Introduction to AI Literacy

Not sure if or how to incorporate AI into your course? Here are a few tips for creating assignments, learning outcomes, and/or assessments that integrate AI in ways that are fair and meaningful to students. 

Navigate your options: First, review this flow chart from the Center of Teaching and Learning (CTL) to help you navigate the use of GenAI in your courses.

Clearly define the learning outcomes for your AI assignments. Be specific about the knowledge and skills you want students to acquire. Transparency in these outcomes provides a roadmap for students. Take a look at the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL's) guidance on Generative AI in your courses.

Model the appropriate way to use AI apps with you students, including how AI can and can't be used for an assignment. Also discuss what information the tool is pulling from. For example, ChatGPT pulls from sources across the entire internet. Whereas some tools are rooted in more academic information. AI research tools like SciSpace, Consensus, and ResearchRabbit pull from open access academic databases. This does not mean these tools cannot also make mistakes, but they are more likely to have high quality and scholarly information behind their outputs.

Syllabus Statements:  Make sure you communicate to your students how they can and cannot use AI.  

• The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) has provided sample syllabus statements. 
• Lance Eaton at College Unbound has helped compile a crowdsourced online repository of syllabus statements written by instructors at other institutions of higher education.

Revisiting Bloom: If you use Bloom's Taxonomy to generate vocabulary for creating assignments and assessing student learning, take a look at an adapted Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid developed by Oregon State that accounts for GenAI.

Choose the right AI tool for the job:

The thoughtful integration of a diverse array of AI tools into the curriculum involves strategic decision-making. Instructors should select tools purposefully, aligning with the goal of empowering students to innovate, deepen their understanding, and generate creative ideas. Consider the assignment’s complexity and desired outcomes when integrating AI tools, ensuring they enhance the learning experience.

The TCEA has created a useful rubric for assessing the right AI tools for a class or assignment.  

► See the Tool Comparison section of this guide for more resources.

Many instructors opt to use AI Detection tools for student assignments, and many colleges and universities (including UGA) provide instructors with some sort of AI or plagiarism checking options. However, there is an ongoing discussion in higher education about their weaknesses and risks. For example: 

• Detectors can yield both false negatives and false positives, which can result in tagging a student paper as written by AI when it wasn't.
• If your native language isn't English, these tools will often tag your writing as written by AI (Liang et al., 2023). 
• And while many studies advocate for the use of text-matching software like Turnitin (Hayden et al., 2021), some researchers have argued that these tools erode trust with students (Williams, 2007). 

Academic Integrity expert Sarah Elaine Eaton, PhD, who does not advocate for their use, has recommended a set of ethical principles for instructors who decide to use AI Detection tools. 

In their ChatGPT Guidance for Instructors, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) discusses the limitations of these detectors. 

AI Detection at UGA

Turnitin’s AI Writing Detector is the only AI Writing Detector approved for use at UGA. 

UGA instructors should not use AI detectors that are not supported by UGA, as these other tools have not been vetted by UGA’s information security team, for FERPA compliance, or for protection of student’s intellectual property.