Bringing student voices into the AI conversation at Boston College
The Student AI Advisors programs are designed to give students a key role in shaping Boston College’s distinct approach to AI through collaborative design, peer research, and intentional reflection.
Year-Long Student AI Working Group
During the 2024-2025 academic year, the Student AI Advisors program brought together 10 undergraduate students from across Boston College to explore how generative AI affects learning and to contribute their voices to campus-wide conversations about AI in education.
Facilitated by the Center for Digital Innovation in Learning with support from Information Technology Services, the year-long working group was designed to run parallel to CDIL’s faculty AI working group and create meaningful dialogue between students and faculty about the role of AI in teaching and learning.
The working group was design and facilitated by Tim Lindgren, Claire Angus, and Noël Ingram from CDIL and Kyle Fidalgo from the BC Law School.
Program Goals
The Student AI Advisors group centered around three main objectives:
- Cultivating Conversation: Sharing perspectives about AI with professors and peers
- Experimenting with AI: Trying educational applications of AI and reflecting on outcomes
- Gathering Insights: Surfacing how students were using AI and how it was shaping their learning experiences
What We Did
The group met monthly for structured discussions on topics including academic integrity, AI use cases in coursework, and experimentation with emerging AI tools. Key activities included:
- Faculty-Student “Penpals”: An asynchronous dialogue where faculty submitted questions for students, and students responded while posing their own questions back to faculty.
- Experimenting with Custom AI Tools: Students provided feedback on faculty-created AI assistants and gained skills building their own as a way to foster AI literacy and inform conversations about when (and if) to use AI for learning.
- Conversation and Reflection: Students engaged in structured discussions and reflective exercises, including scenario-based activities that explored the ethical dimensions of AI use in academic work and the nuanced, critical thinking needed to navigate a changing educational landscape.
Summer Internship Program
Working with the Center for Digital Innovation in Learning (CDIL) and Belle Liang’s Purpose Lab, this summer internship program is meant to continue exploring urgent questions for the Boston College community:
- How can we better understand the student perspective on AI and make sure their voices are part of the conversation at Boston College?
- How can we find ways for students and professors to collaborate in shaping the future of learning in a world where AI exists?
- What might a formative approach to AI look like?
Through hands-on projects, research with fellow students, and their own experiments in learning, interns will respond to these questions and share what they learn, giving the BC community more waypoints to help us navigate this emerging landscape of AI.
2025 Interns
This year’s summer interns are:
- Toby Ting (junior theology/philosophy major)
- Sara Bufi (junior biology and applied psychology major)
Collaborators & Support
This internship is facilitated by Tim Lindgren (CDIL) and funded by the Purpose Lab under Dr. Belle Liang.
Elisa Liang, doctoral student in the Purpose Lab, is providing support and training for qualitative research methods.