How do you help people who are afraid of technology start using AI?

Welcome back to the GO AI podcast. We are thrilled to introduce our next guest, Sherry Duffy. Sherry is the director of learning for the Digital Transformation Center at the University of Louisville. Sherry, tell us a little about yourself.

Thank you so much. That is a mouthful, isn't it? At the University of Louisville, no department or program has a simple name. The Digital Transformation Center was started under President Bendapudi and Dr. Sharon Kerrick, the assistant vice president for the center, and it was their brainchild with Dr. Andrew Wright and Dr. Adel Elmaghraby. The idea was to create a place at UofL where we could take tech vendors' micro-learnings and put them into courses. It was about moving our students and faculty forward with technology so we weren't left behind.

I love that future-oriented thinking. How many years ago was this?

Don't quote me, but I believe it was right as COVID was starting, about five years ago. I had been at UofL since 2008, took a sabbatical, and Dr. Kerrick brought me back. UofL is my people; it's where I graduated. Before I came on, they had received a large national grant for cybersecurity, to create learning and certificates in cybersecurity across the nation. It wasn't developed only by our faculty. It was created by cybersecurity experts at multiple universities, as a comprehensive online program people can complete and come out certified in cybersecurity to move forward in their jobs. It specifically targeted military veterans, first responders and people moving into new careers around age 35 or 40. We also inherited a program called ITCP that puts people through Security+ and other certification training. Again, it's short bursts of online learning that lead to certificates so people can upskill and reskill.

Define short bursts. To me, it was a four-year degree or a two-year degree. You're describing short bursts where people get certified and possibly transition into a different skill or a completely different industry.

Think of us as multipronged. First, we're putting technology into courses at UofL. Say you graduate with an art history degree. The technology you learned as a freshman is obsolete four years later, and if you're not keeping up with your technology skills, you're not marketable. I'm not picking on art history; I have friends with art history degrees who have made an amazing living. The same is true of a marketing degree if tech skills aren't taught along the way. We help students add short bursts of learning from industry leaders like IBM and Adobe. That's internal to UofL. The two programs I mentioned, cybersecurity and ITCP, are for the national stage. And we have a local program called Digital Literacy Train the Trainer. If you live in Louisville, please thank your Metro Council member for funding it.

Dive in.

It's the best part of my job. Two other trainers and I go out in the community and find people who want to upskill and reskill their technology skills. We've put four technology skills into an eight-week online program, but participants have to meet us on camera in Microsoft Teams at least once a week to keep them motivated. When they learn the four skills, they in turn train 10 other people in Metro Louisville, and they earn a $500 stipend. So there's an incentive to finish, plus one of us is checking in: I haven't seen you this week, are you getting your work done?

So many people need that to execute their goals: a coach, an advisor. You're supporting them through the journey, and then they pay it forward to others in the community.

Yes, it's that exponential factor. If we reach our goal of 200, then 2,000 people in Metro Louisville have upgraded their skills. Here are two examples: a failure that isn't a failure, and a massive success. One man, very dear to my heart, has been in multiple cohorts and hasn't finished. But he found a job because he knew how to upload documents to an email for an employer, which he learned in our program. He has since lost that job and found another, and he keeps coming back. He has now finished all the technology skills. He just doesn't have the confidence to do the training yet, so that's my next step with him. I've been working with him for about a year and a half. That failure is a win for our community and a win for him.

He's failing forward, which is what everyone needs to do. This is incredible work. I want to loop back to our audience, which is mostly business owners. You mentioned that after four years, even students coming out with a marketing or business degree might not be familiar with the technology used in the jobs they interview for. As someone who has hired students right out of college, I'm amazed that little things, like not knowing how to get on Microsoft Teams, or not knowing the Adobe suite, which is well known in digital marketing, can be gaps. I know a lot of business owners here want to hire UofL graduates and keep them in our community. Being able to give students those sprints to keep their technology knowledge current throughout college is unbelievable. I didn't know it existed.

We're fortunate that UofL faculty are committed to making sure students leave workforce-ready, and technology is one aspect of that. No single faculty member can be everything to everybody. What makes UofL special is that we recognize the strengths each person brings and pull them into a collective, so the diploma matters when students leave us. The Council on Postsecondary Education put out 10 essential skills, and we recently held a large Taste of Technology event at UofL focused on them. LinkedIn Learning helped me curate all of its content that maps to the 10 essential skills, so faculty don't have to spend hours going through the material. It's already packaged and they can choose.

That's a great example. AI is one of the fastest-developing technologies in recent history. What has been the approach with AI in getting students ready for the workforce?

It's warp speed, isn't it? We go to bed one night and wake up to a different world. We actually teach AI in the Digital Literacy Train the Trainer program. About two months ago, ChatGPT started creating PowerPoint slides and citing material in the free version, and it happened overnight. Kevin Fields from the Louisville Central Community Center had joined the cohort there, and I asked him to show fellow learners his ChatGPT work. When he stood up, he had asked it to create his slides, and there I was, the facilitator, learning it the same day. To your point, I think UofL is doing a nice job overall. The Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning hosts a website with information on AI for faculty, staff and students. In the human resources courses I teach, I created a module on how students can use AI in my course and how I want them to cite it.

So you want them to use it.

I'm saying please use it. This tool is amazing. I also tell them I use it enough to know when I'm reading it, so make it your own. Most students want to do the right thing. Why wouldn't we teach students to use the tool when, the minute they walk out, an employer is going to ask which AI tool they've been using, or which one the company should use?

And companies are putting policies in place for certain tools, like Gemini or Copilot. Depending on the enterprise AI policy, a graduate may have to learn a different tool, and having been a practitioner of one will help them transfer those skills.

And they need to understand the lack of guardrails, the inherent bias of AI and, depending on the tool, the selling of data to third parties. That's something we really want community members to know in the Digital Literacy Train the Trainer program. You don't want your grandmother, mother or sister putting personal information into ChatGPT. But we do use ChatGPT to teach, because it lets us load a large data set that we couldn't in some free versions of other products. It's not that we think ChatGPT is the be-all and end-all. In the course, we ask people to create a cover letter for a job advertisement and have AI give it to them in multiple ways. You were a marketing major, so you know there are many ways to craft a cover letter. Do you want it persuasive or professional? How do you want your persona to come across? Do you already know the interviewer? Are you already inside the company? What's the company's culture?

Exactly.

But they need to know the pitfalls. Another learner taught me something: I had never thought to introduce myself to ChatGPT. She sells products here in Louisville and was creating marketing material. She told ChatGPT who she is, her background and age, and who her target audience is for that product. Then she redid it from the lens of a different community she also sells to. I never would have thought to do that.

That's brilliant, and that's prompt engineering. The more specific you are with your prompts, the more specific the output. It's as much about how you ask as what you ask for.

Not just for students. For everybody.

For anyone working with AI in their job. Going back to the train the trainer program, was it modeled after another university's program? When did it start?

We call it DT3, and it's the brainchild of Dr. Sharon Kerrick. Her model is uplifting, reskilling and upskilling people exponentially by having them train others. She's tenacious and brilliant, and she recognized how much more we can get done by using the people in our community right here with us. I've given you several examples of how the community has taught me. Imagine cohorts of 30 people online, talking with one another, building energy and self-confidence in their tech skills. You cannot get by without technology skills these days, no matter how old you are.

A lot of our listeners are older and afraid of change, especially with AI, in their jobs and their personal lives. What would you say to people who are held back and scared of this technology?

AI has made it simple. You're not coding. But we also have to step back from AI and recognize that we've left a community behind. My husband had a Dictaphone and a secretary, so using a computer wasn't second nature to him. My mother tries to use MyChart. The medical world assumes everyone who walks into an office knows how to use a keyboard and attach documents. In our program, the most difficult thing for people is downloading and uploading documents to an email. And students are coming out of high schools with Chromebooks, not accustomed to uploading and downloading documents or strongly adept at research on a computer.

That makes so much sense.

I promised a win-win story. One of our first cohorts had a woman who worked for a federal program that serves many people who really need help, going from agency to agency to sign up for assistance. They were filling out paper, or someone like her was typing in answers and asking every person the same questions. That's exhausting for both parties, and it can be humiliating to repeat yourself over and over when you're asking for help, to someone too tired to get to the humanity. She took Microsoft Forms, created a QR code, and now it sits on every desk in that local federal office. It completely transformed how that office does business. With a free tool, those conversations can happen between someone who desperately needs assistance and someone who desperately wants to give it.

That's a beautiful story. The technology is there, and it's not as scary once you're using it. What are the most common requests people come to the program with?

AI, AI, AI. That's number one. And a lot of it is word of mouth, so now I get emails asking about that tech program for seniors. I tell them, I'm a senior, I can help you.

Before the podcast, you mentioned coal miners in Appalachia, and the push to teach them to code when those jobs ended. You also said with AI you don't have to code anymore. How are you seeing people use these programs to create new careers?

That's where ITCP comes in. Those courses aren't free, but Security+ and other technology certifications lead to higher-paying jobs than, say, a coding job. We need people to make living wages in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and we hope the cybersecurity program and ITCP will reach western and eastern Kentucky, where there's such great need for living-wage jobs. I'm not negating the four-year degree. I'm a firm believer in higher education; it's my lifeblood. But if people in under-resourced areas can earn a certificate and gain technology skills, it may spark them to say, I can become an engineer, this was easy for me. Others will say this is exactly what they need for employment. We want all of those options. So the Digital Transformation Center serves faculty, staff and students by embedding technology and micro-credentials, a term everybody needs to get accustomed to, because it's lifelong learning in short bursts with workforce skills. We serve the nation with the cybersecurity and ITCP programs, and Louisville with Digital Literacy Train the Trainer.

You also said we left a community behind, and that AI seems to change every two weeks. Does a lack of self-confidence keep people from trying technology on their own?

Convincing people they have what they need and are smart enough to move forward is my job in the program. Take a hospital that moved to all-electronic systems, where the staff trying to help patients get frustrated. There's a major gap. Healthcare moved forward with technology, but the population it serves hasn't. If someone gave me funding, I would love an empty MyChart account to teach seniors how to use it and how to fill out the iPad when they walk into a facility. And by seniors I don't just mean 80-year-olds. I mean people in their 50s who worked in a factory their whole lives, or a retired police officer. Then we expect them to be savvy. Tech-savvy seniors is the next thing we'll look for funding for.

What messages are most successful in getting people over that confidence block?

Short wins, very short wins. We start with orientation. To become a UofL vendor and receive the $500, participants have to fill out a W-9, sign it electronically or scan it back in, and submit it. We walk them through it in steps, and that's a small win that builds confidence. Then we move to Microsoft Teams, and we tell them that if you can use one virtual collaboration tool, you can use Zoom, WebEx or whatever platform your doctor uses. Once you get used to the clicks, you remove some of the angst people build up in their heads before they start.

Once you understand one, it's easy to transfer to Google Meet, WebEx and the rest.

Power BI is the same way. I tell people in the information session they won't leave our program as data analysts, but they'll learn enough about data analytics to know whether they're good at it and want more. We show them free resources and micro-credentials they can take from our web page. If an employer later asks whether they've used Tableau, they can say, no, but I know the language of data analytics, let me try it on my own.

That confidence to be a practitioner and learn on your own alongside the resources you give them is incredible. Circling back to AI, what are you teaching people about how to use it?

First, that there's a lack of guardrails. I call it the wild, wild west. Second, that it's inherently biased, because we all are. AI is human knowledge, and there isn't a human on earth who isn't biased in some way. We say AI hallucinates, but I tell people in DT3 we don't need fancy language. Let's use our Kentucky lingo and say it lies. It makes things up. We go over specific instances. One is a Barbie product where AI generated a misspelled web address that was printed on the packaging and led to an adult website. Another is the airline case in New York, where an attorney used ChatGPT and it made up case law. It's biased, and depending on the tool, data may be sold to third parties. We want people to avoid using it recklessly, but we don't want them afraid of it either. I use it every day. I'm not an exceptionally good writer. I'm staccato. So I tell it, please be compassionate when responding to this email. Make me nice.

Sherry, this has been enlightening. What would you leave our audience with, especially people who aren't using AI daily or the tools available to them?

Get your feet wet. But also do your research. There are all kinds of free learning resources about AI from Microsoft, Google and IBM, and LinkedIn Learning has a lot. If you're in Jefferson County, you can get LinkedIn Learning free through the public library. Educate yourself. It's not going away. It's who we are now, and what we see today will be dramatically different next month. We need to make sure we stay relevant.

Sherry, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast. We'll drop links to the courses and curriculum you shared today.

Thank you for having me.