Teaching College Students How to Seek Missing Voices: Possible Roles for AI

Abstract

College students often defer to trusted search habits when assigned a new research project. Unfortunately, most college students have only been taught a few strategies and tactics for research, and they often choose research methods that are the most convenient, methods that are timesaving, efficient, and easy. Those methods may result in high grades for some projects, but they do not lead to students learning how to think like researchers.

This paper highlights how I have taught students to go beyond using the search bar for their research projects and to seek missing voices and perspectives. I share key components of my lesson plan, assessment strategies, and foundational theories that ground the lesson. The success of this lesson depends on students’ understanding of critical concepts including publishing processes that exacerbate inequities, multicultural ways of knowing, biases, ethnocentrism, and censorship. There is a focus on strategies shared with students for searching for missing voices.

The final part of the paper addresses how to engage with students about AI when seeking missing voices. Points of consideration for discussion with students include how AI could positively help to elevate missing voices or perspectives, concerns about AI harming already disenfranchised communities, and the ethics of using AI tools for research as college students.