Making AI Use Visible: Teaching Students to Develop Personal AI Policy Statements

Students are rapidly adopting generative AI tools to perform a myriad of academic and personal tasks, often without much critical thought or ethical deliberation. Without clear guiding principles or predetermined standards of practice, some students are bypassing the cognitive work learning requires and robbing themselves of meaningful intellectual development. To break the cycle of mindless AI use, I developed a project in which students craft their own personal AI policy statements that detail the ethical and professional considerations that guide their decision making. Students are required to model their AI use through a narrated screen-capture video that demonstrates their prompt-crafting and refinement, bringing transparency to the process and encouraging intention and reflection. Finally, students compose handwritten reflective journals that demonstrate their metacognition regarding the process. This poster presentation will include assignment details, rationale, and outcomes that can be transferred to a variety of academic courses.https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/ai-posters-2026/1000/thumbnail.jp

Leveraging Student Specialties for Innovative Digital Commons Exhibits

In this presentation, Madison Price and Sara DeCaro of Pittsburg State University will cover their unique projects created with Digital Commons Exhibits, what inspired them, and how they incorporated student employees into their workflow. Pittsburg State’s location in southeast Kansas has been home to historically significant institutions like the Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company, an internationally-known leftist press, and artists such as Gordon Parks and Eva Jessye. PSU’s collection of 2,000 Haldeman-Julius printing plates presented a quandary for Special Collections, until one student’s interest in them prompted this question: could the plates still be used? The result was multiple collaborations across PSU’s campus, experiments in printing, and innovative content for PSU’s instance of DCX. The annual lecture series hosted by PSU’s Special Collections has also been the basis for original DCX content. Online exhibits made to accompany the lectures have provided more opportunities for promoting archival collections, shed new light on local history, and given student workers a place to apply skills learned in their degree programs to archival work. Showcasing this history through DCX allows for a more visual, interactive experience with the materials. This is further elevated by the student workers’ talents and interests, such as graphic design and traditional printing. These efforts have breathed new life into underutilized archival collections, resulting in enhanced conservation of physical items and improved engagement and access for patrons everywhere. The audience should leave the presentation with ideas how to visualize or otherwise re-present their collections in an engaging manner, ideas on what exhibits they can create, and what talents their current and future student employees can bring to the table

Bird in Crabapple Tree

Unidentified bird perched in a crabapple tree, possibly an owl.https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/sullivanaudubon/1046/thumbnail.jp

AI Assisted Web Design

This poster presentation explores how artificial intelligence is integrated into the Graphic Communications Web Design curriculum to enhance student learning, creativity, and technical proficiency. Students first design fully developed user interface prototypes in Figma, focusing on user experience principles, layout systems, accessibility, and visual hierarchy. Once designs are refined, AI tools are introduced as collaborative assistants to help translate static mockups into responsive Bootstrap-based code.https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/ai-posters-2026/1003/thumbnail.jp

Mallards

Four mallard ducks in flighthttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/sullivanaudubon/1066/thumbnail.jp

Bird of Prey

Bird of prey, possibly an eagle or hawk, in flighthttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/sullivanaudubon/1059/thumbnail.jp

Travis and Rocky 2

Travis Jeanneret and Rocky Restivo, panelists at the 2026 AI Symposium, speaking at the tablehttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/aisymp-photos-2026/1020/thumbnail.jp

Moose

Moose, no antlers, in Alaskahttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/sullivanaudubon/1013/thumbnail.jp

Waterfall

Waterfall in the woods as seen from the groundhttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/sullivanaudubon/1088/thumbnail.jp

Stream in the Woods

Stream in the woods passing by a rock facehttps://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/sullivanaudubon/1086/thumbnail.jp