Every Undergraduate Will Take an AI-Literacy Module Starting This Fall

Beginning with the fall 2025 class, every UW–Porter Falls undergraduate completes a one-credit module on generative artificial intelligence as part of the required first-year seminar. The module covers how large language models work at a conceptual level, where they fail, how to disclose AI assistance in coursework, and the differences in AI policy from one instructor to the next.

The Faculty Senate approved the requirement in May after a year-long working group that included students, librarians, and faculty from computing, writing, and the trades. The group concluded that a blanket ban was unenforceable and that students were already using the tools without a shared vocabulary for talking about them honestly.

“We are not trying to make everyone a prompt engineer. We are trying to make sure a first-year student can read a syllabus’s AI policy, follow it, and explain what they did.”

— chair of the AI working group

Individual courses still set their own rules — some prohibit AI entirely, some require it — and the module is explicit that the course policy always governs. A parallel set of workshops for faculty on designing AI-resilient assignments runs through the Center for Teaching each term.

Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu