Acadia University opens up AI literacy course to public for free

A pop online trend nearly unreal intelligence service that's offered by Acadia University has now been opened up free of charge to the public.

The self-paced training module, originally developed for students at the Wolfville, N.S., school, became available to the public last week through Open Acadia, the university's online course portal.

After nearly 500 students enrolled since January and provided positive feedback, the university realized the content perfectly matched the curiosity about AI shared by the adult learning community, according to Lauren Wilson Finniss, Acadia's vice-provost of curriculum and planning.

"It was really coming from a place of we have something to really give that could really help people in particular in our region, and that we're engaging with as an institution and we want to be able to provide that," said Finniss.

The introductory course aims to guide students through the text-based artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT and Claude, and the differences between human thinking and AI processes so they can make informed decisions about whether and how to use the technology for specific needs.

It takes about 2½ hours for participants to finish the module and earn a certificate of completion.

A lecture by Daniel Lametti, a psychologist and psycholinguist with Acadia University, is included in the course.

"I talk a lot about how we as humans think, how we as humans produce language as sort of a point of comparison or contrast to highlight some of the differences between what AI does and what we do," said Lametti.

He said it's important to provide more direction to those who have interest in understanding how AI tools work, how they might be used effectively and the downsides of using them.

"We're not suggesting that people use AI or simply giving them information about the pros and cons," he said. "If you over-rely on AI, you sort of short-change your learning and thinking process. And there's growing evidence that this feeds you a real deficit in terms of your cognition."

Twenty people have taken advantage of the new offering by enrolling in the course since it was opened to the public, according to Finniss.

She said the university will continue to update the module to keep up with the rapid change of AI technology, and to revamp it for different audiences if the demand is there.

MORE TOP STORIES

Reporter/Editor

Yuan Wang is a reporter based in Halifax. Get in touch with her by emailing yuan.wang@cbc.ca.

Add some “good” to your morning and evening.

Get the latest top stories from across Nova Scotia in your inbox every weekday.

---

---