Wr_17: ONLINE AI Literacy in Scholarly Writing

For doctoral researchers in all research fields | already participated in a writing workshop

Online Workshop

Date: 11.12.2026 
Time: 09.00 - 16.00 hrs with flexible time schedules incl. breaks
Trainer: Dr. Brian Cusack
Language: English
Participants: max. 12 persons
Credit Point: acknowledged with 0,5 CP for the doctoral training programme of RUB-RS Certificate

The workshop is offered for doctoral researchers who already participated in an academic writing workshop (recommended is the participation in the workshop “Scientific Writing”, but any other workshop counts). Participants should submit a short sample of their own writing comprising an Abstract and Title (max. 250 words) either from a manuscript currently in preparation or describing their research so far. 

Course description

Generative AI (GenAI) tools continue to be irreversibly integrated into daily writing practice with significant potential opportunities and threats for scholarly standards. The workshop helps participants to grasp this opportunity by promoting responsible and ethical use of AI tools while emphasising critical thinking skills and advocating the highest standards of research integrity.

GenAI use has already had a measurable impact on the scholarly literature. Now, the initial promise of GenAI can be gauged thanks to the availability of peer reviewed research. Drawing on these studies, the workshop will take an evidence-based and human-centred approach that emphasizes AI-literacy over AI-dependency. The module will highlight general principles that are transferable among LLMs rather an focusing on individual tools.

The workshop will include video content on theoretical aspects followed by one day of practically-focused live sessions. These sessions will emphasise AI tools as a means to augment productivity while refining writing. Evidence is accumulating that AI tools are only beneficial to authors who already know what does, and what doesn’t, work in academic writing. For this reason, participation in an academic writing workshop is expected.

The workshop will address the following major topics:

• Careful and critical generation of literature summaries that are free of “hallucinations” while maximizing the power of LLMs in mining the scholarly literature.
• Safeguarding your authorial voice when using AI tools to assist with your writing. Prompt-engineering techniques to train your LLM of choice while ensuring your primacy as author as well as our intellectual autonomy.
• Protecting your academic reputation by avoiding “rookie errors” and common pitfalls typical of novice users of LLMs (e.g. generalization bias, genre misalignment, “AI ghostwriter” effects) who risk undermining not only reader confidence but also public trust.
• Using LLM tools as a conversational agent in a brainstorming dialogue that stimulates your own thinking. Maintaining human-centred critical thinking skills through iterative and active interrogation of LLMs.
• Ethics and equity issues as well as privacy and intellectual property concerns related to LLM use. Data protection and copyright issues will be addressed.
• Enhancing your academic integrity through best practice in transparently declaring use of AI-tools to leading journals.

Trainer: Dr. Brian Cusack provides high-level training workshops in Germany and abroad since 2012. He received his Ph.D. in Genetics from Trinity College, Dublin. He completed his first postdoc at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and conducted post-doctoral research in evolutionary genomics at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin.

 

Please click here to register for the workshop: REGISTRATION