AI is a multidimensional tool of modern technology. A great deal of controversy over the usage of AI in college classrooms has to do with the full plagiarism of a final academic product. However, this is not the only potential use of AI software. Summary and synthesis are also key capabilities of AI software. With the increasing prevalence of software tools such as Open AI’s ChatGPT, more and more college students are discovering how to use these tools to not only plagiarize full assignments, but also to avoid any academic heavy lifting in general.

At the same time, summary and synthesis are key academic building blocks for any college-level student. Without the ability to summarize a text, and synthesize multiple texts for a specific purpose, topic, or audience, students will not be able to accomplish academic tasks that involve building their own ideas from other texts.

In the TextGenEd article “Text Generators in Technical Communication” Dr. Douglas Eyman of George Mason University discusses his tactics for intentionally teaching students how to summarize with AI software. Dr. Eyman asked students to use AI tools to summarize technical documents. His students discovered that, while AI was able to successfully summarize, this process was not at all more effective than manually summarizing these documents. This assignment served both as an exercise in AI literacy, and a lesson in the limitations and drawbacks of AI software.

Dr. Eyman’s students discovered challenges with AI user interfaces and optimization that hindered the efficiency of their processes. These students also encountered issues with the readability of AI-produced summaries. Dr. Eyman states: “One student also ran the results through a readability score tool and found that none of the applications she used decreased the complexity of the text.” (TextGenEd) This highlights a key issue that students who lack summary/synthesis skills will encounter. Without the rhetorical awareness to discern the needs and values of their audience(s), students who are reliant upon AI are unable to tailor material from other texts towards specific audiences.

As a beginning Business Communication instructor, I have struggled to take steps to solidify my students’ summary and synthesis skills. Handwriting in-class can be an effective tactic to help ensure that students do not use AI software, however, it is not an ever-present solution when students are doing independent homework assignments. As a result, I feel as though in-class oral discussions on course readings/materials offer an engaging supplement to independent, written assignments. Sharing ideas amongst an audience of fellow students can be the beginning stage of the synthesis process. Students may learn the rhetorical awareness skills necessary to summarize and synthesize sources within the classroom in this way.

With business and technical communication especially, different student and non-student audiences have different levels of comprehension, vocabulary skills, and discipline-specific expertise. The practical exercises and applications of teaching and exercising summary and synthesis skills cannot be understated in college classrooms. If students become too reliant upon Artificial Intelligence to develop a strong command of these skills, final written products will suffer, even if these final products are not products of AI.