Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning

Generative AI 

Beyond generating topic-based paper assignments, generative AI can be used to improve writing skills, create royalty free art and music, and serve as an advanced form of search in all aspects of life. One example of how unique this resource is: you can copy and paste your grocery list and ChatGPT or Bing will provide you with recipe recommendations ensuring that you maximize meals throughout the week.

The list of generative AI is ever expanding. Here are a few examples of generative AI platforms:

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is an AI-powered conversational assistant developed by OpenAI. It uses advanced language models to understand and generate human-like responses, helping users answer questions, explore ideas, create content, solve problems, and complete a variety of tasks. ChatGPT supports interactive conversations and can assist with writing, research, learning, coding, and more. Depending on the features available, it can also work with images, files, voice, and data. Although it can provide useful information and assistance across many topics, its responses may not always be accurate and should be verified when accuracy is important (response from ChatGPT on 10/09/2026).

• ChatGPT Release Notes
• What is ChatGPT? Open AI’s Chat GPT Explained 
• OpenAI blog on ChatGPT 

Copilot Chat

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant designed to help users work smarter, create faster, and stay more productive. Integrated across Microsoft 365 applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and the web, Copilot uses conversational AI to help generate content, summarize information, analyze data, draft communications, and automate routine tasks. By combining advanced AI models with organizational data and Microsoft 365 services, Copilot can provide context-aware assistance directly within the tools users already use every day. Built with enterprise-grade security, privacy, and compliance protections, Copilot helps individuals and organizations streamline workflows, enhance collaboration, and focus on higher-value work (response from Copilot chat on 10/09/2026).

• Microsoft Copilot
• How to access Copilot
• Access through Teams
• Ask Copilot in Teams Conversations

Gemini

Google's Gemini has evolved far beyond its origins as "Bard," maturing into a powerful, multimodal AI ecosystem deeply integrated across Google's suite of products and services. Designed from the ground up to understand text, code, images, audio, and video simultaneously, Gemini acts as a versatile collaborator for everything from creative brainstorming and complex problem-solving to everyday productivity.

As Google's flagship AI technology, Gemini is built to seamlessly adapt to how you work and create. Whether you are looking to draft content, analyze data, or explore new ideas, Gemini offers fast, intuitive, and nuanced assistance (response from Gemini on 10/09/2026).

• Google Gemini

Grok

Grok is an AI developed by xAI, designed to be maximally truth-seeking and helpful. Inspired by the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it offers clear, insightful, and often witty answers with a cosmic perspective on the universe and humanity. Grok assists with everything from scientific and technical questions to philosophy, coding, creative work, and everyday tasks. It has real-time access to the web and X, can generate images and video, supports voice conversations, and is available on grok.com, x.com, and the iOS and Android apps (response from Grok on 10/09/2026).

• Grok

Claude 

Claude is an AI assistant created by Anthropic, designed to be helpful, honest, and safe in conversations and tasks.

Here are some key things about Claude:

• It can help with writing, analysis, coding, creative projects, research, and many other everyday and professional tasks
• It comes in a family of models, from fast and lightweight to highly capable, so people can match the model to the work at hand
• It can search the web for current information, create documents, apps, and interactive content, and work with files that people upload
• Memory is optional: when turned on in settings, Claude can draw on past conversations, and when it’s off, it doesn’t carry information from one conversation to the next
• It’s available on the web, in mobile and desktop apps, and through the Claude API and Claude Platform for developers
• It also works inside other tools, including Claude Code for software development, Claude Cowork for knowledge work, and extensions for Chrome, Excel, and PowerPoint
• It adapts its tone and approach to what’s most helpful for each situation

Claude aims to be a useful collaborative partner for the projects and questions people bring to it (response from Claude on 10/09/2026).

• Claude

Teaching with Generative AI 

Through properly educating ourselves and our students about AI and its uses, generative AI can become more than a way to cheat, but a resource for taking concepts and ideas beyond what we can imagine. 

As we navigate the AI revolution in education, we will continue to uphold the values of integrity, fostering a culture of honesty, and nurturing an environment where genuine learning thrives providing a foundation of success for our students in their future careers. 

Our pedagogical approaches will need to change to mediate the temptation of students who want to overly rely on this resource in their course work. For more insight into the benefits of this adoption, you can read an article from one of our Instructional Designers that was published in the OLC Insights newsletter titled "From Reactions to Insights: Lessons in AI from a Chemistry Conversation" highlighting the adoption of AI in the classroom.

Here are some suggestions that you can implement in your classroom. 

• Make reflection and planning part of your course work. Encourage your students to spend time reviewing their learnings and planning their next steps as part of the learning process. Currently, artificial intelligence cannot compete with human ability in these tasks. After each lesson, set aside some time for students to discuss and digest what they've learned. Include a section for self-review and future planning in their written assignments, which will also be a part of their grades. This is something that students won't be able to accomplish effectively using AI tools, so feel free to explain this to them.

  • Example: Instead of a traditional paper assignment, which is even easier to cheat through now, assign a multimedia project and a self-reflection essay.

• Encourage students to utilize a variety of media. Instead of a traditional essay or brief written task, ask them to present their understanding via an audio recording, podcast, video presentation, speech, sketch, infographic, or a multifaceted multimedia project.

• Design tasks that relate to recent happenings or emerging discussions in the relevant domain; to challenges inherent to the local community, or to debates that have transpired within your own class. Alternatively, prompt your students to discern a correlation between the subject matter of the course and their individual experiences or understanding.

• Flipped Learning approach: Instruct students to study and understand the subject matter at home, and then put this knowledge into practice, show their understanding, and actively participate in class activities, either individually or in collaborative small groups.

• Integrate ChatGPT into your assignments. The more accustomed your students get with its advantages and disadvantages, the less likely they are to rely on it when trying to cut corners on assignments.

  • Example: to enhance your students' analytical skills, have them formulate a question for ChatGPT and analyze the generated response, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses.

• Educate your students on the safe usage of generative AI. Be aware that ChatGPT may share the personal information of account holders with third parties, such as vendors and service providers, as per their Privacy Policy. Ensure your students understand the importance of never divulging personal or sensitive data to AI chatbots. See Privacy Policy. 

  • Tennessee Tech Syllabus Statement Options 

• Ensure your students know how to correctly cite generative AI. 

  • ChatGPT outlines how it uses the information provided in its privacy policy.  

  • Cite generative AI correctly 

AI in the Classroom 

As generative AI continues to expand and make its way into industry, it is important we ensure our students are familiar with the tools and technology being created for their future fields. Listed below are a few examples of how generative AI is being used in various industries. 

Gaming and Entertainment:

• Procedural content generation for video games, including landscapes, characters, and levels.

• Generating realistic human-like faces for video game characters.

• Creating virtual worlds and environments.

Fashion and Design:

• Generating unique and innovative designs for clothing, accessories, and home decor.

• Virtual try-on for clothing and accessories, allowing customers to see how they would look.

• Creating personalized fashion recommendations based on individual preferences.

Art and Creativity:

• Generating artwork, including paintings, sculptures, and digital art.

• Assisting artists in creating new and unique pieces.

• Enhancing and transforming images and photographs.

Film and Animation:

• Creating realistic visual effects and computer-generated imagery (CGI) in movies.

• Generating virtual characters and creatures.

• Automating the animation process.

Healthcare and Medicine:

• Generating synthetic medical images for training and testing algorithms.

• Creating personalized treatment plans based on patient data.

• Assisting in drug discovery and molecule design.

Robotics and Automation:

• Generating robot motion and behavior.

• Simulating and optimizing robot tasks and movements.

• Creating virtual training environments for robots.

Advertising and Marketing:

• Generating personalized content and advertisements based on customer preferences.

• Creating virtual spokespersons and influencers.

• Designing customized user experiences and interfaces.

Music and Audio:

• Composing original music and melodies.

• Enhancing audio quality and removing noise.

• Creating virtual instruments and synthesizers.

Architecture and Interior Design:

• Generating building designs and floor plans.

• Simulating and visualizing interior design concepts.

• Assisting in urban planning and landscape design.

Data Augmentation:

• Generating synthetic data for training machine learning models.

• Increasing the size and diversity of datasets.

• Addressing privacy concerns by generating privacy-preserving synthetic data.

Please note that this list is not exhaustive, and generative AI is continually finding new applications in various industries as research and development progress.

AI in Assessments 

For assignments where generative AI is not allowed, here are a few tips for detecting the use of generative AI and helping ensure students don't use it. 

Clear Communication

• It is important to clearly communicate your expectations to your students. This should be done on the syllabus and specified for each assignment. 

• Remind your students of the university's academic integrity policy. 

Rethink Assessment Questions

• Run your assessment questions through ChatGPT.  It is important to run them a few times so you can see the various outputs students could turn in and learn the likely answers ChatGPT or other generative AI might generate. 

• Create questions that require reflecting on personal experiences or in class discussions. 

• Use multiple assignments and methods to create a history of student's writing styles to use as comparison for their personal writing abilities and voice. 

• Keep in mind, AI generated responses typically have a tone of voice that seems overly professional, grammatically exact, and detached. 

Strategies to Deter Academic Integrity Violations

Submitting assignments created or enhanced by Generative AI when not approved by the course instructor is an academic integrity violation. It is similar to paying an individual to complete your assignments, write your papers, or take your tests. Here are some tips to mitigate cheating and ensure that your students are getting the most out of their educational experience.

Or as a hallucinating AI would say, “Using AI to whip up or boost your work when it's not really asked for or okayed is pretty much cheating. It's like paying someone else to pen your essay, sit your exam, or get your work done. Here are a few pointers on keeping cheating in check in this age of AI magic.”

• Implement Consistent and Clear Communication in your course. The best way to deter an academic integrity violation is to address the elephant in the room. Please use the Academic Integrity First-Day Toolkit to encourage discussions and questions.

• Discuss the policy on academic integrity, discuss when and when not to use AI for each of your assignments throughout the semester (policy 216). 

• Give specific examples of how generative AI can help and hinder their academic progress.

• Be specific and real with the students about your concern for their academic progress if they use AI to cheat.

• Build relationships with your students by ensuring them that you want what they want, to be successful in their future careers. 

• Ask pointed questions through out the semester: Why is integrity important? Are you getting the most out of this class? Are you ensuring that you are prepared for your future career?

• Run your assignments through generative AI and discuss the results with your students. Generative AI does not produce the same results each time, but the results will be similar. 

• Learn to recognize some key components to AI produced text.

  • Often very formal (unless asked to use a different tone) and systematic utilizing perfect grammar and sentence compensation.

  • Consider students previous writing and compare for a dramatic difference.

  • Ask students to submit hand written work for every other assignment. Research shows some improvement in mixing both methods of writing.

  • Often very verbose using multiple paragraphs to illustrate a point. Additionally, AI produced text will repeat, though phrased differently throughout the text.

  • Cite made up sources, though this is quickly changing with access to tools like Orchid, Research Gate, and Google Scholar. (Paid AI services are nearly perfect in citing sources)

  • Does not follow specific assignment guidelines by using sources not discussed in class.

  • Perfect use of grammar, editing, and the tone of the work is voiceless and impersonal.

  • General and predictable responses. For example, Some people believe that X is better than Y. However, there are well established foundations for X and Y with strong supporters of Y over X. 

• AI hallucination is when factual errors are written to look plausible but are factually incorrect. These happens often when referencing data from a specific “Lens”, but does not take into account the entire picture of events. 

Resources

CITL Tech Tuesdays

The CITL Team provides just-in-time training and presentations to faculty and departments across campus.

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AI Academy 

The AI Academy is a course designed for anyone looking to explore and build a foundational understanding of Artificial Intelligence. We are currently in the process of updating the AI Academy course and we are excited to launch it within Canvas later this fall. In the meantime, interested individuals can register using the link below. Registrants will be notified when the Academy is ready. 

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AI for Education Prompt Library

The AI for Education Prompt Library provides prompt guides and examples to help educators better utilize AI tools for class planning, course design, classroom management, and more. 

AI for Education Prompt LibrarY