Ideas for Teaching with AI

Faculty across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities are experimenting with novel approaches to using AI tools within their courses.  Here we present examples of assignments, exercises, in-class tasks, or other techniques using AI that faculty have found helpful or constructive as they teach their courses.  Since these experiments with pedagogical uses of AI are ongoing, we will periodically update this webpage with new examples and ideas as faculty continue to share them with us.

Essay on Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed from Honors 1820 (Spring 2023)

Instructor: Michael D. Bess

Write a critical response to a paper written on The Dispossessed  by ChatGPT.

After you’ve finished reading the Le Guin novel, The Dispossessed go to the website of the ChatGPT chat bot from OpenAI.

Using any prompt you wish, instruct the bot to write a 2-page college-level essay onThe Dispossessed. Try experimenting with different prompts, observing which ones tend to get the most interesting and thought-provoking essays from the AI.

After you’ve picked a final version of the AI’s 2-page essay, read it over carefully, reflecting critically on the choices made by the AI in addressing the novel, and assessing the quality of the essay it wrote. Then write a 2-page paper in which you lay out the most salient strengths and weaknesses of the bot’s essay, comparing its “take” on the novel with your own. In what ways (if any) did the bot highlight aspects of the novel that you had not noticed? Did it provide information that was helpful to you in gaining a better understanding of the novel? In what ways (if any) was the bot misguided or shallow or otherwise lacking in its analysis of the novel.

AI Law and Ethics Exam

Instructor: Daniel Gervais

I “embrace” AI in my teaching. I must because I teach AI Law and Ethics!

This past spring, I decided to give students a take home (knowing the risk that they could use ChatGPT etc), but the exam was designed accordingly. It was an 8-page chat between me and ChatGPT on the issues we had discussed during the semester. Students were asked to find errors in the machine’s responses, and then to comment.  The exams were among the best I have ever had.

External Examples

This article by the University of Central Florida includes 60 examples of assignments using ChatGPT.

For steps to develop your own assignments, check out this Chronicle article.