Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Partners for Algorithmic Literacy

March 12th, 2025

By Samantha LeGrand, clinical assistant professor and instruction and design librarian

The disruptive wake of ChatGPT and other AI tools left many instructors wondering how to address AI in their teaching, namely how to prevent students’ unethical use. However, the surge of conversations about AI in education rarely includes student voices. Partners for Algorithmic Literacy (PAL) is a groundbreaking student-faculty learning community model where undergraduates and instructors partner to co-design collaborative teaching strategies to integrate or interrogate AI.

A key program offered by Purdue’s Institute for Information Literacy, PAL builds on Libraries faculty expertise in knowledge creation and learning design. Facilitated by Libraries faculty members Samantha LeGrand, Zoe Mayhook, and Jing Lu, PAL recognizes that students are core education stakeholders and should have a hand in decision-making. Two cohorts of competitively selected undergraduate and faculty partners (12 in fall 2023 and 19 in fall 2024) from majors and departments across campus have participated in this exciting new endeavor, producing unique curricular plans to be implemented in the participating faculty’s courses.

Faculty partner Kathryn Dilworth shared that her PAL “breakthrough” was “that we were all on the same page about the need for faculty to develop skills and a level of sophistication with AI…including academic integrity and ethics.” Abby Sabella, a student partner, described the value of seeing things from a faculty perspective: “It was thought-provoking to hear instructors explain their goals for encouraging students’ critical thinking and how that intersects with AI regulation. This led me to think about my own learning and how I can use AI to enhance my critical thinking skills rather than having AI think critically for me.”

Deliverables from partners participating in the program ranged from co-designed AI course policies to AI-integrated group projects to specialized chatbots developed to support disciplinary critical thinking.