Abstract

As part of a university-wide, interdisciplinary initiative, faculty in our small, private liberal arts university have been engaged in a months-long Faculty Learning Community (FLC) exploring the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Attending weekly online seminars throughout the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 semesters presented by the Council of Independent Colleges, participating faculty, from undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs across disciplines were asked to implement the use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) into course assignments. GAI is defined as any type of AI that uses deep learning models to generate or create new content (Bowen & Watson, 2024). A team of three faculty across different programs and disciplines convened. This team included an undergraduate representative of the School of Nursing and Health Sciences, a faculty member from the graduate School of Education who teaches master’s degree students, and a professor and program director of the School of Education’s doctoral program. We decided to integrate the use of GAI in various formats as a thought partner for developing scholarly work. The undergraduate and masters level professors convened to discuss the research assignments in their courses, and how AI could help students meet their course objectives, ever mindful of the needs of these varying levels of learners. Difficulties facing students were identified as the lack of time to complete such an involved project and that students had difficulties generating ideas for their topic of research. We wondered if Microsoft Copilot would be viewed as a helpful tool to generate ideas and search strategies, leaving more time for comprehension and synthesis of research for their assignments. The following paper is a description of the implementation of GAI into an undergraduate nursing asynchronous online course entitled “Evidenced-Based Practice and Nursing Research,” describing the process of implementing the assignment, lessons learned, and ongoing evaluation.

Author Details

Christa E. Hartch, PhD, RN, FNP-C has been as a nurse for over two decades, working in oncology and bone marrow transplant tertiary care settings, primary care, home care and hospice.

Dr. Hartch’s published research has included studies showing improvement in medication adherence and medication self-efficacy with the use of mobile smartphone applications in medically underserved patients with chronic illness. As a member of the Greenwich Hospital Nursing Research Council, she is currently working on new research involving spirituality in nursing.

Dr. Hartch is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine as well as the Founding President of Manhattanville’s Sigma Theta Tau chapter, the International Honor Society of Nursing.

Sigma Membership

Alpha Gamma Kappa

Lead Author Affiliation

Manhattanville University, Purchase, New York, USA

Type

Report

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

N/A

Research Approach

N/A

Keywords:

Generative Artificial Intelligence, Nursing Education, Baccalaureate Nursing Education, Nursing Research, Evidence-Based Nursing, AI

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record. All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository. All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Submitted for Open Dissemination

Acquisition

Self-submission

Date of Issue

2026-03-23

Full Text of Presentation

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