Tennessee Tech Students studying the uses of artificial intelligence will be featured in a textbook that covers the emerging uses of AI.
Tennessee Tech Associate Professor of English Mari Ramler said her students learn to use AI to create artwork, graphs, and images using information provided. Ramler said she and her students co-wrote about their different perspectives on using AI technology.
“I think the diversity of experiences that we offer in our chapter, it set us a part,” Ramler said. “I think the idea that we were an all-female class, I think that was interesting to people. I think it was sort of a challenge to have undergrads, graduate students, and an instructor write a chapter together.”
Ramler said many people have negative opinions on the use of AI technology. Ramler said the chapter that students wrote also provides an argument on how AI technology can be used ethically.
“Our ethic is that we cannot ignore this technology because it’s changing the workforce, and because if we refuse to teach it, we will put our own students at a disadvantage,” Ramler said. “Tech is an amazing school, but we pull from rural populations. Many of my students, we call them first-generation students, so it’s the first time anyone in their family has been to college, and I was also a student like that. So my feeling, and this is what I taught my students, is that if I refuse to engage with the technology, that is a paradigm shift in how we communicate, I will be refusing to teach and prepare my students for the future, and that is not something I can ethically do.”
Ramler said the chapter is the only chapter in the book that contains writing from students. Ramler said she hopes the students being featured in the book will be an accolade to help them land jobs in the future.
“A lot of them (students) are going into education or other communication fields, it doesn’t just distinguish them, it actually puts them way ahead of their peers because they have now spent four months thinking through this, playing with the technology, and then articulating with critical vocabulary the affordance sof the technology and the limitations,” Ramler said.
“AI in Technical Communication: Emerging Technologies and Pedagogies” is expected to be published next year by Routledge Press.
