Monthly Archives: October 2024

AI Exercise: Editing With Copilot

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Business communication instructors know that revision is key to teaching writing. By guiding students through the revision process, instructors instill helpful techniques.

Generative AI (ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and others) has provided instructors with new ways to teach writing, particularly for idea generation and revision.

This exercise consists of three components corresponding to the three PDF files below:

(1) The assignment sheet with instructions, purpose and objective; a first draft of the writing assignment generated by Copilot; and notes to instructors

(2) An optional marked-up copy of the first Copilot draft with comments and edits in MS Word

(3) A possible final draft of the edited Copilot message.

AI Editing Exercise–Assignment, First Draft, Notes

AI Editing Exercise–Possible Final Draft

AI Editing Exercise–Optional Tracked Changes

Job Seekers Need to Know About Applicant Tracking Systems

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With about 70 percent of large companies and 20 percent of small and medium-sized firms using Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), it pays for job seekers to know how these AI-powered tools work.

An ATS is software than scans for specific words on job applicants’ résumés to weed out unqualified candidates. They filter applicants by scanning uploaded résumés and other materials for keywords much faster than a hiring manager could, which speeds up the hiring process. These systems can also keep candidates’ submissions for future openings and help companies compose job specs that can better attract job seekers who specifically fit the qualities a hiring manager seeks. Let’s look at how the specifics listed below would be beneficial during a job search from a company’s perspective. By scanning for some or all of these qualifications, filling a job becomes a more efficient proposition for companies.

  • Business/Communication/English degree
  • Bachelor’s degree required
  • 0-2 years of work experience preferred
  • 2-4 years of work experience preferred
  • Strong interpersonal communication and/or public speaking experience
  • Digital fluency with social media
  • Ability to produce written online content
  • Good time management
  • Proficiency in Microsoft Excel

With artificial intelligence searching through hundreds or thousands of job applications, it is no mystery why companies prefer using AT systems. However, for job hunters, it’s a different story. The software may be too selective and pass over highly qualified individuals who may not have provided the specific wording the software looks for. In fact, a Harvard study found that 88 percent of recruiters believe that qualified candidates are indeed overlooked by ATS because their submitted materials did not exactly match the ATS job description.

This is why awareness as to how these tools work can help job candidates integrate the best strategies to “talk” back to these scanning systems. To optimize their applications, job seekers should follow this advice:

  1. Include specific wording and match keywords from the job description for every submission made.
  2. Understand going into the job search that each application will need to be tailored to maximize its suitability for every targeted job.
  3. Spell out and use acronyms (i.e. Bachelor of Arts in Business as well as BA in Business).
  4. Organize the résumé into the chronological rather than the functional résumé format.
  5. Use easily recognizable fonts like Helvetica, Garamond, or Georgia.
  6. Avoid using headers and footers since that information could confuse ATS.
  7. Opt for standard résumé headings instead of cutesy ones (i.e. Work Experience instead of Where I’ve Been.)

Many résumé scanner tools exist that offer templates and advice about ways to make an application ATS-friendly.

Discussion

  1. What are some ways to get noticed besides submitting application materials that will be scanned by ATS?
  2. Why do experts advise first-time applicants to join professional organizations?
  3. Although ATS are time savers for employers, what are some of the negatives about relying on these systems rather than on humans?

Sources:

Henderson, R. (2024, March 27). What is an ATS? 8 Things you need to know about applicant tracking systems. Jobscan. https://www.jobscan.co

Applicant tracking systems: Key features and when you need them. (n.d.). Indeed.com. https://www.indeed.com

 

The Reckoning: Teaching and AI

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Teaching and generative AI have become a reality in academia, the 800-pound gorilla impossible to ignore. Whether your primary concern is the future of higher education in general, the necessity of spending hours learning about AI and adapting your courses, or just fear of plain old plagiarism, the fact is that AI is here to stay, and we must learn to play nice.

Let’s take stock of our uncomfortable alliance with AI. As business communication instructors, we know that employers now expect new-hires to be familiar with the technology, which puts the onus on us to help our students know the best ways to use AI. What’s more, students, like instructors, are not just curious about AI—they are also intimidated by it, providing an even more compelling reason to integrate it into our assignments, since we know that our graduates will need this skill.

College administrations and individual instructors are sharing ideas about how to best to reckon with teaching in the era of generative AI, and we’ve gathered some insights that may be helpful in your business communication classroom. The first three tips are geared toward setting the stage for how AI will be used in your classroom. Exercises and activities follow

  1. Create guidelines for ethical use of AI, including specifics about plagiarism. If your institution has already done this work, it is still worth the time to go over these policies with students.
  2. Share your knowledge and be specific about your own awareness of gen AI to discourage cheating. Once students realize their instructor is well informed about what AI can and cannot do, they are less likely to try to use AI inappropriately. [1]
  3. Demonstrate AI’s limitations to students by showing an example of AI hallucinating.
  4. Have students experiment with ChatGPT and similar large language models by asking them to create prompts relevant to your coursework. This task will require them to continually edit and revise to produce more useful and accurate results they can carry forward.
  5. Ask students to recreate the same task using different generative AI tools. (Some possible examples would be a summary of readings or lectures, bibliographies, or other assignments students have worked on) after which they critique and compare the AI-produced work.[2] Then discuss with the students which AI tool they preferred and why. Working with AI in this way can stoke students’ interest to discover legitimate ways to make the tools work for them. Says one instructor who used this method, “Going through the process of working with AI, [students] see that their own critical voice is better than some of the ideas the bots come up with and … learn to be critical of AI.”[3]
  6. In groups, ask teams to use AI to create a draft of a writing assignment (a routine e-mail, or a persuasive marketing message, for example), and then provide guided questions designed to coax students to analyze the result for accuracy, bias, voice, or any other specifics you are emphasizing. Then have students rewrite the task individually. (You may wish to take advantage of BizComBuzz’s Classroom Exercise, Who Wrote This?, available in our upcoming newsletter.)

As time goes on, we will keep you updated about ways in which instructors are coming to terms with AI in the classroom. In the meantime, we’d love to hear what you are doing. Share your experiences with us!

[1] Mowreader, A. (2024, February 6). Teaching tip: Navigating AI in the classroom. Inside Higher Ed.

[2] McMurtrie, B. (2024, August 15). Critical AI. Teaching Newsletter, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

[3] ibid.