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AI in the Classroom

Artificial Intelligence programs are here to stay. We need to find ways to use them effectively, while ensuring that students learn the skills to read, research, and write at the UPSem standard..

Topic Selection

Assignment AI Intervention
Develop a research question for approval Use AI to refine the question
Put several different questions into the AI search.
Read through the responses. The one that returns results
closest to what the student intends is the best question.

Additional Benefits: The resulting text actually acts as a baseline research starter. As the student reads, it becomes background knowledge that the student can then use to develop keyword search strategies in their actual research. As long as they know that the resulting information created by the AI may not be accurate, then it will serve as a good springboard.

Research

Assignment AI Intervention
Develop an initial bibliography that includes
scholars who provide diverse voices and
viewpoints in the context of their research		 Use AI to suggest scholars to research
For example: the query "Name 10 scholars with
diverse backgrounds who specialize in Public Theology?"

Additional Benefits: Students can use the names of scholars with diverse viewpoints in author searches on various databases to see the breadth of what they study and which journals publish them. This in turn can help students refine their own techniques to recognize and lift up marginalized voices.

Source Evaluation

Assignment AI Intervention
Using research criteria developed in class /
with the help of the professor /
with other approval, evaluate the authors of
your sources.

Use AI and Other Digital Resources

  1. Ask the AI to return information about
    the authors.
  2. Look them up in GoogleScholar
    and ORC-ID.
Using research criteria developed in class /
with the help of the professor / with other
approval, evaluate the publishers.

Use AI and Other Digital Resources

  1. Ask the AI to return information about
    the publishers.
  2. Look up their websites and fill in key
    information relating to your criteria.

Using research criteria developed in class /
with the help of the professor / with other
approval, make a critical analysis of the
content of the source.

Use AI and Other Digital Resources

  1. AI is not going to be of much help
    here, beyond giving you some steps of
    basic critical analysis (see the side box).
  2. Use Google Scholar to determine how
    many other scholars have cited the work

Additional Benefits:

Rough Drafts

Write a prompt to analyze and edit text, then copy and paste your rough draft into the tool for immediate writing advice.

Assignment AI Intervention
Write a rough draft of your research project. Use AI as an editor
Feed sections of your paper into the AI chat
with a query for stylistic and grammar editing.

Additional Benefits to the AI: