The supportive model for GAI use in courses encourages a student-centered, inquiry-driven, and constructivist approach in which GAI is not merely a tool for efficiency, but a platform for learning, exploration, and creativity. It prioritizes engaging students actively in the learning process and preparing them for a future in which GAI will be an integral part of their lives.

When desired learning outcomes can be achieved with the use of GAI, the supportive model encourages faculty and students to learn from and with each other as we all learn how to navigate GAI tools effectively and responsibly. Here are some suggestions for how you can modify or add assignments that support student use of GAI.

Ideas for introductory GAI assignments #

1. Prompt Construction: Have students construct a series of prompts related to course learning outcomes, then run the prompts and analyze the results. Things for students to look for include biases, inaccuracies, and hallucinations.
2. Prompt Revision: Assign students to revise poorly performing prompts to improve the GAI’s output. They should keep a list of prompts used, and how changes in prompts affected output.
3. GAI Output Evaluation: Use a GAI tool to produce essays relevant to your course. Provide students with a grading rubric to score the outputs. Have them note what the GAI did well, and what it did poorly. Follow up with either having students rewrite the GAI output, adding their own insights, or ask them how they would improve the essay.
4. AI Ethics Paper: Assign a research paper on the ethical implications of AI in a specific context in your discipline (e.g. The ethics of using GAI to analyze data, or to write a sitcom script, generate images, or to summarize a paper).
5. AI Interview: Assign students to interview professionals in their field about how they use AI in their work.
6. AI Reflection: Have students reflect on the relationship between using GAI and their learning. Are there better/worse contexts for GAI use?

Ideas for Incorporating GAI in student work #

1. GAI brainstorming: Often the first steps of a project are the most difficult for people to take, since proposing ideas can make them feel vulnerable. GAI doesn’t have an ego, and is unabashed in throwing ideas into the mix. Working with GAI to generate possible ideas for projects or studies can help students to overcome initial blocks, and devote more effort to exploring the ideas they land on.
2. GAI editing/polishing: Using GAI to polish language in papers and projects can help students recognize better writing. It can frees students to think more about their content, arguments, and analyses. It will also ensure that the instructor can take for granted that the grammar and spelling in a paper will be perfect or nearly so, facilitating reading, and eliminating the need to give points for what should be standard.
3. Building arguments with GAI: GAI can help students to structure their arguments, suggest counterarguments, or act as a debating partner in a back-and-forth conversation to help students refine arguments.
4. Organizing information: GAI can help students organize information, providing logical flow or outlines.
5. GAI Generated Examples: GAI is often adept at finding examples that illustrate concepts or processes. Seeing additional examples may help students to deepen their understanding.
6. Double-Checking student Understanding with GAI: Students can use GAI to critique their answers to questions, or definitions they have constructed, as a means of testing their understanding. Feedback given by the GAI can improve student performance.

References and Resources: #

Biggio Center for Enhancement of Teaching & Learning at Auburn University Teaching with Artificial Intelligence, Module 5 Support Student Use of AI. 

Bowen. AJ. And C.E. Watson, (2024) Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning.  Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

McDonald, N., Johri, A., Ali, A., & Hingle, A. (2024). Generative artificial intelligence in higher education: Evidence from an analysis of institutional policies and guidelines (arXiv:2402.01659). arXiv. 

Cengage, (2023) 8 Ways to Prevent Students From Cheating With AI

Kelly, K.J. 2023. Teaching Actual Student Writing in an AI World, Inside Higher Education, January 18, 2023.