Generative AI in Higher Ed

Higher education publications like Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and EdTech Magazine include frequent write-ups on GenAI and its impact on higher ed. Major newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post help provide broader industry, economic, and cultural updates on GenAI.

* CSB and SJU community members: You can access leading news sources like The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Minnesota Star Tribune, and other news apps for free! Visit our Newspapers guide for instructions on signing up. 

Additional resources: 

• Matt Wolfe's YouTube channel for weekly updates on all things AI. 
• Bryan Alexander's "Resources for Exploring ChatGPT and Higher Education" helps identify key readings and resources. He continues to add new resources to the list since first publishing it in December 2022.
• Anna Mills curates both "AI Text Generators and Teaching Writing: Starting Points for Inquiry" and "AI Text Generators: Sources to Stimulate Discussion Among Teachers," which include extensive reading lists and link out to relevant resources. 
• Lance Eaton, Director of Digital Pedagogy at College Unbound, compiles "Educational Resources on AI" and "Classroom Policies for AI Generative Tools."

See reviews - like "10 Essential AI Tools for Academic Research in 2025," from the AI School Librarians Newsletter - for the most current options and comparisons of free and subscription-based models. 

Sample standalone AI models:

• ChatGPT: https://openai.com/chatgpt/
• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app
• Claude: https://claude.ai/
• Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com/
• MetaAI: https://www.meta.ai/
• DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/ 

Some of these additional tools are currently only available to test groups:

• Bing Chat (Microsoft)
• Elicit: "Elicit uses language models to help you automate research workflows, like parts of literature review. Elicit can find relevant papers without perfect keyword match, summarize takeaways from the paper specific to your question, and extract key information from the papers."
• Perplexity
• Google Bard: https://bard.google.com/ (no account required)

There are several free and paid tools available that are designed to "catch" generative AI-produced content. GPTZero is one example of an AI content detector frequently used in higher ed. However, results can vary considerably across these tools and results are inconclusive at best.

Some faculty members might want to explore these tools if/when building an academic misconduct case against a suspected student, but results from AI content detectors are not considered definitive "proof" of academic misconduct or plagiarism.

To learn more about specific AI content detectors, try referring to eWeek's Top AI Detectors: Comparison Chart or similar.