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English Department Responds to AI Boom with Miller Grant Support

Author: CELT | Image: CELT

Instructors Explore AI Use in Foundation Courses During Summer Institute


By Kelly McGowan, Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching

With the recent explosion of generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, the leader of Iowa State University’s English foundation courses — required for every undergraduate and taken by 5,000-6,000 students each year — knew a response to the technological innovation was urgent.

So Lesley Bartlett, ISUComm Foundation Courses director, along with assistant director Amy Walton, and teaching professor Brenna Dixon, sought funding from the Miller Faculty Fellowship Program. They were awarded $49,200 to host the ISUComm Foundation Courses Redesign Institute in June.

“We want to offer (students) the best education in writing and communication that we can,” Bartlett said. “To do that, we need to be ready to work with them on these really important, immediate questions around how to use generative AI responsibly and ethically.”

Instructors who teach or are interested in teaching one of the foundation courses (English 1500, English 2500, English 2500 Honors) were invited to be institute fellows and paid for their time with professional development funds from the grant. The institute began with four days of work centered around revising and creating curriculum. The next week, other instructors served as consultants to review fellows’ work before the full group reconvened in a Zoom feedback session. At the end of the month, fellows returned for two days of revision, refinement, and discussion of next steps.

Christopher Basgier, director of university writing at Auburn University and author of a popular Substack focused on AI literacy, visited as a consultant, and Abram Anders, associate professor of English and associate director of the Student Innovation Center, led a hands-on AI workshop for participants.

Learnings from the institute will be implemented in courses this fall and beyond.

The grant allowed faculty to face the reality of generative AI collaboratively and with a sense of shared ownership, Bartlett said. “We couldn’t have (worked collaboratively) if we hadn’t had the Miller grant,” she said. “It’s going to make our program stronger by having that experience.”

Faculty entered the institute with a range of attitudes toward AI, but Bartlett said she saw some fear begin to give way to curiosity and a “healthy skepticism” as conversations took place. The group aims to integrate AI in ways that will help — not hurt — the learning process, and encourage it to be viewed as an object of inquiry, not simply an opportunity to cheat.

“I feel strongly that the vast majority of our students want to learn,” Bartlett said. “So I want us approaching generative AI as a literacy technology that we’re going to try to figure out how to use to help us learn.”

One takeaway from the summer work is an activity that will be used in every section of the courses: a “reintroduction” to generative AI and discussion of questions around ethics and value of using it. A repository of learning activities developed in the institute, both AI-integrated and not, will also available to instructors.

Bartlett said she felt supported by CELT all along the way and would recommend the grant program to colleagues: “The Miller program is supporting work that is urgent and necessary in my program and enabling me to do that work in the way that’s going to serve instructors and students best.”

Lesley Bartlett, ISUComm Foundation Courses Director

 


 

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