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CfLT Newsletter
The posts below are from the CfLT newsletter which includes curated, research-based digital resources to support ongoing faculty development and pedagogical engagement. As of August 2025, CfLT Director Karen Spierling oversees the content. Posts from July 2020-May 2025 were compiled by previous Director Lew Ludwig.
Teaching: Magic School AI
Despite Sydney Green’s proficiency with AI prompting, she often finds extracting specific tasks from advanced models like ChatGPT or Gemini to be time-consuming and sometimes unproductive. To address this, she turned to Magic School AI, a platform offering over 80 AI-powered tools designed to assist educators with lesson planning, assignment creation, and material generation. It’s user-friendly, click-based interface allows users to interact without the need for specialized prompts.
Teaching: Teach Students How to Make Informed AI Decisions
My approach to AI in my writing courses is primarily to teach students how to make informed decisions about when it is appropriate and inappropriate to use AI. Part of this involves helping them understand what they do and don’t learn when they use AI. To that end, I include an AI policy statement on every assignment as well as a table that identifies what students learn if they use AI for some tasks vs.
Tidbit: Adopt or Resist? Beyond the AI Culture Wars
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| I was talking with Matt Kretchmar after our recent session with Leon Furze on “Understanding GenAI in Education: AI and Assessment.” He was very excited about Leon’s approach to move beyond merely moralizing about students cheating and focusing on how to productively live with this new reality. In particular, Leon emphasized a shift in perspective:
In Validity matters more than cheating the authors argue convincingly that the concept of cheating is an unproductive frame for academic integrity, and we should instead re-centre the concept of “validity” in assessment. |
Tech: Important deadline approaching- about 30 minutes from now
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| Spring break is around the corner, and we all have many tasks to wrap up before it hits. One mission critical assignment that we all need to be mindful of is to…… look outside for a few minutes. I’ll wait.
– — — Excessive screen time can affect mental and social health, eye strain, neck, shoulder, and back pain. |
Teaching: Why Students Won’t Read- and What to Do about it
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| While reading is a mainstay in most college classes, it has gotten increasingly challenging to engage students with their assigned reading. In the insightful piece “Why Students Won’t Read—and What to Do about It,” our friend Chirs Hakala offers practical advice on how to foster deeper engagement with reading materials.
Although this piece first appeared in the summer of 2022, pre-ChatGPT, it still has legs. |
Teaching: Marc Watkins Beyond ChatGPT
Marc Watkins, Assistant Director of Academic Innovation & Lecturer of Writing and Rhetoric at Ole Miss University presented to Denison Faculty online on January 13th, 2025. Here is a link to a recording of his presentation:
Beyond ChatGPT- Developing a Framework for AI Literacy in Writing Courses
Click here to see the additional resources he provided including the slides for the presentation as well as activities for faculty to practice with Lex, Gamma, and Notebook LM as well as activities for students on prompt engineering, Chatbot Arena, and Quick, Draw!
Teaching: Helping students use ChatGPT to aid, not undermine, their learning process
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| A significant issue with students’ use of ChatGPT is their inability to craft effective prompts. Simply copying and pasting assignments into ChatGPT often leads to the tool providing solutions with minimal effort from the students, which can undermine their learning process.
To address this problem and turn ChatGPT into a productive learning tool, David Reher of Modern Languages creates specific prompts for his students. |
Teaching: Artificial Intelligence Disclosure (AID) Framework
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| The Association of College & Research Libraries published an “Artificial Intelligence Disclosure” (AID) framework by Dr. Kari Weaver that you might find useful if you are asking students to disclose AI use. Here is an example for student writing:
Artificial Intelligence Tool: Microsoft Copilot (University of Waterloo institutional instance); Conceptualization: Microsoft Copilot was used to identify key motor-performance fitness tasks in the development of the research question; Information Collection: I used Microsoft Copilot to find relevant journal articles and other sources; Visualization: I used Microsoft Copilot to create a graph comparing the different motor-performance fitness tasks included in my paper; Writing—Review & Editing: I used Microsoft Copilot to help break down my paragraph-long draft sentences into clearer, shorter ones. |
Tidbit: Break the Routine with Five-Minute Starts to Reenergize Your Classroom
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| Now that the initial energy of the new semester has waned and we’ve reached week six, have you noticed your class settling into a predictable routine? While routines have their place, too much predictability can lead to autopilot mode—for both you and your students. It might be time to refocus and inject some fresh energy into your classroom. |