Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly developing technology with the potential to significantly change the way we learn, work, and engage with information. 

How can you, as an educator, most effectively respond to AI in the classroom? Here are a few steps and tips to guide you:

Explain Appropriate Use of AI Tools to Your Students

Provide your students with clear instructions about permissible AI uses. This should include specific guidance on academic integrity policies related to the use and misuse of AI tools. When establishing your course policies on AI use, keep your course goals and values in mind.

Instructors also should initiate ongoing conversations about these policies throughout the semester. Students must understand how they can appropriately use AI tools and other resources in their work, as well as how to cite or acknowledge their use of these tools.

The Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology (OTLT) and the Center for Teaching have put together an AI Tools and Teaching webpage that includes sample policy language for the use of AI tools in a variety of contexts that you can incorporate into your syllabus. The Chronicle of Higher Education also has advice on what to consider when drafting course policies on students’ use of tools like ChatGPT.

Understand the Capabilities of AI

In addition to being able to put together an effective essay or solve problems, emerging AI features such as internet browser plugins can help generate answers to assessment and homework questions.

However, AI technology does have its limitations. AI-generated text can sometimes lack the appropriate context, invent false information, produce biased responses, or provide inaccurate citations. It is crucial students learn how to use AI tools effectively and ethically, and for instructors to facilitate this learning.

The UI’s AI Tools and Teaching webpage offers resources to help faculty adapt to the evolving role of AI in the classroom. These include guidance on how to incorporate AI tools into assignments, recommendations for developing AI-resistant assessments, and tips on maintaining academic integrity.

Adapt Assignments and Assessments for AI

While it will be challenging to make assignments completely "AI-proof," focusing on ways students can demonstrate their learning can make this task more manageable. Assignments that are closely tied to specific information shared during the course and that focus on the students' own learning are less likely to be completed successfully by AI. The Center for Teaching offers several strategies for how you can design assignments in the age of AI. 

Suggested strategies for AI-resistant assessment include:

• Developing specific prompts tied to course materials
• Scaffolding assignments to include several stages
• Incorporating a metacognitive component where students describe their process and what they learned from it
• Focusing assessments on current events and recent classroom discussions not included in AI training datasets

Before finalizing an assignment, explore how AI like ChatGPT responds to your prompt and consider whether you need to alter it to ensure that students demonstrate their learning in an authentic way.

Assess AI’s Role in Your Teaching Strategy

Have you explored whether AI tools can enhance your teaching and student learning? It is possible to use AI tools to assist students with tasks without compromising learning objectives. For instance, students at the Tippie College of Business learn to use ChatGPT as a research and writing tool. If an AI tool can enhance learning without compromising academic integrity, it may be a valuable addition to your course.

Consider ways to integrate AI purposefully into your teaching, like assignments that prepare students to interact with AI in their future careers. Then review the impact of AI on your teaching and students' learning. Encourage feedback from your students and be open to making changes.

Continue to Monitor the Impact of AI

The UI is closely monitoring the impact of AI and is actively taking steps to address concerns related to AI use.

Academic leaders and faculty from across the university formed a committee to explore the impact of AI on academics in fall 2023. The committee launched a survey for students and faculty to assess opportunities and challenges related to AI in the academic setting. The results of the survey will help inform future guidance and resources related to AI. 

The university is continually adding new tools and guidance related to AI. ITS efforts include monitoring developments, escalating AI issues and opportunities with instructional technology vendors, blocking known plugins that threaten academic integrity on university-managed computers in Instructional Technology Centers and testing centers, and adding messages to instructors on ICON’s quiz page to inform them of the latest developments.