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By Chad Brassil and June Griffin
When considering the following questions, be informed of ever-changing AI capabilities, current estimates of environmental footprint, ethics, and uncertainty on the future of jobs. Acknowledge limitations of our understanding.
What is the role of AI in what we want our students to learn?
Categorize elements of your course and ensure your AI Policy articulates your learning goals and rationale to students.
AI Free – remove AI to facilitate intentional development of student skills. Detection methods do not work. Best done in controlled spaces such as in class and may require reorganization.
- In-class Journal: “I’m an AI Power User. It Has No Place in the Classroom” by Geoff Watkinson
AI Ambivalent – students make their own choices. Anticipate this is what is happening outside of class. Acknowledge that the use of AI includes a wide range of activities and that students have divergent attitudes and practices. It can be appropriate to ask students to disclose AI use.
- CTT Resources: Teaching & AI & UNL Syllabus AI Policy
AI Engaged – guide students in how to use AI within the discipline. For example, ask students to comparatively analyze AI output, or teach students how to use AI to expand their expertise.
- AI Sandwich: Strategic AI Use by Beth McMurtrie
What curriculum will prepare our students for an AI world?
Scaffold student learning to prepare them to graduate into an AI-enabled environment. Intentionally structure the above categories across the major.
Undergraduate – intentionally design the timing of AI-Free to AI-Engaged experiences across courses to develop students who can think disciplinarily and act skillfully.
Graduate – explicitly discuss AI use in classes, in GTA work, and in research.
What role will AI have in our task as human educators in effectively teaching students?
Course Preparation – determine if and how you might use AI in course development such as assignment design; determine what to share with students about how you use it to benefit their learning.
- Educause Review: A Framework for Transparent GenAI Use in Higer Education by Damm and Eaton
Grading Assignments and Offering Feedback– consider how AI might enhance or detract from student learning in the context of the discipline. AI could increase consistency but decrease recognition of creative approaches students might take. What work deserves a human response?
- Judgement: “What We Give Up When We Let AI Decide” and Interactive Dilemmas by Marc Watkins