Guest Lectures & Workshops
Artificial Intelligence and the English Classroom (Workshop)
This workshop was proposed, organized and facilitated by Ms. Amanda Zilla.
As artificial intelligence platforms continue to become more accessible, the workshop sought to inculcate necessary digital literacy skills regarding Large Language Models (LLMs). The target audience for the workshop was English Language and Literature Teachers in Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean. Due to the recognition of the necessity of these skills and to encourage participation, the workshop was offered to participants at no cost, however, to ensure that each participant received adequate attention, limited spaces were available.
The two-day workshop debunked myths regarding artificial intelligence, ethical approaches to AI use, introduced frameworks for effective prompt engineering as praxis, and provided recommendations for reducing AI hallucinations, improving output quality and leveraging seemingly poor output as teaching and learning opportunities. Teachers were also given the opportunity on Day 2 of the workshop to put these skills into practice. The Department of Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies will be repeating the workshop in April 2024.
To demonstrate its relevance to education, teachers were also taught context specific strategies, inclusive of but not limited to using LLMs for administrative aspects of their jobs (creation of lesson plans, and schemes of work), to teach effective organization for non-ficitonal writing (argumentative essay, summaries, etc at both CSEC and CAPE) and for the conversion of writing into a process where students are abe to clearly identify the types of information required within each paragraph of a well-structured piece of writing.
Department of Film, FHE
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"A Story is a Machine: An Interactive Storytelling Workshop". The UWI Film Department's Lecture Series: "Film-ing TnT". Thursday 10th November, 2022.
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"A Story is A Machine: Narrative and Script Writing". UWI Film Camp. Monday 10th July, 2023.
Department of Modern Languages & Linguistics, FHE
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"Semantic Anomaly". LING 2702: Point-of-View and Meaning in Literary Discourse. Tuesday 21st November, 2023.
Department of Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies, FHE
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"Discourse Analysis as Methodology". COMS 7009: Communication Project Methods 1&2. Thursday 16th March 2023.
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"Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber: (Re)Imaginings of History & Culture, Subjective Representation of Transgressive Female Experience & The Caribbean Feminist Imagination". LITS 3502: West Indian Seminar B. Friday 24th March 2023.
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“The Poetry of Jennifer Rahim”. LITS 2507 West Indian Poetry B: Selected Poets. 5th February. 2019.
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“An Introduction to Postmodernism”. LITS 2301 Key Issues in Literary Criticism. 30th October, 2019.