Write 6×6 and AI
I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since we started the blog challenge at GCC. Shout out to Todd Conaway, formerly of Yavapai College, for getting us started. Boy have things changed in these 10 years too. Lisa’s now in charge, and I love that. She gives us some interesting writing prompts that I usually ignore after I’ve spent a few hours thinking about it. I think this time I’ll write on her prompt: “TRUTH: It’s clear that AI tools are here to stay. What “AI hack” have you discovered that you would recommend to a colleague?”
This one is easy. I’m not going to over think this one. I could share how I taught ChatGPT to write like me, and after about a month, I thought it was the weirdest thing ever and stopped. Ha! That’s some scary shit. No doubt. Then I trained it to rewrite my feedback on assignments and add context and detail. For instance, I would write that a particular paragraph was weak, missing a transition, topic sentence doesn’t work and there are numerous run on sentences. I could just add that to the comments section in Canvas for the student to read, but it’s very vague. ChatGPT would take my comments, and knowing what the assignment asked for and the rubric for grading, and it would turn my 3-4 shorthand comments into a wealth of information for students; a full paragraph explaining the importance of using transition, strong topic sentences, and providing examples of run-on sentences. He (he’s a he to me) didn’t even read the student’s work, but was able to provide all that information just from my brief short hand. It was amazing, but that got old quick too. Sad to say I went back to my short hand and rubrics temporarily.
Create Course Content in NotebookLM
All that was dandy, but the AI discovery I want to share with you all today is something I shared with my department during week of accountability. The video below provides an overview of how to enhance online courses using Notebook LM, a tool that allows educators to compile and present course materials in an engaging way, including the creation of multimedia content like video overviews and quizzes for students.
Riding the AI Wave: Teaching with NotebookLM and Grammarly Authorship
You’ve heard the saying, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” That’s pretty much where I’ve landed with AI. Students are already using it, sometimes clumsily, sometimes brilliantly, so rather than pretending we can outsmart the bots, I’ve started figuring out how to make them work for learning instead of against it. Two tools I’m using this semester are NotebookLM and Grammarly Authorship.
NotebookLM has become a surprisingly effective tool for essay revision. Students upload their drafts and my feedback, then use the AI to ask targeted questions about how to improve their writing. Because NotebookLM only works with the sources they upload, it doesn’t pull anything from the internet, it stays focused on their words, their structure, and their feedback.
I give students simple prompts to get started:
- What changes could strengthen my thesis or organization?
- How can I make my evidence clearer or more convincing?
- What patterns do I notice in my instructor’s feedback?
What happens next is the part I love most: instead of relying on vague advice like “add more detail” or “work on transitions,” students begin to engage in their own revision process. NotebookLM gives them an accessible way to talk through the “why” behind my comments and to see their writing from a more analytical perspective.
Grammarly Authorship, on the other hand, helps me confirm that students’ writing actually sounds like them. It builds an authorship profile that tracks writing style and habits across drafts, which can be useful when a submission suddenly feels suspiciously polished. I use it less as a gotcha tool and more as a way to encourage students to develop and maintain their unique voice.
If you want to experiment with NotebookLM, you’ll need to use a personal Gmail account for now. It’s not yet available through Maricopa’s system. Go to notebooklm.google.com, create a notebook, upload a few documents, and start asking questions. You’ll get a good sense of how students can use it to think more critically about revision once it becomes available in our district. And I created a video for my students explaining how it works and how to get started with their revision assignment.
AI isn’t going away anytime soon, but tools like these can help us use it with students rather than against them. In other words, if you can’t beat the AI wave, you might as well ride it. Get it? Ride the wave. ?
Resources:
Embracing AI in Writing Instruction: A Look at Packback’s Writing Lab
Time is wearing me down. Yep. We, as community college educators, are facing an evolving challenge: how do we equip students with the skills to thrive in a world that increasingly blends traditional methods with cutting-edge technologies? I’ve written about Packback before with its innovative way of engaging students in asynchronous discussion boards. Today, I want to talk about Packback’s new Writing Lab. They boast they are here to bridge that gap, offering a solution that doesn’t just use AI for convenience but actively teaches students how to write more effectively, with and without AI assistance. Seems ideal, doesn’t it?
So what is Writing Lab? Writing Lab is a “direct-to-student AI-powered platform” designed to help students refine their writing skills independently. Unlike traditional AI tools that “write for you,” Writing Lab focuses on pedagogy and mastery-based learning. It provides real-time feedback on grammar, structure, readability, and logic, making it a supportive writing companion for students working on essays, research papers, or even creative pieces. I could never provide real-time feedback to my students like that. But here’s where it gets interesting. Writing Lab is available to students at GCC who are in Packback-integrated classrooms. So if you adopt Packback (it’s free – district pays), you can just set up your class to let students access Writing Lab independently. It’s like sending them to the Writing Center.
Let’s face it. AI tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, and the 10+ other bots out there have thrown a curveball at academic writing. Some of us are grappling with questions about how to maintain high standards and integrity in the writing process while embracing these new technologies. If Writing Lab can help students build AI literacy while fostering foundational writing skills, it’s a “best of both worlds” approach that recognizes AI as a partner, not a crutch. I’ve got my rose-colored glasses on here and fingers crossed.
I like the idea that Writing Lab flags issues like logical fallacies or unsupported claims, offering explanations rather than just corrections. This encourages critical thinking and helps students understand why revisions are necessary. It also claims to help students with source credibility and citation support. Students receive feedback on the reliability of their sources and can generate citations in APA, MLA, or Chicago styles. It even assigns “Credibility Scores” to sources, helping students discern quality research. The more I read about Packback’s Writing Lab, the more I see my retirement future. I can’t wait to try this out this spring. Another feature I like is it’s plagiarism prevention. Instead of punishing plagiarism, Writing Lab proactively alerts students to potentially uncredited text and prompts them to cite appropriately. It even guides them on citing AI-generated suggestions transparently, a skill becoming increasingly relevant in academic and professional writing. Pretty cool, no?
Okay, I’m starting to sound like an ad for Packback. Truth is, I’m torn between wanting to prepare students not just for their current courses but for the realities of the professional world. AI is not going away, and I’m already seeing more and more student use, and that’s not permitted use. We’ve got to find a balance for ethical use of AI, where tools like Writing Lab can hopefully serve as an extension of our classroom and not a means to cheat. Students using it could gain confidence and competence, reducing the time I spend grading and marking basic errors and allowing me to focus on higher-level feedback. Ah, that would be really nice. I can’t wait to try it. For more information, send me an email, and I’ll forward it to our Packback Curriculum Consultant, Naomi Campbell (not the British fashion model, I’m sure), who is standing in for our regular support person, Katie Horan.
Additional Information
Using AI to Support Teaching & Learning: Captioning and Quiz Question Generation
AI is all the rage these days, specifically generative AI. It seems as if everywhere I turn there are articles about new tools and new debates about their usefulness. Although that might be because Google’s algorithms know I’m interested, so they keep feeding me stuff. The next person may see nothing about generative AI. Oh, well. I’m obsessed. I just started a module with my ENG101 students on rhetorical analysis, and we’ve been exploring how to use generative AI tools to help with that process. I made sure to find database sources for them to use, which makes it more challenging to have the chatbots do all the work for them. And then we’re using website articles to practice with. It seems to be working well. I have a sense that students are quicker to understand analysis by doing it this way.
But I’m also looking for a way to get the chatbots to help me with streamlining my processes. I’m pretty solid with my content knowledge at this point after 30+ years of teaching, but I could use some time-saving hacks. One such hack is writing quiz questions and captions for YouTube videos. I’m a firm believer in not reinventing the wheel, so if I find a good video that already shares the essential points of a lesson, I’m using it. The problem is, if I put that video in Canvas Studio and create a quiz, it takes a long time to caption the video and write the quiz questions.
I discovered recently that YouTube videos added to Canvas Studio don’t have the captions attached. I can go over to YouTube and copy/paste the transcript for the video, but I would still need to match up the words with the video which can be time-consuming. It’s actually faster just to transcribe it in the captioning editor. But who has time for that? At that point, it would be easier to just create my own video, which Studio will auto-caption for me. But I found a solution online using a website https://downsub.com/ that will take a URL from a YouTube video and provide an SRT file with the subtitles that you can then just upload to the video in Studio. The website is super sketchy, so be careful if you use it. I’ll show you how in the video below.
Once I have the captions in place, now I need to create a quiz and add my questions. Super easy to do in Studio, but it’s tedious and time-consuming. For this, I found a Chrome extension, NoteGPT: YouTube Summary with ChatGPT & Notes. Make sure you’re using the Chrome browser. The original script for the extension was to summarize YouTube videos for you, but I was able to edit the script to make it write quiz questions. That makes me sound like I’m really smart, but don’t worry, it wasn’t that complicated. The following video will show you the whole process in case you want to replicate it yourself.
Video Link: https://app.screencast.com/3Anjh9XC7a5W1
Can AI Grade My Essays For Me?
I made a joke with Beth a few days ago about how I wished AI would grade my essays for me. And then I really thought about that, and now I can’t stop. I mean seriously if AI can write the students’ papers for them, what about us? Why can’t it grade papers too? Well, guess what. It can. I tried it. Shhh. Now don’t tell on me. I used both ChatGPT and Microsoft’s tool built into Bing. GPT is much better.
First off, it was a lot of work, probably equal to if I’d just graded them myself, but the benefit was far better for the student. It spat out paragraph long feedback on what was wrong, how the paper did or didn’t meet each rubric standard, and how to improve the work. I was simply amazed. If I were to leave that kind of feedback on a paper, it would take me days to grade instead of hours. As it is, I’ve already moved to grading by recording my feedback, so I can say more and make it easier for students to understand what I’m saying, but this was amazing.
But like a said. It wasn’t easy or quick. I first began by asking the AI to find a rubric for a news article using a summary lead and following the inverted pyramid style. It quickly pulled up a rubric that was adequate, but it was only on a 10-point scale. I used it anyway to see how it would work. Then my next prompt asked Maud, remember, I named her Maud in my last post. I asked her to grade this news article using that rubric, and pasted in a student’s news article. Surprisingly, it worked. She put the two prompts together and graded the article. It was okay, but there wasn’t much detail and it didn’t really meet the standards I was looking for. I decided instead to ask Maud to build me a rubric and added the essential things and the total points I needed. She created this.
Okay, that was interesting, but could she grade a news article using that rubric? I wondered. Yep! She gave the article a 47/60, provided the tally from the rubric AND added this feedback:
Strengths:
- The article follows the inverted pyramid structure.
- The information provided is relevant to the target audience.
- The article includes quotes from reliable sources.
Weaknesses:
- The lead is weak and could benefit from being more focused.
- The article could use more clarity in its presentation of information.
- The article could be more concise.
- The article could be more explicit in identifying biases or opinions.
Suggestions for Improvement:
- The lead should be more specific and focused on the key point of the article.
- The article should be more clear and concise, with shorter paragraphs and simpler language.
- The author should explicitly identify any biases or opinions and explain how they might influence the article’s content.
- The author should consider additional sources to provide a more complete understanding of the issue.
Crazy, right? I probably would have scored it a bit higher, but I noticed Maud didn’t say anything about grammar and punctuation in her feedback and I found a couple of specific errors, so I asked her about them. I typed in, “What about grammar and punctuation?” She replied:
As an AI language model, I don’t have the capability to fully analyze grammar and punctuation, but I can tell you that there are a few errors in the article. For example, in the sentence “This issue goes for not only students but members of the community who live downtown,” the phrase “goes for” should be replaced with “applies to.” Additionally, there are a few instances where punctuation could be improved for clarity and readability. Overall, however, the article is well-written and understandable.
She was right. In another instance, Maud pointed out two run-on sentences in the article and offered a suggestion for how to fix it. Amazing.
Yep, I’m obsessed, but that took a lot of work. In fact, I paused playing so I could quickly grade those news articles and get them back to students. This was going to take all day. First, Maud would forget my rubric after a few follow-up questions about the article she graded, so I’d have to start all over. Then sometimes she would ignore my rubric and just give a paragraph analysis of the article or she would leave out key elements. Basically, she was not consistent and I had to keep retraining her. She gave good feedback, but not the same feedback for each student.
Trashy Romance Novels & Chat GPT
Okay, this could be good. Or not. How exactly does a trashy romance novel help shape my current approach to your work here at GCC? OMG! I’m going to ask Chat GPT to answer that. That’s a good question for her, Maud. We’re on a first-name basis now.
Maud said, “It is unlikely that reading a trashy romance novel would have a direct impact on a teacher’s approach to teaching at a community college. However, there are some potential ways that reading for pleasure could indirectly impact a teacher’s teaching approach.” Well, that’s not very exciting. She’s good at changing the topic or guiding me away from salacious topics and back to more sensible ones. I think I’ll pass on that for now and write about my obsession with Maud (Chat GPT) instead.
I’m completely fascinated by how easy it is for students to cheat using AI tools now, and it’s amazing how freaked-out educators across the country have become. Frankly, I find it all amusing. It’s the perfect scenario for forcing people to change, adapt or get out of their comfort zone. I think we get too comfortable in our jobs at times. We like a certain textbook, and even though it’s 20 years old, it still works somehow. Or you might have a lesson or lecture that you started using when you began teaching 10 years ago. The course content hasn’t changed; the lecture is still good, right? Well, that’s the comfortable mindset. We’re in our comfort zone.
A comfort zone can be described as “a psychological state in which things feel familiar to a person and they are at ease and in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of anxiety and stress.” Well, Chat GPT and other AI innovations have blown most of us out of our comfort zones. We need to face reality. Just like when Covid hit and we all had to magically transform to online learning almost overnight, we are now once again being challenged to get out of our comfort zones and “reimagine” our assessments. I recently wrote about how to Robot-Proof Your Writing Assignments which includes a few tips for how to create assignments that are more difficult for AI to complete. I’ve also been doing a lot of reading on AI and came across a few resources that I found useful, including this page from the University of Utah which is an excellent resource for AI Generative Tools and tips for assignment design and how to discuss these tools with students. Good luck getting out of your comfort zone once again.
Robot-Proof Your Writing Assignments
It’s difficult to estimate the exact number of students who are using AI to help with their homework. However, with the increasing popularity and accessibility of AI technology, it’s likely that a growing number of students are using AI-powered tools and applications to assist with their studies, as well as cheat on their assignments. However, AI use is not all bad. For example, some students may use AI-powered learning platforms or tutoring systems to help with specific subjects. We use one for our students in our English composition courses to help students with grammar and punctuation. Others may use AI to generate reports or summaries of academic articles. Additionally, AI-powered writing and grammar-checking tools like Grammarly are also becoming more common for students to use when working on essays or other written assignments. But not every student is looking to AI for support. Some are looking for an easy way to get their assignments completed without much effort on their part. But there is something we can do about AI. We can either embrace AI and create assignments that utilize these powerful tools to help students learn, or we start robot-proofing our assignments so it’s not so easy for AI to do it for them.
Making assignments that are “AI proof” can be challenging, as artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly sophisticated and can potentially be used to complete assignments on behalf of students. However, there are some strategies that instructors can use to create assignments that are more difficult for AI to complete. Here are some tips:
- Use personalized or creative prompts: Assignments that require students to draw on their own experiences or creativity can be more difficult for AI to complete. For example, instead of asking a question with a clear answer that could be found through a search engine, ask students to write a personal essay or create a piece of art that demonstrates their understanding of a concept.
- Randomize questions and answers: Rather than using the same set of questions and answers for each student, consider randomizing them. This can make it more difficult for AI to predict the questions and prepare answers in advance.
- Use short answer questions: Questions that require a short answer or explanation can be more difficult for AI to generate. In addition, you can change the questions from year to year to make it more difficult for AI to find pre-existing answers.
- Use open-ended questions: Open-ended questions require students to think critically and engage with the material, which can be more difficult for AI to complete. This could be questions that require students to analyze a case study or explain a concept in their own words.
- Use plagiarism detection software: Plagiarism detection software can help to identify assignments that have been completed by AI or copied from other sources. This can serve as a deterrent and help to ensure that students are completing assignments on their own.
Overall, making assignments that are completely “AI proof” may be difficult, but by using a combination of these strategies, instructors can create assignments that are more challenging for AI to complete and promote student learning.
Here are some examples of how students might be using AI to help with their homework but don’t have to be considered cheating:
- AI-powered tutoring systems: Some students are using AI-powered tutoring systems to receive personalized feedback and guidance on specific subjects. These systems can help students understand challenging concepts and improve their problem-solving skills.
- AI-powered writing and grammar-checking tools: Students often use AI-powered writing and grammar-checking tools to improve the quality of their written work. These tools can catch spelling and grammar errors, suggest word choices, and provide feedback on writing style and tone.
- AI-powered study aids: Students may use AI-powered study aids, such as flashcard apps or educational games, to reinforce their understanding of specific subjects. These aids can provide customized learning experiences based on the student’s progress and performance.
- AI-powered research tools: Students can use AI-powered research tools to quickly summarize academic articles or search for relevant information on a particular topic. These tools can save students time and help them focus on the most important information.
- AI-powered language translation tools: For students studying foreign languages, AI-powered language translation tools can help them understand and translate written material and other sources of information.
These are just a few examples of how AI is being used to help students with their homework. The use of AI in education is still in its early stages, and new applications are being developed all the time.
Reading:
Here’s an article with some more strategies to prevent students from using AI tools. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2023/01/19/ways-prevent-students-using-ai-tools-their-classes-opinion
