Instructional Technology: Teaching with AI

Here are some ways that you could use AI in the classroom:

• Develop variety in scenario-based assessment. For example, ask AI tool, such as ChatGPT to act as a client to a marketing business, and create a brief for a marketing expert to design a campaign for an unidentified product, including a budget, timescale and market reach. ChatGPT responded with a request for a 6-month, $100,000 campaign across the USA to sell smart thermostats. Students could then work to actually create materials for this campaign as an assessment task.
• Leverage AI as a thought partner in the authoring of branching scenarios to give learners authentic critical thinking assessments. For example, use Microsoft Copilot to generate a comprehensive case study with relevant dialogue, feedback, and branches that take the learner on a content-rich journey.
• Develop student awareness of information literacy by opening conversations about where AI gets information from, and more broadly about where information online comes from. AI has clear limitations, such as not being able to fact check the text it generates (leading to factually incorrect statements), not being able to browse or search the internet, or to write about anything that happened after 2021. Make sure students know these limitations, and use the conversation as an opportunity to teach students how to check text generated by the tool. 
• Have students interact with AI on topics from the course and analyze and critique what it generates. Do small tweaks to words they input in AI result in significant differences in what it writes? Are there significant omissions in the text that AI generates, and if so, what might be the causes for the omissions? Ask your students what they learned from interacting with AI, and how it might influence their future writing both in terms of how they express their ideas and arguments, and their use of voice.  
• Use AI to generate conversations about ethics and technology, and how the topics will increasingly converge in education. Who has access to AI tools and will they be “free” and equally available? Who might be helped and harmed by AI? How can the technology be used to promote educational equity?   
• Design multipart assignments where some parts explicitly ask students to use AI (e.g., in generating synthesis) and other parts require reflection on the writing produced by AI. 
• Create assignments where students engage in debate or argument with AI and reflect on what they learned. 
• Use AI to generate writing prompts or quiz questions based on the course materials and have students critique what AI did and didn’t get right. 
• Ask students to “remix” their work creatively using AI (such as in the pen of Emily Dickinson) and to reflect on the new version. 
• Use AI as a resource for students to gain feedback on their writing by developing a rubric that students can submit with their writing to Ai. 
• Invite students to consider the nature of tone and voice. If AI consistently generates text that reads as if it were written by a robot, what precisely are the elements of a piece of writing that give it tone and voice? How can students articulate what’s missing? 
• Provide lower-level feedback to students on writing, including argument structure, language and grammar, in relation to the instructor’s rubric for evaluation of student papers.
• After students generate content using AI, they should be asked to critically analyze these drafts and check every fact and claim mentioned. This can be done either individually or collaboratively. To make the evaluation process more productive, instructors should provide students with a rubric outlining the criteria when analyzing AI-generated content. University of North Carolina outlined a comprehensive set of evaluative criteria,

Creating an assessment that counters excessive/unethical use of AI requires a key shift in focus from performance to the learning process. Here are some ideas and thoughts about designing inclusive and authentic assessments that are ‘AI proof”:

• Encourage collaboration and active learning pedagogy 
• Emphasize formative assessments such as in-class discussions and presentations 
• Provide opportunities for students to reflect on their learning process and their use of technology including AI
• Incorporate discussions and activities promoting ethical and responsible use of technology
• Scaffold or structure assignments in a way that guides students towards creating a final product for submission. This approach not only enhances students' writing and learning but also establishes authentic conditions that are less likely to encourage the use of generative AI.
• Foster authenticity in assessment by incorporating real-world and personal experiences.
• Be more explicit about having students provide references for assignments.
• Focus on skills-based rather than knowledge-based assessments.
• Prompt students to explicitly reference in-class discussions, lecture material and course readings in their homework assignments.
• Ask students to connect learning to their personal experiences and/or current events.
• Consider implementing “Live” exams for online students or increased use of pen and paper exams. 
• If moving to an analog format for exams seems appropriate and feasible for your class and you prefer not to deal with AI on any level, consider evaluate students using writing exams, oral exams, or timed group projects.