Artificial Intelligence Resources for Tufts Faculty and Staff
*This information will continue to evolve and change as advances in AI continue to do so.
Tufts Information and Resources
Teaching in a World with AI
- Developing Syllabus Statements for AI (CELT)
- Generative AI in Academe: For Instructors (Tufts Libraries)
- Designing Courses in the Age of AI (Teaching@Tufts)
- Reconsidering and Revaluing Academic Writing in the Age of AI (Teaching@Tufts)
- Fall’s 2023 series of roundtables about AI (Recording and notes from a series of events hosted by CELT)
Using AI at Tufts in your Teaching, Learning & Work
- Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) (TTS)
- Resources & References on AI and Teaching (Tufts Educational Technology User Guide)
- Guidelines for Use of Generative AI Tools (Tufts Technology Services)
Hitchhikers Guide to AI, January 2024 Update
A brief demo, thinking about the use of AI from the perspective of a faculty member teaching a course in Spring 2023. You can find opportunities to learn about AI on CELT's Events Page and from ETS.
Recordings and notes from the full fall 2023 series of events on AI can be found online here and links to helpful resources for instructors can be found at the bottom of this page.
- Resilient and Equitable Teaching and Assessment Require a Paradigm Shift by Annie Soisson (CELT), January 27, 2023 in Faculty Focus
- How to Get the Best Results from ChatGPT by James Intriligator in Tufts Now
- Reconsidering and Revaluing Academic Writing in the Age of AI by Kristina Aikens in Teaching@Tufts
- What I would advise students about ChatGPT by Peter Levine, Tisch College
- ChatGPT unmasked at the intersection of computer science and philosophy (Tufts Daily)
- Artificial Intelligence Resources for Tufts Faculty and Staff (CELT)
- AI Keynote Debate: Is ChatGPT Overhyped & Overrated or Underhyped & Underestimated? (Tufts University's Gordon Institute YouTube)
- A mistake-find exercise: a teacher’s tool to engage with information innovations, ChatGPT, and their analogs (Elena N. Naumova, Friedman)
What do recent advances in AI mean for higher education?
In higher education, rapid advances in AI tools raise important questions about our role moving forward as to what our students need to learn, and how they can best learn. These tools require us to consider how they can be helpful for learning and teaching, and when they may not be helpful. They raise questions about potential embedded bias, or other negative aspects to their use. The new availability of AI tools requires a paradigm shift and ongoing dialogue at all levels of the university as we think through what this means for Tufts. For more see Resilient and Equitable Teaching and Assessment Require a Paradigm Shift.
Change is hard, and we all respond differently. Individual faculty responses to AI tools will fall somewhere on a continuum from resistance and concerns about “cheating” to reflection on whether current assignments and assessments will continue to nurture and assess student learning and how to adapt them, to embracing these new tools and experimenting with how to leverage them for learning by redesigning courses or assessments. At CELT, we view this moment as an opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with each other, to think deeply about what and how we teach, and to be innovative and creative.
Guiding Questions for Individuals, Departments, Schools
Below are sets of questions for individuals, departments, and schools to guide important discussions as we navigate our decisions related to AI.
When AI tools are able to replicate or mimic some or much of the work we ask our students to do in higher education - say write an essay or a term paper, code, an admissions essay, or the preface to a grant proposal - we need to reflect deeply about our role in educating students and our own professional standards. Important questions need to be addressed globally, but also across higher education as an important agent of change, progress, and democracy.
- What does this mean for Tufts’ role in graduating an educated citizenry for the world they will enter post-graduation?
- What opportunities do these new tools offer us that might enhance our work?
- Are there equity concerns or affordances for different students?
- What ethical, legal and safety considerations should we be wrestling with vis a vis AI?
- How does this change how we think about academic integrity?
- What policies for academic integrity do we need to put in place regarding its use that are meaningful and flexible enough to evolve with these tools?
- What might be the impact on intellectual property?
- What are the privacy issues we need to address to protect our students, faculty and staff?
- What other big questions should we be asking ourselves?
At the school level, it will be useful to create cross-cutting working group(s) and structured spaces for open dialogue among faculty, staff and students. Soliciting questions from your department chairs, faculty, staff and students will be important in having a robust path for inquiry and dialogue. These learning groups might focus on overarching questions such as:
- What will our students need to be prepared to enter their chosen field of study in an age of AI, and what does that mean for our school’s curriculum? What is the relationship between AI tools and learning - and what does that mean for our teaching, assessment, and the role of content?
- Which of our current approaches to teaching might need to be repositioned or strengthened to remain effective in this new landscape?
- What new pedagogical approaches might make use of AI as a learning tool?
- How might we define, communicate and engage students in dialogue about the value of academic integrity?
- What policies for academic integrity and professionalism do we need to put in place that are meaningful and flexible enough to evolve with these tools?
- What ethical and safety considerations should we be wrestling with vis a vis the use of AI at Tufts and society?
Reflective and critical dialogue within departments will help to develop a shared understanding of AI implications for learning and academic honesty. They will help you develop consistent language, policies and approaches that can guide both faculty and students in navigating the use of these tools. Pedagogies and curricula traditionally differ across disciplines, and some may be more affected by new and emerging AI tools than others. Questions at the department level might include:
- How are our beliefs about what is necessary and important for learning in our discipline challenged by AI?
- What might this mean for our departmental curriculum?
- How might our learning outcomes for our majors change or be focused differently to reflect new possibilities presented by AI tools?
- How will AI be used in the field, and what do students need to learn to be prepared for that work?
- Are there new skills we need to introduce and develop - for example, ethical reasoning, information literacy, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, etc.?
- What does this mean for our teaching and assessment practices?
- In our department, what are our dominant forms of teaching and assessing learning?
- Which aspects of how we teach and assess currently are resilient in the age of AI, and which are not? Which practices might need to change?
- What are the ethical questions we need to wrestle with together and with our students related to knowledge production and these new tools?
- What implications for equity and inclusion should be considered?
- What guidelines do we want to embrace and communicate, if any, at the department level, to our students for appropriate uses of AI?
There are a range of ways individual faculty can begin to explore the potential impact of AI tools in their courses. While our responses will vary, critical reflection and a thoughtful approach for teaching will be important in order to preserve a respectful faculty-student relationship, provide clarity and guidance for students, and for you to have a framework for how you might adapt your teaching where necessary.
Some questions to consider
- How can I begin to experiment with and explore existing generative AI systems?
- How might generative AI be helpful for my students in learning course materials or expanding course activities?
- Do my students understand when and in what contexts they can use AI in my courses and assignments?
- Are there conversations that I can have with my students to explore the potential ethical, learning and other issues related to AI in the context of my discipline and courses?
See Developing Syllabus Statements for AI for advice and example syllabus policies, Designing Courses in the Age of AI prompts for designing authentic learning experiences, advice for teaching students to write with AI and discussion of each of the practices above
Practical resources for using AI in the classroom
Many faculty at Tufts are beginning to try out activities in the classroom or in assignments utilizing AI. Some are using AI to help prepare teaching materials, and others are having students use AI in activities. Here are some examples from around the web of how faculty are using AI in their teaching:
- Student Use Cases for AI by Ethan Mollick at Harvard, Sept 2023
- Incorporating AI in Teaching: Practical Examples for Busy Instructors by Daniel Stanford, July 2023
- TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies an introduction and examples from Colorado State, Sept 2023
- ChatGPT Assignments to Use in Your Classroom Today from UCF, Oct 2023
- GenAI Chatbot Prompt Library for Educators from AI for Education
- AI Prompts for Teaching by Cynthia Alby
- Discipline-specific Generative AI Teaching and Learning Resources (CTAL U Delaware)
Selected recent articles & resources
- Practical AI for Instructors and Students a video series from Wharton Aug 2023
- 4 Steps to Help You Plan for ChatGPT in Your Classroom by Flower Darby June 2023 in The Chronicle of Higher Education
- Art Schools Get Creative Tackling AI from Inside Higher Ed, Nov 2023
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How AI Chatbots like ChatGPT or Bard Work – Visual Explainer from the Guardian, November 2023
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A Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights for Education by Kathryn Conrad July 2023 in Critical AI