Challenge
The Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario, seconded two professors on a part-time basis from the Faculty of Business to be advocates, models and instructors for other faculty on the educational use and capabilities of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). Professor Corey Gill is the Program Coordinator in Human Resources and Professor Jonathan Carrigan is Program Coordinator in Marketing. They were early GenAI adopters and continue to expand their applications in the classroom and share their expertise with their colleagues.
The Centre for Teaching and Learning provides faculty training in all aspects of GenAI, as well as access to an extensive range of tools, resources and statements on ethics, privacy and security on its website, Generative GenAI | CTL. To provide security for their work, all professors’ content and communication within Microsoft Copilot, a GenAI chatbot, is data protected and restricted to their use.
Professor Gill uses Copilot for course and assignment development with a clear delineation between the tasks and contributions of GenAI and the essential roles of the professor. He describes the purpose of his use of Copilot as “re-imagining courses, classes, and assignments so they are more active and more personalized.” His carefully structured and assessed interaction with Copilot allows the creation of materials and activities that respond to each course’s mix of students and their academic specialties.
Experimentation
An example of this personalized teaching and learning is Professor Gill’s use of Copilot in the design of a first-year course he teaches on Human Resources (HR). It is compulsory for all students in the Faculty of Business, resulting in classes with students from various specialties, including Marketing, Finance/Accounting and Entrepreneurship Programs, as well as HR.
To best teach and support the specific mix of students he has in each year’s class, he uses Copilot as his GenAI tool for course and class development and revision, providing it with as much information as possible to use for production of draft materials.
This includes:
- Information on the mix of students in the current class and their programs, with links to the Durham College website as a source of information on their learning goals.
- His teaching and workplace history, his LinkedIn account, teaching philosophy, and research papers. He tells Copilot that they are working together on revising course outlines and class planning, and he wants it to use his voice.
- Current course outline, including goals and objectives overall and for each class session, class structure, teaching and support materials, activities, assignments, and marking rubric. He focuses on one week and asks Copilot to prepare an outline of that week’s objectives and key content to assess if it is on track and reading the material appropriately.
- The textbook publisher’s PowerPoint slides, in addition to his own.
He prompts Copilot to suggest a class outline for a given week, including how he can balance content delivery with breaks and activities and how the information can flow logically and effectively given the mix of students in the class. He assesses the output and refines his prompts, offering guidance and feedback to Copilot.
When Copilot produces a class outline that he is satisfied with, he chooses the points to emphasize and has it assist in developing the content for PowerPoints – asking for suggested slides with no more than seven unique points on each. He again reviews and modifies this output. He then uses Microsoft Word to produce an outline that can be used to create the slides in PowerPoint. Assigning this work to Copilot leaves him to work on activities and content presentation. It is a collaborative project with GenAI doing the searches, drafts and suggestions of alternatives, while he takes on the direction, judgements, choices and approvals.
He also prompts Copilot to suggest alternatives for assignments that are meaningful, relevant and current. The process is much the same as with course and class development as previous questions, answers and marking rubrics from assignments, course and class outlines, weekly schedules and other resources are loaded into Copilot. It is given prompts concerning its role of suggesting activity and assignment revisions to be consistent with the target outcomes, as well as providing interesting, challenging and engaging projects for the variety of students in different programs.
For a third-year course on Project Management, a collaborative effort with Copilot resulted in a Scavenger Hunt in which students would find answers from real-life experiences, library resources, and contact with industry and business so that they encounter the applied reality of the content being taught. This project has special impact as it has the students relying not on technology, but on the expertise of professionals in their own field of study.
For Professor Corey Gill, the use of GenAI, including Copilot and other tools, has three central purposes:
- empower students,
- gain efficiency, and
- empower faculty.
In his role helping faculty to find ways to use GenAI that suit their teaching, content, and course goals, Professor Gill aspires to encourage improved feedback and interaction with students, along with more personalized learning. Professors can choose to use GenAI as they wish but are advised to inform their students about the role GenAI has played in course development, delivery and assessment.
To assist faculty in guiding students to use GenAI responsibly, in ways that are consistent with academic integrity, he created the CHECK framework, providing students, and GenAI users in general, with five key principles:
- Consent: Seek explicit permission from the professor before using GenAI for preparation of graded work.
- Honesty: Disclose GenAI tool use to build trust and transparency and be prepared to present your GenAI process and results.
- Evaluate: Critically verify GenAI-generated content to ensure its reliability.
- Cite: Treat GenAI output as a source and cite it appropriately.
- Knowledge: Include, supplement, and refine your own ideas.
Professor Gill finds that the more he uses GenAI, the more he learns about how to exploit its capacities.
Results
The course and class revision and assignment preparation processes take far less time the more Professor Gill works with Copilot. It can be instructed how and where to revise and improve and produce multiple alternatives that inspire new thinking and directions for teaching and learning strategies, allowing more to be accomplished in the limited time he has available for course preparation.
The course and class outlines are modified to reflect the variety of students in each year’s class, allowing for examples, activities, and readings that reflect the focus of the specialties represented in each cohort. The learning can be customized, personalized and relevant so that students adapt their learning about the principles of Human Resource Management to their own disciplines and apply it to their personal career directions. As well, the use of Copilot can keep course material refreshed and current.
Professor Gill stresses that “GenAI takes on all the mundane work while the people are responsible for the critical thinking and the humanizing.” For example, in his grading, he provides Copilot with his feedback for each student, accompanied by the marking rubric. He instructs Copilot to distribute the feedback in the appropriate categories on the rubric so that students get clear and well-structured comments on their work. He does the appraisal, and Copilot fills in the feedback format which he verifies after completion.
Student response has been positive to the new curriculum outlines, class design, personalization of resources and activities. Reactions have been gathered through classroom and individual discussions. Professor Gill is part of a group at Durham College that is exploring a more formal survey of student reactions, experiences, concerns and needs regarding the use of GenAI for teaching and learning.
Next Improvement Steps
Professor Gill recognizes the reluctance of many faculty to adopt artificial intelligence. Some are very hesitant. Some are open but not sure how to use it effectively. Others are enthusiastic but not yet making the best choices on assessing and limiting the applications of GenAI.
His workshops, training and presentations for the Centre for Teaching and Learning stress that GenAI should never be fully responsible for teaching any subject. GenAI always needs guidance and review. It can be inaccurate, biased, inappropriate, and provide information that does not relate to the goals of class or students. Faculty’s role is to assess the information and determine how it fits with the essential learning in the class. For example, the students from the Finance stream in the Human Resources course need concrete examples and guidance on how proper human resource management can be essential to job performance in their field, not just information on general HR practices. Personalizing the learning through GenAI is only possible with appropriate prompts.
Caution when using GenAI is essential as it cannot be entrusted with any task that is not monitored and assessed by faculty.
Professor Gill counsels that the more faculty use GenAI the easier it gets, the more they embrace it and the more it learns.
Potential
Professor Gill would like to see some additional tools developed and made available to students such as an GenAI-enabled tutor so that students could pose questions within the course content for help with difficult concepts.
A GenAI integration in the learning management system (LMS) and textbooks would benefit students. The LMS knows what students are being taught and texts have the core content. With integration at course level, GenAI could provide course specific guidance and coaching. The GenAI system would have to be well targeted to work within this framework. The outcome could benefit both students and faculty in facilitating student success and supporting teaching effectiveness.
For Further Information
Corey Gill
Professor and Program Coordinator
Human Resources
School of Business
GenAI Consultant
Centre for Teaching and Learning
Durham College
Oshawa, Ontario
[email protected]
Sources
Professor Gill’s podcast interview on Artificial Intelligence, Academic Integrity and the CHECK Framework. https://lnkd.in/gbySwH86
