In support of The Ohio State University’s AI Fluency initiative, the university and Google Public Sector hosted Data & AI Day at Ohio Stadium on Thursday.
At the event, Ohio State leaders and Google Public Sector representatives announced that university students, faculty and staff can now access secure versions of Google AI tools, ensuring that Google does not save or share the information they enter. The event included demonstrations of the Google Gemini large language model, the Google NotebookLM research assistant and note-taking tool and other applications.
Data & AI Day was designed to help Ohio State instructors, researchers and staff learn more about how Google’s AI tools complement the university’s AI Fluency initiative, said Ohio State’s Executive Vice President and Provost Ravi V. Bellamkonda. Starting this year, the initiative will embed AI education into the undergraduate curriculum, preparing students to use AI tools, as well as understand, question and innovate with them.
“Our mission is to shape the future for our students,” he said. “Every student who’s coming in this year will graduate being bilingual – fluent in AI and the application of AI in their careers.”
Ohio State’s partnership with Google Public Sector also ensures that Ohio State’s faculty and researchers have access to advanced technology that can help carry out their work, Bellamkonda said.
“What we’d like to do is to empower you, our faculty, our scholars, our teachers to have access to the tools, to have access to resources, and then you interpret how AI makes the most sense for you,” he said. “How might we create a moment for our students to think about them discovering something that they did not know before? AI Fluency at its core is our journey together at Ohio State.”
The goal of Data & AI Day was to shed light on how colleges and universities can adapt to AI’s growing role in education and research, said Google Public Sector Chief Technology Officer Charles Elliott.
“We really try to focus on making sure that AI can be folded into the workstreams that many of you do. And of course, think about productivity,” Elliott told participants. “There’s a lot of great resources … out there specifically for teaching. I encourage all of you to go check those things out.”
Data & AI Day included breakout sessions for classroom instructors and researchers. Google Public Sector representatives demonstrated how instructors can use Google AI tools to assist with tasks such as course and lecture design and helping students prepare for exams.
By experimenting with the tools, “you will have an idea of what you can do,” said Jillian Yoerges, Google for Education workspace specialist. “You will also have an idea of what your students can do.”
Breakout sessions for researchers included demonstrations on how to use Google AI tools to access hundreds of models and datasets on a wide variety of subjects and distill complex research articles into succinct audio overviews, among other functions.
“Understanding what tool to use for what is important,” said Chris Daughtery, education strategy lead representative for Google Cloud.
For more information on how Ohio State students, faculty and staff can access Google AI tools, visit Ohio State’s Sign Up and Provisioning website.
