Brooklyn College

Critical AI Literacy Institute

Teaching and Learning Center, CUNY Graduate Center

March 25, 2026

Luke Waltzer · Laurie Hurson · Zach Muhlbauer
Agenda
  1. About CALI
  2. Curriculum and Research
  3. T(h)inkering
  4. Discussion
About CALI

Origins of CALI

About CALI

CALI as an Intervention

Four interconnected areas

Cohort 1 · 2025

Campuses

22 faculty across 12 CUNY campuses

Cohort 1 · 2025

Disciplines

Cohort 1 · 2025

Faculty Rank

Cohort 2 · 2026

Second CALI Cohort

Launching March 27, 2026

Cohort 2 · 2026

Campuses

22 faculty across 12 CUNY campuses

Cohort 2 · 2026

Disciplines

Cohort 2 · 2026

Faculty Rank

Laurie Hurson

CALI Curriculum and Research

Curriculum

Faculty Development

Three-phase arc

Spring Meetings

Summer Institute

  • Intensive exploration and discussion
  • Module development and collaboration

Fall Implementation

  • Teaching courses and modules
  • Research and documentation
Curriculum

Community of Practice

  • Teaching with, about, and against AI
  • Mapping, disciplinary working groups, affinity discussions
  • Exploration and tinkering as shared methodology
Research

Mixed Methods

  • Faculty Development Data & Program Evaluation — tracking engagement, module development, and outcomes across the cohort
  • Critical AI Literacy Modules & Teaching Implementation — documenting how faculty translate CALI frameworks into course practice
  • Undergraduate Student Surveys & Interviews
    • “Describe a recent situation where you had to decide whether or not to use AI.”
    • “How do AI tools affect your learning process when you use them for school?”
Research

Student Surveys

Over 400 responses, 2 interviews

Research

Faculty Interventions

Three early Cohort 1 pilots

  • LIB 10000: Readings across scale, examining outputs, models
  • ENG 100: Reflective writing on creative labor and AI use
  • SOC 101: Applying Core Sociological Concepts to AI
Research

Teaching Critical AI Literacy...

  • Frame AI as sociotechnical system; cultural, labor-driven, non-neutral tech
  • Allow for refusal and/or adoption of GenAI tools
  • Pedagogy leverages community and collaboration to engage in critical inquiry
  • Explore how knowledge is produced, for whom, and with what consequences

...As collective world-building

  • Resist inevitability narratives
  • Think across scale and contexts
  • Interrogate systems of power, knowledge
  • Center social, environmental, epistemic justice issues
  • Classroom as “radical space of possibility” for agency and collective action
Zach Muhlbauer

CALI T(h)inkering

T(h)inkering

Technical Lead

Infrastructure and instructional design

T(h)inkering

Year 1 Infrastructure

In Search of Shared Access

  • June 2025 — Hugging Face Chat (since sunsetted)
  • Summer 2025 — Hugging Face Spaces for hosting AI demos
  • ChatUI-Helper — turning faculty configs into web-hosted applications
T(h)inkering

Piloting on Hugging Face

Spanish at Hunter College, Fall 2025

  • AmigAI — conversational Spanish practice
  • Non-native and heritage speaking Spanish classes, Hunter College
  • Built-in changelog for retraceable system prompt edits
T(h)inkering

Then and Now

CALI Cohort 1, 2025

  • Faculty pilots as standalone Hugging Face Spaces
  • Each demo configured and deployed individually with direct support
  • Hard to track, evaluate, or manage at scale
T(h)inkering

Then and Now

CALI Cohort 2, 2026

  • Open WebUI — open-source chat platform, self-hosted by CUNY AI Lab
  • Dedicated sandbox environment for teaching and learning
  • Supports customization of model cards, comparison of multiple models at once
T(h)inkering

T(h)inkering to Come

Five Projects for Cohort 2

  • Concept Mapping (Interdisciplinary)
  • Laboratory Workflows (Physics)
  • Deep Listening (Ethnomusicology)
  • Interdisciplinary Math Connections (Precalculus)
  • Research Writing Scaffold (Sociology)
T(h)inkering

Lessons Learned By Doing

Looking Ahead

Policy and Strategy

Informing decision making across four domains

Discussion

Questions

How might CALI’s frameworks, tools, and methods translate to your context?

Critical AI Literacy Institute cuny.is/cali
CUNY AI Lab ailab.gc.cuny.edu