Effective TEaching AND Generative AI

Effective Teaching describes teaching that is intentionally designed, focused on learning, supportive of students, and reflective. The continued development of generative AI (genAI) offers us an opportunity to revisit our instructional methods and course designs to ensure that we are upholding these four characteristics. This resource provides specific recommendations, strategies, and resources for implementing effective teaching methods within the contexts of ever-evolving artificial intelligence models and tools. When considering how you will approach genAI in your classroom, you might start by reflecting on the following questions:

Intentionally Designed

How will you be intentional about the use of genAI in the classroom?

When will you encourage it or prohibit it, and why?

How will you communicate your intentions to students?

Focused on Learning

What new skills and knowledge do your students need given the emergence of genAI in both the workplace and at home?

How might genAI be used to enhance student learning and metacognitive thinking in your course?

Supportive of Students

How will you move away from a punitive culture to a culture of support and trust with students?

How will you ensure equitable access to genAI tools in your classroom?

 Reflective

What will you do to continue learning (and sharing ideas) about effective teaching and genAI?

How will you collect and implement student feedback about your approach to genAI?

From CHEATing TO TEACHing with GenAI

GenAI can both interfere with or enrich the learning process, depending how it’s used. See Mines’ Guidance for Faculty & Staff for more information about how genAI is impacting learning. We recommend that instructors approach AI and digital literacies as fundamental skills that students will need in their respective fields and as public citizens and consumers. From this perspective, completely “banning” genAI from a course or ignoring it altogether can deny your students an important opportunity to critically engage with cutting-edge tools that are actively impacting the world around them. We recommend that instructors try to shift their mindset from one that is concerned with “CHEATing” to one that emphasizes “TEACHing.” In other words, rather than relying on a punitive culture or over-utilizing problematic detection tools to police students after suspected misuse has occurred, how might you embrace genAI as an opportunity to learn alongside students while proactively addressing the root causes of cheating? We know, for instance, that students are more likely to cheat when…

    • They don’t see the personal or social relevance of course tasks (coursework feels like “busy work”).
    • They believe that making a mistake constitutes failure.
    • They feel unsupported as learners and as people.
    • They feel that their contributions don’t matter to the instructor or to their peers.
    • They are provided with only one or two high-stakes opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge (in one format).
    • There is an emphasis on the extrinsic motivation to earn (points) rather than an intrinsic motivation to learn.

We recommend a proactive, holistic approach that disincentivizes cheating by building trust and community with students, interrogating the ethics of genAI, ensuring equitable access, explicitly communicating expectations and relevance of course tasks, and (re)designing assignments to center the human in learning by fostering student motivation, iteration, relationships, and creativity.

    T

    TRUST

    Build a culture of trust and transparency in the classroom.
    Click for Strategies
    • Explicitly tell students that you trust them, care about their learning and about them as people, are excited to learn from them, and are there to help them succeed.
    • Add structure so that AI disclosure and reflection is easy, clear, and safe for students. Moving beyond “just share with me when you use it” is critical, as students may be unfamiliar with or nervous about using AI in an educational setting. Use an AI Transparency Tool or create your own tools that provide students with targeted reflection questions or multiple choice disclosure options. Re-assure students that using such tools to disclose or reflect on their AI use will not result in an academic misconduct violation, and is in fact building AI literacy.
    • Model appropriate AI use “live” in class to help students understand the associated benefits and risks before working independently.
    • Include students in a collaborative discussion to develop classroom expectations and guardrails around genAI use. Return to these throughout the term for student self-assessment and community revision.
    • Debrief on students’ AI engagements together as a classroom community. You might even create a form where students can submit useful prompts to a co-created course prompt library.
    • Ask students to describe and reflect on how they use genAI on individual assignments and in their everyday lives.
    • Provide ways for students to work collaboratively, learn from one another, and reflect on their process.
    • Be transparent about how you use (and don’t use) genAI as an instructor.
    • Be open to making course adjustments based on student feedback.
    • Be vulnerable by sharing your mistakes and struggles.

    E

    Ethics

    Analyze and discuss ethical and unethical uses of genAI.
    Click for Strategies
    • Invite students to analyze and discuss ethical and unethical uses of genAI (both in society and in the course). This might also include conversations about the ethical considerations of instructors using genAI to grade, generate lesson plans, and so forth.
    • Ask students to identify and analyze systemic biases, factual inaccuracies, limitations, social impacts and inequities, and privacy or copyright concerns as they relate to genAI tools.
    • Share the Mines AI Copyright Guide to help students and faculty determine appropriate use.
    • Share the Guidance for Faculty & Staff resource so that students can better comprehend responsible, ethical use.
    • Use the Ethical Considerations Toolkit to explore the ethical dimensions of AI.

    A

    Access

    Provide equitable access and accessible avenues for diverse learners.
    Click for Strategies
    • Encourage students to use Mines-approved AI tools to ensure that all students have free, equal access to AI models.
    • Develop accessible and equitable course policies related to genAI tools, knowing that not all genAI models are free, and the most updated versions come at a cost.
    • Develop a shared baseline of understanding around genAI by teaching students how to navigate these tools prior to expecting significant use in the classroom.
    • Consult the “Guidelines for Effective & Accessible Assessments” resource for ideas about how to add variety, options, relevance, and choice to your assessment methods.
    • Don’t try to prevent genAI use by requiring handwritten submissions only, as this builds unnecessary barriers for folks with disabilities.
    • Don’t try to prevent genAI use by switching exclusively to timed in-class tests, as this builds barriers for students with disabilities, students from underrepresented backgrounds, non-native English speakers, and so forth.
    • Proactively investigate the accessibility of genAI tools. Submit a request to ITS for assistance.
    • Design assignments with multiple and various options. Ensure that assignment requirements and components do not undermine any approved accomodations.

    C

    Communication

    Clearly and explicitly communicate expectations around genAI use.
    Click for Strategies
    • Use the GenAI Syllabus Statement to clearly communicate your expectations around genAI use.
    • Use an AI Transparency Tool to indicate appropriate use on individual assignments or provide sample prompts to guide student use.
    • Set (or, preferably, co-create) clear expectations and agreements with students about how, when, and why they are encouraged (and discouraged) to use genAI in your course. Discuss this in class and provide these expectations in writing.
    • Communicate the social importance and relevance of your course, both in terms of your course topics and the skills that students will develop throughout the term. You might also explain how AI literacy will benefit students both at Mines and in their future careers.
    • Explain to students that genAI outputs are based on probabilistic patterns learned from massive datasets. This means that outputs may occasionally (and confidently) present false, incomplete, or biased information. If incorporating AI use into the classroom, emphasize the importance of critically interpreting, critiquing, and verifying genAI outputs for accuracy, bias, and hallucinations. Consider inviting students to play with the “Glass Box AI” chatbot (Mines login required) to get a sense of how LLMs generate outputs.
    • Provide students with this “AI & Citation” resource from the Arthur Lakes Library for additional guidelines for both citing and verifying information generated by AI tools in your coursework. 

    H

    HUMAN

    Explore where genAI complements, augments, or fails to replace human contributions and connection.
    Click for Strategies
    • Spark creativity and intrinsic motivation through authentic  assignments that encourage student choice and multimodality.
    • Provide opportunities for students to collaborate with AI together and discuss their perspectives.
    • Assess the iterative learning process as much as (if not more than) the output. 
    • Foster metacognitive thinking skills by asking students to identify where genAI complements, supplants, or fails to replace human contributions.
    • Normalize making mistakes by offering low-stakes practice with feedback and reflection.  
    • Connect course content with student interests, lived experiences, and real-world examples.
    • Reward growth through multiple revision opportunities. 
    • Consider re-redesigning assessments that are easily completed by AI tools so that they aligns with human-centered approaches (see below).

    Toward a Human-Centered Assessment Design

    Frame Learning AS A Process NOT A Product.

    Build in more opportunities for low-stakes practice, check ins, iteration, revision, and reflection. This will not only help you verify student learning, but also lead to more intrinsic motivation as students take ownership over their work. If integrating AI, consider using one of the following strategies.

    • Process or AI Journals: Ask students to reflect on struggles, mistakes, questions, and engagements with AI during the learning process.
    • AI Timelines: Ask students to submit a timeline or infographic detailing how they integrated AI-Use into their project development, along with reflections on when it was or wasn’t useful.
    • Submit A Prompt: Students submit a prompt they used as well as a brief explanation re: how it helped them deepen their learning.
    • Process Comparison: Ask students to solve a problem or complete a task. Then, prompt AI to do the same task and outline its process for approaching the task. Ask students to compare their own process to AI’s.
    • Chat Transcript Annotations: Invite students to save their interaction with genAI as a .PDF or Google Doc and annotate it, detailing why they asked a particular follow up question, errors or biases they noted, how they reacted when getting an unhelpful output, etc.
    Center Human Relationships and Collaborations.

    Structure learning opportunities where two or more humans are brought into the task. Through peer learning activities like think-pair-share, project work, or small group discussions, multiple perspectives naturally emerge to challenge assumptions, catch AI errors, and provide diverse viewpoints. If integrating AI, consider one of the following strategies:

    • Ask students to work with AI together with other humans in teams and pairs.
      • Co-write or co-code with each other while using AI as a third collaborator.
      • Exchange prompts and critique / improve them.
      • Use AI to augment the process of setting team norms, solving team problems, preparing a learning module for their peers, and so forth.
    • Design assignments that are local, unique, personal, recent, and relevant to students lives.
    • Increase accountability through interactive oral assessments, conferences, working partnerships, and group work.
    • Create shared venues where students can share and explain their creative work with others.
      • Panels or Presentations
      • Shared Class Publication
      • e-Portfolio / public-facing digital spaces
      • Code / Project Walks with community or peer review using a rubric.
    Emphasize Human’s Critical Contributions.

    Create opportunities for students to practice and develop uniquely human skills like creative thinking, critical analysis, ethical reasoning, adaptability, and metacognition. When integrating AI, consider one of the following strategies:

    • Ask students to compare, critique, interpret, debug, and improve AI-generated outputs.
    • Ask students to engage in “human-first” brainstorming and prototyping sessions. Later on in the process, ask students to compare their ideas to AI outputs to reflect on the strengths or vulnerabilities of their original ideas.
    • Bring in an AI-generated response and ask students to evaluate it together in class against your rubric.
    • Ask students to submit screencast or oral explanations of problems / design choices, breakthroughs, and struggles.
    • As an assignment, ask students to purposefully “audit AI,” finding hallucinations, biases, and limitations.
    • Ask students to reflect on their unique contributions and tendencies when working with AI. What kinds of questions do they typically ask? What skills might they be offloading and developing?

    Additional Resources

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