> [!summary]+ Summary > This page describes the background, timeline, purpose, and outcome of staff group I pulled together to help lead transformation in the thoughts and use of genAI in work at GWU Libraries and Academic Innovation (LAI). # genAI Staff Working Group As an extension of my efforts to address generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI) literacy with university faculty, including any potential role for the technology in teaching and learning, I strove to find ways to collaborate with staff colleagues across the university. Similar to the faculty body, the staff body had a few people who were really curious and wanting to explore integrating genAI into their work. The majority of staff wanted to keep the status quo for reasons such as many faculty were not moving and they were afraid what it meant for their jobs. In late 2023, I address what I saw as the importance of genAI in learning design and media work to a collection of Instructional Designers, Multimedia Producers, and Educational Developers from across the university — [[2023, genAI Staff Design Partners]]. My experience outside of higher-education told me this was important, and so through these conversations in within my own leadership, I wanted to try to help others see the need to evolve. In pursuit of this goal and attitude, I first formed the [[genAI Faculty Advisory Council]] and stood that up in the first half of 2024. With that established, I began to network with staff colleagues in Summer 2024 to pull together a broad swath of expertise in the central library to form what would hopefully be an organic effort to evolve staff work and workflows in partnership with genAI. ## Establishment timeline Through 2023 I had conversations and attempts at collaboration with various librarians, Instructional Designers, Multimedia Producers, and Educational Developers on how we may work together around genAI. Some of these were client/faculty facing, and some were not. Additionally, 99% reported to another director and those folks generally had the view that genAI should be ignored. Nonetheless, I found some partners in peer leaders and staff contributors during Summer 2024. After a series of emails and Zoom calls, I was able to pull together a small team of 6 staff from different departments to form the initial library staff working group. All were forward thinkers who were optimistic about working with genAI and helping both their peers and faculty partners to grow in AI literacy. ## Purpose and objectives The central purpose of the working group was to bring people together that could "*…help to stimulate LAI as a center for GAI innovation and problem solving for the GW community*." (Libraries and Academic Innovation (LAI) was our collective business unit.) All staff involved were faculty facing and had experience teaching and/or doing learning design. What is more, all involved were active users of genAI tools. We were not able to nail down specific goals for reasons explained in the results section below, but we agreed that we wanted to do the following: 1. Help colleagues identify ways to partner and build confidence with genAI in their work; 2. Address some of the barriers others had placed to genAI adoption related to various fears; 3. Introduce ways other universities and industry was pursuing the use of genAI in work; and 4. Learn from each other how genAI tools could be used, collectively build those skills, and create examples together of meaningful applications. ## Results Despite all of the effort to stand-up the group, we only met a couple of times and were unable to start any collaborative work. New leadership joined and desired to tone down anything related to genAI. The desire was to roll genAI up into the collection of other educational technologies, and keep teaching and learning focused on traditional human interactions.