SCC AI in Education Newsletter 25.10
October 2025
Happy October, SCC faculty and staff!
I’m Don Button, Design & Digital Media professor and the SCC AI Coordinator.
Welcome to the first AI in Education newsletter — this will be a monthly email detailing a variety of resources and webinars available for everyone to learn more about using and managing AI in your classrooms and offices. Please feel free to email me to share your thoughts, questions, and any resources I might share with the campus community. Let me know if you’d like to meet 1-on-1 to discuss your AI questions and needs.
Don Button (he/him)
AI Coordinator
Professor, Design & Digital Media
Sacramento City College
AI in Education Resource Hub
This Canvas shell is open to all LRCCD faculty and staff (and select students) with an interest in AI in education. It serves as a curated repository of useful AI news, tools, webinars, training opportunities, thought leaders, books, podcasts, and more.
Self-enroll in the Canvas shell
Once you’re enrolled, check out the home page to get an idea of what the site contains. Everything else is on the Modules page. You might want to look at the most recent Announcement at the top of the home page to see what I send out every few weeks.
Previous announcements are also a good way to get a more complete idea of what’s in the modules and find items that may be useful to you.
Upcoming AI-Related Webinars
Except for the NAAIC listing, all the webinars below focus on classroom faculty, but future newsletters will include training for staff members as well.
The Opposite of Cheating: Teaching for Integrity in the Age of AI
October 3
Are Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools a threat to academic integrity or an opportunity for us to evolve teaching, learning, and assessment? The answer is both, of course! In this session, we’ll focus on understanding the threats and opportunities and then identifying the options that faculty have for minimizing the threats and amplifying the opportunities. In thinking about one thing we can do next week, next term, and next year, participants will leave the session empowered to craft their GenAI and AI policy while creating a culture of integrity within their classes. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to stay ahead of the curve and ensure your students are prepared for the challenges of tomorrow. Register now!
Event Details
- Presenter: Dr. Tricia Bertram Gallant, author of The Opposite of Cheating
- When: Friday, Oct. 3, 12:00 pm PST
- Location: Virtual, Free
From Passive to Active: Teaching Students to Critically Engage with AI Feedback
October 7
In this free webinar you’ll explore how to teach students to critically engage with AI feedback, addressing a common concern: that AI turns students into passive consumers rather than active thinkers and writers. You will learn strategies to help students question, challenge, and strategically use AI feedback - building essential skills for navigating AI in all areas of life. Rather than replacing teacher and peer feedback, AI becomes a tool that helps students become more intentional about their writing choices and build confidence in their voice while learning to use AI to stimulate not replace their thinking.
Key Topics
- The Peer & AI Review + Reflection (PAIRR) feedback prompt: Designed by educators and grounded in core writing pedagogy, this prompt helps students see their work through readers’ eyes—identifying strengths to build on and areas for revision.
- Scaffolding critical engagement: Seven practical strategies for teaching students to iterate with AI feedback, including how to push back on suggestions, explore uncertainties, and seek contradictory perspectives.
- Protecting human connection: Why teacher and peer feedback remain essential for meaningful writing as human communication, and how AI feedback can supplement rather than replacing these interactions.
- Hands-on practice: Work with real examples of AI feedback to test out iteration strategies and evaluate the feedback prompt in action.
Event Details
- Sponsor/Presenter: AI For Education
- When: Tuesday, October 7, 9:00 am PST
- Location: Virtual, Free
Can’t make the time? A recording + resources will be emailed to all registrants.
Designing for the Future: Leveraging AI, UDL, and Flexible Course Design for Inclusive Learning
October 14
This session explores how AI can support faculty in anticipating learner variability, designing flexible, inclusive courses, and fostering metacognition through reflective, growth-oriented rubrics. Grounded in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), participants will discover how to use AI tools to streamline design, embed choice, and support student thinking and ownership. Practical examples and strategies will be shared for immediate application.
Event Details
- Presenter: Elli Constantin, Cypress College
- Sponsor: CVC@ONE, CCC
- When: Tuesday, October 14, 119:00 am PST
- Location: Virtual, Free
Can’t make the time? A recording + resources will be emailed to all registrants.
Leaning into Our Values: Incorporating GenAI into Our Teaching Practice
October 27
With the disruptive innovation of Generative AI, educational leaders and faculty alike face uncertainty with the disruptive innovation of this mutable technology. A key component to dealing with radical change is ‘leaning into’ and living according to our personal and professional values. This webinar will encourage participants to examine the roles our values play as we examine how GenAI impacts authorship, connection, critical analysis and meaning-making in our academic learning and workplace environments.
Event Details
- Presenter: Katy Datko, Glendale Community College
- Sponsor: CVC@ONE, CCC
- When: Monday, October 27, 11:00 am PST
- Location: Virtual, Free
Can’t make the time? A recording + resources will be emailed to all registrants.
Advanced GenAI for Educators: Reasoning Models & Deep Research
October 30
GenAI continues to evolve with new capabilities like Deep Research and reasoning, presenting a significant opportunity for educators to enhance both their own practice and their students’ learning experiences. Join us for our next free webinar where we’ll explore these advanced capabilities, understand how they work, and discover practical ways to integrate them into your teaching practice.
Key Topics
- Understanding advanced AI research capabilities: Explore how new AI systems can conduct comprehensive research, draft a research paper, and present findings with citations for review
- Exploring GenAI reasoning models: Deep dive into reasoning models and how chain-of-thought reasoning increases GenAI’s capability to complete complex projects
- Enhancing your practice: Practical applications for operational planning, multi-step projects, research, and working through problems of practice
- Designing learning experiences with GenAI: Strategies for creating assignments and activities that use AI to deepen student research skills, source validation, critical thinking, and academic writing
Participants will gain:
- Clear picture of how GenAI is evolving and what it means for education
- Practical strategies for incorporating reasoning research capabilities into your practice
- Instructional strategies for improving students’ AI literacy and research skills with Deep Research
Event Details
- Sponsor/Presenter: AI For Education
- When: Thursday, October 30, 10:00 am PST
- Location: Virtual, Free
Can’t make the time? A recording + resources will be emailed to all registrants.
Human-First Teaching with AI
November 6
Modern teaching demands more from faculty than ever before. From formatting and accessibility compliance to upholding rigorous academic standards within the new frontier of online courses, instructors are increasingly consumed by digital busy-work. While these responsibilities are essential, these tasks pull us away from what matters most: meaningful human-to-human connection with our students. In this session we will explore how AI tools can automate repetitive teaching tasks without compromising quality, equity, or integrity.
- Create and edit accessible Canvas content.
- Streamline the creation of randomized assessments within Canvas to protect integrity in asynchronous classes.
- Model responsible AI use and literacy for our students for academic and professional success.
Participants will receive a digital resources toolkit to help get them reduce and manage their own digital busy work more effectively.
Event Details
- Presenter: E. Nidia González, Norco College
- Sponsor: CVC@ONE, CCC
- When: Thursday, November 6, 10:00 am PST
- Location: Virtual, Free
Can’t make the time? A recording + resources will be emailed to all registrants.
Self-Paced
Generative AI for Educators with Gemini
With Generative AI for Educators with Gemini, you’ll learn how to use generative AI tools (like Gemini and NotebookLM) to help you save time on everyday tasks, personalize instruction, enhance lessons and activities in creative ways, and more. Developed by AI experts at Google, this course will help you bring AI into your practice. You’ll also gain a foundational understanding of AI — you’ll learn what it is, the opportunities and limitations of this technology, and how to use it responsibly.
You’ll learn how to use generative AI tools like Gemini and NotebookLM to:
- Save time on everyday tasks like drafting emails and other correspondence
- Personalize instruction for different learning styles and abilities
- Enhance lessons and activities in creative ways
Location: Virtual, Free
National Applied AI Consortium (NAAIC) Training
NAAIC is transforming how AI is taught at community colleges nationwide. Through strategic partnerships with leading technology companies and educational institutions, we provide the resources, training, and connections faculty need to teach AI effectively, helping colleges develop programs that create accessible pathways to high-demand careers.
Their Upcoming Events page provides an impressive list of courses, including:
- Intro to Generative AI and Microsoft Copilot
- Autonomous Solutions for Automation Everywhere
- AWS AI Practitioner Faculty Training
- AI in Manufacturing: A Practical Guide for Community Colleges
- Microsoft Azure AI-900 Training
Pre-recorded from CVC@ONE
Building Your Own Multi-Pronged Approach to Reducing AI Misuse in Writing Assignments
Most educators now acknowledge that no single strategy can prevent students from outsourcing their writing to AI—especially in online, asynchronous courses. And yet we must not and need not abandon writing in our pedagogy; its value for learning remains. This webinar will make the case that a well-designed combination of strategies can make AI misuse much less likely.
We will explore three complementary approaches: designing assignments that motivate authentic engagement, implementing accountability measures that respect the student-teacher relationship, and guiding students toward pedagogical applications of AI that stimulate rather than replace writing processes. To support these approaches, we will share resources like AI policies, prompt templates, and examples of tools. Along the way, we’ll reflect on pros and cons and workload considerations for each strategy.
Come ready to think creatively, question assumptions, and begin crafting your own academic integrity plan that aligns with your context and teaching philosophy.
Event Details
- Presenter: Anna Mills, AAC&U Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum
- Sponsor: CVC@ONE, CCC
AI Breakout Room Challenges
In this hands-on workshop, participants will engage in a series of increasingly challenging collaborative AI tasks, structured as breakout room challenges. Each task will explore the use of AI tools to enhance teaching practices and student learning. Topics will include effective prompt writing, designing assignments that reduce the likelihood of AI misuse, and facilitating comprehension of complex texts. By working through these challenges in teams, participants will deepen their understanding of AI’s role in education and develop concrete strategies to apply in their courses.
Event Details
- Presenter: Christopher Stillwell, Saddleback College
- Sponsor: CVC@ONE, CCC