With the rapid advancement of information technology (IT) and artificial intelligence (AI), our society is being impacted and rapidly transformed. This paper explores a new teaching approach for a Vincentian Social Justice course for First-year students. The course helps students understand how IT and AI positively and negatively affect our daily lives. It highlights how IT and AI can be used to improve quality of life, promote social justice, and address potential drawbacks.

A five-stage pedagogy has been created for this course to enhance teaching and learning. In the first stage, students are introduced to Vincentian and social justice issues. In the second stage, students learn the fundamental knowledge and skills of IT and AI for addressing social justice issues. The third stage involves studying case studies of technology-based solutions to address various social justice issues. In the fourth stage, students work on real-world projects for local organizations and communities, collecting information, choosing topics, and proposing solutions. The fifth stage encourages students to explore Vincetian social justice further by utilizing IT and AI in the future. This approach encourages students to engage critically with the Vincentian principles of social justice through IT and AI, empowering them to design technology-driven solutions for organizations and communities.

In this study, working with local organizations is the core, which offers students a deeper understanding of social justice issues and provides opportunities to analyze and propose technology-based solutions. Students are organized into five groups, and each group collaborates with one local organization to address social justice challenges using IT and AI. Students present their findings at a mini-conference with community-based organizations, peers, and university scholars. This hands-on experiential involvement provides first-year students with valuable real-world problem-solving experience in advocating for Vincentian social justice by applying IT and AI technologies.

Keywords: Vincentian social justice, Artificial Intelligence (AI), pedagogy.