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Informed Consent

You are invited to participate in a research study entitled The Role of Authentic Leadership and the Successful Implementation of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education. You were selected as a potential participant because you are at least 18 years of age, are a tenured, tenured-track faculty member, or a full-time instructor in the English Department at one of the 16 universities that have implemented generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), and are involved in my research. Please read this form and ask any questions you may have before acting on this invitation to participate in the study.

This study is being conducted by Juan Rivera, a doctoral candidate at the University of the Cumberlands, and has been approved by the UC Institutional Review Board.

Background Information:

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between faculty’s views of administrators’ authentic leadership in implementing Gen AI, and how this leadership style impacts faculty’s intent to use Gen AI for teaching and learning in 16 universities across the United States. The Authentic Leadership-Rater Form (ALQ-RF) will be used to assess leadership style, while the Technology Acceptance Model 2 (TAM2) survey will assess faculty intention to use Gen AI for teaching and learning. The study will involve approximately 560 participants.

Inclusion Criteria: You can participate in this study if you:

• are at least 18 years of age,
• are in the English department,
• disciplines within this department include Literature, Comparative Literature, Writing and Rhetoric, Rhetoric and Composition, English Education, and Creative Writing,
• are tenured faculty, tenured-track faculty, or full-time faculty,
• and ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot or a university version of generative AI has been implemented at the university.

Procedures: If you agree to be in this study, you will be asked to complete a 30-question survey that will take between 5 and 8 minutes. The survey will be available between January 18 and February 8, 2027.

Voluntary Nature of the Study: Your participation in this study is strictly voluntary. Your decision whether or not to participate will not affect your current or future relations with your university or the University of the Cumberlands. If you initially decide to participate, you are free to withdraw at any time later without affecting those relationships.

Risks and Benefits of Participation: There is no more than minimal risk associated with participation in this study, and no individual benefit to participation. A survey link will be forwarded to an educational leader to disseminate the survey, and no individual private data will be collected during the study. Or directly to participants where required by university protocol. The study's findings may provide an overall benefit by helping educational leaders and faculty in higher education understand the processes and complexities involved in implementing Gen AI.

In the event you experience stress or anxiety during your participation in the study, you may terminate your participation at any time by exiting the survey. You may refuse to answer any questions you consider invasive or stressful. No personal data, names, or other personal information is being collected; therefore, if participation is terminated, only the participant will be aware.

Compensation: There will be no compensation provided for your participation in this study.

Recording: No recording of information will be used in this study.

Confidentiality: Any data or records gathered from your participation will be kept private. Any identifiable data gathered will be coded to protect your identity. In any report of this study that might be published, the researcher will not include any information that will make it possible to identify you. Research records will be securely stored on a password-protected computer and will be accessible only to the researcher and the researcher’s faculty advisors. Research records will be deleted three years after the study is completed.

Contacts and Questions: The researcher conducting this study is Juan Rivera. The researcher’s faculty advisor is Dr. Andrew Alexson. His email is andrew.alexson@ucumberlands.edu. You may ask any questions you have related to the consent to participation. If you have questions later, you may contact jrivera33045@ucumberlands.edu or the UC Institutional Review Board (IRB) office at irb@ucumberlands.edu.