Considerations for your Course

General Considerations for the Classroom

Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) provoke many questions and dilemmas around education and pedagogy. Whether you choose to use LLMs in your course or not, Generative AI tools are a part of today鈥檚 educational, cultural, and workplace landscapes. How will you respond to this new landscape?

One way to respond to AI in education is the 鈥淩obot-Proof鈥 model, coined by president of Northeastern University, Joseph Aoun. In鈥疉oun鈥檚 book, Robot-Proof, proposes a way to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover鈥攖o fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot (Aoun, 2017). Robot proofing is not anti-technology but rather responds to evolving technological landscapes and encourages intentional application of technology.

Beyond highlighting the importance of preparing students for AI in the job market, 鈥渞obot proofing鈥, can be a helpful concept in shaping your teaching and learning. How can we 鈥渞obot proof鈥 our courses, learning goals, and assessment, such that our students are asked to engage and demonstrate learning in ways that robots, like LLMs, cannot?

Many student-centred best practices in teaching and learning make great 鈥渢ools鈥 in 鈥渞obot proofing鈥 education. Application of pedagogies and strategies that engage critical thinking, problem solving, self-reflection, local-global impact, and experience prompt students in learning and innovation that is student-centred and not easily replicated by LLMs and AI broadly.

  • Encourage critical thinking, self-reflection, community-oriented learning by imbedding Indigenization-Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Anti-racism, and Accessibility (I-EDIAA) principals in the foundation of your course content, process, and culture.
     
  • Uphold commitments to Decolonizing and Indigenizing education through holistic and learner-centred centred pedagogies such as Pedagogy of Peace to foster greater cultural safety, self-reflection, and accountability in your classroom community.
     
  • Apply accessible-best practices in the classroom, such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which encourage diverse and student-centred means of engaging and demonstrating learning.
     
  • Use Educational Technologies that enhance student engagement in critical thinking. If you choose, use LLMs thoughtfully to promote learning process, problem solving, inquiry, and self-reflection.
     
  • Implement Authentic Assessment practices to ensure course deliverables advance knowledge of 鈥渉ow鈥 rather than 鈥渨hat鈥 and demonstrate student鈥檚 holistic learning process.
     

As you learn more about LLMs and make intentional 鈥渘ext steps鈥 for your course design, assessments, and syllabi, consider how you can use best practices in teaching and learning to work with, alongside, or challenge the use of AI in education.

Resources 

How chatGPT answers prompts  

ChatGPT use in American classrooms ChatGPT In the Classroom - Alex (WORD, 32KB)

Talk to your Students

This resource was adapted and remixed from the and adapted to Queen鈥檚 University context. All content is licensed under CC-BY-SA.

Start by talking to your students. Using critical media literacy, the following guide offers foundational questions you can prompt your students with regarding Generative AI. The questions focus both on the forward-facing content as well as behind-the-scenes work for the medium. The questions address both representation of the power of construction and of distribution. The questions are intentionally broad - they will best be used to begin the process of analysis.

Questions 成人大片 the AI Writing Tool

  • Who created the AI writing tool?
  • Who worked on training the AI writing tool?
  • What dataset was used to train the AI writing tool? How does the diversity (or lack thereof) of the dataset influence the output of the AI writing tool? 
  • What do the privacy policies say?
  • What are the limitations of this tool? (e.g., ChatGPT is not connected to the Internet, and therefore, cannot generally (though not always) draw connections to present-day events ; ChatGPT has a limit for how much text you can upload)
  • Who is harmed and who benefits from this tool?
  • What are the unintended and unexpected benefits and consequences of using this tool? 

Questions 成人大片 the Text Produced by the AI Writing Tool

  • What information is presented in the text?
  • What information is missing from the text? Why do you think that information is missing? (consider that ChatGPT generates text based on its training dataset)
  • What type of language and word choices are used to convey ideas and information in the text?
  • How are the language and word choices different from, or similar to, the way humans write? Why do you think that is?
  • Who is the target audience(s) for this text? How do you know this?
  • How reliable, accurate, and credible is the text? How did you determine this? 
  • What sources , if any, are cited? How accurate and relevant are those sources? 
  • What biases are present in the text? Why might this be?
  • What might be the original sources used to generate this text? Conduct an Internet search and see if you can find the original source (it's likely more than one source!) that the AI tool used to generate this text.