Incorporating Generative Artificial Intelligence into Engineering Writing Courses

该项目旨在通过开发一个包含生成人工智能（AI）的工程写作课程来服务于国家利益。在改进本科STEM教育的学生学习轨道的支持下：STEM教育理事会（IUSE：EDU）计划，该项目旨在提高工程专业学生的写作技能，使他们成为知识渊博和道德的人工智能用户。写作和沟通对工程师至关重要，ChatGPT等新的生成式人工智能工具为帮助工程专业学生成为更好的作家和沟通者带来了重大机遇和挑战。因此，该项目旨在研究AI写作工具在本科工程写作课程中的整合，并创建开源产品，以帮助教师将AI写作工具整合到此类课程中。该项目旨在最大限度地提高新兴工程师的数字和人工智能素养，以培养他们在大学和未来职业生涯中的批判性写作和沟通技能。工程师必须了解生成式人工智能与错误信息、偏见、隐私和知识产权相关的潜在陷阱，并学会用生成式人工智能写好文章。理解为什么以及何时在写作中使用生成式人工智能的知识，编写生成有用文本的提示的技能，以及道德地使用这些文本来支持自己的写作，应该在所有工程专业的学生中发展，无论社会经济地位，种族/民族，或性别。该项目将使用设计-基于实施研究，以了解将AI写作工具整合到本科工程写作课程中的最佳实践，以及这种整合对学生作为作家的发展的影响。为了实现这些目标，研究人员将迭代开发，实施和评估（a）可用于将AI写作工具整合到本科工程写作和交流课程中的课程，（B）教学信息AI写作平台，以确保可靠地访问生成AI以实现课程目的，以及（c）专业发展以支持教师使用课程和平台。项目的每个阶段将遵循“计划-实施-行动-研究”框架实施：团队将协作计划（设定目标、比较实践、选择用例）;做（制定行动计划，将人工智能写作工具集成到专业领域的交流中）课程）;行动（实施课程）;和研究（监控和评估进展，分析发现）。计划-执行-行动-研究将以循环方式进行，以迭代地改进集成和产品。最终，该团队将在项目网站上公开课程，工具和专业发展;为教师举办面对面和在线研讨会，以支持他们采用课程;向全国观众提供季度网络研讨会;并在开放获取出版物中传播研究结果，所有这些都旨在告知美国各地的STEM教师如何将生成AI纳入写作教学。NSF IUSE：EDU计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by developing an engineering writing curriculum that incorporates generative artificial intelligence (AI). With support from the Engaged Student Learning track of the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Directorate for STEM Education (IUSE: EDU) program, this project is designed to improve engineering students’ writing skills and enable them to be knowledgeable and ethical users of AI. Writing and communication are crucial to engineers and new generative AI tools such as ChatGPT pose significant opportunities and challenges for helping engineering students become better writers and communicators. Thus, this project seeks to study the integration of AI writing tools in an undergraduate engineering writing course and create open-source products to help instructors integrate AI writing tools into such courses. The project seeks to maximize the digital and AI literacy of emerging engineers to foster critical writing and communication skills, both in college and in their future careers. It is imperative that engineers both understand the potential pitfalls of generative AI related to incorrect information, bias, privacy, and intellectual property rights, and learn to write well with generative AI. The knowledge to understand why and when to use generative AI in writing, the skills to write prompts that generate useful text, and the ethical use of those texts to support one’s own writing should be developed in all engineering students, regardless of socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, or gender.The project will use design-based implementation research to understand the best practices for integrating AI writing tools into an undergraduate engineering writing course and the impact such integration has on students’ development as writers. To meet these goals, researchers will iteratively develop, implement, and evaluate (a) a curriculum that can be used to integrate AI writing tools into undergraduate engineering writing and communication courses, (b) a pedagogically-informed AI writing platform to ensure reliable access to generative AI for the purposes of the curriculum, and (c) professional development to support instructor use of the curriculum and platform. Each phase of the project will be implemented following the Plan-Do-Act-Study framework: the team will collaboratively plan (set goals, compare practices, select use cases); do (make an action plan to integrate AI writing tools into the Communications in the Professional World course); act (implement the curriculum); and study (monitor and evaluate the progress, analyze findings). The Plan-Do-Act-Study will be conducted in a cyclical manner to iteratively improve the integration and products. Ultimately, the team will make the curriculum, tool, and professional development publicly available on the project website; conduct in-person and online workshops for instructors to support their adoption of the curriculum; offer quarterly webinars to a national audience; and disseminate findings in open access publications, all with the goal of informing STEM instructors across the U.S. about how to incorporate generative AI in writing instruction. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.