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Integrating AI to Guide Learning

Integrating AI to Guide Learning

Though the increased capabilities of AI writing tools, such as ChatGPT, cause concerns in education, there are several ways to integrate this technology as a means for helping students learn depending on your teaching context (if you choose to do so). In this resource, we offer some research-based practices for integrating AI tools into your classroom, before highlighting assignments created by 91°µÍø faculty and librarians that incorporate AI and promote learning. We alo share additional resources and further reading to learn more around the implications of AI and writing.

Before we begin, we wanted to share what we at the Howe Center for Writing Excellence (HCWE) assert about AI and writing instruction:

  • Education should develop creative and critical thinkers and problem-solvers.
  • Writing is central to creative thinkers’ problem-solving processes.
  • Good writers use writing to learn and think, drawing intentionally on writing tools.
  • AI is one of many tools available to writers, but cannot replace creative and critical thinking.

Recommendations for Teaching Writing with AI

Below is a list of suggestions for ways you could integrate AI into your classroom through policies, activities, and/or assignments.

  1. Be explicit with your AI policies. Since students will face differing policies across all of their courses, be explicit from day one how they can (or can’t) use AI tools in their work. Consider borrowing the “green light, yellow light, and red light” framework from University of Mississippi and visualize what your green, yellow, and red light uses of AI are. You could even then have a conversation with students about it, and ask them for input and discussion. Whatever you do or do not allow, be very explicit and clear.
  2. Remember that specific assignments might have their own AI policies. We know that not every writing assignment is the same, so you might have separate “assignment policies” around AI, where students can use AI in one way for Context 1 but not for Context 2. Consider what each assignment entails and again, have conversations with students about their process and how they may or may not want to use specific tools and programs. We can learn a lot from our students by inviting them to share their experiences and perspectives.
  3. Design syllabus policies and writing assignments around AI with a focus on student learning. Stemming from the above, when crafting your green, yellow, and red lights around AI, think about:
    • What are the goals and outcomes of your writing assignments?
    • How are you evaluating writing and learning?
    • What role does the product vs. the process play in this assignment?
    • How can AI help with your learning and writing goals for students? 
  1. Start small if incorporating AI into your classroom. You don’t have to do everything all at once. What is one class activity or assignment and rubric that you could incorporate to address AI use or give students experience with using AI in some way? Sometimes, even just having a brief classroom conversation can make a difference in students’ views around AI, and can help set the tone for the semester.
  2. Give students practical and hands-on experience with AI. Students can benefit from some directive, discipline-specific discussions around how AI might be used in their fields. You could create activities and assignments that allow students to explore the tools and their capabilities. Some examples include:
    • Have students experiment with Chat GPT. Ask them to develop criteria for evaluation based on its outputs or figure out which outputs are better than others. Ask students to revise Chat GPT’s responses and track their revisions and explain their decisions.
    • Assign students to use AI across different stages of the writing process (invention, drafting, revision, editing, etc.) to co-write an assignment and reflect on its abilities and the experience.
    • Encourage students to engage in reflective and transparent use of AI across different assignments. Ask students whether and how they did end up using ChatGPT in their writing, and ask them how that worked out for them.
  1. Scaffold a process-oriented approach to writing. The biggest learning in writing assignments occurs throughout the drafting process. Encourage students to reflect on their learning throughout writing, even if their writing is assisted by AI tools. Assign students to turn in drafts throughout their writing process and to participate in peer response. Highlight the importance of this process and how writing is an inherently social and rhetorical process that is improved by conversations with other human beings with varying perspectives.
  2. Develop assignments that forefront original research or personal experience. Research demonstrates that original research and personal experience is important in making writing assignments meaningful to students and less of a task that would require AI. Consider incorporating these aspects into your assignments.
  3. Assign team and collaborative writing projects to promote teamwork. Since writing again is inherently social and rhetorical, assigning team and collaborative writing projects can put students into writing contexts where they indeed need to work with other people. See our resource “Structuring Purposeful Group & Team Work” for more information on how to facilitate this kind of writing assignment. 

Research on AI at 91°µÍø

In Spring 2023, the HCWE funded three AI working groups, called “Innovating in an Age of AI: A Call for 91°µÍø Teacher/Scholars.” We asked faculty members and librarians to identify a question or problem that their assembled team would investigate throughout the semester, illustrating why their concern is significant to the university community, assessing what they did and did not know around AI, and providing initial ideas of what they’d like to create to serve and help support the broader university community. 

Our working groups researched AI tools and different implications of these tools on teaching and learning, shared their findings, and then developed a project. Some teams actively created lessons that tasked students with using the tools (the Librarians and sociologists), and others mainly investigated the potential for tools without actively using them (the teacher education group). 

Teaching Resources and Lesson Plans

Our AI working group teams developed several materials, which we include here as further pedagogical resources for you to use in your courses: