An artificial intelligence workshop was held for LBCC students at the TTC Campus’ Multidisciplinary Success Center, where students can learn how to use AI as a tool for their betterment instead of having AI do the work for them.
As AI evolves, the effect is prominent within schools, specifically colleges, where professors have to communicate their policies on AI and what role it plays in their classrooms.
Some of LBCC’s professors allow students to use generative AI as a tool, while others stop the use at the door.
E. Jann Harris, an adjunct professor at LBCC and CSULB, sees the rise in AI and its potential for the betterment of students, which is why the workshops were created.
“We can let students just go off and use it however they want to use it, or we can try to show them ways that they could use it to be more productive,” Harris said.
With growing concerns of plagiarism using AI tools, the workshops are designed and taught by professor Harris, where she shows students how to use it to their advantage.
One chatbot being used is called Copilot, a large language model generative AI software for text. Copilot is available for student use through their student portals, and is able to be customized to fit the needs of each student, such as their majors, interests and hobbies.
Even with the benefits of AI, there are still concerns about its negative effects, especially outside of classroom settings.
“I will say that there’s a lot (of) bad about it, and we talked about that last week there’s a lot of biases in it. There’s a lot of impact to humans, environmental, to our critical thinking.” Harris said.
Despite these concerns, Harris emphasized that AI can serve as a helpful resource if it’s used responsibly and ethically.
“It’s always better to go with a tutor, a human being if you can, but if you’re, you know, it’s 2 in the morning and you’re stuck, what are you gonna do?” Harris said.
For some students like Abraham Chira, AI serves as a helpful guide in their school life.
“I believe that you can use AI to do one of two things, when you’re heavily engaged with it, it will either accentuate your ability to progress, or if you don’t have that ability to progress to digress,” said Chira.
For others, AI may raise concerns not only regarding the authenticity of class work, but the impact it may have on their thinking.
For these reasons, Harris and two other members of the multidisciplinary success center, Isabel Prieto-Torres, a tutorial program coordinator, and Heidi Neu-Stephens, faculty instructional specialist, created the workshops.
“We talked about this as a collective when we started working on this project that we also feel some ethical responsibility to showing students how to use it in ways that can minimize the impact to their critical thinking,” Harris said.
AI has made its way into course syllabi, with some professors stating what is and isn’t allowed in the classroom.
Harris is among those who chose to do so with her syllabus stating all work done by students must be their own original work, even though they can use AI tools to critically and ethically enhance their writing process.
The workshops emphasize ethical use of AI, students like Chira offered their own perspective on how using AI tools can impact a students learning abilities.
At Long Beach City College the goal of these workshops is to teach students how to use AI responsibly, as AI’s presence in education continues to grow, students can learn how to apply it to their academic work without compromising academic integrity.
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