investing in staff training to prepare our team for this lift. We are supporting our first cohort of faculty teaching live academic courses with Canvas this fall, knowing this work will help us to learn valuable lessons for ensuring the success of this transition at scale. Beginning October 5, 2026, any interested faculty and staff can create “Project” spaces to begin exploring Canvas.

Read through our annual report to note all of the other work the DELTA team has accomplished this year. From the creation of Academic Testing Services to the Zoom support that you rely on, we continue to offer support structures and services, academic technologies, and the production and training that you rely on to create extraordinary digital learning experiences for your students. While we are an innovative organization that leans into new technology, including AI, we will continue to support you in a collaborative and joyful way, approaching our work with a human touch that will help us collectively face all of these changes together. Go Pack!