ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and one other synthetic intelligence chatbots aren’t changing human creativity, they’re instruments at our disposal to boost it.
Julia Penchuk ’25, a strategic communications main, and her classmates discovered as a lot throughout their Strategic Campaigns course taught this spring by Assistant Professor Michele Lashley.
The upper-level class for juniors and seniors was charged with creating communications campaigns for the college’s new Imagining the Digital Future Middle and its director, Lee Rainie. On the onset of the mission, the 15 college students have been divided into 4 groups, with Lashley tasking every group to generate marketing campaign concepts with the assistance of synthetic intelligence. By and enormous, the scholars gravitated to ChatGPT over its AI opponents.
“ChatGPT was immensely useful in our mission, significantly within the brainstorming section,” Penchuk mentioned. “We used it to provide you with a wide range of concepts, which we then constructed upon primarily based on our particular wants. The insights and recommendations offered by ChatGPT served as a priceless place to begin, sparking creativity and serving to us discover totally different angles for our marketing campaign – particularly when it got here to picking our ways.”
Caroline Gardiner ’25 echoed Penchuk’s sentiments, explaining that the favored chatbot allowed her group to “work by way of concepts and push ideas additional,” she mentioned.
“One piece of recommendation I’d give when utilizing ChatGPT is to not take the primary response it provides you,” Gardiner added. “As a substitute, refine your questions and push them additional. This method ensures … that you just obtain the absolute best reply.”
This concept of refining your prompts again and again is a degree Lashley careworn all through the semester.
“It’s actually like having a dialog, and that’s what I needed the scholars to remove from this mission,” the strategic communications professor mentioned. “Frankly, for those who put rubbish in, you’re going to get rubbish out. And you aren’t going to create a immediate that results in the output you want the primary time. You need to push the AI to do extra.”
Earlier than the mission, Gardiner and Penchuk admitted they’d restricted to no expertise with ChatGPT and different AI platforms. In truth, Gardiner recalled encountering a couple of classroom insurance policies to restrict using such instruments. However this train was completely totally different.
“That’s what made this mission so attention-grabbing – being inspired to make use of AI for brainstorming and actually getting the prospect to learn to put it to use,” Gardiner mentioned. “This expertise intently mirrors how the workforce operates, the place AI instruments are more and more built-in into each day duties and decision-making processes.”
The strategic communications main credited Lashley for motivating the category to embrace AI.
“She typically emphasised, ‘AI is not going to change people; people who can use AI will change people who don’t,’” Gardiner recalled. “This mantra inspired us to embrace know-how as a instrument for enhancing our abilities and productiveness fairly than fearing its potential to switch us.”
Whereas Lashley mentioned she’s been desirous about incorporating AI into her class assignments a number of years, this was her first deep dive into the uncharted territory.
“I consider that we have now an obligation to show our college students how one can use AI as a result of they are going to be utilizing it after they get out into the workforce.”
Michele Lashley,
Assistant Professor of Strategic Communications
Fittingly, Lashley’s first foray into AI within the classroom featured the Imagining the Digital Future Middle, the college’s new analysis heart targeted on the impacts of the digital revolution and what lies forward. Rainie attended the primary day of sophistication to supply the scholars together with his imaginative and prescient for the Middle, and the director spoke with the scholars all through the semester. Moreover, the category gained extra insights whereas attending the Middle’s on-campus kickoff occasion on the finish of February.
Lashley raved about how accessible Rainie made himself to the category and his enthusiasm for the method. The professor mentioned she knew Rainie and the Middle have been a great match from their preliminary dialog, the place they each agreed how thrilling it might be to have college students use AI to assist create the Middle’s campaigns.
Lashley appreciated how the mission pushed the scholars to suppose past simply market analysis and the basics of campaigns to learn to greatest leverage AI chatbots. For Rainie, he mentioned he additionally welcomed the prospect to accomplice with the campus neighborhood.
“One of many vital missions of the Imagining the Digital Future Middle is to work with school and college students,” he mentioned. “This was an ideal alternative to faucet into pupil experience and creativity. I needed to unfold the phrase round campus concerning the Middle, significantly to college.”
Rainie, Lashley and the scholars got down to construct consciousness of the Middle’s mission, assets and, in some circumstances, arrival on campus. As a part of their respective analysis, every pupil was required to conduct one-on-one interviews with 5 Elon school members ranging throughout all tutorial disciplines.
Rainie mentioned his preliminary hope for the category collaboration was to realize a greater understanding of Elon’s tradition and the methods wherein school members prefer to obtain data. Moreover, he needed to establish methods wherein school may accomplice with the Middle’s tasks.
“The scholars delivered superbly,” he mentioned.
Throughout finals week, the 4 pupil teams offered their respective campaigns and potential deliverables to Rainie. In the end, Penchuk and her classmates – Corinne Berger ’24, Caroline Dellicker ’25 and Allison McGee ’24 – gained the pitch competitors with a marketing campaign constructed round its #LearnWithLee hashtag, emphasizing private, intimate engagement with professors and the Middle’s collaborative nature. Rainie recommended the group’s sturdy mission assertion, sharp e-newsletter concepts, and detailed record of promoting supplies.
“All of it appeared properly personalized to the actual tradition of Elon,” Rainie mentioned.
Penchuk defined that she was pleased with her workforce’s work, which she felt “conveyed the spirit of teamwork and innovation that the Middle embodies,” she mentioned. “I significantly appreciated how this idea tied collectively the experience of Lee Rainie with the interactive and interesting format of our marketing campaign, making it each memorable and impactful.”
Requested for the way ChatGPT influenced her, her classmates and their general class expertise, Penchuk defined that the AI platform is just as helpful as the person utilizing it.
“My recommendation for utilizing ChatGPT is to make use of it to boost your work, to not do the be just right for you,” she mentioned. “You might be stronger utilizing it as a useful instrument to enrich your personal abilities and data.”
