Generative AI Guidance for Instructors

Learn

Explore Generative AI

By exploring generative AI, instructors can discover innovative tools and approaches that can improve student engagement, promote personalized learning, and provide valuable insight, ultimately enhancing the educational experience for students. They should:

• Keep current on emergent technologies.
• Expect to encounter the unknown and to learn iteratively.
• Experiment with various generative AI tools to understand affordances and limitations.
• Investigate opportunities for enhancing student learning, personalization, and workload reduction to allow for higher level skills and learning activities.
• Provide opportunities to explore and learn from each other.

Support Inclusivity, Diversity, and Privacy

To ensure an equitable and safe learning environment, instructors should recognize the limitations associated with newly developing technologies.

• Provide equal access to generative AI tools and resources for all students. Beyond the AI models, instructors should promote inclusivity and diversity in the classroom and support all students.
• Understand that training data used to create generative AI models may be inherently biased. Instructors should be aware of this and think critically about results. As we move forward, we should encourage the use of diverse and unbiased data sets used in training models.
• Be cautious of entering personal information. Discuss privacy implications.
• Protect data and do not enter proprietary information.

Refocus

Recognize Limitations of AI Detection Tools

Don’t depend on AI detection tools to address the use of generative AI in your assignments. They are unreliable and easy to circumvent with small amounts of editing. They also generate many false positives. If you do use an AI detection tool on student writing, we suggest using at least two AI detection tools and comparing the results. Consider using these results as a conversation starter with students. Falsely accusing students of cheating with generative AI can quickly damage a learning community.

ASU & UCLA have both opted out of TII’s AI detection for now. Others like the University of Kansas caution faculty. The UM System has summarized their concerns and includes videos from TurnItIn on how the detection works. Here’s a Washington Post article on the efficacy of TurnItIn’s detection and how the company views the feature as a means to prompt a conversation with students instead of an accusation.

Adapt Assignments and Assessments

A careful review of your course from the lens of the impact of generative AI will help you know where to focus your attention. Identify assignments at risk for cheating with generative AI tools. Basic essays on fact-based topics and essays in which only the final draft is submitted are at high risk for cheating. Some strategies to revise at-risk assignment prompts include:

• Focus on formative assessment and the process of writing (and thinking). Break down an assignment into smaller parts that help students form their ideas on a topic and receive feedback from peers and instructors. Compile these smaller assignments for the final project/essay.
• Ask students to analyze, evaluate, or synthesize information obtained from generative AI and ask them how it could be improved, adapted, or enhanced. Students can drill deeper into the subject by refining or asking more specific questions.
• Require that students incorporate personal reflections, local or course-based data, or require known specific sources.
• Develop authentic assessments: (inquiry-based learning, problem-based learning, scenario-based learning, project-based learning, design-based learning).
• Ask students to report on independent research activities.
• Require students to adopt a particular moral or ethical stance.
• Utilize progressive/reflective portfolio-style assignments that are iterative and episodic.
• Create interactive synchronous oral or asynchronous video-based assessments.
• Require students to "show their work" by submitting drafts or notes or using digital versioning.
• Use an honor statement where students certify that work is their own, all sources are correctly attributed, and/or the contribution of any generative AI technologies is fully acknowledged.

Teach

Establish Framework for the use of Generative AI in your Course

It is important to discuss academic integrity and the use of AI tools with students. The core principle of academic integrity is doing your own work. As such, when students cheat on assignments, they are cheating themselves of the opportunity to learn. The method of cheating — plagiarism, paying for an essay, generative AI tools, and others — doesn’t change the breach of academic integrity.

You can collaborate with your students to create a framework and generate parameters around the use of generative AI in the course. Cover the affordances and limitations of generative AI. Students may not have fully considered the implications of using generative AI. Discuss writing as a process for forming an understanding of topics in your discipline and course.

Be transparent about your learning outcomes and the teaching methods that inform your assignments. What are you hoping students learn through the work? When is using an AI tool required? When is it appropriate and acceptable? When is it out of bounds? How will use of generative AI be cited in classwork?

You may also want to update your academic integrity statement and syllabus to reflect generative AI tools.

Ways to Use Generative AI

There are good and valid ways to leverage the power of generative AI. Here are a few key points to consider:

• Generative AI should be introduced in the course emphasizing its strengths and weaknesses.
• To prepare students for future workplace exposure and expectations, they should be introduced to and supported in appropriate use of generative AI in their course(s).
• Emphasize developing student understanding that generative AI is a tool to enhance problem solving and critical thinking.
• Create assignments where students do their own work and then match it with a response from generative AI. Comparison of the two products can further enhance the learning process as students see how and what the generative AI is providing.
• Educate students on the need to check the validity and reliability of the citations from generative AI as those citations might not exist or are not reliable.
• Ask students to review and acknowledge the Academic Integrity policy of the university.

Ways Not to Use Generative AI

While it may be tempting to ignore the latest developments in artificial intelligence, it is important to recognize that the world as we have known it has changed. We cannot ignore its capabilities and potential. Generative AI is not a replacement for human input, feedback, and guidance. Rather, these advances give us the opportunity to expand our human capabilities and we should embrace it in an informed and hopeful way.

Resources

UI System Guidance for Generative AI

UI System

• Generative AI Guidance
  • Risks of using generative AI
  • Privacy and security information
  • Purchasing guidance

Urbana-Champaign

• ChatGPT for Teaching & Learning
• AI and Law Teaching
• Gies Generative AI Guiding Principles
• Writing with Automated Technology - Illinois Writers Workshop

Chicago

• ChatGPT: Perspectives and Strategies for Prohibiting, Reducing, or Embracing it in Your Curriculum
• AI Writing Tools

Springfield

• ChatGPT & Other Artificial Intelligence Tools

Generative AI in Education

• Department of Education: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning (full)
• Department of Education: Handout — AI and the Future of Teaching and Learning (summary)
• UNESCO: ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence in higher education: Quick start guide

Common Generative AI Tools

OpenAI - The earliest mover with the viral web front-end and the name ChatGPT. The free version uses GPT 3.5 as the model, which is suitable for most tasks, though there are significant improvements in the latest model GPT 4, particularly in the area of reasoning and avoiding hallucinations (think of AI as an intern). An iPhone app was released in mid-May with a phased launch across the world and they are going to launch Android app soon. If you sign up for the paid plan ($20 a month), you get early access to features such as the ability for the bot to access the web and use plugins that supercharge the functionality of the bot. The Code Interpreter feature is in alpha currently and promises to be significantly good at analysis.

Google Bard - A free interface available to everyone with a Google account. Does reasonably well on most tasks, and has access to the web by default. Currently does not match up to the latest models from OpenAI, but it might improve fast given Google’s focus on AI now. A feature similar to plugins, is being labeled ’tools’ and was announced in May 2023. Some AI capabilities are already integrated into Google tools.

Microsoft Bing Chat - A free interface available to all. Powered by OpenAI models. Currently requires downloading the Microsoft Edge browser to access the chat feature. Has default access to the web and is powered by the latest models from OpenAI, so for normal usage this could be considered a free version, versus the paid version from OpenAI. Microsoft has also enabled plugins for several services and will continue to add more. They have also committed to following the same standard for plugins as OpenAI, so the plugins developed once will work across both interfaces. Given that Microsoft is currently offering OpenAI models for free, and adding plugins support, it seems the best free option, and it includes references as well.

ChatPDF - One specific use case that might be very relevant for most users is to be able to ‘chat’ with a PDF document. This might be a research article, a printout of a web page (saved as .pdf), or a PDF of a book. It is a very simple and elegant solution. There are limitations on how much you can use it for free. This feature will be subsumed in one of the other platforms soon, but for now, it is an excellent tool.

Perplexity - If you are looking for a response from a model that includes an aggregation of search and a generative model and present it with references, this is a good option. Microsoft Bing chat also includes references in its response, so this is not specific to Perplexity, though the experience is better with this tool.

Adobe Firefly - Generative AI can be used for images, audio, and video. Adobe Firefly (beta) is currently available via university license and lets you quickly create graphics. Two powerful features include: “text to image” to generate images from a detailed text description and “generative fill” which makes it easy to remove objects or paint in new ones by supplying text descriptions. Other features include text effects, generative recolor, 3D to image, and extending images.

For a full searchable list of generative AI tools, check out the AI Scout Directory.

Glossary

AIPRM’s AI Glossary – A Generative AI glossary designed to empower every reader with a solid and clear understanding of the critical concepts that drive generative AI.