{"id":1436,"date":"2024-07-30T14:05:59","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T14:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2026-01-06T09:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T14:16:12","slug":"navigating-the-future-of-learning-with-gen-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/navigating-the-future-of-learning-with-gen-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating the Future of Learning with Gen AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Gen AI (GAI) tools proliferated across the globe during the last few semesters, did you find yourself panicked, excited, or feeling a bit of both? Were you overwhelmed by the implications for academic integrity or overcome by a sense of wonder at the boundless potential to innovate our teaching, learning, and research? Your reactions are likely to guide your AI Use policies in your classrooms. Here’s how to communicate your expectations clearly to your students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Literacy and GAI skills are essential workplace skills, and USC Upstate programs are committed to preparing students to apply these skills ethically and effectively in the future. So much about GAI differs from course to course and discipline to discipline, and faculty have an opportunity to shape the way GAI is used in our teaching, in our research, in our labs, in our curriculum design, and in the ways we intentionally prepare our students for the future. Cornell’s Center for Teaching Innovation<\/a> offers useful guidance on how to approach GAI in individual courses, and I’m going to briefly build on some of those recommendations below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommendation 1:<\/strong> Talk to your students about GAI throughout the semester and have a plan for notifying your students about how they can or cannot use AI in assignments for your courses.<\/strong> Cornell’s resources use the distinctions “prohibit, allow with attribution, or encourage” to indicate to students how GAI tools can be used with particular assignments. As you’re designing your own assignments, especially your major assignments for the semesters ahead, it is important to alert students to your GAI expectations on the first day of class, in the syllabus<\/a>, AND on each assignment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The table above offers three broad categories of GAI Use and explains to students what each category means for the assignments they’re completing. Also, be explicit about the names of AI tools or functions you prohibit or allow. Grammarly’s AI functions can generate outlines, assist with research or brainstorming, or write complete, detailed drafts for students, in addition to the standard grammar and spelling suggestions. You may wish to prohibit some functions, but allow others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you take the same approach to all course assignments, you can apply the assignment language above to describe your course as a whole. It is still a good reinforcement to include the assignment-specific GAI guidance in your instructions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generative Artificial Intelligence Course Use Statements<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"AI<\/figure>
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Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) Use Prohibited<\/strong>: This course is meant to help you develop and use\u00a0foundational knowledge and skills.\u00a0You will need to\u00a0demonstrate\u00a0your ability to\u00a0apply\u00a0your\u00a0understanding of this content without the use of\u00a0AI, including tools like Grammarly, ChatGPT, Bing, Gemini, and similar tools.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"AI<\/figure>
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Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) Use Allowed with Attribution<\/strong>: This course invites you to use\u00a0GAI\u00a0as a\u00a0resource, but you’ll\u00a0need to include notes and citations to indicate where in the assignment\u00a0you used\u00a0GAI-generated content. There may be additional parts of the assignment where I ask you to analyze the GAI content or to indicate the process you used to check the information for\u00a0accuracy and truthfulness.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"AI<\/figure>
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\u200bGenerative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) Use Encouraged with Attribution<\/strong>: This course uses\u00a0GAI\u00a0as a\u00a0part\u00a0of the learning process. You are invited to use your preferred\u00a0GAI tools to\u00a0push further into your explorations,\u00a0take your thinking in a new direction,\u00a0solve complex equations or problems,\u00a0\u00a0generate case studies, or other\u00a0uses.\u00a0Use citations in our course citation style to indicate where in the assignment you used\u00a0GAI as a thought partner.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The above policy statements are available for faculty to pull into their Blackboard courses through the Learning Objective Repository. To access the Learning Object Repository AI Use Statements, use the purple + in Blackboard. Then select Learning Object Repository and identify your preferred policy statement (see screenshot below for the location of the Learning Object Repository).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"This<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What other categories might you add to the table above to offer your students discipline and course-specific guidance? Does your area of expertise have more nuanced ways that students can collaborate with GAI and how will you bring your students into that conversation? If your course is already using GAI technologies, how will you magnify those uses for your students?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommendation 2:<\/strong> Rely on your expertise and conversations with students about their work to identify GAI-enabled plagiarism. <\/strong>Learn about how tools like Grammarly and TurnItIn evaluate student submissions and can create potential issues with false positives and how those evaluations disproportionately impact students from underrepresented groups. Grammarly and TurnItIn have come under scrutiny and recommend that faculty ultimately should determine whether student-submitted work is original. (Check out Kentucky University’s Center for Teaching Excellence article on Using Caution with AI Detectors<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is important to remember that your own disciplinary expertise and academic experience is the most powerful plagiarism detector, even in an AI-enabled world. Academic integrity conversations and even disciplinary hearings do not require documented sources for you to take appropriate action within a course. Ironically, it is only our past reliance on AI-based plagiarism detection software that makes us expect to find a perfect match. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To prepare for grading, you may input your assignment prompt or test question into a Google AI search or use Microsoft Copilot <\/a>Protected Mode (sign in with your USC Upstate email username and password). If students provide responses using the common themes and phrases from AI, you may need to have a follow-up conversation, such as the scripted conversations from the UNC Charlotte<\/a> Division of Student Affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommendation 3:<\/strong> Learn about, join, and extend the conversation about Gen AI.<\/strong> If you aren’t quite sure what all the Gen AI hype is about or how faculty are approaching GAI, explore some of the resources below. Also, check out the Spring 2024<\/a> University of South Carolina Upstate Alumni and Friends Magazine for some exciting faculty highlights to see how Gen AI is already well-established in some programs across campus. Reach out to highlighted faculty like Logan Camp-Spivey, Celena Kusch, Kristi Miller, or Wei Zhong to hear about their adoption process and see what might work for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the materials listed below, resource number 6, “Discipline-specific Generative AI Teaching and Learning Resources” from the University of Delaware offers several concise, interactive pages of articles and materials relevant to majors here at USC Upstate, including nursing, teacher ed, math, languages, composition and English, computer science, math, and history to name a few. Additionally, Barnard College’s interactive Gen AI and the College Classroom page<\/a> should be a resource at the top of everyone’s list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. “Using AI to Generate Course Content<\/a>” recording from a webinar hosted by Quality Matters featuring faculty and instructional designers from Penn State World Campus on June 5, 2025.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. “Using Blackboard Ultra Generative Artificial Intelligence GenAI tools to enhance student engagement<\/a>” hosted by the University of Kent’s Digitally Enhanced Education Webinars on April 3, 2025.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. “Higher education\u2019s essential role in preparing humanity for the artificial intelligence revolution<\/a>,” a statement issued by a diverse group of educators and scholars at the 18th annual United Nations lnternet Governance Forum<\/a>, October 2023, Kyoto, Japan. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. “AI FUTURES: An Interdisciplinary Conversation on Large Language Models and the Future of Human Writing<\/a>” hosted by Rutgers’ Critical AI on February 16, 2023.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. “ChatGPT – The Future of the Classroom Webinar<\/a>,” recording of a webinar hosted by Vanderbilt University on May 17, 2023.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. “AI for Learning, Teaching, and Writing<\/a>” recording from a webinar hosted by American Chemical Society on August 13, 2023. Please note: only available to ACS members<\/em>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. “Discipline-specific Generative AI Teaching and Learning Resources<\/a>” developed by University of Delaware Center for Teaching & Assessment of Learning.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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    Recommendation 4: Share your thinking\/research\/practice with the rest of us! <\/strong>If you’re looking for more opportunities to join the conversation and to share your own work, please let us know. Email us at academicinnovation@uscupstate.edu with a brief statement about your use of AI in Practice, and we’ll share your story in a faculty spotlight post or panel presentation.
    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As Gen AI (GAI) tools proliferated across the globe during the last few semesters, did you find yourself panicked, excited, or feeling a bit of both? Were you overwhelmed by the implications for academic integrity or overcome by a sense of wonder at the boundless potential to innovate our teaching, learning, and research? Your reactions … Continue reading Navigating the Future of Learning with Gen AI<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genai","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/GAI-Use.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2281,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/2281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/tip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}