Artificial intelligence (AI) and the ethics around using it in the workforce and academia have been an ever dominant source of conversation since the free release of ChatGPT in November 2022. Since the concept of AI in the classroom is still evolving and expanding and the abilities of a variety of software are becoming more advanced and harder to accurately detect, professors at Elizabethtown College and around the world are still navigating the proper way to incorporate AI while maintaining academic integrity.
Many syllabi have been updated to include sections about the appropriate and inappropriate ways to use AI based on their discipline. While some teachers see it as a useful tool, others see it as a hindrance to learning.
This semester Associate Professor of English Tara Moore introduced major integration of AI in her course English 285: Business Writing. Previously, the course had not involved the use of AI but has been expanded to encourage engagement with AI.
In the course syllabus, Moore explains the use of AI with the following description: “A long-term part of the English program, EN285 HUM/GWR Business Writing has been newly optimized for Core… Students will learn to craft and revise good news and bad news messages, develop a client-based marketing project, and create a research-intensive white paper report. Those projects have long been part of the course, but now students will engage with generative AI in ethical and reflective ways, enhancing their critical thinking skills. Projects will incorporate AI collaboration, requiring students to explain their use of AI suggestions and connect their editing decisions to writing theories. The class will also cover prompt generation, the dangers of AI hallucinations, and the limitations of AI in research.”
Students within the course will be using a variety of AI tools including ChatGPT, Gemini, Cloud Perplexity and Copilot. Before using the softwares, they will also get introductions to them.
Prior to taking this class, many of the students, who are business and English majors, had not used AI extensively in their professional and creative writing.
“I haven’t really used AI before. Being an English major, I never wanted to explore AI in a writing way and never felt the need to,” junior English professional writing major Kaitlyn Gilmore said. “I like the process of writing so I want to do that work and not pass it off to a computer for any assignments, big or small.”
The gap in experience with AI and possibly not knowing how to properly and appropriately use it is exactly why Moore believes AI should be included in her business writing course.
“It’s important for students to learn how to use AI ethically and responsibly because their industry might expect them to know how to use it. We want to equip them with those skills as much as we can during their time at Etown.” Moore said.
While students are cautious about the expansion of AI and being not only encouraged but required to work with it in this course, getting exposure to using AI can be helpful to their future careers.
“I think that using AI in the classroom is very interesting because many professors are leaning away from it and banning it completely, but the business world is using AI much more often.” junior English professional writing major Rachel Merchiore said.
Letting students explore the software while maintaining the ability to evaluate their abilities remains invaluable in the course and in the wider world of academia. Moore said choosing not to acknowledge AI in the classroom, when students are using it in a variety of ways could be failing to acknowledge the changes that need to be made in the classroom to account for the updates in technology.
“I’m very cautious with AI and haven’t explored it at all so I’m excited to do so in this class,” Gilmore said. “The ways we’re using it are to help aid us and generate ideas for projects but still allow us to use our creativity and writing skills to actually write everything which I like.”
Moore believes that AI can be used and taught while still giving students learning opportunities.
“What I’m seeing in the national conversations is that we can use AI and still provide students with opportunities to enhance their problem solving and creative thinking. We might just need to revise the assignment type, format, or prompt of the assignment,” Moore said.
Although AI incorporation is not currently commonplace in most academic settings, the shift towards teaching about it and creating clearer policies in the classroom for how it should be used may indicate that it will become more widespread in the future.
