About the course

Content

The planned virtual exchange tackles the ENLIGHT flagship challenge ‘Digital revolution and Impact of digitization’ and puts a strong focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI). It will adhere to the idea of having students work in intercultural, interdisciplinary groups on a challenge und thus contribute to the ENLIGHT ambition to empower students to become globally engaged citizens skilled in critical thinking. In this VE, students will be given the choice between finding a manageable problem within the big challenge ‘Digital revolution and Impact of digitization/Artificial Intelligence’ and working on a given question concerning this challenge. This means that students can choose between a problem based or a challenge based approach. If they decide to work on a problem, this problem will be: How do you use AI based tools for writing in a sensible, reflective, and useful way? This question is highly relevant to today’s students, not only because of the increased competence of browser-based, free tools for generating, translating, and revising text, but especially due to the current release of ChatGPT, an open- source AI that gives very coherent and convincing information on any topic asked about. When it comes to writing (academic) texts and gathering scientific information, this development leads to urgent questions concerning for example authorship, academic integrity, biased content and reproduction of stereotypes. Within this virtual exchange students will develop material for other students on how to work effectively and deliberately with AI based tools. They will present their results, for example material for how to work with AI based tools for writing and revising, at the end of the project.

Learning outcomes

The project has multiple goals, consisting of:

• giving students the opportunity to engage in an intercultural learning experience and by that, to strengthen their intercultural skills,
• fostering students’ ability to collaborate online,
• giving students the opportunity to investigate digitization and AI as one ENLIGHT challenge and by that, contributing to their development as globally engaged citizens,
• further developing sustainable online learning material approachable to students from all ENLIGHT partner universities, especially on the very current topic of how to make deliberate use of AI.

Programme

The group work will start with an asynchronous online path, followed by virtual kick-off workshops in which participants get to know each other and their respective (disciplinary) cultures, form groups, engage in teambuilding exercises and will learn about rules and challenges of intercultural teamwork, constructive feedback and academic writing. At the end of the project, there will be a final virtual workshop in which participants present their results and reflect on the whole process of working collaboratively in an intercultural group.

Assessment

Different assessment tools such as feedback, quizzes, portfolio tasks and team presentations.

Lectureres

• Dr. Melanie Brinkschulte, PhD., (Head of the Key Competencies Area: Intercultural Interactions, University of Göttingen, Germany)
• Dr. Ella Grieshammer, PhD., (Head of the International Writing Lab, University of Göttingen, Germany)
• Dr. Djuddah A.J. Leijen, PhD., Associate Professor of English, College of Foreign Languages and Culture (Head of the Centre for Academic Writing and Communication, University of Tartu, Estonia)
• Dr. Sarah Haas, PhD., (UGent Writing Mentors, Programme founder and faculty advisor, Gent University, Belgium)
• Lefkothea Sinjari, M.A. (research associate and coordinator of ENLIGHT projects at the International Writing Lab, University of Göttingen, Germany)
• Chanel Cools, M.A. (Writing mentor, University of Gent)