GenAI is changing our information landscape
GenAI is changing the way we seek, use, select and avoid information. Our information landscape is changing every day.
You’ve likely already used Artificial Intelligence (AI) for academic and personal reasons – getting help from tools like Grammarly on your writing skills, or notetaking and transcription with a tool like Otter.ai. You’ve maybe used an AI to help settle arguments with your friends, to plan meals, or to set a study schedule. The flyers you create with Canva have AI assistance built in.
It seems like AI is everywhere – from your social media algorithms showing you different AI tools to help you ace a job interview to those cute animal videos that you aren’t quite sure if AI created them or not.
Feelings on AI use vary from AI skeptics to AI enthusiasts. And that’s okay!
One type of AI is Generative AI (GenAI) – a type of AI that can create new, original content (like text, images, audio, or code) that resembles real-world data it was trained on. In this learning experience, you will learn about how this type of AI works and its capabilities, and limitations in your life as a student at the University.
The goal of GenAI+U: student is not to tell you how to use GenAI, or even that you have to use GenAI. The goal is to give you the tools you’ll need to be an effective, ethical and responsible user of GenAI. After completing this learning experience, you will have an enhanced critical understanding of GenAI and how you can, if you choose to, use GenAI in your academic and everyday life.
What you need to know about this course:
- This learning experience is broken up into three lessons: What is GenAI, Ethical and Responsible Use, and Learning with GenAI. It is not meant to be completed in a single session, though you may choose to do that. It should take you about 30 minutes per lesson.
- The videos, where applicable, generally cover the same content as the text. So you can choose to read the text, or watch the video, or both, and you’ll get the same information.
- You will be engaging with AI-generated output (text, images etc.) from University-licensed GenAI tools. These are all cited within the lessons. There is also an acknowledgement in the appendix of where AI was used to help create GenAI+U: student.
- There are case studies along the way that will help you apply what you are learning.
- There is a Certificate of Completion quiz available to UMN students (all campuses) to showcase what you’ve learned.
Choose a lesson to begin
You can navigate through the module using the Next and Previous links at the bottom of the screen, or with the “Content” menu in the navigation.
The broad field of computer science that enables machines to simulate human intelligence, including learning, problem-solving, perception, and language understanding.
A type of AI that can create new, original content (like text, images, audio, or code) that resembles real-world data it was trained on.
