Generative AI Tools and their Uses for Teaching & Learning

Instructors should be direct and transparent about what tools students are permitted to use, and about the reasons for any restrictions

If you expect students to avoid the use of AI chatbots when producing their work, add this to your policy. See the above section for example statements that can be added to your syllabus.

As for explaining why, understanding the learning goals behind assignments helps students commit to them. The only reason to assign written work is to help students learn — either to deepen their understanding of the material or to develop the skill of writing in itself.

Research shows that people learn more and retain the information longer when they write about it in their own words. If instead, students task an AI to generate texts, they won’t learn as much. This is why we ask them to write their own papers, homework assignments, problem sets, and coding assignments. This impact on learning applies across all disciplines—STEM problem sets that require explanations also depend on students’ generating language to learn more deeply. ChatGPT can also generate coding solutions, not just natural language.

— modified from Yale – https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/AIguidance

Discuss the value of the writing process with students and help students see the value in writing as a skill in the context of your class

Changes in assignment design and structure can substantially reduce students’ likelihood of cheating— and can also enhance their learning

Based on research about when students plagiarize (whether from published sources, commercial services, or each other), we know that students are less likely to cheat when they:

• Are pursuing questions they feel connected to
• Understand how the assignment will support their longer-term learning goals
• Have produced preliminary work before the deadline
• Have discussed their preliminary work with others

Many of the above characteristics can be integrated into authentic assessments, which are assignments that 1. have a sense of realism to them, 2. are cognitively challenging, and 3. require authentic evaluation. Examples can be found at the bottom of this website. Authentic assessments also align with practices that prioritize student learning, and make it harder to collaborate with AI tools, including:

• Using alternative ways for students to represent their knowledge beyond text (e.g., draw images, make slides, facilitate a discussion, create a video or podcast).
• Asking students to use resources that are not accessible to ChatGPT, including anything discussed in class or via discussions in theSpring, or resources that exist behind paywall, such as various databases the library licenses.
• Incorporating opportunities for self-reflection into assignments via a blog or journal activity.
• Incorporating the most up-to-date resources and information of your field so that students are answering questions that have not yet been answered or only begun to be answered
• Engaging with ChatGPT as a tool that exists in the world and having students critically engage with what it is able to produce, as in these examples (along with a growing list of teaching experiments planned by Yale instructors)

–modified from Yale – https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/AIguidance

Create an assignment where students analyze and critique what ChatGPT generates

The arms race predicted last year between AI developers and AI detection tools has begun. The consensus among experts is that the detection tools will mostly remain a step behind, and thus not especially accurate or reliable. Therefore, it is suggested that any AI detection tool be utilized with extreme caution and always as part of a multi-faceted approach in instances where honor violations are suspected.

The AI detection tool that we currently license here at Skidmore is part of our plagiarism detection software by Turnitin. Visit the LEDS Plagiarism Prevention & Detection page for information on how to implement AI detection for writing assignment.

While acknowledging that new technologies can change the landscape, we know that most students want to do their own work because they care about learning. Tools like ChatGPT raise broad questions across higher education. We agree with this approach from Inside Higher Ed: “Go big. How do these tools allow us to achieve our intended outcomes differently and better? How can they promote equity and access? Better thinking and argumentation? … In the past, near-term prohibitions on … calculators, … spellcheck, [and] search engines … have fared poorly. They focus on in-course tactics rather than on the shifting contexts of what students need to know and how they need to learn it.”