Notes for "Balancing Innovation and Integrity in Academic Operations"

Presentation on 23 April 2025 as a LilyPad University Webinar

Apr 23, 2025

Note to readers: This post is for attendees at a webinar on April 23 put on by Leepfrog Technologies, makers of the academic operations platform Courseleaf. Attendance was limited to their clients, but I figured why not make the slides and image credits a public post?

My thanks to everyone at Leepfrog for inviting me to talk with their clients about AI and academic operations. Special thanks to Shuva Rahim, who made everything about the webinar better.

Here is how I kicked things off:

Hi, I’m Rob Nelson. I was an academic administrator in the Provost’s Office and a part-time teacher at Penn for many years. Last October, I left my job as a bureaucrat to write and speak about AI full-time while continuing to teach. Earlier this year, I started working with Leepfrog on their AI strategy. Today’s webinar reflects some of that work.
I’m an advocate for responsible AI, what is sometimes called critical AI. That’s why I work with Leepfrog. They are a company that takes integrity and social responsibility seriously.
Leepfrog has been incorporating AI into their products for years, though, they like most people using it, called it machine learning. When it comes to the new large AI models, Leepfrog is not taking the start-up approach of moving fast and breaking things. Instead, they moving carefully with large AI models, making sure not to break anything valuable, especially people and institutions.