The Academic Day (Dies Academicus) has a long tradition at the University of Bremen: Once a year, regular courses are called off for one day so that teaching staff members and students can exchange ideas and network about current developments and the quality of teaching and learning. In the morning, the events of the Dies Academicus are held by the individual faculties and in the afternoon they are organized centrally. The program is as versatile as the faculties themselves: In addition to talks and workshops on AI, there will be events on topics such as study opportunities abroad and the feedback culture in teaching. The day will conclude with the awarding of the Berninghausen Prize for Excellence in Teaching. You can still register for all events on StudIP. The motto of this year’s centrally organized events in the afternoon is “Artificial Intelligence in Teaching – Experiences and Developments.” Professor Maren Petersen, Vice President for Teaching and Studies, and Professor Andreas Breiter, Chief Digital Officer at the university will welcome participants in the afternoon. Professor Hendrik Drachsler, academic director of studiumdigitale at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and professor of Educational Technologies at the DIPF – Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, will provide an introductory talk. Afterwards, participants can choose between two sessions taking place simultaneously: On the one hand, a team of teaching staff members from the SKILL project and the Center for Multimedia in Higher Education will present AI tools and explain how they can be used. On the other hand, teaching staff members from various faculties will report on their experiences with AI in teaching. Among them, Sarah Brommer, professor of Applied Linguistics, who focusses on text production research, and Stephanie Geise, professor of Media and Communication Studies, who focusses on methodological innovations. Here in up2date, they are giving us a preview of their insights and their experiences.

ChatGPT as a Writing Tool for Students – Opportunity and Challenge

“The (potential) Future of the Way We Write” was the title of Sarah Brommer’s seminar for Bachelor’s students of linguistics last semester. The students experimented with AI tools such as ChatGPT, ChatPDF, Research Rabbit, Jenni AI, and Connected Papers to see how suitable they are for academic writing. They used the tools to write an academic text, recorded their experiences in journals, and summarized the results in a manual. They also investigated how well ChatGPT is able to write, analyze, revise, and summarize different types of texts such as reviews, job advertisements, advertising texts, and essays. Consequently, they published their findings.

Sarah Brommer also evaluates the students’ field reports for her own research. “I rarely use AI tools in practice, but they are an exciting subject of research for me,” she states. One of her roles is to head a think tank on the use of AI in academic writing at the Virtual Competence Center for Artificial Intelligence in Academic Writing (VK:KIWA). Together with colleagues from writing societies, she authored a discussion paper on the responsible use of AI tools in academic writing and the implications for institutions, researchers, teaching staff members, and students, which will be published at the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung. Sarah Brommer is convinced that AI writing tools will eventually play an important role in academic education. For this reason, she is keen to sensitize students to the risks and benefits of these tools. “With or without AI – students who wish to cheat will find ways and means to do so,” she says. But the reverse is true also: Students who have high standards for their work will not abandon these if they have the opportunity use AI for their work.

How AI Can Assist with Data Analysis

On Academic Day, Stephanie Geise will present the “Introduction to Quantitative Research Design and Data Analysis” digital textbook. She wrote it together with other researchers from the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) for the Quantitative Methods module of the Bachelor’s degree course in Media and Communication Studies. One of the things students learn in this module is how to use the “R” programming language to analyze data sets such as the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS). Previously, the module was designed as a classroom-based course. However, with funding from the SKILL (student-centered | collaborative | innovative teaching and learning) project of the University of Bremen and the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre (foundation for innovation in higher education), the researchers converted it into a hybrid format. “In practical terms, this means that our students work independently using the digital textbook. The seminar sessions serve to clarify questions and deepen the content,” says Stephanie Geise.

AI was involved in two ways in the course content. Firstly, the researchers used the Midjourney AI tool to create images and videos for the textbook. Secondly, students learn in the module how to use ChatGPT as a tool for data analysis. For example, ChatGPT can be useful in explaining error messages or displaying functions for calculating values. In order to interpret the AI tool’s answers and distinguish between correct and incorrect answers, however, you will need a basic understanding of R, says Stephanie Geise. “Overall, I think using ChaptGPT makes sense if you have the necessary background, know exactly what it is suitable for, and where its limits are.”