“I still describe myself in all these talks as a skeptical optimist,” said Jason Blomquist. “AI is not the answer to everything. But you don’t know which aspects are or aren’t until you play with it enough to figure it out.”
Blomquist, an assistant professor in the School of Nursing, is one of the Idaho State Board of Education’s 2024-25 Generative Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education fellows. During the past academic year, he has been networking across Idaho institutions to foster better understanding around generative AI.
The more Blomquist talks with faculty, the more he hears that “hands down the number one thing” they ask for is time and resources to actually learn how to use generative AI in the context of their work, he said.
So he and co-fellow Liza Long have focused their energy on supporting faculty development.
Supporting faculty development
Since starting the fellowship program, Blomquist and Long have hosted webinar presentations and virtual drop-in sessions to talk about people’s burning questions or work with AI.
An associate professor of English at the College of Western Idaho, Long also developed an AI-focused writing course. She plans to make it available on Canvas Commons so faculty across Idaho could use it if they wanted to.
Blomquist also organized a virtual symposium in conjunction with Douglas Habib of the University of Idaho’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. When they put out a call for presenters, faculty from across seven of Idaho’s eight higher ed institutions responded. Presenters will cover topics from AI literacy and ethics to ways to apply AI for research and teaching.
“A big piece of the symposium, in addition to having people show what they’re doing, is hopefully to create a space where people can just share what they want to do and develop some collaborations and some next steps.”
Blomquist is also developing a five-week faculty learning community with Boise State’s Center for Teaching and Learning. His idea is to provide a space for faculty and staff to learn how to use AI for course development or administrative tasks, like converting a slide deck into an accessible document, for example.
Blomquist wants to help faculty think about how AI can work for them, even if it means deciding that it’s actually not right for the job at hand.
“I think that’s perfectly fine,” he said. “More than anything, I think the idea is to get people actually playing with it and exploring it, so that they can then create more informed opinions about it.”
Nursing as a natural starting place
In addition to supporting faculty learning opportunities, Blomquist has advanced his own AI scholarly footprint. Since he is a nursing professor, schools of nursing are a natural starting place for his work.
In spring 2024, Blomquist, Professor Ellie Dworak, and Associate Professors Jenny Alderden and Sarah Llewellyn conducted a survey of Boise State’s School of Nursing to investigate perceptions around AI use. They received responses from 19% of current nursing students and 74% of the school’s faculty answering questions like:
1) What is your overall level of confidence in using AI?
2) How often do you use AI as part of your role as a student?
3) In what ways do you use AI?
4) Have your professors addressed the use of AI in your classes?
The team’s write up of the results have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Nursing Education. Building on that work, this spring they also launched a longitudinal version of the survey to every nursing school in the state. This will allow them to look at how perceptions might differ over time and between types of nursing schools.
Blomquist’s team hypothesizes there will be significant differences based on degree program, size and location of school. He hopes their results will help nursing educators as they consider the impact of AI on competency-based education.
Blomquist also teaches in a healthcare and informatics course. In addition to teaching AI ethics and giving students time to practice with programs, he regularly asks about their own AI usage and perceptions. While he sees changes semester to semester as new students take the course, overall it’s “markedly fewer” than the extremely high use that many academic articles are reporting, he said.
“This semester I’d say about 20% of the class said they’re using it regularly, which is up,” he said. “And a lot of them–when they are using it–they’re using it like a Google search.”
Insights into Idaho
While Blomquist’s data speaks to perceptions in nursing schools, there isn’t any data on Idaho schools in general. In hopes of establishing a statewide baseline, Blomquist will be surveying all faculty and instructional staff across Idaho with colleagues Llewellyn, Long, and Clinical Associate Professor Serena Morales.
“I think it’ll be interesting, just to see where the lay of the land is,” Blomquist said.
The survey includes a demographic question for faculty to identify their field of study, like health sciences or arts or business. This will help the research team understand how different disciplines use AI and their views on using it.
The results are highly anticipated, as they can provide insights for application in various school settings across Idaho.