AI Sandbox: Our Community for Pragmatic AI Practices
We recently launched an AI Sandbox—an internal initiative that provides our library faculty and staff with regular opportunities to experience and experiment with various platforms. Each monthly gathering centers around a common theme, such as writing tools, images and music, metadata generation, or documentation and workflows. I’m viewing it as a modified community of practice / inquiry.
Gathering Insights & Demos
We conducted a quick survey to gauge interests. This helped us understand how to shape the semester ahead and what people wanted to learn.
We want our sessions to be comfortable, relaxed, and social, so we provide lunch to create a welcoming atmosphere. Each sandbox session begins with a series of three-minute demos, offering a quick overview of a tool or case study from personal experience. For instance, I shared NotebookLM and its value in chatting across multiple documents, essentially acting as a local language model.
Hands-On Exploration
After the demos, it's hands-on time. We provide sample tools, prompts, and scenarios, but participants are free to use the time however they wish. Afterward, we encourage them to share their experiences with others at their tables, fostering deeper exploration. The sandbox concludes with an open floor for anyone who wants to share their insights with the larger group. Two standout examples include a participant who used GPT to help draft a new policy, saving hours of work she gleefully claimed, and another who drafted a “friendlier” email response, sparking a lot of laughter.
The Purpose
With the hype around AI and the constant flood of related content—news, articles, webinars, and reports—there is an abundance of discussions about AI literacies, ethics, research, and impact. However, we wanted to make AI more approachable by stepping away from the theoretical discussions and high-level applications — and instead, dive into pragmatic use cases. We want to focus on how we can use AI (or adjacent tools) in our daily lives and work, showcasing everyday examples and benefits.
Philosophical Aspects
As we were working on this, I wanted to capture some foundational thinking without over-engineering. Here’s where we landed:
Basic Sandbox Philosophy
Inclusivity: ensure that the AI Sandbox is welcoming and accessible to all staff and faculty, regardless of their prior experience with AI.
Learning: emphasize the importance of continuous learning and professional development.
Practicality: focus on practical applications of AI that provide tangible benefits.
Curiosity: encourage a mindset of curiosity, empowering staff and faculty to explore new ideas and approaches.
Collaboration: foster a collaborative environment where shared learning and growth are prioritized.
Guiding Sandbox Principles
Hands-On Learning: ensure each session includes hands-on activities for direct interaction with AI tools.
Theme-Based Sessions: organize sessions around specific themes or topics that participants are interested in.
Diverse Expertise: aspire to have demos from people with various backgrounds, perspectives, and expertise.
Feedback & Improvement: regularly gather feedback to continually improve the sandbox sessions.
Support & Resources: provide ongoing support and resources, such as documentation, tutorials, and access to tools, to help participants continue their learning outside of the sandbox sessions.
We also have program objectives and outcomes, but hopefully this gets the main point across.
Our July 2024 AI Sandbox
Launch: Our first Sandbox session was a lot of fun. We could have filled multiple hours, but it will be a good challenge to keep it to 60-minutes every month. We’re committed to this initiative for the calendar year and will reevaluate over winter break.
A personal takeaway: this was a good reminder that not everyone is familiar with this technology. While I use it daily, it might have been the first time a few colleagues have tried AI tools in a work context. That was helpful and insightful for me to hear. I feel validated that providing this space, encouragement, and a sense community will be beneficial to everyone.
And: none of this would have happened without my AI Sandbox co-creator, Kelly Woessner. She is the Organizational Development Coordinator in our library, and it's invaluable to have a position like that. Kelly has great talent and compassion. She recognized the need to increase our organizational AI fluency and to make it pragmatic. With that, the AI Sandbox was born.
