Loading...Brief Description
This activity can be used within a research project assignment series (e.g. in FY writing) to help students reflect on how using AI reading assistants can help or hinder their reading and research processes. Students will write a summary of an academic article for an annotated bibliography entry three times, with guided reflection at each step: first, by themselves, second, with AI completing the task for them, and third, with the help of an AI reading assistant (e.g. Scispace or Explainpaper).
Context of activity
Students should receive guidance on the different sections of an academic article as well as which sections might be most helpful for their research projects before the activity. This activity can be used to reflectively iterate through versions of the “summary” portion of an annotated bibliography entry.
Instructions
For homework, students should work through the following steps:
Step 1: After guidance on interacting with different sections of academic articles, find an article that is useful for your research project and write a summary of an academic article on your own.
Step 2: Upload the article pdf into SciSpace and ask the AI tool to summarize the article for you.
- Written Reflection: Did this summary from the AI tool help you understand the paper in a new way? Did it represent any major ideas from the article incorrectly? Did it emphasize ideas from the article that were important to where YOU want to go with your research project, or did it leave out important aspects?
Step 3: Use Scispace to work through the article again, using the tool to highlight sections of the paper you had difficulty with the first time.The tool will reword highlighted sections to put them into different (hopefully simpler) language. Use this activity to help you revise your own summary from Step 1.
- Written Reflection: How did using the AI tool while reading the difficult sections of the article help and/or hinder your reading and summary writing processes?
In- Class Reflection (15 mins):
- Reflect in groups and then as a class on the written reflection prompts. What are the group take-aways?
- Based on our reflections so far, in what ways is the marketing at the top of the Sci Space website (“Do hours worth of reading in minutes”) potentially misleading?
Prep Time needed: a few minutes
Classroom Time needed: homework + 15 min discussion
Student Learning Outcomes:
- develop information literacy, practicing the reflective discovery of information, understanding how information is produced and valued, using information in the creation of new knowledge, and participating ethically in communities of learning.
- Read carefully and critically, understanding when AI tools may support or hinder your reading and research processes.
How to assess: formative activity (recommendation: give points for participating in written reflection and in-class reflection)
Recommended Course size: 15-30
Recommended Disciplines: Any discipline with research project, particularly First-Year Writing & Rhetoric
Recommended reading for faculty:
Marc Watkins (2024) Automated Aid or Offloading Close Reading? Student Perspectives on AI Reading Assistants. Teaching and Generative AI: Pedagogical Possibilities and Productive Tensions
