Generative AI - a student's guide: Where does the value of college and generative AI meet?

Technology changes, but the value of college remains

Generative AI is an astounding technological advancement, arguably the most disruptive technology to come along for years. Because of this, it feels like it is changing academic work in college, and there is a lot of discussion and confusion about what the impacts of gAI are on traditional college work, including writing.

I think this is a little misplaced. While some aspects of college shift and change to meet a changing world and changing needs of students and the job market, what college is really about is unchanging in the face of any technological advancements and tools:

• College is a time to interact with people from different backgrounds and cultures.
• College is a time to be introduced to, and critically think about, new, different, and perhaps conflicting ideas.
• College is a time to do things, and develop mastery in things, that you haven't done before.
• College is a time to consider what you value most in life, and to begin building pathways that support those values.
• College is a time to create lasting options for your future.
• College is a time to surprise yourself with what you can achieve

How college supports you with the above changes and adapts to current and future realities, new tools, but what college is about is lasting.

Generative AI has a role in college work:

Technological changes have always changed the way students meet the value of and the work of college. Due to its incredible level of disruption, generative AI feels different from other disruptors, for example, the calculator or the Internet. Here are some of the ways that generative AI may be in use in your course work: 

Required direct creation: Your course work includes actively using generative AI (gAI) to generate content in order to complete assignments and meet course learning objectives.

Optional direct creation: Your course work includes specific options for using gAI to generate content in order to complete an assignment.

Indirect critical thinking work: Your classroom work includes the use of, or the topic of, generative AI to evaluate it's performance, consider its implications, ethics, safety, and impacts on people, culture, economics, politics, the environment, and more.

Sanctioned supportive use: Your instructor may not have specific assignments that use gAI, but has developed an outline of how gAI could be used in an assignment, or course work in general, to support your work. This could include the following incomplete list of examples:

• Using generative AI to create an outline for a project (with the rest of the work being your own)
• Using generative AI to assist you over a creative barrier - prompting gAI to give you ideas for a project, or how to begin a presentation (with the rest of the work being your own)
• Using generative AI to give you feedback on your own writing with ideas of how to improve it (with the changes to your work being your own)

In most cases, your instructors will also require transparency, such as a citation or a note with a description of your use of the gAI to help you complete your work. This is simply best practice for ethical use of information in general, in other words, gAI outputs are really no different from the use of any other information. See Academic Integrity.

If you are unclear about how to ethically and appropriately use generative AI in your coursework, please check your syllabus(es) and ask your instructor directly. You can also get help from the Writing and Tutoring Center, and the TCC Library Research Desk. 

Teaching and learning

Your courses all have Couse Learning Outcomes*. These "CLOs" help your instructors develop curriculum, the assignments, projects, quizzes, and exams, that meet the specifics of the CLOs so that you learn and grow and develop skills on your way to becoming competent and confident within the goals you have set for yourself.

The path to this long-term competency and confidence is to do the work, which includes developing:

• the ability to communicate with others effectively (which includes being able to think critically, evaluate, assess, create, develop voice and agency)
• the ability to internalize learning (which can include memorizing critical information but it's also the ability to retain understanding and skills from one quarter to the next, and into your goals, which could include employers who would naturally expect these things from you as a competent employee)

To do these things, you cannot "outsource" your work to someone or something else. College therefore isn't something to "get through" but to accomplish at the highest level you are able so that you walk away with more options than you came in with to meet your needs, perhaps your family's needs, and the demands of the world now, and the world to come.

When you feel as though the work is too much for you in the moment, or you have other concerns about your learning and the work load, TCC Tutoring and the Counseling Center are the perfect places to contact to develop your understanding, knowledge, and to help build strategies for life demands.

*Example of CLOs: Here are just three Course Learning Outcomes for Anthropology 101 (ANTH&101)

7. Summarize the current scientific understanding of race and human biological diversity

8. Summarize the essential characteristics of culture and language, and the role they play in human societies.

9. Explain how culture and language may have contributed to the spread and evolutionary success of the human species thus far, and why cultural and linguistic diversity may be important to human survival in the future.

Achieving the necessary learning to meet these CLOs requires high-level engagement and critical thinking, particularly COL 8 and 9, which can be augmented by generative AI tools, but cannot be replaced by them.