Artificial Intelligence in Education

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION

A laptop representing generative artificial intelligence is surrounded by icons representing a variety of things such as video, audio, and text. A digital network and world map image are in the background.

Artificial intelligence (AI) impacts many aspects of our daily lives, including our work in higher education. Incorporating AI into higher education comes with challenges, but it can have a positive impact on our students while they are in school and help prepare them for their future careers. 

In a report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the authors state, “The primary purpose of applying AI in education should be to enhance learning, enabling every learner to develop their individual potential, which policies should reflect and support” (Miao et al., 2021, p. 31). They describe four strategic targets that need to be met by education policy-makers: 

  • Ensuring the inclusive and equitable use of AI in education;
  • Leveraging AI to enhance education and learning;
  • Promoting the development of skills for life in the age of AI, including teaching how AI works and its implications for humanity; and
  • Safeguarding the transparent and auditable use of education data (Miao et al., 2021, p.31).

While all four strategic targets are important, this page will focus on providing tips and guidance on how to use generative artificial intelligence (e.g., ChatGPT) to enhance education and learning and how to promote skill development for careers in the age of artificial intelligence.

 

On this page, we will cover:

  1. Using Artificial Intelligence to Support Teaching Practices
  2. Student Assignments that Incorporate Artificial Intelligence
  3. Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence in Education
  4. Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity
  5. Additional Resources
  6. References

 

Using Artificial Intelligence to Support Teaching Practices

Generative artificial intelligence can be used to help with certain administrative and teaching tasks so that instructors can focus on providing support and guidance to students in a way that artificial intelligence can’t replicate.

In a general sense, AI can be used to support instructors in several areas of work (FeedbackFruits, 2023, p. 3):

  • Dreaming: Helping you think by brainstorming, summarizing, synthesizing, and doing research and analysis
  • Drudgery: Lightening your load by sending communications, drafting materials, and proofreading material
  • Design: Building your content by creating slides, course materials such as exams and syllabi, creating or editing images, and suggesting prompts.
  • Development: Advancing your work by drafting policies, strategic plans, project plans, and doing scripting and coding.

Using Artificial Intelligence to Implement Teaching Strategies

Artificial intelligence can be used by instructors to more easily implement evidence-based teaching strategies. Mollick and Mollick (2023) provide examples of five evidence-based teaching strategies that can be more easily implemented with the aid of AI. An overview of the strategies and how AI can play a role in implementing them is provided below. Refer to this article Download this article for helpful examples of prompts to use for each strategy and for guidance on how to evaluate the output that is generated by the artificial intelligence program.

Strategy 1: Providing examples to explain concepts

Providing students with a variety of examples is a proven strategy to help students gain a deep understanding of concepts, but it takes time to create multiple examples that effectively address all of the aspects of a concept and meet the needs of the students. AI can quickly create a list of examples that can be evaluated by the instructor and revised so that they meet the needs of the course. 

Strategy 2: Providing a variety of explanations

To help students gain a full understanding of a concept, it is helpful to provide many explanations of each concept. It can be time consuming to craft explanations that take into consideration students’ prior knowledge and effectively explain complex or abstract concepts from a variety of perspectives. AI can create a variety of explanations of varying perspectives and complexity that can be evaluated and revised by the instructor to meet their needs. 

Strategy 3: Implementing low-stakes quizzes and tests

Frequent low-stakes quizzes and tests are an evidence-based strategy that helps students retrieve information, gives them an opportunity to self-assess their knowledge of a topic, and provides instructors with information they can use to determine if they need to adjust their plans for instruction. It takes time to create multiple low-stakes assessments that include multiple choice and short answer questions, and AI can quickly generate questions that can be evaluated by instructors and then implemented at appropriate times during a course. 

Strategy 4: Assessing student learning

Classroom assessment techniques (CATs) are quick, low-stakes formative evaluations that allow students to check their understanding of a topic and provide instructors with valuable information to help them determine if they need to make adjustments in their course. An instructor may ask students to take one minute to answer a question about the most important concept from the day’s class or what they are still confused about at the end of class. It then takes time to review the answers and identify important patterns in the responses. AI can help by reviewing and summarizing the responses and identifying common themes that can be used by the instructor to make any necessary adjustments to the course. 

Strategy 5: Incorporating distributed practice into instruction

The strategy of distributed practice gives students the opportunity to recall information multiple times through different types of activities throughout a course. This strategy has been shown to help students make connections between topics, build their mental model of a concept, and apply their knowledge to new situations. While distributed practice is a proven strategy, it can be challenging to incorporate into course design and to implement it. AI can help by creating overviews of topics and creating questions about those topics that can be used throughout the course. AI can be used to create connections between topics that are covered throughout the course. AI can even be used to help an instructor determine at what point during the semester questions should be given to students. It is important for an instructor to evaluate what the AI program suggests to make sure the information is accurate and is appropriate for the students and the course. 

 

Student Assignments that Incorporate Artificial Intelligence

Once students graduate, they will enter a workforce where employers will expect them to understand how artificial intelligence works and be able to successfully use it to perform certain duties in their jobs. While students are at CSUN, it is important to provide them with experiences that allow them to directly experience the strengths and weaknesses of artificial intelligence in a safe and supportive environment so they can ask questions and experiment with it as they learn how to effectively use artificial intelligence to complete tasks. 

As you consider your options for how to incorporate generative artificial intelligence (e.g., ChatGPT) into course assignments, keep in mind that some students may not be comfortable with creating an account for programs such as ChatGPT. This could be due to concerns about data privacy, ChatGPT’s impact on the labor market, or the amount of electricity that is needed to run the program and its impact on the climate. Since OpenAI uses the information that is entered into ChatGPT, some students may also object to providing free labor to OpenAI. As you consider these issues, you may want to involve your students in discussions to help them consider the bigger picture implications of using generative AI (Caines, 2023).

If you decide to use generative AI in your course by either inputting prompts into your account or giving students the option of creating their own accounts, below are some ideas for how to incorporate generative AI into course assignments. 

  • As you create a new assignment or revise an assignment, it’s helpful to consider the role AI could play. Consider using the following questions to help you as you think through the assignment (Bruff, 2023):
    • Why does this assignment make sense for this course?
    • What are specific learning objectives for this assignment?
    • How might students use AI tools while working on this assignment?
    • How might AI undercut the goals of this assignment? How could you mitigate this?
    • How might AI enhance the assignment? Where would students need help figuring that out?
    • Focus on the process. How could you make the assignment more meaningful for students or support them more in the work?
  • Give students opportunities to learn how AI is helpful as well as the challenges that come with using it so that they understand what it can and cannot do well. One way to do this is to ask students to create prompts and the class can discuss and critique the output in an in-class discussion, online discussion board, or by using Hypothes.is to annotate the output. Topics to discuss include the accuracy of the information, the validity of the references that are cited, and what students see as the strengths and weaknesses of AI-created content. 
  • There are several options for giving students an opportunity to carefully consider AI’s writing abilities (Prochaska, 2023). 
    • Give students a writing sample that was created by AI and ask them to revise it. Ask them to include a reflection on what they changed and why and whether they prefer to write on their own or use an AI output as a starting point. 
    • Give students a writing sample that was created by AI and ask them to carefully analyze it. Aspects of writing that could be focused on include overall organization of the piece, sentence structure, voice, tone, syntax, and rhythm. Students could also analyze what content is included and what is excluded. Discussions could include what types of writing AI is capable of doing and what types are better suited for humans. 
    • Give students two writing samples: one written by a human and the other written by AI without telling them who wrote each piece. Ask students to compare and contrast the writing styles and try to determine which piece was written by AI.
  • Give students the option of using AI or other tools to complete aspects of assignments such as brainstorming and outlining ideas.
  • Connect AI to your disciplinary field by asking students to research how AI is used by professionals in your field. They can also look for information as to whether professionals in their field have created standards for when it is and isn’t appropriate to use AI. They can submit a written assignment about what they find or share their findings in an in-class discussion or online discussion board.

 

Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence in Education

It is important to provide students with guidance on how to use artificial intelligence ethically in their courses at CSUN as well prepare them to use it properly in their future careers. Instructors can do this by being proactive and explicit about the ethical use of artificial intelligence. 

  • Include explicit information in course syllabi about the expectations for when it is and isn’t appropriate to use generative artificial intelligence for assignments. For example, can they use ChatGPT to create an outline for a paper but they are responsible for writing all of the drafts? Or can they co-create an entire assignment with ChatGPT?
  • Provide them with details of how they should cite Links to an external site. the use of generative artificial intelligence when they use it to complete an assignment.
  • Refer to the Teaching Toolkit page that provides sample syllabus statements regarding the use of AI that you can use for your courses.

 

Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Academic Integrity

You may find yourself thinking about how the recent advances in generative artificial intelligence impact academic integrity and how you can be proactive about creating a culture that promotes academic integrity. Visit other pages in the Teaching Toolkit for more information about the intersection of artificial intelligence and academic integrity. Review this memo and a FAQ guiding document to learn more about guidance CSUN is providing to faculty on this topic. 

 

Additional Resources

 

References

Bruff, D. (2023, July 19). Assignment makeovers in the AI age: Essay edition. Links to an external site. Agile Learning. 

Caines, A. (2023, January 18). Prior to (or instead of) using ChatGPT with your students. Links to an external site. Is a Liminal Space: Somewhere Between Education and Technology.

FeedbackFruits. (2023). Leading in the age of AI: A comprehensive guide for higher education (1st edition) Links to an external site..

Miao, F., Holmes, W., Huang, R., & Zhang, H. (2021). AI and education: Guidance for policy-makers. Links to an external site. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 

Mollick, E. R., & Mollick, L. (2023). Using AI to Implement Effective Teaching Strategies in Classrooms: Five Strategies, Including Prompts Download Using AI to Implement Effective Teaching Strategies in Classrooms: Five Strategies, Including Prompts. The Wharton School Research Paper.

Prochaska, E. (2023, January 23). Embrace the bot: Designing writing assignments in the face of AI. Links to an external site. Faculty Focus.