TSC Team Wins Prestigious CU Teaching and Learning Grant 

The K-8 School at Columbia University is excited to announce that a team of teachers and staff at The School has been awarded a 2024 Columbia University Provost’s Large-Scale Teaching and Learning Grant for their project, “Empowering Pedagogy: Math, Science, and Technology Learning in the K-8 Setting.” The team is composed of Julie Broderick, Gr. 5 Teacher; Jeffrey V. Cortez, Database Specialist; and Lisbeth Uribe, Science Teacher. 

The team intends to explore ways of using artificial intelligence, or AI, in K-8 teaching practice. They want to build knowledge and expertise around using AI to enhance child-centered, constructivist teaching methodologies, creating more engaging and interactive classes that promote deep learning and critical thinking. They also want to explore how AI can support and streamline lesson planning, allowing more time for direct student interaction and personalized teaching, thereby enhancing the quality of education overall. 

“I think a lot of us are tiptoeing around AI in our teaching, questioning whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea, not quite sure of the best ways to implement it into our practice,” Broderick said. “We want to explore these ideas and share the knowledge we gain.”

“So much of the discussion about AI in education seems to be focused on issues surrounding its use by students,” Uribe said. “We want to look at its use by teachers, particularly in math, science and technology.”

Broderick and Uribe, longtime colleagues who also co-lead The School’s new after-school Math Club, have researched the work of mathematician Dr. Peter Liljedahl, who advocates in his book “Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics” for transforming traditional learning environments into dynamic spaces that encourage exploration, inquiry, and critical thinking. This approach felt to Broderick and Uribe that it could align well with some of the capabilities and opportunities offered by AI. 

They then connected with Cortez, a Technology staff member who also teaches an after-school class on AI, and the trio’s grant proposal was born.

“We know that to use AI well, as teachers or students, we have to have metacognition and awareness of the thinking behind our actions. We have to look under the hood and understand the mechanics, so that the directions we feed to AI become better and clearer. And then we have to share that knowledge as teachers, so that we can use AI to develop scenarios and teach science and math in smarter and smarter ways,” Broderick said. 

The group plans to utilize resources from the grant to attend conferences and professional development opportunities related to teaching and AI. They will also lead workshops and creative  sessions for colleagues at TSC, to exchange ideas and pilot projects together. Mostly, they want to generate excitement and interest in what they believe to be the expansive opportunities of using AI in K-8 teaching practice.

Cortez, who represented TSC at the International Society for Technology in Education annual conference this past summer, has planned a series of workshops for colleagues that present easy-to-implement strategies. “Here are five ways AI is impacting teaching right now, here are five ways you can harness that impact in your classroom,” Cortez said. “I think sharing these best practices with each other will be incredibly helpful to our work, and to the ideas we want to advance.”

In addition to collaborating within TSC, the team looks forward to the University partnerships they can build through their work, including with Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and other Teaching and Learning Grant recipients across campus. “We’re excited to host visitors from CTL and additional professors at Columbia, who can visit TSC, see firsthand the work TSC teachers are doing in classrooms and continue sharing research with each other,” Broderick said.

“The team’s project exemplifies our school’s four core values—Community, Collaboration, Diversity, Innovation—and addresses essential issues that K-8 educators face today. I believe that the insights and conclusions they collect will be valuable to the field of K-8 education, and will provide a foundation for future, similar projects by other educators worldwide,” Dr. Sonya Somerville, Head of School, said.

Since 2014, the Office of the Provost has funded more than 300 Teaching and Learning Grants involving faculty across all of Columbia’s schools and campuses to further enhance Columbia’s learning environments for students and develop new and exciting ways to enhance teaching and learning across the University and beyond. Proposals are accepted annually for Innovative Course Design; Innovative Course Module Design; Large-Scale Teaching and Learning; Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs); Interdisciplinary Teaching Initiatives; and Emerging Technology Grants.