When the first widely available version of ChatGPT became available in 2022, educators became concerned about its potential effects in the classroom. What if students used it to cheat? And how would we detect it?
But Deanna Koepp, an associate professor in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development, was more curious than concerned. She had different questions.
What if, instead, we could use generative artificial intelligence to push ourselves – as educators and as students – to think more critically? What if it could speed up and support our work as scholars, rather than replace it?
Koepp is one of two Writing-Enhanced Curriculum (WEC) liaisons in the College of Biological Sciences along with Max Kramer, an teaching assistant professor. Together, they have been helping coordinate the creation of a College-wide writing plan since 2022.
In this role, they inevitably heard a lot of talk about AI in the classroom, but not a lot of specifics on how people are actually using it. So they decided to find out.
In the fall of 2024, Koepp and Kramer hosted two focus groups, one with students and one with faculty, to ask, “How do you use AI in your classes and studies?”
They found out that most had dabbled in it, and some had found some innovative – and ethically unambiguous ways – it could improve their academic lives. Students, for example, said they used AI as a time-management tool. When pressed to make all their coursework fit into a busy week, they asked ChatGPT for a schedule.
Some teachers were using it to write multiple-choice quizzes – a time-consuming task that can leave even the most creative brain grasping for plausible-sounding wrong answers.
“It’s becoming clear that AI can take away some of the drudgery in what we do,” Koepp says. “What AI models do is scour the internet to find information and phrases and put them together. That’s something humans can do, but computers can do way faster. We can use AI to do the things that are mind-numbing and really hard for humans.”
But, beyond the drudgery, Koepp believes professors can use AI to make themselves better educators. “It can force us to think about the ways we structure assignments to make students do more than just look something up and paraphrase, but actually delve deep into an idea and evaluate AI output.”
For example, in her Cell Biology writing-intensive course, Koepp plans to modify an assignment she has often given her classes. Instead of asking students to rewrite poor science writing to make it more concise, she will have them ask AI to write it, then evaluate how well AI has done it. Students will need to explain why the AI succeeded or didn’t, and try to do it better.
While writing and editing are crucial science communication skills, this kind of evaluation is an even higher-level skill.
Koepp and Kramer have published the materials from their focus groups on the CBS WEC Google Site. They plan to continue share how people use AI in courses with other CBS faculty, including in workshops and online resources..
“It’s all about bringing people together to form a community,” Koepp says, “because in the past, it was either a mass freak-out or people putting their heads in the sand. So we’re bringing people together first to talk, to start building those connections.” — Tricia Cornell