Chances are, one of the reasons why you signed up for this course is because you have a lot of questions about Artificial Intelligence. I wanted to teach this special topics course because I have a lot of questions about AI as well. Through the reading and research I’ve done for the last few years, I think I kind of have the beginning of answers to some of my questions, such as what to do about teaching writing with (and in spite of) AI. But like most things, the more I learn about AI, the more questions I have.
What is one of the main questions you have about AI? For this essay, you will conduct research about that question. After a series of research progress updates, you will write an essay (around 2,000 words) that begins to answer your question, based on the results of your research. Note the schedule for research update discussions and due dates along with the peer review before you turn in the final draft to me.
Here are some more details:
- For the first research progress update, you will need to tell us (both me and other students) what question about AI you are going to research and why you are interested in that. You want to research a question that is as specific as possible, and also something that is only one question. As part of the process, we’ll discuss your questions for peer review, and I will offer some feedback. I do reserve the right to make you choose a different question/topic, and once you have a question for research, you need to stick with the topic of that question.
- For all of the research progress updates (including the first one), you will need to share information about the research you’ve done so far. Some if it might be research shared by you or your classmates as part of the AI News and Updates assignment, though you will also need to conduct research on your own and specific to your research question. By “research,” I mean MSM, credible online sources, academic research (journals and books you might access via the Halle Library), etc. You could also do something like an interview with an expert on AI as well.
- I don’t have any specific requirements about how many sources you will need to find for your research, how many of your sources you should cite in your essay, or what kinds of sources you need to include (academic versus MSM, for example). But just to give you an idea: I’d suggest two or three different sources for each of your updates, you should probably have a mix of different kinds of sources, and your essay will probably want to reference somewhere around four to six different sources.
- You should write an essay for an audience beyond the members of this class that uses your research rather than what you might know as an academic research paper. We’ll talk about this more as the semester continues, but think of the readings we’re doing this semester from MSM and platforms like Substack as models to imitate. The only thing you will need to do that is a departure from these kinds of articles is you will need to use MLA Style to cite your sources– that is, in-text citation and a works cited page.
- We will conduct a peer review session of these essays and it will be due to me in the last week of classes this term. I will read, comment on, and grade your essay and return it to you when you turn in the final.