SynthesAIzing Discoveries: Emerging tools for next-level research instruction

Abstract

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are new and exciting, evoking buzz and triggering anxiety. What about less-known AI tools that synthesize information, tools with transformative potential for how we teach info and research skills? We approached an expert with our timely question: What do we need to know about how AI empowers research and sharpens information literacy skills? Our expert—an AI tool called Perplexity—responded by asserting that ChatGPT and other generative AI tools are “neither inherently good nor bad when it comes to finding and using information. Instead, they represent a new way in which we can interact with information.” Perplexity then centered the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy (2016), reminding us of the importance of understanding scholarship as an ongoing conversation; this, for us, begs a looming question: looming question: How do we meaningfully engage AI—and teach others to engage AI—as a conversation partner for next-level research? At the COIL Annual Conference, Michael Hanegan and Chris Rosser will introduce hearers to the potential of synthesizing AI tools like Perplexity for empowering learning and research, emerging tools that will profoundly inform new approaches to information literacy instruction. Our AIm is to equip instructors with tools and tactics for engaging synthesizing AI as a next-level partner for leveling up research.