This post came from the Aestiva Solutions quarterly newsletter, the Campfire. To subscribe, click here.
In this issue of the campfire, we’re sharing our experience incorporating generative AI as classroom instructors. Today, AI use has become ubiquitous in some industries, hesitantly adopted in others, while others, such as higher education, stand somewhere in between. As educators our goal is to foster reflection and critical thinking, while also leveraging existing technologies appropriately.
In 2025 Eric undertook a major redesign of a first year course on career and vocation exploration at Goshen College. A year later, he finds himself at a similar crossroads due to the acceleration of generative AI. For some assignments, Eric found that students should be using generative AI far more than they were, while others needed complete overhauls due to plagiarism. This next year, reflections on lectures and assigned readings will be moved to classroom activities, while resume building activities will include steps on prompt engineering and reviewing AI generated material.
Ruth has been teaching online for the University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) since 2023. New to the classroom this year, the university has added an AI use disclosure. Every single assignment template and discussion post prompt has this wording added at the end:
Please disclose how you used AI below. Highlight the line that describes your use, and fill out the information as appropriate:
- I used ____ [identify generative AI tool] as a thought partner to ______ [describe how the tool was used].
- I did not use generative AI in the completion of this assignment
Or, if an assignment specifically asks the learners to use AI, the disclosure reads:
- I used _____ [generative AI tool] as a thought partner to _____ [describe how the tool was used].
- I used generative AI only as required for the completion of this assignment.
What’s great about this is that it moves right past the debate and wringing of hands over student use of AI and instead directs them into ethical uses.
Of course, many librarians primarily teach one-shot sessions where you aren’t designing assignments, but the same principles still apply in these circumstances. Carefully considering what are the core things you want students to learn alongside things that you want to pass off to the machine to tackle. For example, how many hours have we spent teaching students how to create careful APA citations? This is something that can easily be done by most generative AI tools. But what is the principle behind this work? Ethical information use is still just as important as ever. So our job is to remind ourselves of those core principles and focus our work around them to keep us relevant in this new era.
Looking to strengthen your work in the generative AI arena? Partner with Aestiva Solutions for some creative professional development. Leverage our combined experience to enhance your local impact.
Ruth and Eric