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The Skills Agenda

How faculty can use Generative AI in their teaching

The time to experiment is now and you have the skills to try.

BY ERIN ASPENLIEDER & LOLEEN BERDAHL | SEP 13 2024

By this point, most faculty and instructors are familiar with GenAI (generative artificial intelligence) and some of its capabilities and limitations. You are likely aware of how GenAI tools work as “prediction machines” that sometimes predict correctly, but also sometimes predict incorrectly to “hallucinate” incorrect information or generate biased outputs. You may have discussed with colleagues the opportunities and risks of these tools for your students’ learning or for academic integrity and assessments. You also may have tried using a GenAI tool and had mixed results depending on the tool you used, what you used it for and – crucially, but often overlooked – how you used it.

In this month’s The Skills Agenda column, I am joined by McMaster University’s Erin Aspenlieder. Erin is the special advisor to the provost on Generative AI. Her work supports explorations of where generative AI may be useful in the university context and where there may be risks and harms. In this column, Erin outlines some principles to apply and then shares examples of how some faculty are using GenAI to enhance teaching, and how you can do the same.

Guiding principles for using GenAI in teaching

Before considering some specific uses, it’s worth emphasizing a few principles that apply across all uses of GenAI in teaching.

  • Costs and benefits: GenAI has both benefits and costs. The benefits include the stimulation of new ideas, the offering of alternative perspectives, the introduction of new skills, the automation of rote tasks and time savings. The costs include your time (for setting up the prompt and evaluating outputs), environmental impacts (due to the energy and water needed to operate the tools) and (depending on the tool) the financial cost of a subscription. When deciding to use GenAI for a specific teaching task, assess if the benefits of using the tool outweigh the costs.
  • Personal responsibility: Any use of these tools in teaching requires a careful review of outputs to ensure the outputs are accurate and free of bias. You are ultimately responsible for any GenAI-created outputs you use in your teaching.
  • Privacy and policy: Be sure you are using tools that have been institutionally approved and that you are using them in ways that protect data and privacy. If you are not sure which GenAI tools are approved by your institution, contact your teaching and learning centre or other relevant unit for guidance.
  • Transparency: Acknowledge to your students when and how you use generative AI in your teaching. Doing so demonstrates your own academic integrity and invites discussion about how to appropriately acknowledge GenAI use in academic settings.

Ideas for using GenAI in your teaching

With those principles in mind, how can you use GenAI effectively in your teaching? The examples below focus on the administrative tasks associated with teaching, from designing assessments and lesson plans to responding to student inquiries.

  • Assessment design: In many instances, student use of GenAI has precipitated a need for instructors to revise and update assessments. You can use GenAI to help you imagine new and alternate forms of assessment. McMaster has developed an open-source tool the “Assessment Partner” that helps create new assessments specific to your course context and goals, and that accounts for GenAI in the assessment design to either plan for its incorporation or to mitigate its use. (Note: you can also use any GenAI chatbot to generate ideas for assessments). You can also use GenAI tools to create practice questions and tests, as well as alternate versions of assessments for later use. See this prompt library developed by Ethan Mollick for examples of prompts you can use to create these assessment questions.
  • Lesson planning for pedagogical goals: GenAI serves you best when it is enhancing or improving a part of your teaching that you couldn’t otherwise do as well on your own. For example, you may want to make your lessons more accessible to a wider range of students or to incorporate more active learning. If you are unsure how to start or what might be possible, using a GenAI tool to adapt your lesson plans can be a fast, simple way to generate new ideas and practical strategies in these areas. Take a prompt like this one, replace the italicized text with the information specific to your class, and test it out with a GenAI tool that your institution recommends:

“You are an expert in universal design for learning, active learning strategies and inclusive pedagogy. Review this lesson plan [copy or attach your lesson plan] and suggest at least five ways to improve this lesson to make it more accessible, inclusive and aligned with active learning approaches. Ensure your suggestions account for [insert your class size, the number of TAs, and whether it is online or in-person instruction].”

  • Responding to student inquiries: Many common student questions are easily answered in the course syllabus. In addition to addressing these issues explicitly in the classroom, you can use GenAI to help address common inquiries. Depending on the GenAI tool used, you may be able to quickly and easily set up a custom chatbot that answers questions about your course syllabus and course administrative documents. With many of these tools you can also see what questions students are asking the chatbot in a way that lets you understand common points of confusion that you can then address and clarify in class.

Areas of caution concerning using GenAI in your teaching

While the GenAI use examples above may align with your institutional directions and personal teaching philosophy, there will be other uses that invite caution. For many institutions the use of GenAI for evaluation – as in providing feedback and a grade – remains unresolved. Likewise, using GenAI to write reference letters, to respond to emails from students, or to prepare lecture notes/presentations warrants careful consideration of your personal teaching goals, your institutional norms and expectations and the principles of purpose and publicity.

With many possible uses and a concomitant set of considerations, it can be hard to know where to start. We challenge you to pick one possible use for GenAI in your teaching this semester and give it a try. While the output may not be perfect, the GenAI tool you work with is also the worst it will ever be and will only improve with time.

Continuing the Skills Agenda conversation

How have you used GenAI to enhance your teaching already? How do you plan to experiment with it over the fall? Please let us know in the comments below. I (Loleen) also welcome the opportunity to speak with your university about skills training. Please connect with me at [email protected], subject line “The Skills Agenda”. And for additional teaching, writing, and time management discussion, please check out my Substack blog, Academia Made Easier.

I look forward to hearing from you. Until next time, stay well, my colleagues.

ABOUT ERIN ASPENLIEDER & LOLEEN BERDAHL
Erin Aspenlieder is special advisor to the provost on Generative AI at McMaster University. Loleen Berdahl is an award-winning university instructor, the executive director of the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (Universities of Saskatchewan and Regina), and professor and former head of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan.
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  1. Dr Jagbir Singh Kadyan / September 22, 2024 at 09:04

    Very Informative and interesting article.