--- title: "Curriculum Integration: Artificial Intelligence – a historical perspective" type: "blog" space: "The Teaching & Learning Centre" author: "Ashley Ribbel" created: 2026-10-23T22:13:20Z updated: 2026-11-03T23:03:37Z tags: ["ai", "artificial-intelligence", "curriculum-integration", "faculty-pd", "spark-plug", "teaching", "teaching-and-learning", "teaching-and-learning-centre"] url: "https://employees.senecapolytechnic.ca/spaces/39/the-teaching-learning-centre/blogs/updates/24879/curriculum-integration-artificial-intelligence-a-historical-perspective" --- # Curriculum Integration: Artificial Intelligence – a historical perspective [**View all the Teaching & Learning Centre Spark Plugs!**](https://employees.senecapolytechnic.ca/spaces/39/the-teaching-learning-centre/blogs) * * * **by Todd Malarczuk, Professor in the Teaching & Learning Centre** I’m gonna be honest – I thought short and hard about asking Copilot to write me an article about the changes I’ve seen in faculty thoughts about Artificial Intelligence \(AI\) use at Seneca Polytechnic. When I thought about the prompt that I’d use to write such an article, I realized that Copilot does not know what I’ve seen; about the conversations I’ve had; about the mindset of faculty at Seneca; really about anything about me and the last two years at all. The prompt I’d have to use, in essence, would need TO BE THE ARTICLE I wanted to write. Those five minutes of internal struggle is a microcosm of what I have learned over the last two years of Curriculum Integration \(CI\) at Seneca. Let me explain… For those new to the whole CI thing, Curriculum Integration is an enormous undertaking whereby we attempt to have different core areas \(ex. AI, EDI, Sustainability\) integrated into EVERY program area at Seneca. Curriculum Integration: Artificial Intelligence \(CI AI\) is the initiative focused specifically on integrating AI into every program area. We do this by meeting with Faculty members \(referred to as Faculty Champions\) through an 11-week program/course that meets for about 2 hours every week for the 11-week duration. The goal of those 11 weeks is to allow the Faculty Champions to explore, discuss, and determine where AI might best fit into their program area, and then to create some sort of an Action Plan for how to integrate AI into their program over the next 2-3 years. Yeah, it’s enormous \(I said that 😊\). The pleasure and the privilege have been mine over the last couple years to facilitate these CI AI sessions. Over the last two years, about 50 Faculty Champions have taken part in an 11-week CI AI program. And in those short\(ish\) two years, A LOT has changed. The technology itself has changed at lightning speeds. Think going from the horse-and-buggy to the Space Shuttle in just two years!!!\* Almost equally as rapidly, I have seen changes in what our faculty think and feel about AI in education. At the start, there was massive pushback. I heard a lot of “I wish this AI thing didn’t exist”; “can’t I just ban the use of AI?”. Faculty were awash in an ocean of change; students were grappling with the power \(both good and sometimes bad\) of this new tool. There was this overall sense of just wanting things to go back to the way they were. Although loud at the start, this sentiment did not last long. Faculty were beginning to see that AI was here, there, and everywhere. There really is no way to eliminate it; it’s a part of so much of the way the world is working; heck I used AI to do my grocery shopping! So, the mindsets shifted to trying to control how students were using AI and what they were using it for. Our CI AI discussions moved into areas around monitoring AI usage – a lot of times by thinking that if we just gave our students a guideline like a red light/green light system, they would oblige. Around this same time, I started noticing a change in students as well. Were they still using AI? You know it, but they were beginning to metacognitively notice that their whole way of thinking and doing was shifting; and they didn’t always like what was happening. This has led us to the most recent cohort of CI AI Faculty Champions \(who met in May/June of 2026\). The questions and concerns are evolving. It is becoming less and less about wondering if our students are cheating and becoming more and more about trying to figure out how we can incorporate AI into our teaching & learning and still walk away feeling like we have learned the important things that we are meant to learn in our programs. We landed on calling this Responsible AI Use. And this Responsible AI Use entails a lot. It requires faculty and students to ask, “does it make sense to use AI here?”; “How can AI enhance my learning here? How can it hinder my learning here?”; “How can I be sure that my students have indeed learned what I wanted them to learn if they are using AI as part of their learning?”. This is a very long way from “Can I ban AI?”. Where will our next group of CI AI Faculty Champions take us? We’ll find out in the winter of 2027 \(please consider joining us\), but one thing I think I’ve learned \(and that hit me hard in the face as I sat to write this article\), is that we have agency over this tool, and we can decide on the best ways for it to support our learning and demonstration of learning. Our students, now more than ever, need our guidance to help them foster this agency. \*I did use Copilot to help with the analogy and here’s my prompt: “can you create an analogy for me that will convey the speed at which AI technology has advanced since the inception of ChatGPT” Photo by [Sascha Bosshard](https://unsplash.com/@thesaboo?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/blue-red-and-yellow-light-qhhp1LwvPSI?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) * * * [**View all the Teaching & Learning Centre Spark Plugs!**](https://employees.senecapolytechnic.ca/spaces/39/the-teaching-learning-centre/blogs) * * *