Rethink Your Teaching Approach
Give some thought to incorporating AI-based tools into your teaching approach. Reflect on how these tools could enhance student learning and help students develop the skills necessary to engage thoughtfully with these technologies in their personal and professional lives. Consider how critically engaging with AI tools helps students develop digital literacy skills, such as evaluating the accuracy of information sources and interrogating what constitutes effective writing.
Communicate Expectations
We cannot ignore that AI tools exist. Be sure to acknowledge the availability of generative AI tools and explain your expectations for students in your course syllabus. Explain your learning goals and clarify whether such tools are permissible in the course or for particular assignments. Also, specify the extent to which their use may be limited, such as brainstorming, ideation, editing, debugging, or other purposes. In addition, outline how students should document and reference their use of these technologies. If using AI tools is prohibited, discuss what steps you will take if you find out that a student has submitted AI-generated work.
Sample Syllabus Language
- If you want students to limit their use of AI tools,
- Students in this course may only use Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, for idea generation. Using these tools to generate complete responses to assignments violates CBS's Honor Code, and I will report suspected instances of plagiarism. Please contact me if you have any questions about this policy.
- If you will encourage students to use AI tools,
- You may use Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, for your work in this course, but only in the ways I have specified in the assignments. When you use any of these tools, you must include a note describing how you used them to generate your response to the assignment. Please contact me if you have any questions about this policy before submitting your work.
Integrate into Assignments
Create tasks requiring students to link the subject matter, classroom discussions, and the students’ lived experiences. It's more challenging for AI-powered tools to establish connections among diverse knowledge sources.
The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning's Considerations for AI Tools in the Classroom is a comprehensive guide with tips on rethinking assessments. These include:
- Scaffold Activities and Assignments: Break down a larger assignment into subtasks, creating opportunities for students to check in and receive feedback. The cyclical feedback and revision process in multistep assignments makes using tools like ChatGPT challenging.
- Design Authentic Assessments for Learning: Authentic assessments prevent using tools like ChatGPT by asking students to apply course concepts to a "real world" situation or problem infusing their own experiences and reflections.
- Incorporate AI Tools into Assignment Design: Depending on the goals and objectives, instructors might consider incorporating AI tools in their assignment design to provide students with opportunities to practice and foster the digital literacy skills they will need for the future.
Detect AI-Generated Work
Research is underway to develop robust methods for detecting prose generated by AI tools. Despite the lack of evidence regarding their effectiveness, some generative AI plagiarism-detection tools are now available, such as Turnitin, which can be found in Canvas's Assignment tool. Recently, Turnitin announced that their software can detect some forms of AI-generated writing. In spite of this, the company cautions that their assessments may not always be accurate, so it is not advisable to penalize students solely based on Turnitin’s assessments. It is also more difficult to detect plagiarized content when tweaked, as it is with all plagiarized work. False positives and false plagiarism flags are also concerns. We will continue to monitor these tools as they evolve.
Design Instructional Materials
Educators can also benefit from using generative AI tools to short-cut the ideation phase when planning course content or assessments. Below are some sample prompts for designing assessments. Try these prompts in ChatGPT (adapted from Revolutionize Your Instructional Design Workflow with ChatGPT: The Ultimate List of Prompts).
- Suggest an assessment method that would be appropriate for evaluating [type of learning objective].
- Help me design an assessment that aligns with [specific standard] and measures [specific learning outcome].
- Create a rubric for [assessment type] that measures [learning outcomes].
- Provide examples of formative assessments I could use in [type of learning environment].
- Can you suggest different assessments that align with [instructional topic] and are appropriate for [target audience]?
- I want you to act as an assessment expert and help me design an assessment that accurately measures the [learning objective] for [target audience].
Report Academic Integrity Concerns
If you prohibit using AI tools in your course, such as ChatGPT, and suspect that a student has engaged in academic misconduct, you are encouraged to make a report. The CBS Honor Code outlines the Reporting and Disciplinary Process.