TPSS 200 - Agriculture, Environment, and Society -  is a required introductory course for the Tropical Agriculture and the Environment major at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.  I have taught the course since 2015, growing it from ~20 students per year to three sections with a total enrollment capped at 120 students, with a substantial waiting list each semester. 

Two of the sections are designated as writing intensive. In the Fall 2023, I became worried that students would be using generative AI to complete their writing assignments.  Rather than resist and restrict the use of generative AI, I made the decision to instead require its application so that students could:

• gain skills and experience with a technology that will likely play an increasingly regular part of their lives

• understand the benefits, capabilities, and shortcomings associated with generative AI

• foster discussions regarding the use and application of generative AI

The primary writing assignment for which the AI is required are four separate papers that, collectively, explore many aspects of a single crop, which the students select and use throughout the semester. Students were required to use ChatGPT to some extent in each of their papers.  

To support the effort, I engaged in the UH sponsored AI Explorer Badge, to better improve my own knowledge and application of generative AI.  I attended numerous webinars on the topic, such as "Work Smarter, Not Harder" and "Generative AI in the Classroom." These webinars were very useful, in particular in talking about the formula for prompting generative AI in ways that produces the product closest to what you want. In addition to the components that a good prompt includes, there were also many helpful hints, such as breaking up larger tasks into small ones (e.g. donʻt ask it to write whole paper, but maybe have it outline it and then write one small section at a time), being iterative to refine the work to the point of quality desired, and feeding the program specific resources/examples that can help generate the product of interest. 

Based on this, I designed, piloted, and refined the assignment, which is not being implemented.  The assignment in full reads as follows:

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Assignment Details:

Writing assignments will require the use of ChatGPT.  READ ALL INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE STARTING

As part of learning how to leverage AI to improve the efficiency of your writing, we want you to utilize the ChatGPT program in one or more ways in creating your essay. You must use ChatGPT to generate all or parts of your essay, which can be as little as generating an outline or as much as generating the entire essay. 

You can use ChatGPT to do any number of things to generate content, such as:

●      Create an outline

●      Summarize the articles

●      Generate content ideas

●      Generate individual paragraphs or the entire paper

You should prompt ChatGPT in terms of the types of resources you would like it to use, the specifics about the topic, along with any instructions on the tone, style, length, or other commands that you would like the program to consider, to generate material. Here is a basic and slightly more advanced blog tutorial on how to do this, as well as a UH-produced primer on prompting AI. For example, a simple initial prompt might include: "Using only sources published in scientific journals, and in a tone of conversational spartan, generate a 1,000 word essay that outlines the soil nutrition needs of mango, with an emphasis on phosphorus demands and application of organic fertilizers." Based on what is generated, you should refine your prompt, either for the whole essay or for individual paragraphs. Once the essay is generated to your liking, copy and paste it into the Google Doc provided for the writing assignment.  Change the writing mode to “Suggesting” to track changes to the document.  Then make corrective changes to the essay for quality, accuracy, and appropriate tone, as well as adding appropriate citations to ensure your facts are correct.

Some suggestions for best leveraging ChatGPT to generate your essay:

-       Take your time to interact with the program. 

-       The more information you feed it the better the program will respond.  You can have it read specific resources, tell it to act in specific roles, and so on.

-       Be interactive.  Tell it what you like and don’t like and have it rewrite as many times as necessary.

-       Break the essay into smaller chunks. Have it write on paragraph or section at a time

For those of you who do not want to utilize ChatGPT for generating your essay, you can use it to generate an outline and to support your personal writing. This can include:

●      Proofreading your article

●      Changing the tone of your writing

●      Format your article

●      Check for plagiarism

If you choose to write your own essay, please use ChatGPT to make suggested improvements to the writing.

As an Appendix to your paper, paste a link to your entire conversation with ChatGPT so that we can see all your prompts and interactions with the program. Feedback on your prompting will be posted, and your prompts considered as part of the assignment grade.

Papers will be scored according to a Writing Assignment Rubric. Your improvements should be focused within the rubric categories. You are responsible for all content generated and submitted. Use at least three *quality* sources from outside the class, and be sure that they are properly cited. The assignment should be at least two pages in length, excluding the reference section.

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Overall I feel that this was a big success.  I highlight some of my thoughts on the assignment.

• By requiring students to turn in their conversation with AI it allowed us to gauge their level of engagement, and grade how well/seriously they took this on

• By requiring edits on their part, as we could see by requiring the essay be turned in with "track changes", it keeps them accountable for the quality and the content of the material

• Most student on the first essay hated ChatGPT and felt that it was more effort to fix the bad essay than write it from scratch.  But by the fourth essay, those sentiments have switched as students got much better at prompting and refining the work through AI before doing the manual finalizations.  

• The students not only seemed genuinely engaged with the process, but noticed themselves the shortcomings of the generative AI, and were quite critical of the quality that the program produced, particularly in terms of the detailed information.

I will continue to utilize and refine this assignment into the future!