Overview

The Summer 2023 Technology Enhanced Learning Centre (TELC) Newsletter is out!

I think it’s a safe bet to say practically no-one really thought that the explosion of AI tools and services in 2023 would have been so dramatic and rapid, leading to some even warning at the highest political levels that there might be a threat to humanity’s future species dominance on planet Earth when artificial general or super intelligence ‘comes along’. Humans, however, are an incredibly complex, ‘battle-tested’ species, and we have long figured out how to survive and flourish against any odds. Also, humans, I understand, are biologically astounding with their thousand-trillion-trillion-molecule and thirty-seven-trillion-cell bodies, and with their low-energy 10-to-20-watt brains containing about a billion neurons and 100 billion nerve cells. So, that all seems ‘pretty’ awesome to me!

As educators (human awesomeness aside), we must nonetheless fully acknowledge AI is not going to go away, and plan appropriately.

The challenge we now face as educators, however, is to learn how to harness quickly and effectively what AI has to offer. TELC therefore aims to keep faculty and staff up to date on relevant and potentially useful AI-enhanced learning technologies and approaches. With this purpose in mind, this summer 2023 newsletter is mainly about AI, with fewer general interest learning technology posts.

In addition, in a featured post below on the efficacy of some well-known AI detectors, TELC has concluded that even the new Turnitin AI detector is far from being effective at detecting AI content. What’s more, as AI will be ubiquitous in every important application used by students soon, educators will need to think about ways of ‘reimagining’ approaches to assignments by considering the importance of integrating AI creatively into the assignment. Therefore, this newsletter presents some (hopefully useful/interesting) initial ideas for consideration. Moreover, it is the aim of TELC to provide training and share best practice too in this important area.

We therefore wish you good reading!

Click here to view previous TELC newsletters (especially the Spring 2023 Newsletter, which also covered a lot of AI issues). Alternatively, you can follow AI news on https://telblog.unic.ac.cy/artificial-intelligence/.

TELC also offers one-to-one, personalised support on a wide range of technologies to faculty and staff. Training – TELC Portal (unic.ac.cy).

Overview

The Summer 2023 Technology Enhanced Learning Centre (TELC) Newsletter is out!

I think it’s a safe bet to say practically no-one really thought that the explosion of AI tools and services in 2023 would have been so dramatic and rapid, leading to some even warning at the highest political levels that there might be a threat to humanity’s future species dominance on planet Earth when artificial general or super intelligence ‘comes along’. Humans, however, are an incredibly complex, ‘battle-tested’ species, and we have long figured out how to survive and flourish against any odds. Also, humans, I understand, are biologically astounding with their thousand-trillion-trillion-molecule and thirty-seven-trillion-cell bodies, and with their low-energy 10-to-20-watt brains containing about a billion neurons and 100 billion nerve cells. So, that all seems ‘pretty’ awesome to me!

As educators (human awesomeness aside), we must nonetheless fully acknowledge AI is not going to go away, and plan appropriately.

The challenge we now face as educators, however, is to learn how to harness quickly and effectively what AI has to offer. TELC therefore aims to keep faculty and staff up to date on relevant and potentially useful AI-enhanced learning technologies and approaches. With this purpose in mind, this summer 2023 newsletter is mainly about AI, with fewer general interest learning technology posts.

In addition, in a featured post below on the efficacy of some well-known AI detectors, TELC has concluded that even the new Turnitin AI detector is far from being effective at detecting AI content. What’s more, as AI will be ubiquitous in every important application used by students soon, educators will need to think about ways of ‘reimagining’ approaches to assignments by considering the importance of integrating AI creatively into the assignment. Therefore, this newsletter presents some (hopefully useful/interesting) initial ideas for consideration. Moreover, it is the aim of TELC to provide training and share best practice too in this important area.

We therefore wish you good reading!

Click here to view previous TELC newsletters (especially the Spring 2023 Newsletter, which also covered a lot of AI issues). Alternatively, you can follow AI news on https://telblog.unic.ac.cy/artificial-intelligence/.

TELC also offers one-to-one, personalised support on a wide range of technologies to faculty and staff. Training – TELC Portal (unic.ac.cy).

Featured

Top AI Detectors Appear Unreliable: Time To Reimagine Assignments

Results of an analysis into the effectiveness of 4 AI detectors revealed how inaccurate they are, depending on the way they are used.

New Scopus success of the Journal of Teaching English with Technology (TEWT) 

The 2022 Scopus results came out recently; the Scopus Q1 Journal of Teaching English with Technology moved up 25 positions to 101 out of 1001 in the highly competitive Language and Linguistics category.

Assigning AI: Seven Ways of Using AI in Class

Many people are trying to figure out how AI will affect their lives, but one group of people has already been dealing with the reality of AI: educators.

Five Ideas For DL Course Gamification (Contact TELC for more)

Gamification is more than a passing trend, in recent years it has become a must-have feature for any successful LMS.

Referencing ChatGPT: This New Feature Could Help

With its new “Share” function, users can now share conversations and those who access them can continue them. Furthermore, such continued-conversations are only visible to the person continuing the conversation, however, they can be shared further to others.

University of Nicosia Drives Innovation and Engagement with Intentional Technology

The University of Nicosia’s Business School, as part of its dedication to innovative teaching and learning methods, implements the Engageli platform; following its success in UNIC’s Blockchain courses.

Re-Imagining Assignments

Reimagining Assignments: Assessing ChatGPT’s (Or Other AI Platform) Factual Accuracy, Biases And Artificial Empathy

This is a possible reimagined approach to an assignment, where students can analyse and think about factual accuracy, artificial empathy and bias in AI.

Reimagining Assignments In The ChatGPT Era: Be On The Lookout For Unusually Advanced Language Use

It’s important for lecturers to become more familiar with the differences between human and AI writing. This article can help you do just that.

Reimagining Assignments In The ChatGPT Era: Reformulating

Some interesting ideas on reimagining assignments using Lived Experience, Class Conversation & Unique Materials and/or a combination of them.

Reimagining Assignments: Refine Editing Skills Via Grading

After creating a list of possible topics and rubrics, teachers will ask students to create an AI essay and grade it, providing specific feedback justifying each of the scores on the rubric.

Example Of Human-Directed AI-Enhanced Learning

The way humans use the AI generative image space is becoming more interesting by the day! Here is an example of how this might be applied to education.

A Shift to the Creative Curation Process

We expect students will be doing more of this in the future, as a result of the developments in the Generative AI Platforms.

Human Experts Are Required To Craft & Explain Effective Prompts For Generative AI Image Platforms

A well-engineered prompt can create fantastic images. Here ,for instance, are the outputs of four well-known AI tools.

General AI

8 Prompt Tools That Can Help You Create More Effective Prompts

Anyone can write a simple prompt, but knowing how to create a complex and specific prompt isn’t easy. These tools could help.

Microsoft Copilot Announced

Copilot combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with data in the Microsoft Graph— calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings etc—and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn text into a powerful productivity tool.

Perplexity And Burstiness In AI And Human Writing: Two Important Concepts

It is important to understand perplexity and burstiness, as they both appear to be integral to AI detection and bypassing it.

Introducing AI Technologies To Students And Possible Expectations Of An Institution

As a lecturer, expect students to be inquisitive about these tools and to need clear guidance on whether they are authorised to use them for academic work within your course.

7 Interesting AI-Powered Technologies

Fun fact: The banner in this post was generated from one of the tools mentioned below! (before being edited in Illustrator a bit)

Using ChatPDF To Speed Up Your Reading Of Academic Publications

ChatPDF is an AI that can summarise academic publications using prompts, giving you the ability to cover far more papers than you normally would.

New MBA Course Thumbnails in Moodle!

New designs for MBA course thumbnails in Moodle make a small but very noticeable change to the user experience in Moodle. These were done using a human-directed AI curation approach.

Two Cool Plugins For ChatGPT That Lecturers And Students Can Use

Wolfram helps complicated calculations. ScholarAI helps you find access to a database of peer-reviewed articles and academic research.

Contact TELC

Dr Chris Alexander
Technology Enhanced Learning Centre (HEAD)

 alexander.c@unic.ac.cy

Mr Vladislav Kolev
Multimedia Expert & Learning Technologist (TELC)

kolev.v@unic.ac.cy