CSUN Journalism Students Explore Learning with ChatGPT

September 1, 2023

Chatbots such as ChatGPT by OpenAI and Bard by Google are here to stay.  If you are planning to work as a communication professional, you are going to have an artificial intelligence chatbot on your desk very soon—assuming you don’t already use AI on a daily basis.   

CSUN Journalism is leading the way with innovative course content using these AI chatbots and other AI tools, such as Midjourney for image creation.  

Our professors are incorporating the creative use of chatbots into their media courses. After all, our students are using AI chatbots at school and work. 

As recently covered by KCRW 89.9 FM, Zócalo Public Square and the Los Angeles Times, Prof. Elizabeth Blakey is exploring how to use chatbots with the CSUN journalism students in her course J480, History of American News Media. They are workshopping various projects including brainstorming, researching, and writing about media history using chatbots combined with their own creativity and intuition.  

Prof. David Blumenkrantz is engaging students in J460, Magazine Journalism, with the use of AI tools for creating digital images. 

For more information about these projects, see the recent article in the Los Angeles Times, “I’m co-teaching my college class with ChatGPT. Will it upstage me?” (subscription required or click here to read print version) or the article in Zócalo Public Square, “Anything ChatGPT can do, my students can do better.”  

This topic was also covered by CSUNToday.