In this episode, Rob and Jared continue their chat about the use of generative AI in Higher Education with faculty from Tiffin University. They focus on how instructors can employ Generative AI in their day-to-day teaching practices. Contact us at [email protected] with any questions. You can also visit our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog for additional resources.

The rapid changes of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT makes keeping up with them challenging. To combat this challenge, instructors learn how to use these tools better through training in prompt engineering. At Tiffin, they have recently hired someone to assist faculty in incorporating AI tools into teaching.

The Tiffin faculty also shared about an upcoming webinar on using AI in courses and course design that they are hosting for faculty and graduate design students. AI has a wide variety of uses that range from getting ideas to create lesson plans to uploading a student paper and rubric and having it generate initial feedback that the instructor then reviews and revises before giving it back to the student.

They also talk about how generative AI is well-suited for academic work and course design because of its origins. It can help to write content for online courses in a neutral way. And it can be used for specific activities as well – revising assignments to be more authentic or creating better discussion questions.

Even with all these benefits, the introduction of generative AI can cause instructors to think, “what am I needed for?” It’s important to remember that AI is just a tool. These kinds of tools can help faculty focus on higher order issues and let the AI make initial evaluations on things such as grammar, spelling, and low-level content. Additionally, ChatGPT can create a good lesson, but the human input of an instructor is still needed to question its validity, relevance, and alignment to courses. And that element of humanity is still needed in education for the personal connection between educator and student. ChatGPT doesn’t have the experience and personality that an instructor would and cannot foster those kinds of relationships.

Resources

Design Statements - Tiffin University
The Ethics of Using Generative AI Tools - Tiffin University

How Can You Use Generative AI Tools at Tiffin University