Faculty Resources on AI in Education

This page is designed to provide faculty members at CT State Northwestern with the necessary resources, tools, and insights for integrating AI into their teaching and research. As AI continues to shape education, it is important to explore how these technologies can enhance learning, while also addressing the ethical challenges that arise. Here, you'll find suggestions on how to use AI effectively, alongside resources to help you navigate AI’s role in academia.

1. Introduction: AI in the Classroom

Artificial Intelligence is transforming the way we approach teaching and learning. As AI becomes more widely used in educational settings, understanding its potential benefits and challenges is crucial for faculty members. AI tools can support a range of educational activities, from grading and student assessments to content creation and curriculum development. However, it's essential to evaluate and apply these technologies thoughtfully, ensuring that they align with best practices for pedagogy, student engagement, and academic integrity.

Key Considerations for Using AI in Teaching:

• Personalized Learning: AI can help adapt teaching methods to the diverse needs of students.
• Efficiency: AI can automate administrative tasks, saving time for instructors.
• Ethical Concerns: AI may raise issues related to bias, transparency, and fairness in educational materials and assessments.

Explore further: AI ethics as a complex and multifaceted challenge: decoding educators’ AI ethics alignment through the lens of activity theory

2. Teaching with AI: Strategies and Best Practices

Integrating AI into your teaching requires deliberate strategies to make the most of its capabilities, while maintaining academic integrity. Here are some ideas for using AI to enhance your instruction:

Enhancing Instruction:

• Lesson Planning & Content Creation: Use AI tools like ChatGPT or GPT-based models to help generate ideas for lesson plans, summaries, and even to explore teaching approaches for specific topics.
• Personalized Learning Paths: AI-powered platforms (e.g., Squirrel AI, DreamBox) adapt in real-time to students' learning styles, providing individualized feedback and suggesting tailored content.

Critical Thinking & AI Literacy:

Incorporate discussions on AI literacy into your curriculum to help students understand the limitations and strengths of AI tools.

• Encourage students to critically assess AI-generated content, questioning the data behind it and its potential biases.
• Promote digital literacy by assigning tasks that require students to compare AI-generated content with human-produced materials.

Classroom Policies:

Even without an established AI policy, consider introducing some basic guidelines:

• Encourage transparency: Require students to disclose when they use AI tools for writing assistance, research, or problem-solving.
• Clarify expectations: Set clear expectations regarding when AI assistance is acceptable and when it crosses the line into academic dishonesty.
• Foster responsible use: Ensure that AI is seen as a tool to support learning, not replace critical thinking or original work.

Further reading: Strategies for the Responsible Use of AI in Higher Education Learning

3. AI Tools for Faculty

Here’s a curated list of AI-powered tools that can support your teaching and research efforts:

• AI Writing Assistants:

  • Grammarly (Helps improve grammar, style, and readability of writing)
  • QuillBot (Paraphrasing and summarizing tool)
  • ChatGPT (Generative AI for brainstorming and content generation)

• AI Research Tools:

  • Semantic Scholar (Uses AI to recommend relevant research papers)
  • Elicit (AI-powered tool for data analysis and generating research questions)

• AI-Enhanced Presentation Tools:

  • Canva (Design presentations with AI-generated suggestions and templates)
  • Piktochart (Create infographics and data visualizations using AI)

• AI-Powered LMS Integrations:

  • Grading Assistance: Platforms like Gradescope use AI to assist with grading assessments, saving time and improving consistency.
  • Chatbots for Student Support: AI-driven chatbots, like Watson Assistant, can provide students with 24/7 answers to common academic questions.

4. Academic Integrity & AI in Student Work

As AI tools become part of the academic landscape, it is important to consider the implications for academic integrity and plagiarism. While no formal AI policy exists at CT State Northwestern, instructors should establish their own expectations for AI use in assignments.

How to Identify AI-Generated Content:

• AI Text Detection Tools: Tools like Turnitin and GPTZero are developing detection algorithms to identify AI-generated text in academic papers. However, these tools are not 100% reliable, and can lead to alienation of students and misjudgments.
• Critical Evaluation: Encourage students to critically evaluate and fact-check any AI-generated content used in their assignments. Have them compare AI-generated text with traditional sources and analyze its accuracy.
• A formative process for assignments will have a profound effect on student AI usage. By getting to know our students, their work, and how they write, we can help them develop as learners. For example, conferencing with students as they write a paper rather than setting a due date and viewing only the final product. By avoiding assignments that call for simple regurgitation of information, we can teach our students to think critically while also preparing them for the real world.

Encouraging Proper Citation of AI:

• Instruct students to cite any AI-generated content they incorporate into their work, just as they would cite any other source. Refer to the Citing AI section for citation guidance.

Further reading: The Cheating Vibe Shift

5. Research & AI: Opportunities and Challenges

AI can significantly enhance research by providing tools for data analysis, literature review, and hypothesis generation. Here are some ways faculty can use AI for academic research:

• Data Analysis: AI tools can assist in analyzing large datasets, identifying patterns, and generating insights that would be difficult to detect manually.
• Literature Reviews: Tools like Connected Papers help map the landscape of research, uncovering key papers related to your topic.
• Research Assistance: AI platforms like Elicit enable researchers to generate research questions and review existing academic literature efficiently.

However, there are ethical considerations:

• Bias in Algorithms: Be mindful that AI models can replicate biases found in their training data, so always critically assess AI-generated research suggestions.
• AI and Authorship: While AI tools can help generate research or assist with analysis, AI itself does not have the ability to hold intellectual property, and human authorship is still a requirement.

For more on AI in research, check out AI in Academic Research: Trends and Implications (MIT Sloan Management Review)

6. Professional Development & Further Reading

Stay informed about the evolving role of AI in education through these resources, and by continuing to check the live feed of blogs, podcasts, and articles on this Libguide.

• Workshops and Webinars:
  • Upcoming faculty workshop on AI in education (TBA by CT State Northwestern faculty and librarians)
• Recommended Books and Articles:
  • Teaching AI: Exploring New Frontiers in Education by Michelle Zimmerman
  • Artificial Intelligence in Education: Promises and Implications for Teaching and Learning by Wayne Holmes
  • Co-intelligence by Ethan Mollick