By: Jeffrey L. Bernstein and Ann Blakeslee

For those of us in higher education, our worlds were rocked last December with the news about ChatGPT, a large-language chatbot developed by Open AI. As we began pondering what it might look like for students to go to a website and have it compose passable (and often far better than passable) papers, many of us became concerned, understandably, about the future of writing in our classes and about how we might handle this new reality.

In our roles as Faculty Development Center Director and Director of Writing Across the Curriculum and the University Writing Center, our dance cards suddenly started filling up with conversations about ChatGPT.  We are not alone. Our peers at other universities have shared that they too are spending significant time on ChatGPT. Considerations of the implications and potential uses of Generative AI are now a significant focus of conversations about teaching and learning and about assigning and assessing student writing. It’s a new world!

This is not the first disruptive innovation in higher education, and it will not be the last. Many of us were teaching when the Internet, and eventually search engines, came into prominence, leading us to make changes in our teaching since students now had ready access to a tool with far more information than was previously imaginable. Cell phones further changed education by putting that information at the tips of students’ fingertips.  

Going back even further, the printing press also led to a significant disruption in teaching and learning. The lecture was an indispensable teaching tool when only the instructor had access to “the book.” And although many still lecture, we now also have flipped classrooms and numerous other pedagogical options since our students have ready access to the same materials we do. And what about calculators and applications like Grammarly? Clearly, Generative AI is not unique in being a disruptive innovation.   

As we have each done presentations on ChatGPT, we have seen responses to Generative AI that have ranged from fear and anxiety to anticipation and excitement, and everything in between. In our learning about this new technology, individually, jointly, and also with many of you, we have arrived at a few broad ideas and recommendations that we wish to share.

• First, please do not ban or forbid ChatGPT. As tempting as it may be to take this new technology and shove it into a closet, much like the slime in a horror movie, it will find a way to ooze out. We recommend learning about it and even embracing it. We also recommend talking about it openly with your students. One fear we both have is that students will end up being referred to disciplinary proceedings on flimsy and unverifiable evidence that they “used ChatGPT” unethically, when, in fact, they may well have done nothing wrong–or they may have simply misunderstood how to use or acknowledge how they used it. Further, research has suggested that students from marginalized populations are disproportionately penalized when faculty rely on plagiarism detection tools. Currently, these tools only offer probabilities and not answers about whether a piece of writing was artificially generated. We urge you, therefore, to avoid going down this road. Instead, engage in conversations with your students regularly and cultivate a culture of trust and respect in your classroom. Learn about Generative AI together.

• Second, we encourage you to communicate clearly to your students about what and why you are asking them to write, as well as what you hope they will gain from that writing. Writing is an iterative process that promotes and supports critical thinking. Students generate ideas and refine and improve those ideas, and their thinking on a topic, through the act of writing, and re-writing. The writing we all do, including this blog entry, is enhanced by an iterative process that incorporates conversation, feedback, reflection, and revision. Building into assignments these opportunities for conversation and feedback will make students much less likely to use Generative AI to write their paper. Remember, low-stakes and informal writing can also be meaningful, and it often requires less time to assess. 

• Finally, we also encourage you to consider the professional contexts that await our students when they graduate. Just a few years ago, understanding how to unleash the power of the internet helped some students navigate the employment landscape with greater facility than peers with less internet savvy. Even today, those who understand how to use Google effectively (for example, by being able to evaluate the quality of the results they obtain) are better off than those who are not able to do this. In this vein, understanding how to use ChatGPT is likely to play into our students’ futures in ways we cannot even imagine.

We cannot hide–or hide from–Generative AI. It is here, and it will surely make a difference in the lives of our students, and in our own lives. To that end, we encourage you to thoughtfully consider the ways you might incorporate Generative AI into your classes, and your assignments, and how you can help and support your students as we all, together, learn to navigate this new technology.

Throughout this semester, our offices are co-sponsoring a series of conversations that will focus on different topics connected to Generative AI. We will meet on September 19, October 10, October 24, November 14, and December 5, from 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM, in the Faculty Development Center and on Zoom. You can find more information about, or register to be part of these conversations, here. 

The FDC will also be soliciting people who would like to share blog entries about their experiences teaching in this brave new world of Generative AI. If you would be interested in writing something at any point this semester, please email us at the FDC.

We hope to see you at future events, and to hear from you about your experiences, ideas, and concerns regarding this exciting, and admittedly scary, emerging technology.