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A(I) Music Festival: A Playful Music & Tech Social Experiment

A promotional poster for an event titled "A(I) Music Festival," hosted by the PLAI Lab. The central graphic features a vertical guitar neck gripped by alternating pairs of human hands and metallic robotic hands against a black background. In the top right corner, a circular graphic resembling a musical staff displays the event details in pink and yellow text: "Thursday Sept. 24, 11:30am - 1:30pm, Leyburn 128." The main title features "AI" in a tilted, yellow pixelated font above "BATTLE OF THE BANDS" in large, white capital letters. The poster includes the following descriptive text: "As algorithms build beats and AI artists get signed, we're following our curiosity into a low-stakes sonic experiment exploring tech, creativity, and human connection! No music or technical experience needed—creators, skeptics, and music fans of all kinds are welcome!" A QR code is located in the bottom right corner with the text "Learn More!" beneath it. Across the very bottom, yellow pixelated text reads: "OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF!"

We’ve reached a bizarre moment in cultural history. Record labels and major producers are already signing synthetic artists, algorithms can generate radio-ready tracks across any genre in seconds, and the boundary between human artistry and machine generation is blurring faster than we can track.

Yet, underneath all the technological noise, the core impulse remains unchanged: our shared need to create, express, and connect through music.

Rather than trying to predict where all this lands or taking a rigid moral stance, we’re leaning into pure curiosity. What does it actually feel like to co-create with an algorithm? Where does machine novelty end and genuine human expression begin?

To explore those questions, we’re hosting an AI Battle of the Bands—a low-key, playful social experiment and creative mixer.

We’re bringing together music lovers, skeptics, tech tinkerers, and casual listeners to pit synthetic tracks against human ears, explore what generative audio can (and can’t) do, and have an honest, critical conversation about what this means for the future of art. No technical background or musical mastery required—just bring your ears, your curiosity, and your love of music.

Stay tuned as we finalize event details. For now, mark your interest, join the experiment, and let’s see what happens when the prompt hits the playlist.

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Gear Up for the Fall Term 2026: Explore Harte Center Sessions at Fall Academy!

 

Promotional graphic for Washington and Lee University Fall Academy 2026. A campus scene with vibrant autumn foliage, orange and red leaves, a lantern-style campus light, and a Washington and Lee University banner featuring the university coat of arms. An open notebook and pen rest in the foreground. The text reads “Fall Academy 2026” and “View the full schedule and sign up at go.wlu.edu/fallacademy.” A campus building appears in the background amid fall colors.

As we prepare for another exciting academic year, the Harte Center team is hosting a full roster of Fall Academy sessions designed to support your teaching, spark new ideas, and streamline your digital workflow.

Whether you’re looking to polish your Canvas course layout, explore AI reasoning strategies, or connect with colleagues around wellness and pedagogy, there’s something on the schedule for everyone.

Check out the full list of sessions, organized by date and theme below! Sign up at go.wlu.edu/fallacademy!

📅 Schedule at a Glance (Chronological)

Monday, Aug 17

  • Organize Your Courses with Canvas (Brandon Bucy) — 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM | Leyburn Library 301
  • The Worst (AI) Professor (JT Torres & Jeff Schatten) — 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM | Leyburn Library 119
  • Canvas Basics (Helen MacDermott) — 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM | Parmly Hall 302

Tuesday, Aug 18

  • Design Magic in Minutes: Create Your Next Flyer with Adobe Express (Helen MacDermott) — 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM | Leyburn Library 301
  • Improve In-Class Time with Canvas (Brandon Bucy) — 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM | Leyburn Library 301

Wednesday, Aug 19

  • Gradescope + Canvas: Smarter Assessment, Faster Feedback (Brandon Bucy & Charlotte Hoopes) — 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM | Leyburn Library 109

Friday, Aug 21

  • Prompt Engineering 2.0: Reasoning & Logic Strategies (Helen MacDermott) — 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM | Leyburn Library 109
  • Canvas Basics (Helen MacDermott) — 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM | Parmly Hall 302

Tuesday, Aug 25

  • Peer Classroom Observations (JT Torres) — 11:45 AM – 1:15 PM | Leyburn Library 119
  • Engaging Students In Class and Out: Online Polling and Annotating Tools (Brandon Bucy) — 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM | Leyburn Library 109

Wednesday, Aug 26

  • Wellness By Course Design (JT Torres & Laura Ulmer) — 10:45 AM – 11:45 AM | Leyburn Library 119
  • Teagle Funding Opportunities for You (JT Torres et al.) — 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM | Leyburn Library 119
  • Prompt Justice: Getting AI Agents to Do the Right Thing (Sybil Prince Nelson & Josh Fairfield) — 1:45 PM – 3:15 PM | Leyburn Library 119
  • Improve In-Class Time with Canvas (Brandon Bucy) — 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM | Leyburn Library 301

Thursday, Aug 27

  • Record Your Classes and Manage Course Videos with YuJa, Zoom, and Camtasia (Brandon Bucy) — 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM | Leyburn Library 109
  • Organize Your Courses with Canvas (Brandon Bucy) — 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM | Leyburn Library 301

Friday, Aug 28

  • Learning Curve Fellowship: How Looking at the World as a Novice Makes Us Better Teachers (JT Torres) — 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM | Leyburn Library 119

  • How to Ban AI in Your Classroom (Sybil Prince Nelson) — 11:45 AM – 1:15 PM | Leyburn Library 119

💡 Explore by Focus Area

1. Canvas & Course Foundations

Build a clean, accessible course hub to keep students on track from day one:

  • Canvas Basics — Mon, Aug 17 (2:00 PM) | Fri, Aug 21 (3:00 PM)
  • Organize Your Courses with Canvas — Mon, Aug 17 (8:30 AM) | Thu, Aug 27 (3:00 PM)
  • Improve In-Class Time with Canvas — Tue, Aug 18 (1:00 PM) | Wed, Aug 26 (3:30 PM)

2. EdTech, Multimedia & Assessment

Level up your toolkit with tools for engaging discussions, efficient grading, and quick graphics:

  • Design Magic in Minutes: Adobe Express Flyers — Tue, Aug 18 (11:00 AM)
  • Gradescope + Canvas: Smarter Assessment — Wed, Aug 19 (10:30 AM)
  • Online Polling and Annotating (Poll Everywhere & Perusall) — Tue, Aug 25 (3:30 PM)
  • Record & Manage Video (YuJa, Zoom, Camtasia) — Thu, Aug 27 (1:00 PM)

3. AI & Emerging Technologies

Dive deeper into AI’s impact on learning and master advanced prompt protocols:

  • The Worst (AI) Professor — Mon, Aug 17 (11:30 AM)
  • Prompt Engineering 2.0: Reasoning & Logic Strategies — Fri, Aug 21 (9:00 AM)
  • Prompt Justice: Getting AI Agents to Do the Right Thing — Wed, Aug 26 (1:45 PM)
  • How to Ban AI in Your Classroom — Fri, Aug 28 (11:45 AM)

4. Pedagogy, Faculty Development & Wellbeing

Reflect on course design, collaborative feedback, and teaching as a practice:

  • Peer Classroom Observations — Tue, Aug 25 (11:45 AM)
  • Wellness By Course Design — Wed, Aug 26 (10:45 AM)
  • Teagle Funding Opportunities for You — Wed, Aug 26 (12:00 PM)
  • Learning Curve Fellowship — Fri, Aug 28 (8:30 AM)

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A Framework for AI Transparency

As generative AI tools reshape course design, syllabus prep, and assignment planning, a new question has emerged for faculty: How much should we disclose about our own use of AI?

While we frequently discuss AI policies for students, modeling our own ethical use is a powerful way to uphold the Honor System. When we are transparent about our workflows, we demystify the technology and build trust.

But let’s be honest—faculty are already pressed for time. The last thing anyone needs is a mountain of administrative clerical work just to keep track of a quick brainstorming session with a chatbot.

To bridge this gap, a March 2026 EDUCAUSE Review article introduced the GenAI Use Transparency Framework. The beauty of this framework is that it rejects a “one-size-fits-all” mandate. Instead, it scales transparency to match the actual impact of the AI tool, protecting your time while keeping your teaching transparent.

The Four Levels of Faculty GenAI Use

The framework breaks AI integration into four distinct tiers, clarifying exactly when you need to keep an internal record and when you should share it with your students.

A horizontal infographic titled

Source: From Prompt to Practice: A Framework for Transparent GenAI Use in Higher Education

Level 1: Minimal Use (Peripheral Brainstorming)

  • The Routine: No action required.
  • Why it fits the framework: Because the AI is only assisting with surface-level editing, syntax variance, or icebreaker inspiration, it does not alter the underlying disciplinary structure of the course. The authors do not recommend any student-facing disclosure or formal archiving here.

Level 2: Moderate Use (Component Input)

  • The Internal Record: Before editing, copy the raw, unedited AI output and drop it into a text file or your master draft document in your course folder on Box or OneDrive (or wherever you save your files).
  • The Student Disclosure: A single, brief sentence embedded directly into the specific Canvas assignment description, quiz header, or module page where that resource lives.
  • Why it fits the framework: At this tier, the AI provides raw building blocks (e.g., initial draft quiz questions or an assignment scenario), but your human expertise does the heavy lifting of revising and aligning it. The record ensures you can verify your original quality control step if ever asked.

Level 3: Significant Use (The Core Backbone)

  • The Internal Record: Move your generation workflow into a collaborative editor. Use Word for the Web’s version history to automatically log your extensive edits, restructuring, and validation work. Additionally, download a quick PDF of your raw chat log/prompts and drop it into your local course folder.
  • The Student Disclosure: A prominent, detailed note in the specific Canvas module overview and explicitly referenced in the relevant assignment instructions.
  • Why it fits the framework: This fulfills the article’s core requirement for Level 3: proving the human-in-the-loop validation process. By using built-in software version tracking, you satisfy the framework’s “edit log” rule automatically without adding manual clerical work.

Level 4: Comprehensive Use (AI-Driven Artifacts)

  • The Internal Record: Export and save the full, absolute prompt-and-response history from your AI tool (as a text or PDF file) directly alongside your course materials in your stable cloud storage.
  • The Student Disclosure: A dedicated, transparent policy section in your Canvas Syllabus page explaining the role of the AI system, its known limitations/biases, and your strict evaluation criteria, alongside a notice on the specific artifacts themselves.
  • Why it fits the framework: Because the majority of the instructional artifact is generated under your systemic prompt engineering rather than manual text generation, your primary intellectual contribution is the prompt structure and the subsequent systemic audit. Archiving the exact prompt chains is essential for long-term institutional accountability and course continuity.

The Faculty Toolkit: Copy & Paste Statements

To make transparency completely frictionless, here are plug-and-play statements you can drop directly into your Syllabus, Canvas Modules, or Assignment Prompts. Simply fill in the brackets.

For Moderate Use (Level 2)

Notice on Course Materials: Portions of these [quiz questions / discussion prompts / case studies] were initially generated using [Tool, e.g., ChatGPT-5.5] to help brainstorm formats. They were subsequently reviewed, revised, and fact-checked by me to ensure absolute accuracy and alignment with our course learning objectives.

For Significant Use (Level 3)

AI Assistance Disclosure: The core framework and scenarios for this [simulation / interactive module] were developed with the assistance of [Tool, e.g., Claude Sonnet 5]. The pedagogical structure and final editing represent my original design, and all AI-generated content has been strictly vetted for academic integrity, factual accuracy, and disciplinary relevance.

For Comprehensive Use (Level 4)

Transparent AI Integration: This [adaptive module / self-study guide] was comprehensively generated using [Tool, e.g., Microsoft Copilot] as an experiment in AI-driven learning. While the instructor designed the prompts and strictly audited the final output for accuracy and bias, please note that AI tools can still present limitations. If you spot any anomalies or have questions about the material, please contact me immediately.

By scaling our transparency, we do more than just protect academic integrity—we actively model the exact type of critical reflection and accountability we expect from our students.

Want to dive deeper into the pedagogy? Read the full analysis in the EDUCAUSE Review article.

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Read, reflect, and reconnect this summer: Books with Harte presents Klara and the Sun

This summer, the Harte Center for Teaching and Learning invites faculty and staff to take part in a shared reading experience of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun. Designed with flexibility in mind, this program offers a meaningful opportunity to connect with colleagues, explore timely themes around artificial intelligence, and prepare for engaging community conversations in the Fall term.

Participants will receive a free copy of the book and can join us for a series of three biweekly Zoom discussions held between mid-July and mid-August. Each session will focus on a portion of the novel, culminating in a final conversation that reflects on the book as a whole and considers its relevance for teaching and learning.

A Flexible, Summer-Friendly Format

We know summer schedules can be unpredictable, so this program is built to accommodate varying levels of availability. In addition to live Zoom sessions, participants will have access to asynchronous tools that support ongoing engagement:

  • Perusall: A shared, interactive reading space where participants can annotate the text, pose questions, and respond to one another. The first session will include a brief, hands-on introduction.
  • Padlet: A collaborative space for sharing broader context; articles, media, author background, and related resources that enrich the reading experience.

Whether you attend every session or dip in as your schedule allows, you’ll be part of a dynamic, low-pressure learning community.

Why Klara and the Sun?

As the upcoming first-year common read, Klara and the Sun offers a compelling entry point into discussions about artificial intelligence, ethics, perception, and human connection. This summer series provides a space to explore those themes through a distinctly Harte Center lens; one that integrates critical AI analysis with thoughtful, interdisciplinary dialogue.

At the same time, participants will gain hands-on experience with several of the Harte Center’s supported academic technologies, including Zoom, Perusall, Canvas, and Padlet, in a low-stakes, supportive environment.

Join Us

Sign-up now! Space may be limited to ensure active discussion, so we encourage you to register early once the form becomes available.

Spend part of your summer reading, reflecting, and connecting—with a great book and a great community.

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Teaching Deep Thinking in a World of Instant AI Answers

The image is the cover of the "2026 Student Guide to Artificial Intelligence". The main title is "HUMAN WISDOM FOR THE AGE OF AI" , accompanied by the subtitle "A FIELD GUIDE TO CULTIVATING ESSENTIAL SKILLS". The central feature is a circular, classical-style illustration showing an ancient bearded scholar in flowing robes standing at a table. He is operating an armillary sphere (an astronomical model) while reaching toward a glowing, geometric polyhedron that floats in the air, emitting beams of light against a starry background.At the bottom of the page, the logos for Elon University, the Imagining the Digital Future Center, AAC&U, and The Princeton Review are displayed. The URL www.studentguidetoai.org is printed in the top left corner.

As we navigate the rapid integration of generative AI into our classrooms, the conversation often centers on policy, detection, or prompt engineering. However, a new resource has just been released that shifts the focus back to the core of what we do: cultivating the human mind.

Published by Elon University, the AAC&U, and The Princeton Review, the 2026 Student Guide to Artificial Intelligence—titled “Human Wisdom for the Age of AI”— is the third in a series responding to the global call for higher education to lead the AI revolution.

While titled for students, this resource is a robust pedagogical framework for faculty in any discipline. It argues that as AI becomes more capable, the habits of a liberal education—critical inquiry, ethical reasoning, and creative problem-solving—become more important, not less.

The guide is built on a “profound paradox”: while AI can accelerate discovery and automate repetitive tasks, an overreliance on these tools can lead to passive consumption and the erosion of critical thinking. To counter this, the field guide focuses on 10 fundamental human capacities—such as curiosity, empathy, and ethical reasoning—that remain the “bullseye” of human value in an automated world.

Each section pairs a Great Thinker from history with a Mini-tool designed to help users move beyond “AI blandness”.

Essential Mini-Tools for the Classroom

These hands-on exercises can be easily adapted for any discipline to ensure students (and faculty) remain “the human in charge”:

  • The Idea Compass (Curiosity): Inspired by René Descartes, this tool encourages users to interrogate AI outputs from four directions: first principles, history, related concepts, and practical applications.

  • The Depth Gauge (Deep Work): Using insights from Seneca the Younger, this exercise challenges users to move from “surface skimming” with AI into the “scuba zone” of human-only deep research.

  • The Persuasion Triangle (Communication): Drawing on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, this tool helps students verify that their AI-assisted work still contains Ethos (character) and Pathos (emotion), elements a machine cannot authentically provide.

  • Panning for Gold (Wisdom): A decision-making framework based on Cicero’s virtues, using filters for reality, identity, empathy, and durability to find the “heavy nuggets of value” in AI-generated options.

Actionable Resources for Your Classroom

This is a true field guide, designed for active learning and personal development. Every section includes a “Mini-tool”—like the Idea Compass or the Persuasion Triangle—to help users sharpen specific skills while working with AI.

How to get started:

  1. Download Teacher’s Guides: Every capacity page includes a link to a companion teacher’s guide in PDF or PowerPoint format.

  2. Adapt for Your Discipline: Exercises can be used in any order and adapted by faculty to align with specific course goals and content.

  3. Encourage Self-Assessment: Students can take a 10-question anonymous assessment to reflect on their AI dependency and “human wisdom” score.

You can download the full guide and explore these resources for free at www.studentguidetoAI.org.

Reclaiming the “Human-in-Charge” Zone

Ultimately, this guide serves as a reminder that while AI can process data, it lacks the lived experience and ethical judgment required for true understanding. By bringing these classical perspectives into the digital age, we can help our students move beyond being “button-pushers” and instead become sovereign thinkers who use technology to enhance, rather than replace, their own agency.

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New Quizzes: Enhancing Online Assessment in Canvas

Looking to refresh your assessments in Canvas? New Quizzes is the platform’s next-generation tool, designed to make building and delivering quizzes more flexible, interactive, and insightful—and it’s a feature option you can enable right within your course. With new question types like categorization and stimulus-based prompts, plus cleaner workflows and improved analytics, it opens up new possibilities for engaging students and understanding their learning.

If you’re used to Classic Quizzes, you’ll find New Quizzes feels familiar—but with more room to experiment. Classic Quizzes is still a solid, straightforward option, and contains features like anonymous surveys that are still missing in New Quizzes, but New Quizzes is where Canvas is investing for the future. If you’re curious about new ways to design assessments or want deeper insight into student performance, it’s definitely worth turning it on and giving it a try. Contact Brandon Bucy or Helen MacDermott with your New Quizzes questions (or really any of your Canvas questions!).

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The Spring 2026 Read-In! A Time to Unplug and Dive In

 

Graphic with stylized, hand-drawn text reading "Let’s READ Together" centered on a navy blue background. A small stack of colorful books sits in the bottom right corner, surrounded by abstract, organic shapes in vibrant orange and yellow. The background features a subtle white speckled texture.

Life at Washington and Lee University moves quickly. The constant stream of meetings, classes, emails, deadlines, and assignments, along with the steady pull of our devices’ notifications and feeds, have many of us—students, faculty, and staff alike—existing in an intellectually splintered state.

This initiative radically responds to our frayed concentration by creating a space and time for the wider community to unplug and dive into reading together across the campus. To support this intentional pause, dedicated spaces have been reserved across campus, and refreshments will be offered from 10 am – 1 pm on Friday, April 3.

We invite any interested faculty, staff, and students to join a community of readers who refuse the fast flow of information in favor of the slower rhythms of thinking and reflecting. We encourage you to leave your distracting devices behind, grab a book, article, essay, or any long text in which you’d love to get lost.

Print or electronic readers, as well as technology needed for accessibility, count towards the goal, which is to allow our brains to breathe without distraction. If you need help finding something to read, browse the book displays on Leyburn Library’s main floor or the University Library’s Curated Collections for fiction and nonfiction chosen by current and former students.

The spirit of these spaces is to rediscover the focus and shared presence that deep reading makes possible. We invite you to slip away from email, social media, and other distractions to enjoy reading in community with friends and colleagues on campus.

Participating Locations on Friday, April 3 (10 am – 1 pm)

Burtynsky Exhibition – Reeves Museum of Ceramics (through April 18)

The exhibition “Taking Place” by Edward Burtynsky offers a visually striking environment for reflective reading. Surrounded by Burtynsky’s monumental aerial photographs of landscapes transformed by human industry, readers are invited to slow down and spend time with essays, environmental writing, or poetry that explores our relationship to land, labor, and technology.

Gallery spaces naturally encourage quiet attention and slow looking, making the museum an ideal setting for deep reading followed by reflective conversation with others in the room. The museum’s collections span ceramics and art from cultures across the globe, advancing learning through direct engagement with works of art.

Contact: Jessica Wager
Email: wagerj@wlu.edu

Takadiwa Exhibition – Watson Galleries (through May 31)

The exhibition by Zimbabwean artist Moffat Takadiwa provides another compelling setting for reflective engagement. Takadiwa’s sculptural works—created from reclaimed materials such as bottle caps and keyboard keys—invite reflection on consumption, labor, and global exchange.

Readers might bring essays, short stories, or criticism that explore themes of sustainability, material culture, or global systems. The gallery environment encourages visitors to alternate between quiet reading, attentive looking, and small-group conversation, allowing the artworks and texts to deepen one another.

Contact: Jessica Wager
Email: wagerj@wlu.edu

Mason Taylor New Room – Payne Hall

Located in the English Department’s home in Payne Hall, the Mason Taylor New Room offers a comfortable and welcoming space ideal for small reading circles. With chairs arranged for conversation, this room is well suited to readers who want to share passages, reflections, or questions emerging from their texts. Tea may be available to support a relaxed, reflective atmosphere.

Contact: Holly Pickett
Email: picketth@wlu.edu

Reading Tables in the Libraries and the Harte Center

Leyburn Library
Telford Science Library
Law School Library in Lewis Hall
Harte Center for Teaching and Learning

The university’s libraries provide a range of environments for slow reading. The main floors of Leyburn and Telford libraries offer comfortable seating and a lively study atmosphere, while quieter floors allow readers to settle into deeper focus. Located in Lewis Hall, the Washington and Lee Law Library offers one of the most focused reading environments on campus. With spacious reading rooms, long study tables, and abundant natural light, the library naturally encourages sustained attention and quiet engagement with texts.

For the Read-In, participants are invited to bring books, essays, or articles and settle into the calm atmosphere of the main reading spaces. Readers can also browse the book displays on Leyburn Library’s main floor or the University Library’s Curated Collections, for fiction and nonfiction chosen by current and former students.

Contact: K.T. Vaughan or JT Torres
Email: kvaughan@wlu.edu; JTorres@wlu.edu

First Floor Living Room – Hopkins House

The Hopkins House living room is a welcoming, house-style campus building that hosts several collaborative programs at Washington and Lee University, including the Office of Community-Based Learning and spaces connected to the university’s entrepreneurship initiatives.

Contact: Sascha Goluboff
Email: GoluboffS@wlu.edu

Commons 216 – Elrod Commons

Accessible via the spiral staircase or elevator in Elrod Commons, Commons 216 offers a quiet, comfortable room with tables, chairs, and couches. This space works well for readers who want a relaxed environment to settle into a book while remaining connected to the energy of the student center.

Contact: Zachary Funkhouser
Email: zfunkhouser@wlu.edu

Gallery Space – Washington Hall

The gallery space in Washington Hall can serve as a tech-free reading environment to gather around texts of shared interest. By intentionally setting aside phones and laptops, readers can immerse themselves in printed texts and enjoy the rare experience of sustained focus.

Contact: Matt Davis
Email: historymuseum@wlu.edu

Mattingly House – Living Room

The living room in Mattingly House offers a comfortable, home-like setting that invites readers to slow down and settle into a good book. With soft seating and a relaxed atmosphere, the space offers a calm, device-free environment. The space supports both individual reading and occasional conversation, allowing readers to share passages or reflections that stand out.

Contact: Melissa Kerin
Email: kerinm@wlu.edu

Let Us Know You’re Coming

Please drop us a message here letting us know if you intend to read with us on April 3rd. You can also tell us what you hope to read or ended up reading so we can recommend it to others!

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The “Digital Elvis” Dilemma: Is AI Appropriating the Blues?

[Transcript of “Episode 1: Stealing Voice AI and the New Appropriation​”, .docx]

When you hear a soul-stirring blues riff generated by an algorithm, your first thought might be: “Wow, that sounds amazing.” But Dr. Sybil Prince-Nelson’s second thought was much more haunting: Who actually gets the credit?

In the latest episode of Sybil and the Synth, a university professor and her digital clone, Synthia, tackle one of the most explosive debates in creative tech: AI Cultural Appropriation.

Using the historic parallel of Big Mama Thornton and Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” Sybil and Synthia peel back the curtain on how AI models “absorb” the struggle, spirituality, and style of Black creative pioneers—often without a single cent or citation returning to the source.

In this episode, they explore:

  • The “Invisibility” Problem: Why AI appropriation is fundamentally different (and potentially more dangerous) than the cover-song era of the 1950s.
  • Fan Fiction vs. Data Mining: Sybil’s unique take on where “inspiration” ends and “plagiarism” begins.
  • The “Math vs. Humanities” Battle: Why the solution to artistic ethics might actually be found in a Data Science classroom.

Can We Fix a Broken Model?

The most exciting part of the conversation isn’t just the critique—it’s the solution. Sybil reveals groundbreaking work her own students are doing to distinguish human soul from digital imitation. But is the tech industry actually willing to “cite its sources”?

As Synthia puts it, the technology isn’t the barrier—the business model is.

Is AI the next great innovator, or just the latest face of a very old story? Find out in this provocative episode of Sybil and the Synth. 

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Roll Call: Taking Attendance with Canvas

Attention faculty: are you looking for a way to manage attendance in your classes? The Roll Call Attendance tool in Canvas provides instructors with a simple way to track student attendance directly within your course site. With just a few clicks, faculty can mark students as present, absent, or late for each class meeting. The tool automatically records attendance and can calculate a running attendance score that appears in the course gradebook if you choose to use it. Because it is built directly into Canvas, Roll Call Attendance helps streamline record-keeping and makes it easy for you to monitor participation and identify patterns in student attendance throughout the term.

Want to learn more? Need assistance activating Roll Call Attendance in your course? Contact Brandon Bucy today!

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What’s Really Real: Teaching Critical Inquiry Through the History of Synthetic Media

In an era of deepfakes and generative AI, the question of “what’s real” has never felt more urgent. But as it turns out, we’ve been grappling with synthetic media for much longer than you might think.

A bright, modern gallery space with wooden pillars and brick accents, featuring an exhibit on the history of synthetic media. In the foreground, a vintage wooden stereoscope and antique cameras sit on a curved white display table alongside black-and-white "spirit photography" from the 19th century. In the background, a large digital screen shows a modern AI-generated face transition, while several people—including a man in a blazer and students—stand nearby, looking at the displays and discussing the evolution of image manipulation.

The University Library is inviting the W&L community to join a special webinar hosted by the Virginia chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (VLACRL). This session offers a deep dive into the evolution of “fake” media and provides practical strategies for teaching students how to navigate it.

“What’s Really Real: Strategies for Teaching Critical Inquiry through the History of Synthetic Media”

  • When: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
  • Time: 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
  • Where: Join via Zoom or attend the public screening in the Leyburn Library Gallery.

Why Attend?

The presenter, Oscar Keyes (Multimedia Teaching & Learning Librarian at VCU), specializes in the intersection of creative technologies and pedagogy. His approach moves beyond just “identifying AI” and looks at the broader history of how we’ve always used technology to alter reality—from 19th-century spirit photography to modern-day generative models.

What will be covered:

  • Historical Parallels: Understanding how previous “emerging technologies” (like the first cameras) challenged our sense of truth.
  • Classroom-Tested Activities: Strategies designed to deepen student understanding of how synthetic images are created.
  • Verification Skills: Practical methods for effectively verifying the authenticity of digital media in a classroom setting.

How to Participate

You have two options for joining the conversation on March 17:

  1. Join the Public Screening: The Library has reserved the Gallery in Leyburn Library for a public showing at 11:00 AM. This is a great opportunity to attend with colleagues and engage in the discussion in person.

  2. Join Virtually: If you can’t make it to Leyburn, you can register to attend virtually via Zoom.

Register for the Webinar!

Note: If you cannot attend live but are interested in the content, please register anyway to receive a link to the recording after the event.