I spent the summer helping faculty rethink their courses in this ever-shifting Generative AI landscape. Here are three take-aways that everyone found helpful:

I have been hearing different versions of the same story. Predictably, most faculty responded to the rise of generative AI by trying to ban it from their classrooms. Then, in subsequent semesters, they found this exhausting, unfeasible, and pedagogically stifling. Now, after seeing generative AI seep into student work in less desirable, usually surreptitious ways, they want to move to a posture where they incorporate responsible uses of generative AI into their courses. 

 

AI is not an on-off button. It’s a sliding scale. 

The first recommendation I make now when I speak with faculty  is to encourage them to think of generative AI in their class as less of a zero-sum game, like an on/off button, and more of a scale or a continuum. I ask them to identify which parts of their course students can use AI with zero restrictions, which elements can utilize guided use, and which elements require completely authentic work from students. 

I share a widely available AI assessment scale, and ask them to begin thinking of the different parts of their course like genres, and ask them where the genres of their course fit onto that assessment scale. You can find one example here (Link to Assessment Scale).  This helps everyone begin seeing the complexity of this issue and how it’s impacting their course, but it also helps them see how saying no to every potential use has exhausted them. It leads to an important next step. 

 

We have to let go of some things. 

I’ve started asking faculty to look through their course and decide what elements they used to control that they now need to relinquish. This is very difficult for anyone who has taught. Part of what we believe we are teaching is a way of learning and thinking. However, in this landscape, this is leading our faculty down an exhausting path. For better or worse, students are going to learn using AI. We have to let go of the idea that we control how they learn. 

This will probably mean that students will: 

1. Learn most of your course content with AI or with AI assisting. 
2. Seek drafts, models, outlines, etc of major assignments. 
3. Try to get it to do homework or other assignments for them

This list could go on and on. But the reason I share it is that I want faculty to begin thinking about what behaviors they can live with AI assisting and which ones they can’t. This encourages faculty to decide where they spend their energy. There are elements of every course that, if changed, alter the nature of the course itself. They are the essence of what we’re trying to pass on to a subsequent generation. They are immutable and precious, and if we don’t do those things, we aren’t teaching. 

However, there are components that are not that. For example, as a former literature and writing professor, I decided that I had to let go of the fact that students were never going to outline: at all or in the ways I wish they would. So, I’m letting go of outlining. If using generative AI to draft an outline helps them understand the value of pre-writing work, then I’m learning to be okay with it. 

This isn’t uncomplicated. It’s messy and I have grave reservations about what we give up when we do this. But we are human and there is a limit to the energy we can give to any of this and serve our institutions and our students in the healthiest and most productive way possible. 

Which leads me to my final point about all of this work in this landscape.

 

This is VERY messy. 

At one point this summer, three major innovations occurred in the span of two weeks. Some of those developments upended the advice for redesigning a course I was giving to faculty that week. I felt a palpable exhaustion and wanted to throw my hands up. I think faculty share that frustration.

Higher education is not built for this pace of disruption. Think about how difficult this moment is for teachers trying to adjust to all of these new developments. We design courses for a semester, but innovations don’t follow that schedule. They appear unexpectedly and we are left to pick up the pieces. Faculty can’t change a course in the middle of a term anymore than an airplane passenger can change their destination once the plane is in the air.  Even if we could, it would be likely destructive to the learning we’re trying to achieve in the first place. 

So what can we do? 

What we can do is keep teaching, keep trying, and keep holding our students to a standard that maintains the value of the Colorado State University degree. But it also means recognizing that we’re teaching in a remarkable moment and doing the best you can is the only thing anyone expects.