Title: Ethical-Epistemic Awareness and the Use of AI in Language and Literacy Education

Session description: In this hands-on and exploratory session, Dr. Shyam Sharma of the State University of New York at Stony Brook will help us critically examine AI’s influence on education, focusing on its epistemic limitations, ethical challenges, and global inequalities. As we explore AI’s impact on teaching and learning throughout the webinar, we will first discuss and develop strategies to foster critical AI literacy among students. We will then try to find out our comfort zones and discuss how to help students do so while ensuring its ethical and critically informed use in education.

Speaker’s Bio: Dr. Shyam Sharma is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University, part of the State University of New York. His scholarship and teaching focus on writing in the disciplines, cross-cultural rhetoric, international students and education, new media in education, and issues about language and language policy. He has published widely in these areas in a variety of venues in and beyond Writing Studies. A recipient of Nepal Bidya Bhusan (2000), AACU’s Future Leaders Award (2012), SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service (2021), and the Fulbright Specialist fellowship (2023-26), Dr. Sharma is actively engaged in faculty development support internationally, including to address emerging challenges posed by new technologies.