OSU Resources about AI in Teaching

Editor’s note: This is an expanded version of the September 7 Inform email Alix Gitelman, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Senior Vice Provost, sent to Oregon State University faculty regarding OSU resources about AI in teaching and learning. This version provides additional examples and suggestions.

Welcome to fall term! Your colleagues in Ecampus and CTL have been busy developing resources and guidance to help you address AI in your courses this year. OSU will host professional development events throughout the year to help you learn and share with other faculty as well.

Below you will find a few key strategies that can be implemented before fall term begins, and know there will be much more to come as we work through considerations and impacts together.

Strategy 1: Get to know AI and its possibilities

If you haven’t already, explore using one or more generative AI tools. ChatGPT is perhaps the most recognizable name currently, but you might also try out Bing’s Chat feature, which is driven by a newer algorithm (GPT-4).

AI technologies are evolving rapidly in ways that hold both promise and create concern. By experimenting with them, you’ll have a much better understanding of what you may need to address in your courses than if you just read about them or consider what you’ve heard from others.

Another key component of getting familiar with AI tools is considering the ethics of using them. Ecampus created a decision tree to support decisions related to AI in teaching and learning.

Strategy 2: Include a syllabus statement

Feedback from OSU students (and students in higher education more broadly) has indicated that they are less concerned about what faculty’s stance on generative AI tools is than that instructors say something about it in each course so that expectations are clear. Include a syllabus statement this fall addressing your position.

Also, talk to faculty and leadership in your department. Will there be a department-wide stance on using these tools for teaching and learning that needs to be incorporated into your syllabus? You might also consult professional organizations for your discipline to determine if those policies might influence your own (e.g., MLA and Conference on College Composition and Communication’s joint statement).

You might want to consider addressing the following in your statement:

Generally, whether you are encouraging, restricting, or prohibiting use — and what that means in the context of your course. Maybe students should not use AI tools to generate content for written work, but can they use it as a “study buddy” that helps them understand where they went wrong on past homework problems?

Will there be any variation in your AI use policy by activity or assignment? You might say in your syllabus that you will address these nuances with examples in each activity/assignment prompt.

How or where can students pose questions about AI use in your class?

Note: we advise not referencing “AI detectors” in your syllabus statement (or using them in your evaluation of student work). These so-called detectors are not accurate and have been shown to produce biased results.

Here are sample syllabi statements from Ecampus and from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL).

Strategy 3: Run your assignments through an AI tool

We recommend running your key assignments through an AI tool (or two) to see what is generated. You might be surprised at how much AI can do with your assignment — or by the limitations of its output.

AI has of course generated concerns about academic integrity. Don’t panic if an AI tool can do your assignment fairly well. There are many ways to encourage your students to do the work and to contextualize it within their learning in the course as well as within their own interests, or you can explicitly allow students to use AI first and then extend the assignment in some other (new) way.

Strategy 4: Start adjusting assignments as necessary

Most courses would likely benefit from tweaks that help ensure learning is meaningful in the wake of widely-available generative AI tools.  Not sure where to begin?  Ecampus has a resource based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, to guide you.

Generally speaking, learners are motivated to do their work if they know why they are doing it and what they can expect to gain from that work. This is a great time to add or expand purpose statements to your activities and assignments.

Additionally, here are suggestions for minor adjustments to activities and assignments that are relatively easy to implement.

When you don’t want students to use AI…

Lean into frameworks that create and sustain a community of learning in your course, including peer and group work, opportunities to engage with you individually, etc. Most students still want a human-to-human connection. Adding a peer brainstorm for a written assignment or project might dissuade students from using AI to do that task, for example.

Ask students to incorporate one or more course readings in their work. (Note: some AI tools can accurately quote real sources now, though the earlier versions still “hallucinate.”)

Ask students to contextualize their learning in their workplace, community, personal experience, etc.

Ask students to explain their process (their research, writing, and/or learning process, or how they completed the assignment).

Ask students to self-reflect on their learning from one assignment to another.

For online discussions, weight peer responses more heavily than initial responses (since AI could more easily be used for initial responses), and emphasize substantive, thoughtful reflection and integration of peers’ ideas.

When you will allow or want students to use AI…

Ask students to document their process and explain how and where they used AI and then what they did with its output (e.g., how it was used to brainstorm ideas; how they selected an idea; and then how they implemented that idea with their own efforts and course resources.)

Clarify for students how to properly cite AI (APA, MLA).

Create distinct phases to the activity/assignment where students use an AI tool for a specific purpose (e.g., to evaluate bias in information or to assist with revisions) and then do something with the output.

See additional information about frameworks for supporting “AI literacy.”

If you are concerned that a student may have used AI inappropriately in your course, see the Student Conduct section on CTL’s ChatGPT and Other AI Tools page.

In the coming weeks, watch for more information about professional development opportunities related to AI in online teaching and learning. Please reach out to Ecampus Faculty Support (for Ecampus courses), or CTL (for pedagogy in on-campus courses) or Academic Technologies (for educational technology in on-campus courses) if you have any questions.