Generative Al for College Students: A Collaboratively Developed Online Microcourse on GenAI in the College Classroom

Abstract

Academic libraries have taken a variety of approaches to addressing the opportunities and challenges of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in higher education. For universities that have no standard policy around GenAI, instructors are left with little guidance on how to teach students about GenAI in the classroom and may have varying levels of comfort with GenAI and its applications. To address the need for more instruction around GenAI, a team of librarians and university writing center and digital media suite staff took an innovative approach to teaching AI literacy by creating a six-lesson microcourse in their learning management system all about GenAI: how it works, its limitations, and how to use it efficiently and ethically for college research and writing. Microlearning offers a robust avenue for delivering instruction created by multiple experts, while also considering instructors' time constraints around addressing both course content and AI literacy.