So, what are you looking at right now, in terms of changes for your courses going forward? I’m asking about the summer and things that you are considering going forward in your teaching.

So, the first paper that I'm having students in my Comp 2 class do is engaging with the student AI use policy on campus and putting together a definitional argument about what is academic misconduct, academic dishonesty, and then thinking about one issue in AI with education as a whole. So they're starting to engage with that policy. I'm hoping that's a way that they will think a little bit more deeply each time they do something about what the policy asks of them and how my guidelines are set up in class. And then I'm having students put together a podcast or a video that is a research project that then they are presenting orally in some way. And if they are using AI, such as NotebookLM, to build that podcast, that's fine.
If they don't want to use AI at all, they are welcome to build their own video, like what you might see on Instagram or TikTok. And use that instead. And then with the final paper, I'm having them build a meme. And again, it's a research paper that they are presenting as a meme, and then with both the podcast and the meme paper, they have to do an audience analysis. So who is your audience? Why did you put it together this way? What do you think they would want? What sources did you use? Why did you think that those sources would be good? So even if they are using AI, they still have to do that deconstructive part.
First, they have to do all the research to get to the AI moment, use AI to build the thing, and then, if they want to use AI to help them deconstruct it, that's fine. And by doing that, I'm saying these are places where AI might fit for you, these are places where it might not, and this is why, because this is what I want you to get out of doing the work yourself, this is where I think using AI is not going to harm your learning in any way. And I find that when I phrase things like that, students tend to be more receptive to using it or not using it based on their own comfort levels, instead of feeling like, “I feel stressed about this, and I'm just gonna offload all the work, because I don't see the point in it.”

And so, what led you to that? Was that trial and error? For me, I’ve been doing a whole bunch of different stuff since 2022, but how did you kind of come to this idea that we need to find a place where it maybe doesn't matter as much?

How do we use research to show that we actually understand the point, and we understand where our audience might be coming from as well? So because of that, and because I've been doing scholarship of teaching and learning projects for about a decade now, I think. For me, coming back into the classroom is really saying, okay, what do I want my students to learn? I want them to learn argumentation. I want them to learn how to participate as civically engaged citizens in their world, so if they read a story, they can go, oh, this sounds fake because I didn't see this, that, and the other, or this sounds like rage bait because of this. So, those kinds of things are really important to me.
And the way that AI fits into all of this also comes from a perspective of accessibility, specifically for me, thinking about neurodiverse students and how AI can be a helping tool for them. And I also have probably about 40% of my students who want nothing to do with AI. So, given that I've got this wide range of things I'm trying to do, for me, it's never been about policing. I don't want to have to try and figure out who is or isn't using AI. I want students to disclose, so I give points on assignments for disclosure: did you disclose? Did you give me the information I'm looking for? Were you what appears to be honest with me? Because obviously I can't know, right?
But they get points for that kind of thing, and that metacognition is important, too. And we also focus heavily on transformative learning here at University of Central Oklahoma. So, asking students before and after response questions that help them see what they've gained by doing an assignment, I think that also, in a way, helps to mitigate some of the AI use. So, I realized that was a big, long answer with a lot of stuff in it.

And I like how you frame, each of these assignments and with the first one, looking at the actual policy. I think that is fantastic, because we always put them in our syllabi, but how often do students actually read them and look at them beyond the maybe the surface glance that we see as we go through, right? And so. What do you anticipate, with that assignment. Do you think, and I'm just thinking out loud here, because I did a similar assignment for a government class, where students were looking at a certain law. One thing I was surprised with, and it'd be interesting to see if you might see this too.
Is students were finding ways to try to improve, the policy itself, and so I'm curious, with their evaluation of it, are you having them look at what it means for them, but also ways that they might see it improved or changed?

Almost like a you come to this Y in the road, and here is a way that you could utilize AI if you want, but here is a way where you can absolutely go away from it. One thing that I am going back to I used to, and for context, the majority of my classes are now asynchronous courses. I teach some in person, but also a majority online. And in the in-person classes, I would have students Do reading journals, but these were written-down reading journals. They were taking notes. Some students, I gave the option for them to do, audio notes, but as they're reading through, in my classes, I like to have at least one book length, and it's they're always open access, or much older, right, with history.
Most of our stuff is in the public domain, so it's a lot easier to do that. But for example. Students will be reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and I have them annotate that in a way. I had started moving completely away from handwritten, and for many reasons, accessibility being one of them, right? I wanted to make sure there were many different options. But I'm putting that option back on the table, because there are some students who still will print out the entire thing, even though it's free online. They will they want to have that and work that way.
And so for me, one of the things I'm looking at this summer is, okay, as much as I want to lean in to a lot of the cool technology and the AI opportunities students can have with these assignments, I want to not forget about the students who want nothing to do with it, and are looking for a very analog approach to their education, even if they're taking it online. And so, that was just something that I am noticing, especially this last semester. And something I'm hoping to grow into a little bit. And so, that's one thing I'm thinking of. But beyond that. You talked a little bit about some of those other projects, and both of those seem to be a little more on the tech side, maybe embracing a bit more, right?
So we have we have one assignment where you are really thinking about AI in your course, thinking about the policy, thinking of how how it can be utilized, with the podcast, and correct me if I'm wrong, it was a podcast or a video, correct?

And so it's similar to what a paper would have, but they need to have sources, they need to have, both secondary, so written by historians or books, and then also have primary sources. And one way I have scaffolded that, thinking of it more from a content-based course versus, what you're doing, is that they have to provide an outline, almost like a paper outline. What they would do with: okay, here's my thesis, and so on and so forth. But what has been so helpful for me in that is that I can see right away when an argument is not really an argument. And this is something that I've talked about a little bit before. But I think it's harder for students now to realize when you are trying to make a point.
it should be something that can be debatable. I think, and we can go a lot of ways, and personally, I think some of it is just the way society is right now, there's a lot of division, there's a lot of concern about saying something that might feel controversial. Being able to see that argument early on, and then give feedback to that student right away, just on that argument. There are multiple possibilities. So I give them a rubric where they self-assess, could somebody disagree with me? And it was a good way to get them to think. That's what I'm looking for.
Because, again, I think it's a challenging skill that I think many of us, and I'm speaking generally here, maybe take for granted that they have learned some of that skill earlier on before they get to our class. But being able to take a stance has been something. And so, going along with kind of my thought process this summer, I am revamping that a bit, to make it explicitly about the argument. It's going to be a short assignment, but a required assignment to lay it out there, and to evaluate, doing some of that metacognition. Could somebody disagree? And what would I say if somebody disagreed? And it's a way to get them to start thinking about, other aspects. Now I had Jason Guglia on a while ago, and he talked about the contrarian, right?
Having the AI be a contrarian, and I'm looking at ways to implement that to help them refine their arguments a bit. Throw their argument in, see what it has to say, and so I've been doing a little bit of talking there. I'm curious if you have any even suggestions for me, or thoughts about, what you're hearing there as well.

These are the sources I'm using and how they're supporting things. So I do have them do that at the midpoint, but I like adding these questions of, can someone argue with it? And if they did argue with it. What would I say? How would I support my argument back? Because I love the idea of teaching them Some of it is media literacy, some of it is, human literacy, if you will: how do we be human with each other?

Having students understand that it's okay as long as you're backing it with something, to take a little leap and try to make a unique argument, that's what we're looking for. So, no, that's fantastic.

Because when we get into those places where they say, “oh, I just had Grammarly write this for me, because you can do that. It looks fine. Grammarly mentions Hamlet and mentions his dad, ergo, this must be a good argument. And then you have them actually try and parse through what the AI is putting out, and they realize that there isn't anything there. It's just you stage a home with a bunch of cardboard boxes and a sheet over it. That's not a bed.

It was a great teaching moment for me to look and say, I need to advance this, because now, we are at a place where we can ask more without adding a lot of burden to the students. And this is something I've seen you talk a little bit about as well, in terms of AI has moved the needle in some ways about what we look for in writing. And so that was maybe 2 years ago now, and I have revamped my rubric, and some of those things that seemed so important for us, I don't think are as important anymore.
For example, the area I put so much heavy emphasis on, the area was no spelling errors and similar surface issues, that isn't as important in a sense, because there are tools like Grammarly and those tools, we need to dig a little deeper. So, how have you seen, in your classes, kind of a change in student output, and has that changed your teaching at all?

This is a learning space, and I do expect disclosure because I want students to think about if using AI helped them, or hindered them, or if they would use these tools again. It's also a chance for me to learn what tools people are using and keep up with it. And then I ask, if you used AI, does your voice still shine through, even in the places where AI was used? Because they are allowed to use some of the text that the large language models give them; they just have to indicate where it is. And some students do a really good job of working with that text, and shifting the voice.
Other students leave that large language model information, just stick it right in the middle of their paper, and then keep going, kind of like how they'll stick a quote in and they won't really deal with it, right? And that's not a smooth and effective way of using AI. That's very jarring for the reader. So I am looking at if their voices shine through, and one of the other things I'm doing is all of the sources that students use, they are supposed to do annotated PDFs of them. So if they're using a book, they can take pictures of it, and then they can tell me what they got out of that quote or source.
With articles, they can turn them into PDFs and use the comments feature, or drag everything over into Word and use the comments feature. But I'm doing that because I'm trying to emphasize that the research is important, because AI will tell you that people are living on the moon right now, if you ask it. But, do you have any research to back that up? And I want students to get into the habit of not just accepting, oh, Perplexity gave me this summary, therefore it must be right. Because I found that Perplexity, again, it overstates things, and it misses some of the nuances, or it will assume nuances that aren't there. That was great.
Speaking of Jason Guglia, when I was trying to find some stuff on process, and I knew it was out there, and Perplexity was bringing back these summaries, and I thought, oh, this is great, and none of them were doing what Perplexity said they were doing. I was so mad. But it's that, how do we do the research? How do we make sure that the arguments that we are putting our name on are real? Because I think sometimes students don't think about that, because there is often very little negative response on the internet to people who put up fake videos. Right? It's I go into the grocery store, and I'm looking at a label, and I'm saying, oh, these ingredients are so bad for you. All of these food influencers who don't know anything about actual health.
And people will believe them, because they'll say, oh, I can't pronounce that ingredient, therefore it must be bad. Or they'll say, all GMOs are bad, without thinking about some of the spaces where perhaps genetically modified foods have saved communities, or something like that, right? And I just want students to understand that if I'm saying that this is my argument. I need to be able to stand, both feet, right on that line. I made this argument, it's real, and I've backed it up.

This is a great way to analyze AI without requiring your students to use it themselves, because some don't want to touch it, and that's totally fine. And it came up with a terrible result. Not that it was bad in terms of how it was written, it was very well written. It even had some really strong points. However, it was a great moment to teach what AI does, some of the basics of how it works, how it takes and predicts what people are wanting to hear. Specifically, it seemed to take the idea that, who are the leaders in the world that have been referenced the most? And therefore, that must mean it was good. It almost made something like a value assessment that more times cited means this was good.
And we could all imagine a very notorious leader from Germany came up as a strong leader. And it absolutely, freaked out my students. It was, it was almost, harmful to see what it was saying, and it showed why you don't take an assignment like this and I do have an assignment where they create what they think would be the perfect government, is it going to have a monarchy? Is it going to have this? This is why you don't just put it in and turn it in. Because if you turn something in. The reader, in this case myself, will believe that whatever you have turned in is your own thoughts.
I wish I had, a picture of some of the faces of the students, because it finally hit that this isn't just for, quote, an assignment. This is me making a stance about my own beliefs as a human, right? And that is a very, it's a troubling example, but I think it's a very important one to recognize that there is harm with this, right? Just going in blatantly thinking that it is always correct. So I think it's great that you're doing these assignments where you're having students, question it, and specifically explain how they're using it to still be able to stand behind their argument. Fantastic.
So, as we're kind of getting to the end of the conversation, I'm curious: what are the things that you are thinking? We've talked a lot about our summer process here. What are some of those bigger things you're thinking about right now in terms of AI in education? What are those things that excite you, maybe scare you a little bit? What are the things that you see going forward, knowing completely that no one is going to come back to this and say, “Laura said this, and it didn't happen, right? This is just this is just completely kind of a thought experiment. What are some of the bigger things you're thinking about right now?

I can't get the students to do the work. They think I'm not gonna notice. And I feel like there's a real disconnect there, because if you're paying, $1,600 or $3,000, or whatever it is to take a course, yes, you want to pass it, but don't you want to learn something, too? To me, I'm not going into most of my classes not wanting to learn. But to be fair, I also understand that college is really expensive, and that sometimes students are gonna say, I don't understand why I have to take an ancient history class. What does that have to do with me being an engineer?

And I'm hoping that we can find positive ways to engage with students who might otherwise have felt inadequate for the tasks that they're being asked to complete.

And I go back to that at the end of the semester, so right now, I am not teaching this summer, and I can finally start thinking about the things I was frantically jotting down after a class or after a week. and hopefully find ways to improve. And so, Laura, where can people contact you? I will make sure to put it in the show notes as well, but if people have questions, thoughts, how can they contact you? Where can you best be found?