Classroom Application, Case Studies, and Additional Resources
Introduction
Incorporating AI literacy into higher education can feel like a daunting and time-intensive endeavor. This chapter highlights real-world examples of how educators are effectively teaching the competencies covered in this chapter in their classrooms. By showcasing diverse approaches, we aim to inspire and empower faculty to integrate AI literacy into their teaching practices, regardless of discipline or expertise.
Aligned with the philosophy of open educational resources (OER), we encourage the adaptation of existing approaches and resources to save time and effort while addressing the unique needs of individual educators and their students. By building on proven strategies, faculty can seamlessly incorporate AI literacy into their teaching without reinventing the wheel.
In addition to these examples, we provide effective pedagogical strategies that can be adapted to various educational contexts, along with curated resources for further exploration.
We also encourage you to contribute to this growing body of knowledge. If you have a classroom example to share, please submit it via the form below or contact us at teachingwithaioer@virginia.edu. Your insights and experiences can help shape the future of AI education in higher ed.
AI-Enhanced Instructional Design
Example Overview: This open resource guide presents practical examples of AI applications that are versatile and suitable for a broad spectrum of instructional activities alongside others that have more specific uses. The textbook explores effective ways AI can generate high-quality course content, foster creativity, personalize learning, and drive innovation.
Recommended Use: This open resource, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike, allows educators to remix and adapt it as needed. This resource includes a range of AI tools with step-by-step guides on how to use them for different instructional design tasks. It examines the affordances and limitations of each AI tool, helping educators make informed decisions about their use. The examples are geared towards K-12 context, but Higher Ed educators can still integrate this guide into their teaching strategies or adapt its examples to fit their instructional goals.
Explore the Example: AI-Enhanced Instructional Design
AI Tool Evaluation Sprint
Example Overview: The AI Tool Evaluation Sprint is a classroom activity designed to help students evaluate and select appropriate AI tools for different tasks relevant to their learning in a given class (e.g., summarizing content, literature reviewing, generating code, etc.). Students work in small groups to discuss tools that can best address specific tasks, considering criteria like functionality, usability, reliability, and ethical considerations. Through group discussions, students identify strengths and limitations of AI tools, select what they believe to be optimal choices for each task, and present their reasoning to their classmates and instructor. This fast-paced activity challenges students to think critically and collaboratively while making practical decisions about AI integration into educational settings.
Recommended Use: This activity is highly adaptable to a variety of course contexts and sizes. Select the use cases most relevant to your classroom—for example, for a research methods course in psychology, you might choose tasks such as identifying relevant literature, generating hypotheses and study designs, generating R code for common data analysis procedures, and generating figures and images for a research poster. Use this activity to help students see how generative AI can augment their learning, rather than replace it, and help them make better choices about effective tools. By encouraging students to actively engage with emerging technologies in a context that mirrors real-world decision-making, you are setting them up with skills that will serve them well in their futures.
Explore the Example: AI Tool Evaluation Sprint
How to Prompt AI Chatbots
Example Overview: The How to Prompt AI Chatbots open resource is a beginner-friendly guide that introduces students to the fundamentals of text-to-text prompting. It includes various examples to help them understand effective AI interactions.
Recommended Use: This open resource, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, allows educators to remix and adapt it as needed. You can assign it as an introductory guide or draw inspiration from its prompting examples to help students learn how to use AI effectively for various tasks.
Explore the Example: How to Prompt AI Chatbots
ChatGPT Assignments to Use in Your Classroom Today
Example Overview: The bulk of the book consists of over 60 practical assignment prompts and ideas across disciplines to assist with teaching skills for using ChatGPT (and other AI tools), including prompt engineering, evaluating output, analyzing texts, writing, generating content, studying, and career planning.
Recommended Use: This open resource, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 license, allows educators to remix and adapt it as needed. You can draw inspirations from the assignment ideas and prompting examples designed to help students refine their AI prompting skills while exploring diverse applications of gen AI tools.
Explore the Example: ChatGPT Assignments to Use in Your Classroom Today
AI Disclosure Agreement
Example Overview: Christopher Ostro, an Assistant Teaching Professor and Course Designer at the University of Colorado Boulder, uses an AI disclosure method in his courses. He provides students with a form to disclose their AI use, which includes the AI tools they use and how they use them. He also encourages students to link their Google Docs or Office 365 files to their submissions so he can review the revision history. If students are upfront about their AI use, Ostro does not honor code them for that paper. Instead, he uses it as an opportunity to discuss whether the student might have been too reliant on the tool.
Recommended Use: Ostro’s work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License and allows educators to remix and adapt it as needed. You can draw inspiration from his AI disclosure agreement and AI policy to help students learn how to use AI ethically in their academic work.
Explore the Example: AI Disclosure Agreement
The AI Pedagogy Project
Example Overview: The AI Pedagogy Project was created by the metaLAB (at) Harvard within the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. The AI Pedagogy Project helps educators engage their students in conversations about the capabilities and limitations of AI informed by hands-on experimentation.
Recommended Use: This project features a continuously growing collection of AI assignments created by educators. These assignments can be customized to your own pedagogical values and classroom needs. These assignments cover a wide range of disciplines and AI topics, such as AI ethics and AI literacy. Use the filters to search for assignments relevant to your own needs.
Explore the Project: AI assignments
Reflect and Apply: Educator’s Toolkit
Pedagogical Strategies and Considerations
Understanding AI Capabilities and Limitations
Students need a foundational understanding of what AI tools can and cannot do effectively. This understanding helps them set realistic expectations and make informed decisions about when and how to use AI in their learning process. Instructors should provide structured opportunities for students to experiment with different AI tools and evaluate their outputs critically.
Developing Effective Prompting Techniques
Prompting is a new literacy skill that requires practice and refinement. Teaching students systematic approaches to crafting effective prompts empowers them to get more useful results from AI tools. Instructors should model effective prompting strategies and provide opportunities for students to practice and receive feedback on their own prompting techniques.
Establishing Clear Guidelines for Academic Attribution
When students use AI tools in their academic work, clear guidelines for citation and attribution are essential. Students should understand when and how to disclose AI assistance in their work, just as they would cite any other resource. Developing classroom norms around AI use helps establish expectations and promote academic integrity.
Balancing AI Assistance with Student Agency
While AI tools can support learning in many ways, they should enhance rather than replace student thinking and creativity. Design assignments that require students to critically engage with AI-generated content, add their own insights, or use AI at specific stages of a larger process that still requires substantial student input.
Fostering Collaborative Evaluation of AI Tools
As demonstrated in the AI Tool Evaluation Sprint example, having students collaboratively assess different AI tools builds critical thinking and helps them make informed choices about which tools best suit specific tasks. This collaborative approach helps students understand that different AI tools have different strengths and limitations.
Reflection Questions
- How might you adapt the open resource guide on AI-Enhanced Instructional Design to address specific learning challenges in your classroom? Consider which AI applications would best support your instructional goals and student needs.
- How could you modify the small group structure of the AI Tool Evaluation Sprint to fit your class size and format (e.g., online, hybrid, or in-person instruction)? What adjustments would ensure all students meaningfully participate in the evaluation process?
- The “How to Prompt AI Chatbots” resource introduces students to text-to-text prompting fundamentals. How might you extend this foundation to include other forms of AI interaction relevant to your field (e.g., image generation, code completion, data analysis)?
- The AI Pedagogy Project features a collection of AI assignments. After browsing the assignments related to Level 2 competencies, which assignments are you interested in adapting to your classes? How might you adapt the assignments to better align with your course learning objectives while still maintaining its core purpose?Use the Padlet Discussion Board to share your thoughts with peer educators.
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