Series, Pallbearer for the Term Paper: Beyond ChatGPT with Michael Bugeja

In our Chat GPT Teaching Talks Series, faculty members discuss their strategies while teaching in this new educational landscape of Chat GPT or generative artificial intelligence that uses machine learning to generate human-like text in response to users’ prompts. Michael Bugeja, a distinguished professor at the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, will present the first in this series:

With the advent of AI chatbots, professors are looking for ways to ensure the integrity of the term paper or to do away with it entirely and replace it with a better pedagogy. Michael Bugeja, the distinguished professor, has been at the forefront of consumer technology with more than a dozen articles in Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He was among the first to critique Facebook in January 2006 before many even realized that Iowa State students were interacting on the platform. He was key in criticizing the avatar world of Second Life and arguing against higher education investing in it, requiring students to adhere to the company’s terms of service rather than the Iowa State student handbook. He supports educational technology, including Canvas, which provides online discussion boards to engage students in class content. An advocate of research that informs teaching, Dr. Bugeja has created a multi-digital learning platform for media ethics that engages students in face-to-face classes and online. In his discussion of the term paper, he demonstrates how learning is enhanced if roles are reversed, with professors writing the term papers and students critiquing them.

Read Michael Bugeja’s recent essay, “If AI kills the essay, I will be a pallbearer at the funeral” (Poynter Institute, January 24, 2023).