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AI Information for Students

How should I disclose the use of AI in my academic work?

Even when your instructor gives you explicit permission to use Generative AI in your assignments, you have a responsibility to tell them how you used it. Instructors will often ask that you follow the disclosure guidelines of their specific discipline, so be sure to check your course’s syllabus and policies first.

Does ÍøÆØÃÅ recommend a specific AI tool or tools?

Because ÍøÆØÃÅ is a Google Campus, you have free access to Gemini Pro and Notebook LM. Both tools are available in your Google App Launcher (the ‘waffle’). When using these tools in your Cub account, there are privacy protections in place that keep your data safe. You can read more about these protections . If you choose to use other Generative AI tools, it is important to learn how your inputs and uploads are collected and used by those tools. Before inputting any information, check the AI tool’s privacy policies and settings to ensure you understand how your data will be used to train the model.

What are some good ways for me to use AI? Time management Break a large project into smaller steps. Action: Paste an assignment prompt into Gemini. Prompt: "Break this 2,000-word research paper into a 10-day step-by-step checklist with specific daily goals." Create a personalized study schedule. Action: Give Gemini your fixed class times and your peak focus hours. Prompt: "I have classes from 10 AM to 2 PM. I am most focused in the morning and tired by 4 PM. Build a study schedule for Tuesday that puts my hardest math homework in a high-energy slot." Add deadlines and reminders to Google Calendar. Action: Use the Google Calendar extension. Prompt: "Look at my syllabus [uploaded PDF] and add all the assignment dates to my Google Calendar with a reminder 1 week before each." Bring focus to study sessions. Action: Tell Gemini how much time you have and what you need to cover. Prompt: "I have 45 minutes before my next class. Based on these lecture notes, what are the 3 most important concepts I should review to make this session effective?" Rank your tasks based on urgency and importance. Action: List all your pending tasks and their due dates. Prompt: "I have a lab report due tomorrow, a math quiz in 3 days, and a reading assignment due next week. Rank these by priority and tell me exactly how many hours to spend on each today." Gemini 3.0 assisted in the creation of these prompts. Tutoring In Gemini, turn on the Guided Learning tool and then enter the question or questions you need help with. The tool will not give you an answer, but will enter into a dialogue with you to help increase your understanding. It can also create follow-up questions for extra practice. In Notebook LM, add your documents, links, and Google Drive items into a ‘notebook’. Ask the tool to create flash cards, test questions, and other study materials. The tool will only use the information you input, so it will be accurate and focused on your objectives. Summarizing When you have a large amount of information to review and you are not concerned about specific errors (or when you will spend time checking for errors), AI tools are useful for creating summaries. Notebook LM is specifically designed to accomplish summarizing tasks and can produce written, audio, or video summaries. Feedback When you don’t have access to a reliable human, AI tools can provide feedback on your assignments. You might prompt Gemini to check for readability. You can also ask Gemini to provide multiple perspectives on your work–for example, from the points of view of hostile, friendly, and naive recipients. It can also be helpful to ask Gemini to pick out your main argument or thesis and your supporting statements to make sure your ideas are being clearly expressed. Brainstorming support After you have done some brainstorming offline on a particular topic or assignment, asking Gemini to expand on your list can be helpful. Generative AI is good at remixing and modifying ideas in order to generate new ones. However, keep in mind that asking Generative AI to brainstorm for you (instead of after you) will always return pre-existing ideas, since Large Language Models are designed to produce the most statistically common results.

What are some ways I should not use AI? As a Short-Cut Learning is a process which is meant to be challenging. Just like training for a sport or learning a musical instrument, if you don’t go through a period of struggle, you don’t grow. Make sure that you are not using AI tools as a way of avoiding the learning process. For Assessments Sometimes we forget that tests and quizzes are meant for more than just a grade–they are meant to measure what you know and can do. Using AI tools on an assessment gives you and your instructor a false impression of your current abilities. This creates gaps in your knowledge and snowballs over time. You set yourself up for failure in upper-division courses when you misrepresent your knowledge in lower-level courses. Because you are under pressure Panic over impending deadlines and competing obligations can lead you to make poor choices, including outsourcing your work to generative AI. If this is something you are struggling with, the ÍøÆØÃÅ Student Success team can help you create time management plans and put anti-procrastination strategies into place. Learning to handle your business may be the most important knowledge you gain in college. When it’s personal Expressive writing, personal sentiments, notes of sympathy or congratulations–if it’s meant to be coming from your heart, don’t use AI tools! Humans produce messy writing with grammatical errors and quirky turns of phrase when they are demonstrating their feelings; outsourcing to a machine reads as insincere. To replace humans Large Language Models are trained to increase your engagement with them, so they will tell you what you want to hear–your opinions are correct, your ideas are the most amazing, your perspective is the only reasonable one. Remember, AI is not human and it is incapable of thinking or feeling. The ‘advice’ it gives you is machine-made, predictive text. Genuine advice and connection can only come from actual people, so seek out friends you can trust and experts who can thoughtfully guide you. If you are in need of someone to talk to, the ÍøÆØÃÅ Counseling Center is an excellent free resource.

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What are some of the ethical issues around using AI? The following list comes from AI-researcher Leon Furze. You can read more about each item on their website. Bias. The data used to train AI systems reflects the prejudices and biases of society, and almost always results in output that amplifies those positions. Environmental Concerns. Refining rare earth minerals and metals to manufacture the electronic components used by AI systems contributes to soil, water, and air pollution. Data centers, where AI processing power is located, consume large amounts of energy and water. Truth & Academic Integrity. AI models generate fictitious content, including highly convincing deepfakes (manipulated images and videos). Individuals then use AI models for academic cheating and to spread false information. Copyright. Creative works of art, writing, and music are used to train AI models without the creators’ consent. AI content then imitates these works without attribution. Privacy. AI models collect personal data without the individual’s knowledge or consent. Current legal protections are inadequate to ensure this data is used responsibly. Datafication. AI-powered apps collect large amounts of user data. This information is then used to predict and influence users’ behavior. Emotion Recognition. AI-enabled technology analyzes facial expressions and speech patterns in order to shape behavior. However, this recognition is highly unreliable, especially with people from non-dominant cultural backgrounds. Human Labor. In order to create safeguards around the output of Large Language Models, content moderators must interact with large amounts of traumatic content. These workers have thus far typically been in foreign countries, receiving minimal pay and working long hours to the point of exploitation. Power. All of the individual issues listed above contribute to increasing systemic disparities serving the interests of those already in power.

How can I be ready to use AI in my career? Build your AI Literacy by learning how large language models work and what limitations and biases they have. Practice ethical and transparent use by disclosing when and how you use AI, including citing tools and explaining your processes. Be prepared to explain how you avoid over-reliance on AI in your work. Integrate AI into authentic tasks aligned with how employers use it. Be sure you can demonstrate how AI is augmenting your analysis and decisions rather than replacing them. Develop human skills including communication, adaptability, and problem-solving. Practice explaining your ideas clearly, giving and receiving feedback, and collaborating. Build an AI portfolio with the following components: a personal AI philosophy and ethics statement a list of tools you have used with examples of the tasks you completed a collection of well-crafted prompts used for a variety of purposes, including iterations an example of a project where you incorporated AI, along with a statement explaining your workflow, how AI contributed to the outcome, and how you used your judgment to accept or reject AI-generated elements an example of how you identified and addressed errors or biases in AI output an example of a group project where AI was used, including the group contract or agreement showing agreed-upon norms for AI usage and academic integrity certificates, badges, or microcredentials in AI literacy, prompt engineering, data analysis, or domain-specific AI tools