How Will Generative AI Change My Course (GenAI Checklist)?

With the growing prevalence of generative AI applications and the ongoing discussions surrounding their integration in higher education, it can be overwhelming to contemplate their impact on your courses, learning materials, and field. As we navigate these new technologies, it is crucial to reflect on how generative AI can either hinder or enhance your teaching methods. CATL has created a checklist designed to help instructors consider how generative artificial intelligence (GAI) products may affect your courses and learning materials (syllabi, learning outcomes, and assessment).

Each step provides guidance on how to make strategic course adaptations and set course expectations that address these tools. As you go through the checklist, you may find yourself revisiting previous steps as you reconsider your course specifics and understanding of GAI.

Checklist for Assessing the Impact of Generative AI on your Course

View an abridged, printable version of the checklist to work through on your own.

Step One: Experiment with Generative AI

  • Experiment with GAI tools. Test Copilot (available to UWGB faculty, staff, and students) by inputting your own assignment prompts and assessing its performance in completing your assignments.
  • Research the potential benefits, concerns, and use cases regarding generative AI to gain a sense of the potential applications and misuses of this technology.

Step Two: Review Your Learning Outcomes

  • Reflect on your course learning outcomes. A good place to start is by reviewing this resource on AI and Bloom’s Taxonomy which considers AI capabilities for each learning level. Which outcomes lend themselves well to the use of generative AI and which outcomes emphasize your students’ distinctive human skills? Keep this in mind as you move on to steps three and four, as the way students demonstrate achieved learning outcomes may need to be revised.

Step Three: Assess the Extent of GAI Use in Class

  • Assess to what extent your course or discipline will be influenced by AI advancements. Are experts in your discipline already collaborating with GAI tools? Will current or future careers in your field work closely with these technologies? If so, consider what that means about your responsibility to prepare students for using generative AI effectively and ethically.
  • Determine the extent of usage appropriate for your course. Will you allow students to use GAI all the time or not at all? If students can use it, is it appropriate only for certain assignments/activities with guidance and permission from the instructor? If students can use GAI, how and when should they cite their use of these technologies (MLA, APA, Chicago)? Be specific and clear with your students.
  • Revisit your learning outcomes (step two). After assessing the impact of advancements in generative AI on your discipline and determining how the technology will be used (or not used) in your course, return to your learning outcomes and reassess if they align with course changes/additions you may have identified in this step.

Step Four: Review Your Assignments/Assessments

  • Evaluate your assignments to determine how AI can be integrated to support learning outcomes. The previous steps asked you to consider the relevance of AI to your field and its potential impact on students’ future careers. How are professionals in your discipline using AI, and how might you include AI-related skills in your course? What types of skills will students need to develop independently of AI, such as creativity, interpersonal skills, judgement, metacognitive reflection, and contextual reasoning? Can using AI for some parts of an assignment free up students’ time to focus more on the parts that develop these skills?
  • View, again, this resource on AI capabilities versus distinctive human skills as they relate to the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
  • Define AI’s role in your course assignments and activities. Like step three, you’ll want to be clear with your students on how AI may be used for specific course activities. Articulate which parts of an assignment students can use AI assistance for and which parts students need to complete without AI. If AI use doesn’t benefit an assignment, explain to your students why it’s excluded and how the assignment work will develop relevant skills that AI can’t assist with. If you find AI is beneficial, consider how you will support your students’ usage for tasks like editing, organizing information, brainstorming, and formatting. In your assignment instructions, explain how students should cite or otherwise disclose their use of AI.
  • Apply the TILT framework to your assignments to help students understand the value of the work and the criteria for success.

Step Five: Update Your Syllabus

  • Add a syllabus statement outlining the guidelines you’ve determined pertaining to generative AI in your course. You can refer to our syllabus snippets for examples of generative AI-related syllabi statements.
  • Include your revised or new learning outcomes in your syllabus and consider how you will emphasize the importance of those course outcomes for students’ career/skill development.
  • Address and discuss your guidelines and expectations for generative AI usage with students on day one of class and put them in your syllabus. Inviting your students to provide feedback on course AI guidelines can help increase their understanding and buy-in.

Step Six: Seek Support and Resources

  • Engage with your colleagues to exchange experiences and practices for incorporating or navigating generative AI.
  • Stay informed about advancements and applications of generative AI technology.

Checklist for Assessing the Impact of Generative AI on Your Course © 2024 by Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Want More Resources?

Visit the CATL blog, The Cowbell, for more resources related to generative AI in higher education.

Need Help?

CATL is available to offer assistance and support at every step of the checklist presented above. Contact CATL for a consultation or by email at CATL@uwgb.edu if you have questions, concerns, or perhaps are apprehensive to go through this checklist.

 

 

My Resistance (and Maybe Yours): Help Me Explore Generative AI

Article by Tara DaPra, CATL Instructional Development Consultant & Associate Teaching Professor of English & Writing Foundations

I went to the OPID conference in April to learn from colleagues across the Universities of Wisconsin who know much more than I do about Generative AI. I was looking for answers, for insight, and maybe for a sense that it’s all going to be okay.

I picked up a few small ideas. One group of presenters disclosed that AI had revised their PowerPoint slides for concision, something that, let’s be honest, most presentations could benefit from. Bryan Kopp, an English professor at UW-La Crosse, opened his presentation “AI & Social Inequity” by plainly stating that discussions of AI are discussions of power. He went on to describe his senior seminar that explored these social dynamics and offered the reassurance that we can figure this thing out with our students.

I also heard a lot of noise: AI is changing everything! Students are already using it! Other students are scared, so you have to give them permission. But don’t make them use it, which means after learning how to teach it, and teaching them how to use it, you must also create an alternate assessment. And you have to use it, too! But you can’t use it to grade or write LORs or in any way compromise FERPA. Most of all, don’t wait! You’re already sooo behind!

In sum: AI is everywhere. It’s in your car, inside the house, in your pocket. And (I think?) it’s coming for your refrigerator and your grocery shopping.

I left the conference with a familiar ache behind my right shoulder blade. This is the place where stress lives in my body, the place of “you really must” and “have to.” And my body is resisting.

I am not an early adopter. I let the first gen of any new tech tool come and go, waiting for the bugs to be worked out, to see if it will survive the Hype Cycle. This year, my syllabus policy on AI essentially read, “I don’t know how to use this thing, so please just don’t.” Though, in my defense, the fact that I even had a policy on Generative AI might actually make me an early adopter, since a recent national survey of provosts found only 20% were at the helm of institutions with formal, published policy on the use of AI.

So I still don’t have very many answers, but I am remembering to breathe through my resistance, which has helped me develop a few questions: How can I break down this big scary thing into smaller pieces? How might I approach these tools with a sense of play? How can I experiment in the classroom with students? How can I help them understand the limitations of AI and the essential nature of their human brains, their human voices?

To those ends, I’d like to hear from you. Send me your anxieties, your moral outrage, your wildest hopes and dreams. What have you been puzzling over this year? Have you found small ways to use Generative AI in your teaching or writing? Have your ethical questions shifted or deepened? And should I worry that maybe, in about two hundred years, AI is going to destroy us all?

This summer and next year, CATL will publish additional materials and blog posts exploring Generative AI. CATL has already covered some of the “whats,” and will continue to do so, as AI changes rapidly. But, just as we understand that to motivate students, we must also talk about “the why,” we must make space for these questions ourselves. In the meantime, as I explore these questions, I’m leaning into human companionship, as members of my unit (Applied Writing & English) will read Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI by Ethan Mollick. We’re off contract this summer, so it’s not required, but, you know, we have to figure this out. So if we must, let’s at least do it over dinner.

Teaching Strategy Spotlight – Escape Rooms Help Students See That Chemistry Doesn’t Have to Be Scary! 

a smiling woman with blonde hair wearing a black shirt
Breeyawn Lybbert, Associate Professor of Chemistry

Background

Professor Breeyawn Lybbert has been teaching at UWGB for the last 5 years. Professor Lybbert started at the UW Colleges in Manitowoc in 2014, after having worked previously at the University of Minnesota Morris. She went to the University of Minnesota for her bachelor’s degree and earned her PhD from UCLA. She has a special love of Organic Chemistry, which is also the focus of her dissertation.

Strategy

an office door covered in strips of caution tapeWhen Professor Lybbert began thinking about escape rooms, they were all the rage. She discovered an article in the Journal of Chemistry Education, which described, in detail, a Lab-Based Chemical Escape Room. The article describes a scenario in which four bombs are set to explode unless the chemists in the room are able to neutralize them. The scenario presented used the kinds of puzzles those familiar with escape rooms might be used to, but in order to solve these puzzles, chemistry knowledge would also come into play. This is what Professor Lybbert used as a guide to create her own physical escape room inside her classroom. More than just creating a fun activity, she created an environment designed to immerse her students in the escape room, complete with yellow caution tape, scary music, and a countdown timer. Her students get a full hour to work as a team to solve this puzzle.

a chemistry classroom with a counting down timer on a projector screen

Why Is It Important?

Professor Lybbert uses this activity in her Chem 109 class, a class that is not geared toward chemistry majors. The students who take this class are often anxious about the content of the class and their ability to master it. This activity comes at the end of the class and manages to demonstrate to students how much they’ve learned about chemistry, even with all of their apprehension. While the professor says students are often confused at the beginning of the exercise, they become invested and work together to solve the puzzles and escape. At the end of the escape room, they complete a survey of their thoughts on the experience, and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. They feel that it’s a nice way to round out a hard class.

How Does It Benefit Students?

manila envelopes and notebooks on a black tableStudents have the opportunity to use the knowledge they’ve gained throughout the course of the semester in a low-stakes (but heightened-intensity) lab activity that gives them the chance to reflect on their learning once the adrenaline has passed. Although not perfectly a real-world scenario, students do realize that they can use their knowledge when the time counts!

What Inspires Your Work?

Professor Lybbert says that her students’ reactions inspire her work. Students realize that they have mastered and applied knowledge and skills that likely seemed very daunting when they started her class. They realize through this activity that chemistry really isn’t so scary and that makes it worth it.

Want to Try It?

The resources below include the article that inspired Bree Lybbert, along with some other articles that link to puzzles and more tips for creating your own escape room.

Share with Your Colleagues

Do you have a strategy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send a quick email to catl@uwgb.edu and we will follow up with you to create your teaching strategy spotlight! We would love to hear from you!

Teaching Strategy Spotlight – Comics in the Classroom

Zack Kruse Teaching Spotlight

Zack Kruse, Lecturer for Applied Writing and English

Background

POW speech bubble

Professor Kruse earned his undergraduate degree in 2004 and then worked in the comics industry for a decade. He went on to earn his PhD from Michigan State in English, focusing in visual media and American Cultural Studies. His dissertation was published by University Press in Mississippi. That book, Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity was nominated for an Eisner award. Professor Kruse is also writing for a comic series called Static, one of Steve Ditko’s creations, and he wrote a comic strip called Mystery Solved! which appeared in Skeptical Inquirer Magazine. He is in the process of creating a documentary based on the books of Steve Ditko.

Strategy

Comic books are an enduring form of storytelling that several instructors on our campus are using. Professor Kruse’s classroom strategy is using comic books both as literature in English classes and to teach visual literacy in writing foundations courses. Zack also teaches a first-year seminar focused on comic books and American culture. The comics are used to convey ideas about society using characters and ideas that students are more familiar with. It meets the students “where they are” and gives a diverse student population the opportunity to see others like themselves within the pages of these books and also as creators.

Why Is It Important?

Kapow speech bubble

Professor Kruse makes it clear that he is passionate both about comics and the students within his classroom. He is aware of the broad cultural impact of comic books and that these texts invite a sense of discovery by looking at characters that are likely familiar in a new way.  He believes that comics help students who are trying to find their place in the world see others like themselves doing the same thing. It also can help students who are hesitant to read to ultimately engage with ideas in a more accessible way and become part of the cultural conversation. The history of comics is a history of many of the divisive issues in our current time. Comics have existed as long as many of these issues and they have something to say to our students. His hope is that young people will engage with these texts and then act where they feel passionate.

Want to Try It?

Boom speech bubbleProfessor Kruse has used the following comic books in his classroom. Some of those comic studies have included author visits. Professor Kruse uses a multitude of others not listed here and would be happy to offer recommendations if you’d like to integrate some of these works into your own classroom.

Want to Know More? Explore Additional Resources!

*Speech Bubbles covered by a Creative Commons license and provided courtesy of Rojal on PNG All

Share with Your Colleagues

Do you have a strategy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send a quick email to catl@uwgb.edu and we will follow up with you to create your teaching strategy spotlight! We would love to hear from you!

Canvas Discussions Redesign Arrives May 13, 2024 

In Summer 2024, Canvas will officially roll out its “Discussions Redesign,” which will bring a visual refresh to Canvas Discussions while adding some new features. UW-Green Bay will be turning on the redesign between the Spring and Summer terms on Monday, May 13, 2024. On this date, all discussions will automatically upgrade to the redesign with no action needed from instructors. Read this post to learn about the new features coming to Discussions and where to look for familiar buttons that have changed locations within the Discussions Redesign.

New Features

The Discussions Redesign adds the following new ways for students and instructors to interact and to view discussion activity:

Anonymous Discussions

Screenshot of the Anonymous Discussion settings seen while creating or editing a Canvas discussion

With the Discussions Redesign, the options shown when creating a new discussion in a Canvas course remain largely unchanged except for the addition of a setting that allows instructors to enable full or partial anonymity while setting up an ungraded discussion. With “full” anonymity, all student replies will appear anonymously without the student’s name and profile picture. With “partial” anonymity, students can choose whether to reveal their name and profile picture while making a reply. Anonymity only applies to students; instructor posts and replies are always shown with names and profile pictures. If you allow students to create their own discussion topics, a new setting in the discussion options for your course allows you to choose whether students can create anonymous discussions.

@ Mentions

Screenshot of two discussion replies with @ mentions. The mentions each include a student's name and are highlighted in purple.

With the Discussions Redesign, discussion participants can mention an instructor or student in their replies by typing “@” and the beginning of a person’s name and then selecting the full name from a list of matches from the class roster that appears. Mentioned names are highlighted in the post and will trigger a notification for the mentioned person if they have the “New Mention” notification type enabled in their Canvas Notifications settings. Students and instructors can use this feature to more clearly identify who they are responding to in a discussion thread and get their attention.

Quote Reply

Screenshot of the Quote Reply option on a reply. The options menu icon and Quote Reply option are highlighted.

The Discussions Redesign has a new “Quote Reply” action which lets you include the contents of the post you are replying to within your reply. Using this feature will help add clarity to long discussion threads when replying to a post that is higher up in the thread. You can find the Quote Reply option within the options menu (the three vertical dots icon) of any discussion reply.

Multiple Viewing Options for Discussion Threads

A Canvas discussion reply. The link that can be selected to reveal threaded replies is highlighted and reads, "9 Replies, 2 Unread"

The Discussions Redesign offers a more condensed initial view where only the top-level replies to the topic are visible after opening a discussion. If a reply to the main topic has threaded replies (i.e., replies to the reply) “underneath” it, they are initially hidden, and the post will have a link under its contents which reports the number of threaded replies that are “underneath” that post. You can select that link to reveal the threaded replies in either an “Inline View,” which shows all replies underneath one another with varying indentation (like the older discussions design does), or a “Split View,” which shows threaded replies in a side panel that flies in from the right side of the screen.

A screenshot of the search bar and buttons found at the top of a Canvas discussion. The "View Split Screen" and "Expand Threads" buttons are highlighted.

You can switch between using the Inline and Split view modes with the View Inline / View Split Screen button at the top of the discussion page. When using Inline View, you can select the Expand Threads button at the top of the discussion to quickly reveal all threaded replies at once.

Edit History

A screenshot of a Canvas discussion reply that has been edited. The reply's "View History" link is highlighted.

If a student edits a reply after posting it, Canvas will now keep each version of that reply in an “edit history” that is available to instructors. Instructors will see a “view history” link on any reply that a student edited after posting and can select it to view that reply’s previous versions. Students can only view the edit history of their own replies.

Coming Soon: Discussion Checkpoints!

Canvas will soon (finally) be adding the oft-requested feature for supporting multiple due dates in a discussion. This feature may not yet be available when we enable the Discussions Redesign in May, but Canvas plans to add it during Summer 2024. With this feature, instructors will be able to easily set separate due dates for initial posts and for replies to peers’ posts within the same discussion, which will help automate reminders for students by adding calendar and to-do list items for each “checkpoint.” Watch for more information on this feature as it gets closer to release!

New Locations for Important Buttons

Don’t get lost within the Discussions Redesign by taking note of the following new locations for some often-used buttons:

Edit Button

A screenshot of the options menu for a Canvas discussion topic as seen by an instructor. The "options" icon and "Edit" menu item are highlighted.

The Edit button is moving from its prominent position at the top of the discussion page to being tucked within the options (three dots) menu found in the top-right corner of the discussion topic. Look for the Edit link in that options menu whenever you want to adjust an existing discussion’s settings.

Group Discussion Navigation

A screenshot of a Canvas group discussion with the groups icon highlighted in the top-left corner.

Group discussions will no longer show a blue box at the top of the page with the links for accessing each individual discussion. Instead, a group discussion will have a button with the “groups” icon in the top-left corner which you can select to switch between the discussions of each group.

Publishing and Subscribing

Two screenshots of the publish and subscribe icons of a discussion topic. The first screenshot shows the unpublished and unsubscribed icon states; the second screenshot shows the published and subscribed icon states.

The buttons for publishing a discussion and subscribing to it (for notifications) have shrunk into smaller icons that can be found next to the options (three dots) menu in the top-right corner of the discussion topic. You can select these smaller publish and subscribe icons to publish or unpublish a discussion and subscribe or unsubscribe to a discussion.

Ready, Set, Discuss!

Knowledge of these new features and interface changes is all you need for a smooth transition to using the Discussions Redesign in your courses. Your existing discussions will automatically upgrade on May 13 with all existing topics and replies retained. We hope that the fresh look and new features will facilitate more robust interactions within your courses! If you want to discuss ideas for using Canvas discussions in your course with a member of our team, we encourage you to request a CATL Consultation or reach out to us at catl@uwgb.edu.