Occupational therapy employees learn to integrate AI into coursework

SHARON, Pa. - Allied Health Program Assistant Amy Beveridge, and Assistant Teaching Professor of Occupational Therapy Geralyn Wallace, recently completed of the Penn State Provost Endorsement Program: AI-Enhanced Pedagogy. The duo participated in the program during the fall 2025 semester.

As part of the program, participants explored generative AI technology to find creative ways of integrating those technologies into their teaching practices. Beveridge and Wallace, along with other program participants, collaborated with colleagues and subject matter experts from Penn State's Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT), University Libraries, the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence and Commonwealth Campus instructional designers to find ways of incorporating generative AI into each respective academic discipline.

"We decided to do the program together so that we could learn how to use generative AI to support the occupational therapy assistant program at Shenango that we both work in," Beveridge said.

The pair credit instructional workshops for showing them how to incorporate equity and ethical practices into generative AI assignments, how to use AI to review and revise a course, and fine-tune their instructional philosophy. Beveridge and Wallace received individualized feedback from the endorsement program leads and were required to submit a revised assignment incorporating generative AI, an insights post and a philosophy video in order to complete the program.

As staff support for all of Shenango's allied health programs, Beveridge's final project focused on introducing the allied health faculty to ways that generative AI can support them in their teaching roles. Wallace, as the fieldwork coordinator in the occupational therapy assistant program, focused her final project on utilizing generative AI in specific courses she teaches within the program.

"Working together on the endorsement let us discuss and throw ideas off each other," Wallace said. "It was a great learning experience for both of us."

Wallace was chosen as a representative for the Commonwealth Campuses to present as part of the TLT AI Fest panel titled, "Practical Uses of AI in the Classroom: Examples from the AI-Endorsement Exemplar Panel" held on April 16. As a panelist, Wallace will share her experience with identifying skills that remain irreplaceable by AI, using AI to support student learning, and designing assignments that foster ethical AI use and professional readiness.