Draft Preliminary note on identifiability and PII review · click to expand

This appendix is being circulated to the committee as a draft. It contains material that has not yet completed a final review for personally identifiable information. Before the appendix is finalized for submission, every mention of a named individual will be reviewed against the taxonomy in §B.6.5: students named in instructor-produced materials will be anonymized unless explicit written consent for educational use is documented; named guest speakers will be retained as public professional identities with their professional context attached; Luma-platform workshop feedback will be reviewed for anonymization; and external journalism is retained as already published and consented.

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§F.1

AI Use Disclosure

This appendix discloses the use of generative-AI assistants during the preparation of this dissertation, in accordance with the transparency expectations that the dissertation itself argues for in its treatment of GenAI pedagogy.

F.1.1 Statement of Authorial Responsibility

I am the sole author of this dissertation. Generative-AI assistants helped with specific tasks of drafting, revising, and structuring described below. All substantive analytic claims, methodological decisions, theoretical findings, and interpretive moves are my own. The conclusions, contributions, and limitations are mine to defend.

F.1.2 AI Tools Used in Dissertation Preparation

Two distinct categories of AI tools relate to this dissertation. Each is named here for clarity.

Tools used as writing assistants during dissertation preparation:

Tools that are the subject matter of the dissertation:

The generative-AI tools that appear throughout the four iterations as instructional content — ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Runway, Pika, Sora, Soundful, Suno, Udio, ElevenLabs, HeyGen, NotebookLM, Microsoft Designer, and others — were taught and demonstrated in class as part of the curriculum. My own use of these tools to support classroom delivery and curriculum design is documented within the iteration narratives (Appendix C). I do not separately enumerate that classroom usage here.

F.1.3 How AI Assisted with Dissertation Preparation

Concrete enumeration of how AI writing assistants were used during the spring 2026 preparation period:

F.1.4 What Remained Entirely the Author's

The following were not AI-generated and predate or stand apart from the AI-assisted writing:

F.1.5 Disclosure as Consistent with the Dissertation's Posture Toward AI

The dissertation studies pioneering generative-AI pedagogy. My use of AI assistants in writing about that pedagogy is internally consistent with the curriculum's posture rather than in tension with it. The pedagogical stance documented across the four iterations — name the tool, show what it does and does not do, model responsible use, iterate when the output is inadequate — is the same stance taken in this disclosure: I name the tools used, describe what they did and did not do in this dissertation, and place the human author's judgment as the final arbiter of substantive claims. Anderson's analytic-autoethnography framework licenses reflexive disclosure about the conditions of analytic work, and this disclosure is part of the performed reflexivity that Appendix B §B.7 develops.

F.1.6 Compliance with University Policy

This disclosure is provided in accordance with the University of Colorado Boulder Graduate School's expectations on the transparent use of generative-AI tools in graduate scholarly work, and with the College of Engineering and Applied Science's guidance on responsible AI use in academic writing. The committee was kept apprised of the AI-assisted preparation process throughout. Any university or program policy revisions that arrive between the defense and final submission will be reflected in the final version of this appendix.

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