Generative AI

Recently, many of us have seen Gemini integrations pop up on University Google platforms. Tech companies rolling out consequential changes to GenAI tools, access, and capabilities seem to pay little attention to the semester calendar or our existing assignments, assessments, and course policies. These integrations vastly reduce the friction of using GenAI tools, making it easier and more automatic for writers to use GenAIs.

Networked information technology has made this the best and the worst of times for literature review assignments. Positively, information science experts continue to refine our understanding of literature reviews, highlighting how systematic and rigorous review essays can provide crucial clarity in an age of widespread misinformation. Less positively, those promoting AI tools claim generative artificial intelligence technologies can produce ‘literature reviews’ from nothing more than a well-designed query.

Semester to semester, many of us copy-paste ever-growing lists of policies and resource recommendations for our syllabi. When we’re down to the wire the Friday before classes start, it can be tempting to recycle old materials after a quick skim, rather than closely rereading and analyzing our choices. But of course, syllabi set the stage in important ways for the work your students will do in your course. Crafting a syllabus is an excellent time to assess the scaffolding and support you provide to students in your course.

In March, our Teaching with Writing Blog addressed the complexities of documenting how Generative AI might be used in students’ writing processes. It provided suggestions for creating an Acknowledging AI assignment for courses where AI use is allowed.

When they imagine students using AI, faculty might picture a student plugging an assignment prompt wholesale into ChatGPT and submitting the output with minimal or no editing. But students—who are far more prolific users of AI than faculty—report that this approach to AI use is relatively uncommon. AI tools are more often leveraged as collaborators that enhance students’ writing, rather than replacing their efforts wholesale.

The Provost’s Office and the Senate Committee on Educational Policy at the University of Minnesota provided strong early guidance for instructors on student use of ChatGPT and other GenAI technologies in classrooms (Embrace, allow, and prohibit). Since the publication of those original policies, the landscape of GenAI tools and the quality of GenAI outputs has changed dramatically.

With the start of the fall semester, campus sidewalks and bike lanes are flowing, once more, with humanity—welcome back! In these early weeks of the term, there is plenty to navigate, and not just physically. For students entering new courses and new fields of study, there will be plenty of questions about location, schedules, course policies and procedures. Amidst the effort to get oriented to new terrain, students might not be thinking yet about other questions they have about writing or about writing processes and practices that will support their learning.

Generative AI has created some challenging new realities for instructors. While initial concerns focused on academic integrity and the risks of GenAI being used as a replacement for student work, emerging concerns are developing around the ways students may be differently impacted by these advances. Last fall, Indiana University was subject to media scrutiny and a lawsuit after its AI detection technology, Turnitin.com, systematically produced false positive results for work submitted by multilingual students.

In previous years, August blog entries have focused on using syllabus descriptions to clarify purposes, tasks, and audiences for student writing, describing writing expectations in your field, and fostering academ

The arrival of ChatGPT has sent shockwaves through popular media and higher education circles. Headlines have suggested that artificial intelligence could render some familiar genres and technologies obsolete (including the college essay and Google).