From Consumers to Contributors: Why I Designed an AI Performance Support Hub for Faculty

 

From Consumers to Contributors: Why I Designed an AI Performance Support Hub for Faculty

Posted by Damilare Ajayi 

Let us be honest about something. Students are already using AI. They are using it in our courses, between our courses, and often in ways their instructors have not sanctioned, anticipated, or fully understood. This is not a future concern. It is the current reality of every classroom, and the data backs it up. Faculty who have been in the room lately know it. The question is no longer whether students are engaging with AI tools. The question is whether instructors are doing anything intentional with that fact.

That is the thought I kept returning to as I designed AI Sparks Hub for this course's produsage assignment.

Students Are Already There. Instructors Are Catching Up.

In most higher education contexts today, students arrive to class having already interacted with AI in some form, whether that is drafting an email with Copilot, debugging code with ChatGPT, generating study notes from lecture slides, or using Grammarly to polish an assignment. Many instructors have given AI-integrated activities in their courses, intentionally or not, simply by assigning tasks that students routinely complete with AI assistance.

So here is the reframe I want to offer: if students are already receiving a daily dose of AI through the assignments instructors give them, why are instructors not the ones designing that dose deliberately? Why is the AI integration happening in the margins of instruction rather than at the center of it? The opportunity is sitting right there, and most faculty are either unaware of it, anxious about it, or waiting for someone else to figure it out first.

AI Sparks Hub is built on the premise that faculty do not need to wait. They need a starting point, a low-stakes way to try something, and a community of peers who are doing the same.

What I Built and Why


The hub is a Web 2.0 performance support space housing ten structured AI Spark activities that faculty can try in any course and any discipline. Each activity is designed around a specific learning goal, whether that is developing argumentation skills through The Persona Debater, building research habits through The Expert Interview Simulation, or cultivating critical self-assessment through The Red Team Peer Review. Faculty choose an activity, try it with their students, post a short reflection to a community Padlet board, and share that post on social media with the hashtag #AISparksHub.

The design is deliberately lightweight. No login to browse. No formal enrollment. No certification at the end. Just structured experimentation, honest reflection, and peer knowledge that accumulates over time. That last part is the produsage element: the hub becomes more valuable with every faculty member who contributes, because each reflection post adds a piece of real institutional knowledge that no textbook or training program can replicate.

I also added a curated resources section because I quickly realized that activities alone were not enough. Faculty who try one Spark and want to understand the broader landscape of AI literacy frameworks, assessment design, and policy need somewhere to go next. The resources section gives them that without requiring them to leave the hub or start a new search from scratch.

Why Social Media Is Part of This

The community board on Padlet and the hashtag #AISparksHub are not decorative. They are doing real work. Padlet provides a low-stakes reflection space where faculty can post honestly about what worked and what did not, without the performance pressure of a public blog or a formal evaluation. The hashtag extends those reflections to social media platforms where faculty already spend professional time, LinkedIn for professional visibility, Reddit for candid practitioner discourse, and Instagram and X for broader reach.

The social layer matters because faculty professional development has historically been too local. A great activity tried by a Business Communication professor at FSU should not stay at FSU. It should be visible to a Communication instructor at a community college in Ohio, a Marketing lecturer in Nairobi, and a Language Arts teacher in Lagos who is wondering whether any of this AI stuff actually works in a real classroom. The hashtag is how that happens without anyone needing to build a new platform or write a grant proposal.

The Bigger Argument

What this produsage assignment taught me, beyond the mechanics of building a Web 2.0 resource, is that the most powerful professional development is peer-generated and practice-grounded. The Maria Chen reflection post I wrote as a prototype says more in three paragraphs about what The Persona Debater actually does in a classroom than any theoretical framework could. That specificity is only possible because it comes from someone who tried it with real students and was honest about what they would do differently.

Faculty are not waiting for permission to use AI in their courses. Students are not waiting either. What everyone is waiting for is a community of practice that makes the experimentation feel less lonely and the reflection feel less like wasted time. AI Sparks Hub is my attempt to build that community one post at a time.

If you are a faculty member who has tried an AI-integrated activity in your course and found yourself thinking "I wish I could tell someone about this," the community board is open. Post what you tried. Share what happened. That contribution is the resource.

Check out the AI Spark Hub: https://test12344443333.my.canva.site/ai-sparks-hub

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