This is the fifth and final in a series of posts about each of the teams that will be attending SCI 2023 and their projects.
The Internet has altered how we see, perceive, and move within the world. While access to travel and shopping has become more prevalent, the reliability of educational resources has been taken for granted. The rise of the Internet’s tool, Chat GPT, is a pre-trained Artificial Intelligence chatbot providing natural conversations and mostly accurate, appropriate, and personal responses to almost any question.
Our team comprises five practitioners from diverse institutions, collaborating to assist first-year students in their pre-requisite courses with critically, ethically, and thoughtfully using Chat GPT in post-secondary work. Our initiative will enable us to create a video series, short and long-form social media videos, Lib Guides, FAQ Handouts, mentoring and tutoring sessions. We plan to work with various departments such as records, writing centers, student life, and the registrar’s offices at our respective institutions to disseminate our content to as many incoming students as possible.
While we can see the allure of free and instant responses to inquiries, Chat GPT is not flawless, and it has some limitations. The processing tool lacks creativity and the ability to assess information and texts critically, give solutions from its data, and to justify if the responses are right, wrong, or inappropriate. It is with these hindrances in mind that we want to teach students to utilize Chat GPT as an additional resource rather than becoming dependent on it. We want to instill in students the skills to trust their research fully.
We know that as practitioners at various institutions in higher education, we will face many issues. We all work at minority-serving institutions and are aware that we face a different set of challenges. With the growing capability of AI and in a digital native generation that implicitly trusts the Internet, students of color enter institutions of higher education less academically prepared. They need more access to technologically advanced tools; their institutions receive less funding and have less academic rigor and prestige. Although these obstacles can affect the success and retention of first-year students, it is our goal to alleviate some of the obstacles they may have with research assignments. As scholars, we have a keen awareness of the needs of our institutions. Bringing together four librarians and an English professor/Ph.D. student is an intentional combination of ambitious, competent, sincere academics committed to student success. Together, we will interact with students throughout their entire educational journeys.
The librarians encounter new students earliest in their matriculation can help reduce library anxiety, foster new relationships, and provide creative ways to orient students with available resources. The librarian who interacts mostly with graduate students can identify areas in the resources that need emphasis to better prepare students for more advanced and complex research assignments in undergraduate school and beyond. The English professor comes across the students in the midst of their degree pursuit and can hone in on the specifics of interpreting and understanding primary and secondary sources. Lastly, the graduate librarian intermingles with advanced students and aids in the particulars of data analysis, collection development, and digitizing information. We will proactively, rather than reactively, meet weekly to sort out any current issues that could serve as barriers to completing our goal. Within these different sectors of education, we are a dynamic committee and can fully serve our students in meeting their academic goals.
Participants
The team is bringing together a group of four academic librarians and an English professor/PhD candidate. We are a dynamic and diverse group with varied experiences and expertise who serve at minority serving institutions (MSIs) in the United States and the Caribbean.
- Renise Johnson
Head of Access Services/Systems Librarian at Morgan State University at Earl S. Richardson Library. Morgan State University is an HBCU in Baltimore, Maryland. Ms. Johnson is currently the library liaison to the School of Social Work, School of Education & Urban Studies, and School of Business Management. In her role, she teaches information literacy to both undergraduate and graduate students. The experience of working with a multiracial, multi- ethnic, and multinational population will bring an understanding of the challenges that this community faces as it relates to academic integrity. Moreover, Ms. Johnson understands what is needed to help students where English is not their first language. A large population of students at MSU comes to see librarians after they have received a failing grade as a result of plagiarism. Developing these resources will help students to avoid the potential pitfalls of academic dishonesty.
- Sabrina Dyck
Ms. Dyck is a dedicated professional with extensive experience in education and library services. With over ten years of teaching experience spanning K-12 and community colleges, she brings a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective to her work. Her expertise lies in areas such as First-Year-Experience (FYE), instruction, library outreach, and research design. Throughout her career, Ms. Dyck has served in various roles, including as a high school history teacher and library media specialist in Alabama’s Black Belt Region. She later transitioned to the field of library science, working as a Reference and Instruction Librarian at different institutions. With a focus on serving diverse student populations, particularly those from minority-serving institutions and underserved communities in the rural South, she is passionate about addressing their research behaviors and information needs. In her current role, Ms. Dyck serves as a community college librarian where she acts as a bridge between K-12 and higher education. She provides invaluable guidance on introducing scholarly communications to students within the classroom setting, emphasizing the importance of adapting to technological advancements like AI technologies in scholarship across all education levels.
- Rachael Falu
Ms. Falu is a full-time Ph.D. student and adjunct professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. Before relocating to Maryland, Ms. Falu was an Associate Professor at Chattanooga State Community College, teaching several Composition and African American Literature courses. Her area of specialty is mid-19th-20th century African American Literature and American Gothicism. Ms. Falu wants to contribute to the conversation that examines the history of American slavery and its dark aftermath and provides a vehicle for understanding the specific terrors in American Gothic Literature. After completing her degree, Ms. Falu hopes to earn a tenure-track position at an institution of higher education.
- Karen Tyrell
Mrs. Karen Tyrell has been a Reference Librarian at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Science, and Engineering Branch Library since 2018. As a Reference Librarian, Mrs. Tyrell is expected to provide current and up-to-date research resources for undergraduates, postgraduates, and faculty for research purposes and cater to other information needs. She conducts Information Literacy sessions teaching students how to navigate the UWI OPAC (UWILinC). She facilitates searching numerous databases to find scholarly resources to complete assignments and research projects on various topics. She has worked in the library environment since 1992. Her research agenda focuses on Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning (CPDWL), metadata creation, and reference services. Mrs. Tyrell has attended several IFLA/NASIG conferences, seminars, and workshops to broaden her knowledge and skill set while building and enhancing her network profile both locally and internationally. Mrs. Tyrell is also the Liaison Librarian for the Faculty of Science and Technology in the Chemistry Department, Earthquake Unit, Agriculture and International Centre for Environmental and Nuclear Sciences Unit.
- Anidza Valentin, Ph.D
Dr. Anidza Valentín is currently the Library Director at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, coordinator of the Center for the Development of Information Literacy and Bibliographic Research and the library liaison of the Business Administration School and Kinesiology Department. She develops and offers workshops, online guides, and videos for the entire academic community on reference management tools, citation styles, searching strategies, tools to identify plagiarism and academic dishonesty. In addition, she offers an interdisciplinary course in library research methods to undergraduate students. Dr. Valentin also develops and manages content for the official Library website and social media and administers our Springshare platform. She has participated as a speaker at various conferences and has attended the NYU Faculty Resource Network Summer Program on two occasions.
Each institution represented by the assembled diverse and inclusive team will significantly benefit from the knowledge gained and the products derived from their participation in the Scholarly Communication Institute. At the same time, the Institute will gain from the unique perspectives that can bring individuals with such different backgrounds and life experiences. Furthermore, the geographically dispersed areas of the convened team members will widen the institute’s impact from a regional to an international level.
The deliverable from this collaboration will provide resources to aid researchers with the challenges and benefits of incorporating artificial intelligence chatbots into the scholarly communication system, particularly concerning the ethical consequences of its use, authorship, originality, and plagiarism. As a result of this team’s participation in the Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute, a series of multilingual learning objects exploring the use of ChatGPT will be created using a free digital animation software. Videos will include captions in English and Spanish. All created resources will be freely and widely available via a LibGuide hosted by one of the institutions and could be used at future campus events such as welcoming week, library orientation, Freshman and International Student Orientation and more. If opportunities arise, the team also plans to disseminate the results of the experience by presenting at local and regional professional events or conferences.
During the preparation of this proposal, under the leadership of Renise Johnson, the team met via Google Meet for one hour per week to brainstorm ideas and establish the parameters of this collaboration. The team will continue its weekly meetings until the start of the institute. We will collaborate on the best approaches to share these resources among our campus, faculty, staff, and other campus-wide stakeholders, and we will devise strategies for publicizing our initiative among undergraduate students at our respective institutions. Participating in Triangle Scholarly Communication Institute will provide an arena to vet this project with other higher education professionals. These resources will be used to bring awareness of this new and innovative natural language processing tool driven by AI technology and how to effectively utilize this technology within the educational environment, especially as it relates to student scholarship. This opportunity will help us to develop a collaborative model between different countries that will build a bridge between these four universities and could serve as a model for other higher education institutions.
[ Illustration by mikemacmarketing used under CC-BY license and photo by vnwayne fan used under Unsplash license ]
trianglesci.org 
