Except where otherwise noted, the contents of this guide were created by humans (not bots) and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly altering the landscape of higher education. While artificial intelligence has been around for decades, it was in the fall of 2022 when tools like ChatGPT took the education world by storm. This guide is intended to provide an introduction to AI and its current implications for teaching and learning in higher education.
There is so much information out there right now about AI and its implications for education that wading through it can be a daunting task. We've tried to do some of that work for you and collect some resources and recommendations here to support you in developing your own thoughtful approach to AI in teaching and learning.
If you have any questions about the contents of this guide, or suggestions for additions or improvements, please contact cetl@camosun.ca or complete our feedback form. CETL faculty are available for consultations with individual faculty or to facilitate a conversation in your department. Please reach out! We have real humans (not chat bots) ready to help.
Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash
Artificial intelligence "refers to computer systems that undertake tasks usually thought to require human cognitive processes and decision-making capabilities." (EDUCAUSE, 2017) ChatGPT, an example of generative AI (Gen-AI), "generates coherent and complex responses, based on statistical recognition of existing textual patterns in a large corpus of sources. GenAIs can also produce images, numeric data and references, based on similar types of predictive algorithms." (CRADLE, 2023) You may have heard the phrase "human-like responses" from people describing what ChatGPT does. To be clear: ChatGPT does not think like a human. It is also not a "copy and paste" program. It uses existing patterns in a body of text to predict a probable response to a user prompt.
GenAI tools can do much more than produce text outputs based on text inputs!
The range of GenAI tools available is continually expanding. There are tools now that can read not only text, but also images, video, and entire documents. GenAI tools can provide text, but also audio, video, images, slide shows, infographics, etc.
As a starting point, the best thing you can do right now is educate yourself about the opportunities and challenges arising from the emergence and coming ubiquity of AI. The folks at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University have a handy "Two First Steps" guide for faculty, which we've summarized here:
If you are unsure what this means for you, please reach out! Contact cetl@camosun.ca to arrange a one-to-one consultation.
Whatever you decide to do, it's worth considering that your students are almost certainly aware that this technology exists and many of them are eager to see how it might be used to their benefit. There is a knowledge/experience vacuum that currently exists and it is going to be filled one way or another.
In his book, Co-Inteligence: Living and Working with AI (Penguin, 2024), Ethan Mollick (University of Pennsylvania) suggests that taking about 10 hours to use AI for things that you would normally do for work or fun will give you a pretty solid understanding of how the tools work and what the possibilities might be for you.
The answers might surprise you! In a survey in March 2023, Canadian students shared that they were aware of ChatGPT, and many of them had used it in some way, but only a small minority said they used it to complete an entire assignment. Other students have written about the innovative ways they use it iteratively throughout the writing process. Faculty are also engaging with new AI tools in many interesting and innovative ways. See the links below for thoughts from both faculty and students on the place of AI in teaching and learning.
This guide was produced by faculty in Learning Services, including the Library and the Dr. Lloyd Morin Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. It is based largely on collected prevailing wisdom and is not without its faults. If you have suggestions for improvement, please let us know by filling out our feedback form.
As AI technology is advancing rapidly, we suggest that you consider any advice offered here as our current best effort, which is subject to change. For example, in early 2023, a common suggestion for adapting to ChatGPT was to focus on resources created since September 2021, since the tool's training data did not have access to information beyond that date. This is no longer true of tools like GPT-4, which has access to a much larger dataset than its predecessor, or BingAI, which can access the internet and provide references to the sites it uses.
The most recent substantial updates to this guide were made on January 4, 2024. Recent changes:
