Each summer, the Center for Engaged Learning facilitates week-long meetings for three distinct international, multi-institutional, and multidisciplinary research seminars that foster collaborative scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) on focused engaged learning topics. During this summer’s research seminar meetings, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) came up in conversations about research designs, research analysis, and writing. As a professor of professional writing and rhetoric who teaches in an undergraduate degree program that advocates preparing students to use GenAI ethically and effectively, I want to encourage the Center’s research seminar participants and other SoTL scholars to explore ethical use of these tools. As a journal editor, however, I also want to encourage them to proceed with caution, informed by their target journals’ policies on GenAI.

In April 2023, my current co-editor of Teaching & Learning Inquiry (TLI), Earle Abrahamson, wrote about questions that the SoTL community (and scholars more generally) would need to grapple with as GenAI gets better at generating texts—and as SoTL scholars rely on GenAI more to support their scholarly inquiry and circulation. He ended his post with the question, “Perhaps the real challenge is to consider the role of integrity and responsibility in using AI within educational settings?”

This type of questioning has guided several discussions among higher education journal editors about responsible use of GenAI in work that culminates in journal submissions. Many journals now have guidance for authors (and sometimes reviewers) on acceptable use of GenAI and how to acknowledge that use. TLI offers “Generative AI Guidance for Authors and Reviewers” that includes a table highlighting when it’s okay to use GenAI and when it’s not. For TLI, it’s okay to use GenAI tools for “organizing references, creating citations, or formatting your bibliography” if that use is acknowledged—and the author is still responsible for selecting which sources to reference, assessing their quality, and ensuring the accuracy of citations. This example reflects longstanding use of tools like Zotero and EndNote, demonstrating that GenAI is a continuing evolution of inquiry and writing technologies, not something that’s entirely new.

TLI’s guidance also suggests that SoTL scholars can use (and must disclose their use of) GenAI to:

• Facilitate brainstorming
• Create visuals that supplement their work
• Automate basic tasks in data collection
• Support proofreading and editing

However, TLI’s guidance makes clear that scholars must remain the researcher and author. GenAI shouldn’t be used to:

• Compose the “main ideas, arguments, or analysis” of the manuscript
• Generate or interpret data
• Replace the SoTL scholar’s role in analyzing their data and drawing conclusions
• Write significant sections of a TLI manuscript

This approach reflects the TLI editorial team’s recognition that GenAI can be a helpful tool—much like other technologies that are widely accepted for use in the research and circulation processes. At the same time, TLI’s guidance keeps the human scholar as the central actor in SoTL inquiry and writing.

Of course, other journals take different approaches—or are guided by policies set by their publisher (e.g., Taylor & Francis’s AI Policy). Therefore, SoTL scholars should look at their target journals’ guidance long before they begin writing about what they learned from their research since journal policies might include provisions that could shape the research design.

For the record, I did not use GenAI while writing this post—regardless of what my tendency to use em-dashes might suggest!

References

Abrahamson, Earle. 2023. “SoTL: The Next AI Generation.” ISSOTL (blog). April 4, 2023. https://issotl.com/2023/04/04/sotl-the-next-ai-generation/

Mania, Greg. 2025. “The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations.” McSweeney’s. July 17, 2025. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-em-dash-responds-to-the-ai-allegations

Taylor & Francis. n.d. AI Policies. https://taylorandfrancis.com/our-policies/ai-policy/

Teaching & Learning Inquiry. n.d. “Generative AI Guidance for Authors and Reviewers.” https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/TLI/gen-ai

About the Author

Jessie L. Moore is Director of the Center for Engaged Learning and Professor of English: Professional Writing & Rhetoric at Elon University. She is the author of Key Practices for Fostering Engaged Learning: A Guide for Faculty and Staff (Stylus Publishing, 2023) and co-editor of five edited collections on engaged learning topics. As CEL’s Director, Jessie leads planning, implementation, and assessment of the Center’s research seminars, which support multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary inquiry on high-impact pedagogies and other focused engaged learning topics. Jessie also co-edit’s Teaching & Learning Inquiry, the flagship publication of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

How to Cite This Post

Moore, Jessie L. 2025. “GenAI and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog). August 8, 2025. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/genai-and-the-scholarship-of-teaching-and-learning/.