ACORN Toolkit

SDSU ACORN Toolkit graphic featuring a robot icon holding a wrench, representing AI-ready curricular resources.

Overview

In AY 25/26, with funding from the CSU Chancellor’s Office via the AI Educational Innovations Challenge mechanism, SDSU’s AI-ready Curricular Options Resource Network (ACORN) developed a scalable ‘Toolkit’ supporting intentional, faculty-led integration of AI at the curricular level. Designed for updating entire majors or programs, the Toolkit contains resources (‘tools’) meant to help instructional units embed AI competencies coherently and strategically in their programs—versus reactively or piecemeal, course-by-course. 

The Toolkit’s data-based rationale and initial development are described in this March 2026 article in Society & AI. The Toolkit’s application fosters faculty ownership of AI-related curricular changes that support critical thinking, reduce gaps and redundancies, enhance program relevance for students, and boost workforce readiness. Its tools (templates, worksheets, protocols, guides, etc.) can be used in any combination that the faculty deem appropriate to support their work to ensure program coherence when it comes to AI literacy. 

Toolkit Access

The final scalable Toolkit for making comprehensive, consensus-based, data-informed, program-level AI-related changes will be shared across the CSU in AY 26/27 via the Canvas LMS, enabling units statewide to adopt a similarly strategic, whole-program approach to AI-related curricular upgrades. After it takes root systemwide, it shall be distributed even more widely so that others can benefit too. 

Taskforce membership

The AI-ready Curricular Options Resource Network (ACORN) is led by PI EJ Sobo (Professor, Anthropology; ITS AI Faculty Fellow) and Co-PI Norah Shultz (Professor and Chair, Sociology). 

The Network’s tool development taskforce includes Alvin Henry (Associate Professor and Chair, Asian American Studies and CAL Careers Hub); Beth Pollard (Professor and Chair, History); Consuelo Salas (Assistant Professor, Rhetoric and Writing); Fernando Bosco (Professor and Chair, Geography); Rob Malouf (Professor and Chair, Linguistics); Sam Kobari (Lecturer, Anthropology); and Sobo and Shultz along with two student representatives, Abir Mohamed and Rosabel Ibrahim. 

Faculty nomination to the Taskforce required prior use of AI in teaching and demonstrated AI fluency (e.g., as confirmed via completion of the Academic Applications of AI (AAAI) microcredential, available CSU-wide and to the public); affiliation with a high-impact program; commitment to group decision-making concerning curricular innovations; experience in curricular planning; and proven capacity as a respected role model at SDSU. Diversity in career stage, discipline, and leverageable cross-campus connections also were crucial. 

Taskforce decision-making was supported by subject matter experts DJ Hopkins, from our Center for Teaching and Learning; Stephen Schellenberg, past Dean responsible for curricular issues; Sarah Tribelhorn, AI librarian; David Goldberg, SDSU’s AI Survey PI and the AI Survey Dashboard’s designer; and Alvin Henry, CAL Career Readiness Fellow. 

Instructional Designer Kristi Collins created the Canvas website or toolchest in which our tools are stored. Ananda Ortanez & the Academic Media Team created the Toolkit’s ‘welcome’ video, and Jiong Li and Marc Pastor provided graphic and webpage support. 

Project Funding and Enablement

This work was funded through the CSU’s AI Educational Innovations Challenge (AIEIC) mechanism, without which the Network could not have delivered the Toolkit. Small grants from the College of Arts and Letters (CAL) and from the IT Division supported a robust pilot testing phase. Further, the in-kind support we received from the IT Division at SDSU was invaluable. This includes the strong executive sponsorship from SDSU CIO and Vice President for Information Technology, Dr. James P. Frazee, whose leadership has positioned ACORN as an institution-wide priority and enabled the cross-campus collaboration necessary for ACORN’s development and implementation at scale.

Publications and Other Documentation