ENT30806 – Fundamental and Applied Aspects of the Biology of Insects. See the study handbook for learning outcomes and further course details.

• Master, some Bachelor students
• Around 20
• Prior knowledge and skills in GenAI: most students had used GenAI before. Some even indicated they use it regularly in their daily lives (for example, to write personalised recipes based on the content of their fridge).

The usage of GenAI has seen a rapid increase and it is safe to say it isn’t going away. There is no way for us to stop (all) students from using it. Therefore, it is wiser to focus on making sure students learn how to use GenAI in responsible ways, and to teach them to critically reflect on its output.

Throughout the course the students learn how to write a scientific essay. The introduction, main body, and discussion are submitted separately throughout the weeks, and in the last week they both submit a written reflection and have an individual oral reflection session with their supervisor. Throughout the course of this process, the use of AI is allowed in three ways.

1. Brainstorming (formulating RQ)
2. Outlining and Structure
3. Improving writing (proofreading & editing)

In the first lecture, an introduction is given to the WUR’s rules on using AI, ethical issues of using AI, and how to responsibly use AI in the three ways above. A list of examples of AI tools students could use is provided. It is stressed that if students do not want to use AI, they do not have to.

Students are supposed to outline how they used AI in the essay itself, and more extensively in the reflection paper and session. Topics discussed during this reflection are:

• Did you use AI while writing your essay?
• If yes, in at which stages of the process did you use AI?
• How useful was it to use AI? Did using AI positively affect your writing process, in your opinion?
• If you would use AI again in a next writing assignment, what would you do differently?
• The Personal Supervisor will also check whether your use of AI is justified. For this, the Personal Supervisor may ask you questions about the content and interpretation of the papers that you refer to, to check whether you read and interpreted these papers yourself (and you did not blindly copy-paste text generated by AI without critically checking/reading sources). The Personal Supervisor will also check whether the overall structure and scientific depth of the essay is good (AI writes superficial texts!).

The course went very well over the last years. Almost all students said they used AI in some stage of the writing process. They mostly used it for improving their writing (and less so in the other two ways). All were able to justify their AI use, had a good understanding of the content of their text, and could critically reflect on the quality of AI tools’ output. The students evaluated the assignment positively.

Compared with previous years when GenAI was not used, the quality of the language and grammar of the essays was clearly much better, while the quality of the content remained the same. However, other changes to the course structure happened at the same time as the introduction of GenAI, so these changes aren’t completely attributable to the introduction of GenAI alone.

Talk about AI, ethical issues, and responsible use in a lecture, and make it interactive. This is already helpful in making students think. The Student Support webpages on GenAI are a helpful tool to refer to.

Have students write a reflection on their use of AI within the essay itself, but also in a separate report. Writing the reflection makes students think critically about their AI use. Oral reflection sessions also work quite well. One-on-one supervisor-student sessions are great, but in larger courses you could perhaps have the students reflect in groups.

Martine Kos (course coordinator) and [email protected]