Each month, Full Sail University hosts the Teacher Toolbox webinar. This free, monthly professional development series is facilitated by faculty from the Instructional Design & Technology master’s program and is geared toward K-12 and college-level instructors.

“We look at educational trends and we want to be ahead of things as best anyone can be, especially in a world where AI and all these other technologies are really exploding exponentially,” explains Program Director Dr. Thomas Lucas.

The online presentations are held on the third Wednesday of each month at 4:30 PM Eastern and run for an hour. They give educators additional tools they can incorporate into their work and offer plenty of time for questions. Some topics have included using AI to create videos and help develop school policies, self-care strategies for teachers, and gamification for educational environments. According to Dr. Lucas, AI has naturally been a popular topic for attendees.

“People are very hungry for learning about how to use AI and use it ethically and effectively,” he says. “It's a big paradigm shift… Our students have to be AI-literate going into the marketplace because all the jobs are now basically requiring that you have the ability to use AI.”

The series gives prospective students interested in the master’s program an opportunity to meet instructors and get a sense of the program’s learning environment. Alumni from the program and guest speakers participate in some of the presentations as well.

Previous sessions are available on demand. Upcoming sessions will cover building online communities, using AI to streamline workloads, the ethical use of AI in feedback generation, and assessing soft skills.

“It's the mission of our faculty to always be forward-thinking in trying to address the skills that are needed both now, but [also that] will be needed in the future because every day, there are jobs being created that didn't exist the day before,” Dr. Lucas explains. “And if we are going to prepare our students for that job market, we really have to keep our finger on the pulse of things.”