Zotero Integration

You can connect invidual courses to specific Zotero collections. This can be helpful if you are using an LLM coding agent to assist with preparing course materials.

Once a course is connected to a Zotero collection, any materials you add to that collection, or notes you make about those materials are easily accessible to yor LLM agent. This includes highlights and annoctations you make to PDFs.

Why Do This?

If you use an LLM coding agent to help with course development, making the agent aware of course materials creates a range of affordances. For example, you ca prompt the coding agent to do the following kinds of things:

• compare your assignments prompts and lecture notes to the notes you made on the course readings.
• help prepare the course bibligraphy and build a reading calendar.
• revise the reading calendar to match changes you may have made to the course materials.

What Not to do with LLMs

I believe that teachers should be wary of how we use generative AI in our teaching. I'm all for improving workflows and consistency, but I think we should refrain from using these tools for any of the real writing we do on materials where authenticity matters, for example, assignment prompts, writing feedback, student-facing communication, etc. For writing that is about creating relationships with our students, LLM-generated content risks failing our students ethically and pedagogically. More on LLMs and Teaching here.