Artificial Intelligence makes its way into class syllabi

By Sarah Sternhagen, Editor-in-Chief

This semester saw the incorporation of artificial intelligence into class syllabuses. Professors are using recommended language from Towson University’s AI Task Force, which started in August of 2023 to help faculty navigate AI in classrooms. 

Operating under the Faculty Academic Center of Excellence, the Task Force created sample text for professors to use in their syllabus as they saw fit. That way faculty could decide how involved generative AI would be in their courses depending on their needs.

“Clearly in the computer sciences, AI usage might be much more common and even encouraged in classes,” Task Force member and Anthropology Professor Samuel Collins said. “Whereas in, you know, some English 102 writing class, the opposite might be the case.”

The Task Force’s sample syllabus language provides two main approaches to AI, if faculty allow some AI in class, or none, and gives faculty discretion from there. Since the initial recommendations, Collins said faculty are now being encouraged to spell out AI’s use in each assignment as well.

Collins experimented with AI in his classes and has settled on using it as a brainstorming tool, not to complete assignments.

“Generative AI does a really bad job at anthropology,” Collins said.

FACET member and Education Professor Liyan Song tested out AI in her spring 2023 graduate courses, where she and her students learned AI’s strengths in broad information gathering, and its weaknesses in deeper knowledge on specific topics. Now, she allows AI in her classes so long as students share their conversation with the tool.

“I also asked them to write a reflection on the experience, to see how useful or not they have found the AI tool,” Song said.

Professor of Mass Communications Sushma Kumble studies machine learning and was an early adopter of AI policy in spring of 2023 too. 

She also talks to her students about the influence of AI on the job market.

“AI does not need weekends,” Kumble said. “And so you want to make sure that you are now getting ahead and being smarter than AI and not using that as a tool to pass your courses.”