Best Practice: Use AI for Knowledge Management and Information Retrieval

Implement widespread use of AI-powered virtual assistants to help learners efficiently find and summarize relevant educational materials. This aids in brainstorming, streamlining the research and study process, evaluating resources, building mental models, and making information more accessible.

Applicable Principles (the why)

Keeping Humans in an Active Role

  • Instructors and learners should balance AI and Human work.

Complementing Creativity

  • Learners should use AI to build on their own original, creative ideas, rather than replace them.

Generative AI Literacy

  • Instructors and learners need to know how and when to use AI appropriately.
  • Instructors and learners need to understand how generative AI works.

Academic Integrity

  • Instructors and learners must acknowledge when and how they have used AI in learning.

Practical Application (the what)

Instructors should consider the role of AI virtual assistants as part of topic exploration and conducting scholarly research for the purpose of learning.  It is important to identify and document expectations for how learners contribute to research question formation, and how AI is used to shape the direction of research.  Instructors should specify how AI is to be cited, and how AI-summarized information is attributed in a source list alongside traditional scholarly sources.  The sources that AI tools are drawing from should be reviewed for currency, accuracy, and fit with the course material. 

Resources for writing with AI should complement the research process, and instructors should provide guidelines for how to integrate material derived from AI alongside traditional published research in the writing and/or presentation phase of assignments.  Instructors should provide guidance for learners on expectations and methods for understanding and demonstrating how they integrated their own original thoughts and work into the community of scholarship.

Resources