Generative Artificial Intelligence: Updates and Articles for Instructors

Welcome to our GAI resource-sharing blog page! Here you’ll find some of the latest updates and articles on generative AI, curated especially for faculty and instructional staff. While there are numerous resources available out there, CATL will share a select, timely sample of articles and perspectives to help instructors stay informed about new changes in AI technology and education.

For more in-depth, instructor-focused articles on generative AI by CATL, explore our AI Toolbox Articles.

Table of Contents

Generative AI Tools Directory

Stay updated on the different AI tools being created and discover what your peers or fields might be using!

(Resources in this section are updated biannually)

May 2023 – June 2024

  • Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning, May 2023. This report by the Office of Educational Technology provides insights on how AI can be integrated into education practices, and recommended responses for educators.
  • The AI Index Report: Measuring trends in AI, April 2024. Created by the Institute for Human-Centered AI at Stanford University, this report provides an analysis of AI trends and metrics, including important insights into the current state and future direction of AI for educators grappling with the rapidly evolving technology and what it means for their teaching practices.
  • AI in 2024: Major Developments & Innovations, Jan. 3, 2024. This article provides a timeline of AI developments during 2023 and newest updates in 2024.
  • 2024 AI Business Predictions, 2024. This report by PwC describes how businesses are preparing for and incorporating AI, with predictions on future trends and AI strategies in the corporate world.

Monthly Resources for Educators

(Resources in this section are updated for each month)

June 2024

Tips for Teachers

  • If you haven’t signed into Copilot with your UWGB account, now is the time! Microsoft Copilot, accessible through any browser and soon integrated into Windows 11, avoids using your personal email, which makes it a better alternative for classes. It doesn’t require providing, for example, a personal cellphone number for use, and it is available to all UWGB faculty, staff, and students with an institutional login and ID. Copilot also offers enhanced data protection when logged in using your UWGB account, although FERPA-protected and personally identifiable information should still not be entered. Watch this short video on how to log in. Remember, use any AI tool responsibly and always vet outputs for accuracy.

Latest Educational Updates

  • Latest AI Announcements Mean Another Big Adjustment for Educators, June 6, 2024. This article from EdSurge recaps some of the latest AI advancements that will heavily impact education and provides advice from instructors and ed tech experts on how to adapt.
  • AI Detectors Don’t Work. Here’s What to Do Instead, 2024. MIT’s Teaching & Learning Technologies Center critiques AI detection software and suggests better alternatives. The article advocates for clear guidelines, open dialogue, creative assignment design, and equitable assessment practices to effectively engage students and maintain academic standards.

May 2024

Tip for Teachers

  • Subscribe to the “One Useful Thing” blog by Ethan Mollick, an Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Co-Director of the Generative AI Lab at Wharton.

Latest Educational Updates

Latest AI Tech Advancements

My Resistance (and Maybe Yours): Help Me Explore Generative AI

Article by Tara DaPra, CATL Instructional Development Consultant & Associate Teaching Professor of English & Writing Foundations

I went to the OPID conference in April to learn from colleagues across the Universities of Wisconsin who know much more than I do about Generative AI. I was looking for answers, for insight, and maybe for a sense that it’s all going to be okay.

I picked up a few small ideas. One group of presenters disclosed that AI had revised their PowerPoint slides for concision, something that, let’s be honest, most presentations could benefit from. Bryan Kopp, an English professor at UW-La Crosse, opened his presentation “AI & Social Inequity” by plainly stating that discussions of AI are discussions of power. He went on to describe his senior seminar that explored these social dynamics and offered the reassurance that we can figure this thing out with our students.

I also heard a lot of noise: AI is changing everything! Students are already using it! Other students are scared, so you have to give them permission. But don’t make them use it, which means after learning how to teach it, and teaching them how to use it, you must also create an alternate assessment. And you have to use it, too! But you can’t use it to grade or write LORs or in any way compromise FERPA. Most of all, don’t wait! You’re already sooo behind!

In sum: AI is everywhere. It’s in your car, inside the house, in your pocket. And (I think?) it’s coming for your refrigerator and your grocery shopping.

I left the conference with a familiar ache behind my right shoulder blade. This is the place where stress lives in my body, the place of “you really must” and “have to.” And my body is resisting.

I am not an early adopter. I let the first gen of any new tech tool come and go, waiting for the bugs to be worked out, to see if it will survive the Hype Cycle. This year, my syllabus policy on AI essentially read, “I don’t know how to use this thing, so please just don’t.” Though, in my defense, the fact that I even had a policy on Generative AI might actually make me an early adopter, since a recent national survey of provosts found only 20% were at the helm of institutions with formal, published policy on the use of AI.

So I still don’t have very many answers, but I am remembering to breathe through my resistance, which has helped me develop a few questions: How can I break down this big scary thing into smaller pieces? How might I approach these tools with a sense of play? How can I experiment in the classroom with students? How can I help them understand the limitations of AI and the essential nature of their human brains, their human voices?

To those ends, I’d like to hear from you. Send me your anxieties, your moral outrage, your wildest hopes and dreams. What have you been puzzling over this year? Have you found small ways to use Generative AI in your teaching or writing? Have your ethical questions shifted or deepened? And should I worry that maybe, in about two hundred years, AI is going to destroy us all?

This summer and next year, CATL will publish additional materials and blog posts exploring Generative AI. CATL has already covered some of the “whats,” and will continue to do so, as AI changes rapidly. But, just as we understand that to motivate students, we must also talk about “the why,” we must make space for these questions ourselves. In the meantime, as I explore these questions, I’m leaning into human companionship, as members of my unit (Applied Writing & English) will read Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick. We’re off contract this summer, so it’s not required, but, you know, we have to figure this out. So if we must, let’s at least do it over dinner.