Winter 2026 Learning Community

The Robots are Coming: Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Society into the Information Age

“The Robots are Coming” is a Learning Community of two GNED foundation courses: GNED 1103, Section 005 – Innovation, and GNED 1303, Section 015 – Conflict and the Social Context. Together, the courses explore the basic ideas, challenges, techniques, and problems in artificial intelligence.  Course topics will include exploring the philosophical underpinnings behind automation; probability and uncertainty; machine learning; implications on intellectual property; and information creation, dissemination and measurement; social responsibility; and ecological impact of AI.  Through an interdisciplinary framework, this learning community will ask students to engage in activities and discussions through information science, computer science and other lenses.  This will help students develop an understanding of not only how to use these tools but also what they are and how they work.

 

The Making and Unmaking of Monsters

The “Making and Unmaking of Monsters” is a Learning Community of two GNED foundation courses: GNED 1202, Section 007 – Text & Ideas and GNED 1401, Section 001 – Writing for Academic Success. Together, the courses explore iconic cultural notions of monsters and academic writing. Using the lens of monsters, the course will walk through ancient, classic, and contemporary texts and media that highlight and examine ways that people create monsters, and how they sometimes attempt to “unmake” them. Notions about monsters also have historical, philosophical, psychological, and scientific roots that relate to academic questions about how we perceive, and sometimes fear, that which is different from ourselves. Through critical reflection and analysis of monster-making, students will research, reflect, and write to further their academic writing abilities and the many dimensions of the monsters of our world.