I have avoided using AI in my own work and have strictly prohibited my students from using it for any assignment. That ended at the beginning of this academic year. I gave in. I had to.
It is everywhere. I am particularly struck by the number of sessions on AI topics at various conferences. For instance, at the 2025 ACSP Conference, there was an all-day workshop titled Urban Planning AI.
I was concerned about being left behind since it seemed many are incorporating it into their work. Equally, I was concerned that I might be doing a disservice to my students who will be joining the workforce, where they will be expected to use AI. Additionally, the course I taught this semester was given asynchronously, with many reading reflections. At the beginning of the semester, I decided to experiment with allowing students to use it in a prescribed way. Because I did not want to deal with the alternative: students using AI unethically.
Source: FREEP!K
I planned 10 reading reflections, each with instructions for students to incorporate AI into their work as prescribed for that reflection. Although I selected the reading materials at the beginning of the semester, the question of how to use AI was decided each week. Every Monday, before I posted course content on the course management online, I sat down and thought about the “how” part.
The whole process was stressful and exciting at the same time. I certainly learned a lot about students’ use of AI from reading their reflections. I have graded five of the 10 assignments, with five more to go. I am looking forward to what more I will learn.
From the outset, I decided to write about my experiment and publish it somewhere to share with fellow professors; I have been keeping a detailed account of my experience. Stay tuned for that.
Regarding my own use, I am still on the fence, but I am getting more comfortable with asking it to find references for my course or other purposes. I use ChatGPT’s free version because I am not ready to pay for its services. I do want to leave you with the following though.
In the winter of 2024, one of my colleagues at my institution and I had daily writing sessions in the evening. One day, we decided to ask ChatGPT to write a poem about working at night. We burst out laughing at what it produced. It was very strange that it could create a poem in a fraction of a second, and that the poem, though incredibly tacky, read like it could be written by a human with no talent. I searched my ChatGPT chats to look for it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it – I must not have signed in to my account when I put that request to ChatGPT. I asked it a moment ago, this time, signed in from my account. Here is what ChatGPT produced; it is worse than the poem from 2024!
Night Shift (A poem by ChatGPT)
The world grows quiet as the hours thin,
A soft hum rising where the day has been.
The moon leans close like a curious friend,
Watching the work that refuses to end.
Keys click gently in the darkened room,
Thoughts drift slower, wrapped in gloom;
Yet somewhere in the hush I find
A clearer space inside my mind.
While others sleep, the night becomes
A place where small ideas hum,
Where focus gathers, calm and deep—
A secret kept while cities sleep.
The dawn will come, as dawns always do,
But in this shadowed hour or two,
I work by quiet, borrowed light—
A lone companion to the night.
Anyway, good luck to all of us.
Mahtot [Mah-tote] Gebresselassie, PhD 