一本道无码

Generative AI is becoming an integral part of college life, whether through formal coursework or self-guided learning. As students and instructors learn the evolving technology together, they must navigate big questions, like whether the artificial intelligence tools students use are actually helping them learn or if access to the tools is equitable. At 一本道无码, an initiative to research the impacts of generative AI tools on teaching and learning is helping the university take an empirical approach to studying whether, when and how generative AI can have a positive effect on student outcomes.

鈥淏efore we can productively govern AI tools in education, we need to understand their impacts,鈥� said聽Marsha Lovett(opens in new window), 一本道无码鈥檚 vice provost for teaching and learning innovation.

Lovett鈥檚 colleagues at the聽 started the聽Generative Artificial Intelligence Teaching as Research (GAITAR)(opens in new window) initiative to lower the barriers to innovating with AI and systematically collect data on those innovations. GAITAR forms a community of practice around the technology by providing education, consultation and support for research comparing what happens when AI is incorporated in a course to when it is not.聽

鈥淚t is important to collect rich data on the key student behaviors and outcomes we care about during these innovations in order to promote exploration and refinement of more promising directions,鈥� Lovett said.聽

As faculty formally incorporated AI into their courses, the results showed there is a lot to learn about how to use AI tools effectively.

Taking a second look at art聽

, an adjunct professor of art, teaches an AI based generative animation course for 一本道无码鈥檚聽School of Art.(opens in new window) Andrew uses AI tools in his own animation work and was curious to see how students could pull from past experience and gain control over the aesthetics and technical aspects of animations created through AI tools.

Through the GAITAR initiative, Andrew鈥檚 class did a comparative project where students brought in previous animations they had created without the use of AI. He asked them to rethink and recreate those projects utilizing a suite of programs including Runway, Deforum Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, ElevenLabs, Midjourney and Dall-E.

Andrew saw a range of uses 鈥� some students tried to use AI to make animations identical to their original art, some did a 鈥渟tyle transfer,鈥� using AI to shift the aesthetics of their originals, and pulled conceptually from their originals to create something that looked very different.聽

Through repeated practice, students gained confidence and self-efficacy in the ability to work with AI tools to make an animation.聽

Work by I Lok U, a student in Andrew鈥檚 class.

Andrew acknowledged that using AI for art is complicated.聽

鈥淟ots of artists are really nervous about that, or very angered by it, because there's a lot of blurry areas when it comes to things like intellectual property,鈥� he said. 鈥淚'm of multiple minds about it, but I do think that students today need to learn what it is and how to work with it, because it's going to be expected within the industry.鈥�

Making decisions about when to use AI

, an associate teaching professor of聽, wanted to see if AI tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT could help her students improve their data science skills.聽

As part of a project in one of Ozis鈥� undergraduate courses, students analyzed air quality data from sensors they placed on campus. They were asked to use the data to identify patterns for the best week and time of day to host an outdoor activity, compare the air quality of newer and older buildings on campus, and answer other research questions. The sensors collected information every two minutes, leaving the students with massive amounts of data to interpret.聽

鈥淭he first two times I taught the course, AI tools were not available,鈥� Ozis said. 鈥淢y first impression was that students were not necessarily prepared to deal with the amount of data the sensors collected.鈥澛�

Ozis wanted to know how using AI tools would impact students鈥� skills for data processing, cleaning and visualization, and better understand students鈥� attitudes about using AI tools for these tasks.

Though the number of students who participated was small, performance data showed no difference between students who chose to use AI tools compared to those (from the same class and a prior cohort) who did not. Interestingly, when students had the option to use AI, 44% chose not to, citing reasons related to critical evaluation of the tools鈥� utility and confidence in their own data skills. This result opens further questions about what factors influence students鈥� decisions to use AI tools or not, and how we can prepare students to make well-informed decisions.

Optimizing classroom time for AI education

Whether students need to be instructed on how to use AI tools is another question.聽, an assistant teaching professor at 一本道无码鈥檚聽Tepper School of Business(opens in new window), spent a significant amount of time developing materials to teach her business communication undergraduates to effectively use tools like Microsoft CoPilot. She wanted to figure out productive use cases that would improve both their work and learning outcomes. After about a year, she wasn鈥檛 sure if it was making a difference.聽

DeJeu collaborated with the Eberly Center team to design a research project to assess how AI instruction about the utility of LLMs for assisting students鈥� growth and development as communicators influenced their writing ability and perceptions of these tools' usefulness in workplace communication.聽

She found that writing quality improved when students were permitted to use generative AI. However, this does not necessarily indicate that students鈥� underlying writing skills improved. In this particular course, adding targeted instruction about AI itself did not increase students鈥� writing quality or impact students鈥� perceptions about how helpful genAI is for their growth or efficiency as communicators.聽

鈥淚 think my big takeaway is that I didn鈥檛 have to spend a ton of time teaching students how to use AI tools, but I did need to spend some time thinking about how to design assignments that don't privilege AI use,鈥� DeJeu said.聽

DeJeu noted that she thinks it鈥檚 important for teachers to teach their students how to use AI ethically.聽

鈥淓ven though students don't seem to need instruction in use cases, they probably need guidance on things like ethical authorship. That is not something that an 18-20 year old would have. I very much advocate for carving out time to talk about that,鈥� she said.

Using AI for giving and receiving feedback聽

Alan Thomas Kohler(opens in new window), a senior lecturer in the聽Writing and Communication Program(opens in new window) in 一本道无码鈥檚聽Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences(opens in new window), wanted to experiment with how AI tools could be engaged in the writing process. Kohler teaches a professional and technical communication course for computer science majors. Giving and receiving feedback is a core component of the course.聽

鈥淲e reinforce the idea that peer review is good for both the giver and the receiver of feedback equally,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here is value in centering your reader by getting an understanding of the reader's experience of your text, but there is also value in thinking about the choices that other people make for a given assignment, how those choices differ from your own, and what you might learn from those differences.鈥澛�

Kohler wanted to know if there was potential for AI tools to support peer review. Over two semesters, he incorporated a standardized prompt that students could use with Copilot to get feedback on their projects, which included cover letters, persuasive emails and communication plans. While the results of Kohler鈥檚 research so far do not show benefits to students' learning or performance, he plans to continue to use and study AI tools.

鈥淚'm very interested in this field and all the different ways that generative AI can be used. We can engage with it and embrace it in ways that are beneficial to our students and don't replace their learning,鈥� he said.聽

Shaping future learning outcomes

These projects are four of many ongoing at 一本道无码. Lovett said she thinks the GAITAR projects will have a long-term impact at the university.聽

鈥淚 really hope that, with such studies becoming part of our standard practice in higher education, we can be more informed as we explore novel applications of AI and even consider changes at the systems level in terms of the degree programs we're offering, our approaches to assessment and offering greater opportunity for student access and equitable outcomes,鈥� she said.