Julie Kolgjini

Julie teaches various writing, linguistics, and humanities courses at the RIT Kosovo campus. Her recent research interests include Albanian linguistics, sociolinguistics, phonetics, and writing studies.

1. How do (or will) you use AI in your teaching, and what are your favorite resources?

Over the past few years, various digital tools have been woven into my courses. I consider AI, including various generative AI chatbots, another digital tool. I have been experimenting with Open AI's ChatGPT and Bard, to name a few.

2. Can you share or describe an example or two of an AI assignment?

Since last spring, I have been experimenting with ways in which students can leverage generative AI and integrate it into their assignments, including by working in tandem with students and peer writing consultants (tutors) in the Academic Support Center on our campus. Some of these explorations include crafting and tailoring prompts relevant to the given assignment that can be used for AI. For instance, one group of students investigated the notion of linguistic imperialism, including in the realm of generative AI. Special emphasis was placed on regional linguistic ecosystems, particularly various languages and varieties that are part of the student's linguistic repertoires and cultural heritages.

3. What do you tell students about using AI?

I encourage students to be responsible and transparent in how and when AI is employed for an assignment. Some students upload and share screenshots of the prompts and follow-up questions they have utilized and include the given AI tool on the References page.

4. What challenges, if any, have you had with AI in your courses?

The potential hallucinations of the chatbots can pose a challenge; this is especially the case when students are exploring a topic where they need more background knowledge on the subject matter. Also, some of the biases of these large language models have been found to be problematic. Generative AI's carbon footprint, as well as copyright issues, are also concerning. Some students opted to examine these concerns throughout the semester in their completed projects.

5. How do you think AI has or will impact your domain?

AI will continue to transform the fields of language science and writing studies. Computational linguistics and corpus linguistics are two such examples.