Although Augustana College does not yet have an official policy on artificial intelligence (AI), many professors have begun incorporating AI into classroom activities and assignments. The college is currently in the works of creating a policy through an established AI task force team. 

Over the past several years, AI has grown increasingly popular and become prevalent in classrooms and learning spaces around the world. In light of this, the college has appointed Assistant Professor of Interpersonal Communications Maria Hannah to serve on the AI task force, along with several other staff members.

“My role in that is to just kind of be a contributor to figuring out how is Augustana going to approach AI and have a statement about that,” Hannah said.

In her classes, Hannah said she allows students to utilize AI through a red, yellow, green light system. This system shows students how and when they can use AI, she said. 

Although Hannah was not the creator of this system, she said she has further developed the approach to best fit her classroom and make her expectations clear to all students. Hannah’s Social Science Communication course syllabus explains the AI-guideline system, stating green light as “encouraged AI use,” the yellow light as “cautious and limited use” and the red light as “prohibited AI use.” 

“One thing I do, that I think maybe not everyone does, is I put the stoplight on every assignment that’s due,” Hannah said. “So, I’m not forcing students to go back to the syllabus or memorize my policy, I’m always having it upfront and transparent.”

Professor of Communication Studies David Snowball also utilizes AI within his classrooms, dedicating certain days to in-class AI workshops that explore generative AI applications such as ChatGTP, Perplexity and Claude. Through this, he said he hopes to foster a deep understanding of how AI is operated and consumed among students.

“AI are designed to deal with you in different ways and to look at different spaces for answers. Claude is written by a company called Anthropic, and it attempts to be the most nearly human of the AI,” Snowball said. “It wants to talk to you, and so it has both politeness and follow-up built into it… You need to know it’s fundamentally different or requires a fundamentally different mindset to use effectively than a simple search engine would.” 

Efforts to foster a deeper understanding of AI among students are also found within Augustana’s Reading and Writing Center (RWC) and the Learning Commons. Assistant Director of the RWC and the Learning Commons Farah Marklevits said the center will be presenting research on AI at the Midwest Writing Center Association Conference on March 13-15, in hopes to aid both students and tutors in their own navigation of AI. 

“We’re developing training materials for that specific question of like, how to use it when a professor is supportive of it,” Marklevits said. “Largely, our training so far has focused on really understanding what are the limitations of generative AI, how to help students see that just simply putting a prompt in and uncritically using the output and just turning it in, what [are] the limitations to that.”

AI is seen as rather taboo in some educational and higher thought circles. To combat these claims, Snowball said he is trying to break down the stigma surrounding AI and allow for more open conversations about it with students’ thoughts and concerns. 

“Many students are about as open in discussing their AI use as they are in discussing sex. The ‘I’m not sure what’s appropriate. I could get in trouble,’” Snowball said. “And therefore, most students don’t ask about AI, they don’t ask about sex [and] they don’t talk through their experiences. They don’t talk about their problems, and so part of what the workshops attempt to do first is to demystify technology.”

In relation to the college’s ongoing AI task force and policy work, Hannah said the team is currently preparing reports to deliver to the college’s administration and academic affairs for further review. 

“It’s important for students to know that we’re not shying away from things,” Hannah said. “We’re having the necessary conversations to make sure that Augustana is a place that prepares students and has faculty and staff that are acting in the most ethical ways possible. There’s conversations happening.”