We are delighted to introduce Melanie Sage, PhD, LCSW, as the August 2024 FOTL keynote speaker!

Biographical Information

Melanie Sage, PhD, LCSW, is an expert at the intersection of emerging technologies, teaching and learning, and empathy and engagement. With two decades of experience across social work practice, academia, private industry, and consulting, she is a go-to expert for academics and organizations that are reinventing ways to work with technology in ways that center the humans in the room.

Melanie’s experience includes 12 years in tenured faculty positions, but as a creative entrepreneur at heart, she also spent post-academia time as a researcher at Meta, working on ways to improve social media equity. Her research roles have explored the impact of social media on youth in foster care, how to make social media systematically safer for people who are LGBTQ+, how to teach with technology in trauma-informed ways, and when and how AI can be used to make ethical decisions about social services priorities, to name a few.

Her national and international board roles have included serving as the co-chair of the Harnessing Technology Grand Challenge in Social Work, the Chair of the Human Services Information Technology Association, and serving on the Council of Social Work Education’s first Technology Advisory Committee. She is co-author of the CSWE-best-selling text Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology, has presented over 100 conference sessions and tech-related talks, and has dozens of academic journal articles about tech in human services. Her work spans important emerging practice areas such as AI and ethical decision-making and the impact of technology on vulnerable populations. 

Today Melanie channels her passion to empower professionals to harness technology’s potential benefits while minding risks and staying true to their core values related to human dignity and empathy. She operates her own consultancy so that she can choose projects and opportunities that align with her values about thoughtful innovation and digital transformation.

Talk Description

The Balancing Act: Teaching and Learning with AI from a Place of Integrity

How do our personal and professional values inform our choices about technology use? How does this inform our classroom policies? How can we discuss AI policies with students in ways that resonate with their values about learning and higher education? Dr. Sage will lead faculty through these critical conversations about the impact that AI has on higher education and how it is transforming our thinking about teaching, learning, and professional readiness. Through interactive exercises and real-world examples, participants will consider how to best align their pedagogical goals with AI innovation in the classroom. This talk will focus on maintaining enthusiasm for teaching and fostering students' passion for learning amidst rapid technological advancement, regardless of individual AI adoption in teaching practices.

As a kickoff to a day of engaging activities and talks about AI use cases, this keynote will move you beyond hope or hype toward a balanced approach to teaching with integrity. You'll leave more confident in your explainable choices about integrating AI in the classroom, better equipped to navigate this new landscape with purpose and clarity.