Dear FACT² Campus Representatives,

Thank you for your continued engagement and leadership across SUNY. As we move through this academic year, I want to take a moment to reflect on the incredible work FACT² continues to do—and the values that drive us.

The Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology remains a vital force for innovation, collaboration, and advocacy within SUNY. Your role as Campus Representatives helps bridge local campus perspectives with system-wide goals, and your voices help shape the direction of our work.

This year, we reaffirm FACT²’s commitment to equity, access, and academic integrity in a time when these principles are increasingly being tested. Regardless of federal shifts or political rhetoric, our dedication to diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice (DEISJ) remains firm. We will continue to support inclusive pedagogies, promote accessibility in digital environments, and ensure that our teaching technologies serve all SUNY learners—especially those most at risk of being left behind.

Your insight, advocacy, and creativity are essential to maintaining SUNY’s leadership in technology-enhanced education. Whether you’re participating in task groups, presenting at CIT, or leading initiatives on your campus, your work matters.

Let’s keep building on this momentum. Please continue to share your ideas, successes, and challenges—we are stronger together.

With gratitude,

Judith Littlejohn

Chair, FACT²

FACT² Task Groups

During the 2025-26 academic year, FACT² is sponsoring two task groups:

SUNY FACT² Digital Accessibility through Artificial Intelligence (AI) Task Group

• This FACT² Task Group will explore best practices for leveraging AI to support faculty and campus efforts to increase Digital Accessibility of course content and access for students to academic resources and services. Building on the work of the previous Task Group on Generative AI in Teaching and learning, this Task group will look at expanding the AI Tools rubric to include assessment of digital tools for supporting EIT accessibility.
• Co-chairs: Meghanne Freivald and Nicola Marae Allain

SUNY FACT² Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) through Technology-Enhanced Portfolio Assessment and Institutional Structures for Access and Equity Task Group

• This working group will examine enhanced portfolio assessment practices supported by the adoption of technology solutions while developing clear recommendations for equitable campus structures and procedures.  SUNY and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) have formed a two-year partnership to support SUNY’s interest in enabling the award of academic credit through Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) in credit courses and programs. CAEL training and consulting through this partnership will support both the FACT² working group and campus faculty and staff.  Through the integration of advanced technology solutions—including AI-powered assessment tools—and robust campus structures designed for access and equity, the FACT² Task Group will empower SUNY to expand access to credit for prior learning, elevate portfolio assessment standards, and ensure all learners have equitable paths to academic credit based on their skills and experience.
• Co-chairs: Janet Nepkie and Chrisie Mitchell

New FACT² Guide to AI in Higher Education!

The SUNY FACT² Task group on AI in Action has just released a new guide to using AI in higher ed:

AI in Action: A SUNY FACT² Guide to Optimizing AI in Higher Education.

This new resource has been publicly released under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License. Thanks to Kati Ahern, Nicola Marae Allain, Abigail Bechtel, Angie Chung, Billie Franchini, Meghanne Freivald, Ken Fujiuchi, Dana Gavin, Jack Harris, Keith Landa, Alla Myzelev, Victoria Pilato, Ahmad Pratama, Russell V. Rittenhouse, Bruce Simon, Carrie Solomon, Angela C. Thering, and Shyam Sharma for all of their work on this project!

Get updated on the 11/14/25 Campus Rep webinar

If you were unable to attend the 11/14/25 FACT² Campus Rep webinar – or want to more broadly share the info from it – you’ll want to explore the following materials:

1. Kim Scalzo’s update on SUNY Digital Innovation and Academic Services (slides)
2. Report by Janet Nepkie and John Zelenak on FACT² Excellence Awards co-chairs (slides)
3. Report from the task group on Technology-Enhanced Portfolio Assessment by co-chairs Janet Nepkie and Chrisie Mitchell (slides)
4. Call for FACT² award nominations – submission deadline extended until 12/15 (.doc)
5. Course Accessibility Checklist – developed and shared by Allene Slating from SUNY Online (.doc)

2024-2025 FACT² Award winners

Highlighting the work of two of last year’s FACT² award winners:

Dr. Babette Faehmel – SUNY Schenectady

A summary of Dr. Faehmel’s work is available here. (generated by NotebookLM)

Dr. Gina Solano – SUNY Oneonta

Dr. Gina Solana (SUNY Oneonta)’s accomplishments netted the 2024 FACT² Award for Instructional Excellence in Instruction. Please review the following Notebook LM-generated summaries of Dr. Solano’s work:

• Audio podcast of her work.
• Infographic 
• Text summary

We’ll be sharing summaries of the work of the other 2025 FACT², Laura Parmenter and the Upstate team in a later issue of this newsletter.

CIT

The SUNY Conference on Instruction and Technology (CIT) is at Stony Brook University on May 26-29, 2026. The theme of the Conference this year is: Designing the Future of Learning: Resilient Teaching, Innovative Practices, and Student Success. The keynote address at this conference will be provided by Dr. Sarah Rose Cavanagh, a Psychologist, Educational Developer, and author of The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Learning, Mind Over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge, and numerous scholarly works.

If you are interested in presenting at SUNY CIT 2026, the call for proposals is now open. Get information on the CIT 2026 Conference at the CIT website.

Tools and Resources

SUNY System-Wide D2L Lumi Pro Rollout

D2L Lumi Pro features in Brightspace help you streamline your course preparation. Consider testing this feature, which was rolled out in the DLE system-wide beginning in August 2025; it may be new to your campus. It is designed to create significant workflow efficiencies for course creators. As you set up your courses, explore Lumi Pro’s capabilities, including the ability to instantly generate test questions directly from your content, craft engaging assignment and discussion descriptions, and produce concise module summary overviews. D2L Lumi Pro can save you time and enhance your course design process without leaving Brightspace, leveraging Anthropic’s Large Language Model (LLM) Claude.

Training

Take advantage of the ongoing, no-fee faculty training sessions offered by the SUNY Center for Professional Development (CPD), through January 2026. Visit the SUNY Online LUMI Pro Training link to register for a live session. Review the training materials, including the Lumi Pro PowerPoint Presentation with embedded help documents from Jamie Heron.

Quick How-To Videos from D2L

• Generate Assignment Ideas with D2L Lumi
• Generate Quiz Questions with D2L Lumi

Sample Disclaimers to Embed in Your Courses (lightly adapted fromUpstate)

• AI Use in Course Materials: Any instructional materials or learning activities in this course that are created with the assistance of AI tools are adequately reviewed by the instructor.
• AI Use in Course Materials: Some materials in this course may be drafted with assistance from AI tools. Final content always reflects the instructor’s judgment and expertise; AI is used as an aid in the process, not as an authority.
• AI Use in Course Materials: Portions of instructional materials or learning activities may be created with AI tools. All items are reviewed by the instructor(s) for quality and alignment with course outcomes and are finalized by the instructor.

SUNY Pressbooks: Open Publishing Made Easy

SUNY Pressbooks empowers faculty and staff to create, adapt, and share open educational resources using an intuitive interface and robust formatting tools. Offered at no cost, it supports the development of accessible, customizable course materials across disciplines and reflects SUNY OER Services’ commitment to collaboration, affordability, and equitable access to high-quality learning content. 

SUNY Create: Empowering Digital Agency

SUNY Create empowers students, faculty, and staff to take ownership of their digital presence by building personal websites, portfolios, and projects using more than 100 open-source tools. This shared platform, offered to campuses at a nominal cost subsidized by SUNY OER Services, supports digital agency, literacy, and creativity. By integrating SUNY Create into teaching and learning, campuses foster equitable, expressive, and participatory approaches to knowledge-building. 

Torus: Adaptive Learning Powered by Open Content

Torus is an open-source platform developed by the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University that integrates adaptive learning technologies with OER. Designed to deliver personalized, data-informed learning experiences, Torus supports modular course design and is grounded in a research-based framework. It offers campuses a flexible, learner-centered approach to improving engagement and outcomes through open, customizable content.

AI for Learning Joins SUNY’s Ready-to-Adopt OER Catalog

SUNY OER Services has added AI for Learning to its Ready-to-Adopt catalog – an open course available at no cost to SUNY campuses. The course was developed through the AI 4 Learning Network (AI4LN), a partnership among Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative, SUNY OER Services, College of the Canyons, and UNCF, with generous support from Axim Collaborative. More than 75 faculty from diverse institutions co-designed, tested, and refined the materials to ensure their relevance and practicality. Consider exploring the course and integrating AI into your teaching. 

Deque University 

SUNY’s contract with Deque University provides SUNY employees with valuable resources that we can use to help ensure that our campuses meet the digital accessibility requirements of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Information on accessing Deque University resources is available on SUNY’s Deque University website.

Google AI Certification

This is a faculty and student facing set of resources that faculty and students can use, especially to learn the basics about AI. It should be noted that the course was NOT created by academics; instructors who teach courses meeting SUNY Information Literacy goals have pointed out that it does not align with SUNY’s updated InfoLit goals. Despite potential limitations, however, the content could be a starting point, including for critical discussions about how the definition of information literacy differs in the contexts of college versus the industry. 

AI and Accessibility & Allies Fellowships

SUNY launched its AI and Accessibility Fellowship programs in 2025, designed to support fellows who help facilitate initiatives on their campuses and across the SUNY system. More information is available at the following sites:

• SUNY AI for the Public Good Fellows program
• SUNY Advocates & Allies Faculty Fellows

In this issue, we’re featuring the SUNY Accessibility Advocates and Allies Faculty Fellowship program. It is co-sponsored by the SUNY Office of Student Success, in partnership with the SUNY Office of the Provost and supported by the Universal Design for Learning at SUNY project. The initial 2025 cohort of fellows has been hard at work establishing communities of faculty leaders and champions committed to growing accessibility practices in and out of the classroom on their campuses. Based on their own campus experiences and interconnected communities of practice, they are exploring diverse strategies to expand cultures of access and generate solutions exemplars. Collectively, their work touches Disability/Accessibility Directors, EIT Accessibility Officers, Chief Diversity Officers, Chief Information Officers, Teaching Center Directors, Directors of Online Learning, Instructional Designers, faculty and staff. 

The approach has been unique, supporting fellows’ work on their own campuses. Last spring, fellows engaged in comprehensive audits, including physical accessibility, digital accessibility, UDL practices, the event accessibility, and more. During the summer, each fellow developed an engagement effort to address their own campus’ needs, capitalizing on baseline practices and strengths to increase faculty engagement. The year wraps up as fellows curate “case studies” of their work, which will be published on SUNY Blue.

Facilitated by Professor Rebecca Mushtare, an experienced faculty member and Associate Dean from SUNY Oswego, the inaugural 2025 fellows of the SUNY Accessibility Advocates and Allies Faculty Fellowship Program are:

• Shannon Bessette, Jamestown Community College
• Liz Bowen, Upstate Medical University
• Kathy Doody, Buffalo State University
• Melissa Glenn, SUNY Broome Community College
• Shelly Jones, SUNY Delhi
• Talia Lipton, Rockland Community College
• Gillian Paku, SUNY Geneseo
• Carrie Rood, SUNY Cortland
• Casey Ryan, Hudson Valley Community College
• Jessica Sniatecki, SUNY Brockport
• Nicole Tschampel, Westchester Community College

The second-cohort 2026 Fellows were announced on 12/6/25:

• Emma Ben Ayoun, Fashion Institute of Technology
• Kelly Ficner, SUNY Canton
• Kevin Hofmann, Alfred State College
• Melissa Johnson, Cayuga Community College
• Alexandra Kay, SUNY Orange
• Robert Koble, SUNY Corning Community College
• Janita Moricette, Tompkins Cortland Community College
• Efekona Nuwere, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University
• Emily Riddle, SUNY Oneonta
• Margaret Schedel, State University of New York at Stony Brook
• Bridget Whearty, State University of New York at Binghamton

Apply Now: SUNY’s 2026-27 IITG and OER Impact Grants 

SUNY is offering over $1 million in competitive funding through its 2026-27 Academic Innovation Grant programs, including Innovative Instruction Technology Grants (IITG) and OER Impact Grants. These grants support campus-led projects that advance teaching, learning, and student success through innovation, collaboration, and open educational practices.

The application process begins with a Stage 1 Ideation phase, followed by full proposal submissions. Resources are available to help applicants prepare. The portal opens in January 2026.

The Practice Corner: Effective Uses of AI 

Updating Writing-to-Learn Assignments – The PAIRR Model and More… 

As GenEd faculty and also instructors across the disciplines who assign writing-intensive or writing-to-learn assignments know, writing is not just the text, the product, that someone else or something else can do for the learner. Instructors assign writing – ranging from first-year writing to writing-intensive upper-division courses across the disciplines – for “facilitating” research and reading, ideating and organizing ideas, articulating/drafting and revising/refining arguments, editing and stylistically fine-tuning to find a voice of their own. If used without adequate knowledge, skills, and focus on the learning objectives, GenAI tools take the “friction” out of the multi-layered and recursive experience of the writing process. Indeed, more and more AI tools explicitly offer to help students offload writing entirely, making a mockery of the many tasks and skills “writing” embodies and helps to teach. One approach writing experts have developed for breaking down that process, teaching students how to be in the driver’s seat while using AI, and integrate human/peer feedback in the process is the PAIRR method. Developed by Marit McArthur and her colleagues in California, the “Peer Review & AI Review + Reflection” method helps “students interact with AI tools for feedback and improvement of their writing skills.” 

PAIRR graphic designed by Nicholas Stillman.

When using the PAIRR method, instructors first provide students with a short reading on AI literacy (McArthur et al. provide one that addresses language equity issues). Note that you could expand/adapt this learning-about-AI step to your course goals/needs. Then students complete human peer review of each other’s drafts. Third, they prompt an appropriate AI tool to review the same drafts, with instructor guidance on privacy settings. Fourth, student writers critically reflect on and assess both types of feedback, peer and AI provided, relative to the goal and audience of the writing. Finally, the student writers revise their own writing based on what they’ve learned from both kinds of feedback. The quality of AI feedback depends on the writer’s agency and control over their writing process, depending on their knowledge, skills, and caution. 

The above overview is based on this open-source resource, which contains a package of materials that you can adapt. In addition, consider exploring:

• A repository at UC Davis of additional teaching/learning resources; and
• For colleagues who teach writing or use writing-to-learn assignments, explore the Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse (and publication). 

Colleagues at many SUNY campuses have also developed rich resources to preserve and promote writing-intensive learning. We feature just two this time:

• University at Albany’s guide to assignment creation using AI
• Stony Brook University’s grant-supported modules that they can assign students, to help instructors across the disciplines preserve and promote writing-to-learn assignments and pedagogies.

Critical Perspectives Corner

No technology is neutral but some are more disruptive to established social norms, educational foundations, and the public good than others. Generative AI is on the most disruptive side. From being built on intellectual property whose ownership rights are often violated to the rewriting of rules of academia and the overall global knowledge economy to posing threats to the information systems that sustain democracies, GenAI calls for a vastly more informed and cautious approach than, say, personal computers and even the internet (which were themselves transformative to society). From generating fake scientific research that is on the rise to deepfakes that are flooding both the fun side of social media and often used with criminal intents online, GenAI has a wide range of uses that are becoming serious threats. Almost everyone can find numerous productive uses of GenAI. Unfortunately, students, teachers, members of professions that are permeated by GenAI, and members of the larger public alike are generally far behind in their knowledge about this technology – whether that is foundational knowledge about how AI works and how to use it positively or it is about spotting and avoiding or helping curb the negative and harmful uses of GenAI. That is because it is impossible for almost everyone to catch up to the breakneck speed at which technology is advancing and its uses are penetrating society. 

The following resources were picked as starting points for educators who want to engage their students in critical conversations about AI: 

• Here is a primer on how GenAI works from the national organization of writing professors (CCC); a working group has also provided teachers with a very useful guideline for navigating plagiarism in relation to AI. For a broader treatment of the impacts of GenAI on higher education, here is a very comprehensive and critically informative article from Current Affairs.
• For more on how GenAI works straight from the “godfather” of AI, here is an interview conducted by the comedian Jon Stewart with Geoffrey Hinton, who developed the foundations of “neural networks.” Hinton goes beyond explaining the basics of how GenAI works to saying that he is dedicating his retirement to encouraging the public to put pressure on their governments to regulate AI (without which “we could be toast” within 20 years). For deeper dives, watch him on Bloomberg or on the Diary of a CEO podcast, or watch Stuart Russell, who raises similar alarms. 
• An AI industry insider turned journalist after becoming concerned about the dismantling of ethical guardrails by the emerging AI industry, Karen Hao, author of “Empire of AI,” covers some fundamental concerns that educators should also know about in this CNBC Interview. Hao warns about the concentration of power and a cult-like view of GenAI and following behind its leaders. Indeed, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI says that he loses sleep over a few ways in which AI progress could go wrong. 

Emerging scholarship (e.g., Buston et al., 2024) has started addressing how AI could corrupt research processes (from data contamination and untraceable “AI-written” sections in manuscripts to automated literature reviews), not just threatening the reproducibility of science but also the reliability of the all scholarly record.  The Australian higher-education regulator warns that generative AI poses “significant risks” to research integrity through data poisoning, privacy breaches, and fabricated outputs, and urges universities to tighten policies for AI use in research training and supervision. Unfortunately, reviews of university-level GenAI policies worldwide (e.g., Yan et al., 2025) find that institutions are struggling to balance innovation against academic integrity, equity, and data-protection concerns. Even researchers in medicine are found to uncritically adopt GenAI, increasingly normalizing shallow engagement with content, exacerbating inequities, and eroding trust in the profession (Francis et al., 2025). Beyond classroom and research, AI affects education as a public-good and foundation for democracy: if AI systems used in schools and universities are opaque, discriminatory, or commercially driven, they can undermine civic purposes of education and weaken democratic cultures. Unfortunately, as this critical op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle shows, universities like the California State University’s are pushing to become “AI-powered” systems, in partnership with major tech companies, risking replacing tutors and advisers, eroding critical thinking, and turning students into test subjects in an unregulated experiment that undercuts the public mission of a regional access-oriented system. The work of balancing benefits of AI with the need to educate future generations about its risks rests on the shoulders of educators and scholars advancing the scholarship on AI, higher education, and the public good.

Initiatives Across SUNY 

Many among us, educators might feel like there is nothing that mere teachers or even universities can do. Technology will make things unfold as it unfolds. Indeed, unlike in SUNY, many university leaders around the country seem to have gotten on the GenAI bandwagon and stopped asking questions about jobs and economy, society and education, or even the environment; they’re adapting to the pull and push of AI, or their perception thereof. Educational futurist Bryan Alexander poses different potential futures where AI has reshaped higher education, or rather humans have let it (or used it to) do so. SUNY and campus leaders are not just letting the tail of technology wag the dog of education. At a system level, there is some guidance on responsible use of AI, and that guidance has shaped strategic planning and campus-level initiatives. 

SUNY’s FACT² initiative has developed a number of initiatives around integration of AI in teaching and beyond, including its SUNY FACT² Guide on Optimizing AI in Higher Education. SUNY also just launched the AI Fellows for the Public Good program with the goal of helping campuses meet the updated information literacy goals starting the Fall of 2026, as well as to advance the broader vision of public good. 

In addition, SUNY campuses are starting to translate SUNY’s ethical guidelines to practice. For example, at Stony Brook, the Senate Technology Committee has adopted and published a “Statement of Principles Guiding AI Adoption and Use” to provide all stakeholders (from institutional leaders to staff and faculty members to students) with shared guidance. It covers the full range of topics from teaching AI literacy to broader concerns of staff labor and faculty academic freedom, student rights and privacy, humane and educationally sound solutions to cheating, and much more.  

SUNY Orange Spotlight- Shared by FACT² Rep Michael Wolter

SUNY Orange’s Center for Teaching & Learning has strengthened faculty preparedness by delivering a summer professional development series led by Dr. Michael Wolter on Accessibility, UDL, OER, YuJa, Brightspace, and Orange Connect. This work continues through weekly accessibility workshops that build faculty skills in document remediation, Ally usage, and accessible course design. To support proactive compliance, Dr. Wolter and CTL Director Dana Salkowsky also launched a course-review submission process that provides individualized accessibility feedback, for faculty that self-select to register, ahead of the April Accessibility deadline.  

SUNY Plattsburgh Spotlight – Shared by Marcus Tye, PhD, Provost & SVPAA

FACT² Rep Dr. John Locke

Dr. John Locke has accepted the position of Director of SUNY Plattsburgh’s new Center for Instructional and Program Innovation (CIAPI). This will move towards integrating the Center for Teaching Excellence and Technology Enhanced Learning into a new unit, which will work together to advance our excellence in all forms of instruction and support program development, including online programs.

Many of us know John in his former role as Coordinator of the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Unit since 2015. The TEL and Teaching Excellence Fellows will report to John. In the coming months, John will consider how best to structure CIAPI in order to maximize the benefit within these current resources. The most important short-term goal for CIAPI will be full compliance with the new ADA Title II standards by April 2026 for materials in the LMS.

As you may know, John is a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Professional Service recipient who brings a great deal of expertise to this new role, having been an advocate for years for such an integrated approach at SUNY Plattsburgh. He has taught courses in communication and political science. His career spans over three decades in higher education, instructional design, marketing, and digital media. A U.S. Navy veteran, Locke received two Navy Achievement Medals: one for establishing the first upper-atmosphere analysis (rawinsonde) program aboard the USS Guadalcanal, which supported air operations during the 1983 U.N. peacekeeping mission in Beirut, and another for his work at the Naval Eastern Oceanography Center during a major hurricane that threatened the Norfolk Naval Base in the mid-1980s. Locke brings both strategic focus and creative energy to his work—he played a key leadership role during the campus-wide transition to remote learning in Spring 2020 and has been instrumental in SUNY Plattsburgh’s ADA compliance and online readiness initiatives. He holds a Ph.D. in Humanities and Culture, with a certificate in Creative Writing, and is the author of several books, including Utopia Revisited. Again, a huge welcome to John in accepting this great opportunity to help support our students and faculty. My gratitude also to the search committee, led by Joshua Beatty, and to last year’s task force, also led by Dr. Beatty, on conceptualizing how we should approach instructional and program innovation in the future.