Generative AI: A Student's Guide

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 assigned in your coursework.

Always pay attention to your course policies and instructions about the use of generative AI tools.

• Required direct use: Your instructors direct you to use generative AI (genAI) to complete an assignment.
• Optional direct use: Your instructors offer you options to use genAI to complete an assignment.
• Applied critical thinking: Your instructor directs the use of generative AI to critically evaluate its performance and/or critically discuss its implications on education, ethics, safety, privacy, and its impacts on people, culture, economics, politics, and the environment.
• Allowed supportive use: Your instructor may not have specific assignments that use genAI, but may have policies on the use of generative AI in a supportive role. Encourage your instructors to have class discussions on what is acceptable supportive use of generative AI. The following is an incomplete list of possibly acceptable and ethical uses of generative AI in coursework.
  • Using generative AI to create an outline for a project (if the outline is not part of your graded work for that project)
  • Using generative AI to assist you with a creative barrier - prompting genAI 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 genAI to help you complete your work. The list above is the best practice for ethical use of information in general. Remember, using information and technology tools appropriately and ethically isn't a new concept - what has applied in the past about academic integrity still applies in the AI world. See the tab about Academic Integrity.

If you are unclear about how to ethically and appropriately use generative AI in your coursework, please check your course syllabi and then ask your instructor directly. You can also get help from the Writing and Tutoring Center, and the TCC Library Research Desk (see the "Get Help" tab in this guide for links). 

Teaching and Learning

All of your courses have Couse Learning Outcomes*. These CLOs help your instructors develop curriculum, assignments, projects, quizzes, and exams that meet the CLOs so that you learn, grow, and develop skills so that you can reach your goals competently and confidently. 

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

• the ability to communicate with others effectively and being able to think critically, evaluate, assess, create, and develop voice and agency.
• the ability to internalize your learning. This can include memorizing critical information but it's also the ability to retain knowledge and skills from one quarter to the next, but also into your future where your employers or clients would naturally expect competency.

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

When you feel overwhelmed with your coursework and/or your life, TCC Tutoring, the TCC Library, and the TCC Counseling Center are the perfect places to contact; they can help develop learning and coping strategies so you can gain the knowledge and skills necessary to meet your goals. Find links to both those support services on the "Get Help" page in this guide.

*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 CLO 8 and 9, which can be augmented through the careful use of generative AI tools, but cannot be replaced by them.