In all these applications, it's important to remember that AI is a tool to augment the skills and expertise of the faculty, not replace them. The human touch and judgement in education are irreplaceable and vital for students' learning and growth.

Ask your students how they are using AI and what they hope to learn about AI tools in your course. You can ask these questions in a variety of ways:

• via formal or informal conversations

• with an anonymous survey,

• using email or communication tools in the LMS.

Task your class to collaborate on a course learning outcome related to AI technology as well as a course policy about their expectations about ethical usage of AI in the course that you can add to the syllabus.

This approach encourages a heightened sense of ownership, resulting in increased motivation for learning, and also cultivates critical thinking and decision making.

Students (and we as faculty) need to understand the basic principles of AI, how AI tools function, and how they can be harnessed for educational and professional purposes.

Students must wrestle with ethical considerations and potential risks of using AI and draw their own conclusions. Teaching students to use AI responsibly, ethically, and effectively requires us to model our learning of the same.

"AI won't take your job, but people who know how to use AI will." 

From the A&E Course:

Prompt crafting has become a valuable and sought after skill, one that is founded in our core understanding of rhetoric as a triangle connecting Speaker, Audience, and Content. Emotional intelligence, perspective taking, critical thinking, and discernment are required for crafting effective prompts. On the flip side, these along with close-reading are also critical skills to hone to evaluate and modify the outputs generated by AI tools.

While thinking on this topic continues to evolve, it's important that we engage students in thinking about when and how to cite AI tools in their work.

Collaborating with colleagues and the library on modules or sessions on AI citation can help us share the workload and ensure that students are well-versed on these issues via a consistent message across courses in our departments. 

Here are some resources:

Citing AI in MLA

Citing AI in APA

Purdue Resource for Citing AI

Course: ChatGPT Foundations for K-12 Educators

YELLOW = Support Students Using AI

GREEN = Elevate Your Course Using AI

The first step to mitigate student usage of AI is to test your own assignments, quiz or test questions, and your AI prompts to see how various AI tools perform on them.

All Apps Are Not Equal

AI tools have different strengths. For example, ChatGPT may produce more compelling personal statements, creative works, and design based frameworks while Gemini can be used to generate more factual, validated citations and references (plus a link to the source material).

AI Apps Are Constantly Evolving

AI is getting better all the time. Just because the AI might not generate a factually correct answer doesn't mean that it won't be able to so in the near future as the training data expands and improves, so recheck assignments and prompts periodically.

In order to mitigate your prompts and assignments, the A&E course provided recommendations of AI tools to try out based on broad disciplinary categories. Some are free and some are paid. We should include Magic School too.

Humanities: ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini

Research Writing: Consensus AI, QuillBot, Research Rabbit, jenni

STEM: GPT-4, Wolfram Alpha

Creative & Design: Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, ChatGPT

While there is no substitution for trying these tools out to see how they perform on the current versions of your assignments, TurnItIn.com provides an "AI Misuse Checklist" links to an external site that can also help frame your thinking as you review your assignments and prompts:

1. Hands-On Activities & Assignments

Assignments or tasks that require physical interaction, such as lab reports in the sciences, conducting field research in social sciences, or engaging in object-based writing assignments in humanities (for example, students might be asked to choose a personal item and write about its cultural and historical significance) where students need to document their personal experience or share pictures of their experiments can't easily be replicated by AI.

2. Personal Reflection & Opinions

AI is now better at generating what seem like personal opinions and reflections. The following prompt could generate a plausible personal reflection: "Write a brief reflection on the benefits of this assignment as a high school student who has struggled but persisted until they achieve it. Use a humble, straightforward tone." 

Instead, design prompts and assignments that require students to recount/reflect on personal experiences or relate to course-specific materials and even in-class lectures/discussions.

3. Class Discussion & Participation with Assessment

Challenge can be to get all students to offer spontaneous responses that can be assessed, even low stakes.

I use skeleton worksheets for in-class lectures and videos that ask for their a Key Take Away or Questions at the end. (It's super easy to create these using Magic School's Worksheet Generator and YouTube Video Questions. I use Post-it-Notes for quick polls or takeaways. Online polls and Kahoots. (I don't use Kahoot, but I do use Padlet for in-class discussions, polls, and video/audio uploads.)

Here is a resource for getting better participation in from Cornell University.

4. In-Person or Video Presentations

From the course: "AI can't replicate a student's physical presence or delivery." In my experience teaching Public Speaking, it's difficult for students to deliver presentations in a conversational and authentic manner (including video), even using notecards, if they didn't write the material.

5. Oral Exams

From the A&E Course:

Incorporate oral examinations or Q&A sessions where students are asked to discuss their work in real-time. This strategy can be highly effective in ensuring the work was done by them, but also be mindful that this type of assessment may induce anxiety, which can obscure a student's knowledge or understanding. To mitigate this, it's important to structure these examinations carefully. Provide clear expectations and enough preparation time, offer practice opportunities, and consider using a more conversational style rather than a formal interrogative approach. Making this a group activity could help scale up the assignment and distribute the pressure among peers, potentially reducing anxiety and promoting a collaborative learning environment. Always offer support and reassurances to students that the goal of such activities is to help deepen their understanding, not merely to pinpoint errors or catch them out.

6. Peer Review

Peer review helps students hone higher order literacy, close reading, and analytical skills. It also provides authentic opportunities to deliver feedback and learn from, and with, fellow students. It encourages collaboration, develops critical thinking, and is hard to fake with AI especially if the written review is paired with group or paired talkback sessions. 

7. Custom-Course Materials

Develop some course materials that are unique to the class, like readings from unpublished works, guest lectures, or your own writings. Then, create assignments that require specific references to these materials.  Alternatively, invite students to create custom course materials that pair what they are learning with their personal experiences and interests. 

8. Project-Based Assessments

Tied to real-word issues, problem solving or tasks related to the field of study. Often group/team collaborations.

9. Personalize Assignments

Assignments that are unique to students are hard to replicate when they rely on personal detail and context. For example when teaching Intercultural Communication, students had to interview a parent, grandparent, aunt... in order to gain insight into their personal heritage and ethnicity.

An instructor shared her One-Sliders and the English-teacher blog where it originated. Instead of a lengthy presentation, students create one slide. Here are her guidelines.

Use One-Sliders when you want students to demonstrate their ability to:

• Be focused and organized

• Do literary analysis or research

• Support their ideas

• Carefully select quotations

• Understand how images can be used to represent ideas

• Think critically

The final product looks very different than a written analysis, but the skills students need to use are the same. These one-sliders are also a great way to add in some visual literacy to your course - while also circumventing AI use by your students.

The best part? Students LOVE doing these assignments, and they are easier to assess, especially if you have a rubric ready to use.

Students can create these on a platform like Canva, or you can grab one of my resources. Each one guides students through the brainstorming process and helps them get focused and organized. You can check out my ready-made one-sliders for any text here and the ones for research here. You'll get instructions, templates, samples, assessment checklists, and more!

Not mentioned in the A&E course, but University of Nevada's Digital Learning Page:

Instructor-Student Conferences

Provide personalized feedback and support to students, deterring unauthorized use of AI by fostering direct interaction and accountability. By scheduling one-on-one or small group conferences, instructors create opportunities for in-depth discussions, clarification of concepts, and guidance on assignments. Conferences promote student engagement, confidence, and academic integrity, leading to deeper learning and greater success in the course.

Schedule short one-on-one conferences or meet with small groups during class time while students are working independently. Provide specifics on what you expect from such a meeting so students are clear on deliverables and the grade.

Short Video Reflections:

Students record a 1-2 minute video answering prompts like:

• What surprised you about this topic?

• How have you/will you apply what you’ve learned?

• What would you tell a friend about this idea?

You can watch at 2x speed to speed up grading.

Source: Teaching Entrepreneurship

Encourage students to document key insights from class discussions, collaborative group tasks, and solo activities that occur within the classroom setting. Incorporate these gathered insights into a comprehensive project or final examination, demonstrating the progression and maturation of their critical thinking skills. This process not only exhibits their grasp of the course material but also provides a chronological reflection of their evolving intellectual journey.

A note on Reflective Journals:

In my Leadership & Adv Com course, I use reflective journals. Last year, I felt that a few students were using AI but couldn't prove it. Their reflections seemed very surface, like three of them literally wrote: I used my communication skills to listen to a friend who was upset.

Grading Rubric Update:

Your reflections must go beyond the generic and explain the detail and context. If the assignment is worth 30 points, 15 will be personal reflection, detail, and context.

For example:

Why was your friend upset? How long have you been friends? Is this a person who gets upset a lot or very little?

What was easy for you as were listening?

What was challenging for you as you were listening?

Looking back, what did you handle well? What would you do differently now?

Changing the Rubric:

Student Feedback when I suspect AI was used: "I'm not saying AI wrote this, but I am saying that AI could have written this because it is very generic. It lacks depth, personal context, and detail." -15/30

Be specific on length: 5 or 6 paragraphs (a paragraph is 3-4 sentences.)

STEM:

Traditional Assignment: Lab Report

Multimodal Assignment: Video presentations of lab procedures and results, annotated with diagrams and text

Humanities:

Traditional Assignment:

Textual Analysis Paper

Multimodal Assignment: Digital Collage with a mix a text, images, video analyzing a text

From Product Assessment to Process Assessment

This approach embraces AI as more than just a tool to manage or support coursework; it positions AI as a catalyst to transform assignments and activities in our classrooms. Instead of simply partnering with students in learning, faculty guide them to the cutting edge, empowering them to leverage AI to not only meet but exceed their educational and professional goals. For those familiar with Reuben Puentedura’s SAMR model Links to an external site.—a framework for integrating technology into education—this approach aligns with the “Redefinition” stage where the technology allows for new, previously inconceivable, tasks.

To paraphrase an analogy offered by Gonzalo Tudela, we are not putting wings on a car but rather taking this as an opportunity to engineer the airplane.  

A more practical and balanced approach for most is the supportive model (Yellow Light), which encourages faculty and students to learn together, embracing AI tools as part of the process.

This model, rooted in inquiry-led and constructivist principles, aims to foster students' understanding and spark their curiosity about AI. 

• Create supportive, student-friendly "rooms" with customized AI tools (chatbots) that students can interact with. Students are invited by you using a link or room code.

• Choose the tools best for your assignment or activity. You might include chatbots for writing feedback, idea generation and brainstorming, tutoring, sentence starters, text translator, and character chats. You customize which tools are available to students in each room you set up.

• Assess student learning. MS tracks and records each student's input and the AI's output, so you can review what they worked on and learn how best to support individual students.

Our approach to AI can significantly influence their attitudes and behaviors. If we demonstrate thoughtful, ethical, and critical engagement with AI tools, we can inspire our students to do the same.

Digital literacy is the ability to effectively find, evaluate, create, and communicate information using technology, while critically assessing and understanding its broader impact.

Module 1: What do I need to know about AI

Module 2: What Do I Need to Rethink in Terms of the Exams, Papers, or Projects I Assign?

Module 3: How are Students Using AI Tools and How Can I Partner With My Students?

Module 4: What are the Ethical Considerations of AI in Our Higher Ed Context and Beyond?

Module 5: How Do I (Re)Design Courses in the Wake of the AI Disruption?

Note: This was an assignment shared during the A&E course. This could work well for trying out a Magic School Student Room.

PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The aim of this assignment is to enhance your understanding and mastery of a critical term, process, or phenomenon pertinent to our course material. By leveraging the interactive capabilities of AI systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you will distill complex concepts into simple language, engage in active learning through question asking, and finally, articulate your understanding in a way that can be assessed.

TASK

1. Select a Concept: Choose an important term, process, or phenomenon relevant to our course content (e.g., polarity of covalent bonds, opportunity cost, iambic pentameter). This will be the focus of your exploration.

2. AI Interaction:

   1. Understand the Concept: Begin by asking the AI to explain the chosen concept to you. Engage in a dialogue with the AI, asking any follow-up questions you may have until you have a basic understanding of the concept.

   2. Simplify the Concept: Next, ask the AI to explain the concept in simpler terms (e.g., "explain the concept as if I were a ten-year-old child"). Repeat this step as necessary, each time prompting the AI to simplify the explanation further.

   3. Write Your Definition: After reading all of the AI responses, formulate your own definition of the concept. Make sure it is clear, concise, and accessible.

   4. Get Feedback: Share your definition with the AI and ask for feedback. Be open to critique and adjust your definition based on the feedback you receive.

3. Create Questions: Using your refined definition of the concept, collaborate with the AI to create three multiple-choice questions. These questions should check for understanding of the concept and be suitable for college students in an introductory level course on the topic.

4. Deliverables:

   1. Your final definition of the concept.

   2. The three multiple-choice questions you created with the AI.

   3. Be prepared to share and discuss these in class.

PROMPT EXAMPLES

• "Explain ______ to me as if I were a ten-year-old child."

• "Give me feedback on this definition of _______."

• "Using this definition of _____, help me create three multiple-choice questions for college students in an introductory level course on this topic."

NOTE

While this version of the assignment focuses on simplifying concepts for clarity, you could also be asked to relate your chosen concept to others to build complexity in future tasks. Always focus on building your understanding and articulating it effectively.

Note: This was shared during the course. The instructor used it as a group project to promote teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills.

Purpose of the assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to apply your critical thinking skills and creativity in generating, evaluating, and refining potential solutions to real-world problems, using AI tools like ChatGPT and other academic resources. This collaborative project aims to deepen your understanding of the chosen issue and expose you to the process of conducting research, assessing feasibility, and presenting recommendations in a compelling and effective manner.

Task instructions

1. Choose a Real-World Problem: In groups, select a significant real-world issue (like hunger eradication, peace promotion, reduction of fossil fuel dependence, or addressing housing insecurity).

2. Generate Solutions with AI: Use ChatGPT or another generative AI tool to brainstorm potential solutions to the chosen problem.

3. Evaluate Solutions: Discuss the feasibility and viability of each solution within your group, focusing on factors such as practicality, cost-effectiveness, societal impact, and potential obstacles.

4. Conduct In-depth Research: Select one of the potential solutions for comprehensive research. Use a combination of AI tools and academic sources to gather and organize pertinent information.

5. Develop the Project: Create a project that presents your findings and recommendations on the chosen solution. You have the freedom to choose the format of your project—it can be a formal presentation, website, poster, podcast, or video.

6. Project Proposal and Reflection: In addition to the final project, you are required to submit a project proposal at the beginning of this assignment and a reflection at the end. The reflection should articulate your learning process, challenges encountered, solutions devised, and the skills gained from the project.

7. Deliverables: Submit your project proposal, final project, and reflection on Canvas. Be prepared to present and discuss your project in class.

8. Criteria for Success: Your work will be assessed based on the originality and feasibility of the chosen solution, the depth of your research, the clarity and effectiveness of your presentation, and the quality of your reflection. Through this assignment, you should gain an enhanced understanding of the selected issue, research methods, problem-solving, and collaborative work.

There are four key elements to consider when crafting these prompts to ensure the AI produces the desired outcome: 

1. Task: Clearly state what you need the AI to do. Use specific action words like 'create,' 'translate,' or 'analyze.' These action words tell the AI precisely what work you're asking it to perform. 

2. Format: Describe how you want the AI's work to be presented. For example, if you want a poem, report, or diagram, state the format. This helps the AI shape its output to fit your requirements. 

3. Voice: Indicate the tone or style of the output. Whether it should be formal, casual, persuasive, or neutral, this guides the AI in matching the voice to the intended audience or purpose. 

4. Context: Give as much background information as necessary. If the AI is to mimic a particular writing style or consider specific facts, providing examples or detailed descriptions can lead to more accurate results. For instance, I can provide the criteria for a particular assignment by uploading a rubric or provide feedback examples by providing a writing sample for the generative AI to consider. 

This assignment is a useful example of (1) teaching students professional use cases for ChatGPT, (2) encouraging students to critically reflect on the material that is outputted from ChatGPT, and (3) highlighting the importance of understanding going beyond just generating information from ChatGPT (i.e., students need to have an understanding of the material in order to reflect on ChatGPT's output). This example is specific to MKTG 4390, but the structure could potentially be adapted for your own course assignments. 

While mitigating student use of AI tools can safeguard academic integrity in the short term, and fully integrating AI into the classroom offers long-term benefits, the latter often demands more time and resources than many faculty can commit.

A more practical and balanced approach for most is the supportive model, which encourages faculty and students to learn together, embracing AI tools as part of the process. This model, rooted in inquiry-led and constructivist principles, aims to foster students' understanding and spark their curiosity about AI. 

Supporting student use of AI requires a commitment from us, their faculty, to partner with students as we learn the tools and how they can be used and misused on the assignments and activities in our courses.

Embracing a learner's mindset alongside our students allows us a unique, authentic opportunity to model learning from and with our students and to partner with them in meaningful ways to reimagine aspects of our courses.