Professor Laughton generated a photo using PlaygroundAI with the prompt: “combine image with Mary Had A Little Lamb in the style of Picasso.” The image was generated from a generic photo of the professor next to a water fountain on campus.

Professor’s sabbatical to cover advancements

By Delaney Reaves/Editor-In-Chief

Professor James Laughton has been teaching at NWACC for 25 years and has been granted a sabbatical in Fall 2024 for Artificial Intelligence research. During his sabbatical from his English instructor role, he will develop course advancements and bring community perspective to the institution.

According to the NWACC faculty handbook, a sabbatical leave is a benefit to eligible faculty to encourage professional and personal development. Recipients take leave from teaching and service duties to engage in other academic work. The work may include continuing education, scholarly or creative projects and/or development of curriculum.

He put together a professional development session for Early College Experience instructors regarding the use of AI within the college. Laughton said he was concerned about the impact, such as plagiarism and copyright issues, that the technology could have on students. He wanted to teach the instructors how AI works and how it is navigated to fight common misconceptions.

Laughton’s sabbatical was approved during the spring semester. He will create a self-paced Canvas course for faculty as an introduction into AI. This will consist of defining the AI software and showing them different platforms that are used. Other components include creating a syllabus policy, what to do in the case of plagiarism, and the issue of false accusations regarding plagiarism.

Laughton said that some departments are very universal and might follow similar syllabi and plans, but there is much academic freedom in how faculty can go about the course.

“We have outcomes for courses, but we are responsible for building the courses that meet the outcomes,” Laughton said.

Laughton is taking online professional development workshops[1]  to extend his knowledge in preparation for course development and research. Laughton said that the most important thing to learn within AI use is how to prompt correctly.

“AI gives you the ability to build curriculum or at least frameworks for curriculum very, very quickly,” Laughton said.

During his sabbatical Laughton will be going into the community to interview local businesses that have adopted AI systems, including those in the medical and sciences realms, to document how the area is adopting it. He said he is seeking out learning from anyone in the local community who is extensively using AI tools or in the early stages of use.

“I think it’s really important that this be connected to our local community,” Laughton said.

The goal after reaching into the community would be to tailor the knowledge shared with instructors in hopes of connecting to the local employers to in turn help the students.

“Anytime you use any kind of technology like this you should be thinking about what are the implications of it,” Laughton said.

A big concern Laughton has is misinformation and those who have ill intent on how they can use the tools. Laughton’s main positive with AI is that it allows the user to complete daily tasks quicker and advance capabilities we once did not have in technology.

Laughton said that job loss is a concern and that some jobs are initially going to be impacted by the advancement of AI within daily lives. But you still have to be an expert or have the knowledge to know when AI is producing an error.

“If you don’t know the information, how are you going to know what’s an error?” Laughton said.

“It makes it more important and more timely I think to teach media literacy and to learn media literacy yourself whether you were taught it or not,” Laughton said. 

“Media literacy is such an important thing because technology is just so embedded in our life, and this is just going to make it even more so,” Laughton said.

Laughton said that he urges those to use the AI programs responsibly and to treat it like an unreliable Wikipedia entry rather than a library database source. His advice: if library peer reviewed information is needed don’t go to AI yet.

“What it produces is never as good as what a student who’s putting forth the effort will produce.”

–Jim Laughton

He hopes his work will help instructors to become more comfortable talking about AI with their students and to decide how and when it’s appropriate to use the systems. The work that Laughton will engage in will help people to understand the pros and cons of using AI detection tools. His goal is that the professors who want to use it are able to learn how to in more productive and robust ways and that students will benefit from these efforts.

“[For] young people that grew up and are true technologists, I’m really excited to see what they can do with these tools,” Laughton said.

Related story by Hayden Bowen — Artificial Academics: Students Share Perspectives on AI

Laughton said that having emotions and personal perspectives within creativity and work improves the product. He said that he has found his students somewhat reluctant to use the technology and that he thinks they want to think and understand the material on their own. “What it produces is never as good as what a student who’s putting forth the effort will produce,” Laughton said.

“I was l more blown away by this [AI] than in retrospect I was by the internet simply because the internet developed more slowly than this is,” Laughton said.

Colleen Lawrence, NWACC Curriculum and Instructional Designer, said that she is glad that Laughton is able to have the opportunity to take the sabbatical and continue his research. She said that Laughton has been a point of contact for the development of AI when it first became an occurrence and when it began to impact the college.

“He’s been the AI champion since day one for us, he knows more about it than I do and he created some really helpful guides that really aided a lot of faculty,” Lawrence said.

Lucas Paxton, NWACC Director of  Digital Learning, said that Laughton’s work will play a humongous part within the college with what he’s bringing to the table from everything he has already learned and developed.

PackBack, an AI writing assistant located on Canvas, is a newer asset for students; it is non-generative and an instructional tool that prompts and guides to help improve writing skills. The resource gives the individual feedback and asks questions as they write. The AI feature launched inside courses in Fall 2023 and has officially launched globally on Canvas profiles this semester.

Lawrence said the writing center in Burns Hall 1217 is a helpful tool for students as a resource, but the AI tool might be a first step to take before going to the center.

“It will help spark your brain a little bit and lead you down the writing pathway,” Lawrence said.

Paxton said that he recognizes there can be a stress for students regarding plagiarism systems flagging writing assignments as AI generated. He said that this can become an issue due to AI properties available but there should be caution before penalizing students before verifying that it is not AI.

With the advancements in AI use within education Paxton said that training students and giving the faculty awareness that these tools might do things blazingly fast is needed. But individuals need to still evaluate them to make sure they’re including the human element in the design.

“There is a very broad range of faculty who want to embrace AI in their course including generative AI like ChatGPT but there is also the other end of the spectrum,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence said that as each individual department and individual instructor decides how to adapt it, it will become a learning scenario for students too. If students are not aware or informed of parameters in a class regarding AI use within assignments, Lawrence encouraged students to talk with the class and their professor. She said she hopes it can be a learning opportunity.

Concerns from students about plagiarism flags of potential AI use should be discussed with a faculty member before further action is taken. Lawrence said that she understands there is a real concern for students incorrectly called out for scenarios like this. She said that this has to be a conversation had and hopefully faculty are opening it up to discuss AI operations and grading.

Lawrence said that everybody has different ways of adapting and she has seen some faculty who are focusing more on having assignments centered on the process of something like showing work rather than the final result.

“That’s where the content lies; that’s where the real thinking lies and it’s also not as tempting and not as easy to just enter it into ChatGPT. So, there might be a swing in assignments that are more focused towards the process rather than the end result,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence said that she has come across others who have noticed the impact of AI on creativity; a commentbeneath a social media post from artist Amanda Palmer showcasing an AI generated artwork impacted her. The comment read, “who knew AI art would convince me of the existence of a soul, purely because it doesn’t have one.”