From October 19 to 22, SFLL held the International Course Week, themed “Generative AI (GenAI) and Academic Publishing: Norms, Ethics, and Future Challenges.” Professor Lawrence Jun ZHANG (Zhang Jun), doctoral supervisor and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, delivered the course, drawing on his team’s recent research to outline the landscape, ethical norms, and methodological pathways of GenAI in foreign language education and academic writing. Over 40 faculty and students attended the courses, which were chaired by Associate Professor Xie Xiao.

The courses focused on AI-empowered digital multimodal writing and cognitive factors such as metacognition, self-regulated learning, self-efficacy, and critical reasoning. Based on his SSCI research, Professor Zhang introduced the student AI literacy scale, self-efficacy profiles and their link to writing self-regulation. He also covered cross-genre and cross-media writing transfer, as well as the role of metacognitive instruction in collaborative digital multimodal writing. He argued that AI should not be a static tool or used freely; instead, teachers should design complex tasks and guide discussions to set clear AI boundaries, ensuring GenAI is used ethically and academically.

In addition, Xie Xiao introduced his recent collaborative research with Professor Zhang on teacher AI literacy and AI emotions. The research illustrates teachers’ ethical stances and underlying motivations in real teaching contexts across AI data, models and algorithms, pedagogy, and the socio-technical environment.

The International Course Week, as part of the serial events to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the School of Foreign Languages Literatures, expanded academic horizons at the intersection of GenAI and foreign language education, while boosting awareness of technical norms, ethics, and research methods.