What can you do with AI?

AI can be used to enhance the overall learning experience with a number of applications in the classroom. Below are just a few examples of how AI can used to leverage learning opportunities. 

  • Accessibility

    • AI enhances accessibility in education by providing tools that support students with diverse abilities. AI can generate captions that describe and explain charts, making them more accessible for people with visual disabilities, Text-to-Speech tools assist visually impaired students, assistive reading tools can help those with reading difficulties, writing assistants can help students improve writing with re-phrasing, and social interaction supports can provide guidance for students with anxiety or communication difficulties. 

  • Assessment Enhancement

    • AI opens the door for all kinds of new low stakes assessment types. Being transparent with students about your expectations surrounding AI for each assessment in a course will help them to understand how to use the tools responsibly.
    • Use of technologies to produce text and other media as part of student submissions (or as part of the process of developing such submissions) can be thoughtfully supported and/or limited, and clearly and openly acknowledged.
    • Some examples of building AI tools into assessment design are given below:
      • Allow students to use AI tools but require that they provide the prompt that they used and show via Track Changes (and comments) which changes they made to improve the output and why.
      • ChatGPT allows for a URL to be sent from the page. You can require students to use the tool for certain steps of an assignment and then have them submit the URL from their work.
      • Generate AI content and provide it to students for them to evaluate (with predefined criteria) and revise.
      • Grammarly can be used to find the main point of a paragraph- this allows students to see whether their main point is coming across and you can then work with students to discuss why it thought x was the main point etc.

  • Time-Saving for Instructors

    • GenAI can be used for a variety of time-saving measures such as
      • creating wrong answers on quizzes
      • creating an essay with specific issues that you can then discuss/edit together with students
      • summarizing large chunks of text
      • creating formative assessments such as quizzes, simulations, and case studies
      • creating codes for students to improve/make function properly

  • AI Tutoring Systems 

    • AI powered tutoring systems can assist in real time answering questions, providing guidance, feedback, explanations, and breaking down difficult to understand concepts. It can also walk students through the process of brainstorming, researching, and more.

  • Automating Tasks 

    • Students and faculty can benefit from the automation AI can provide with administrative tasks like managing schedules and grading.

  • Writing Prompts 

    • AI can assist individuals who struggle with open-ended questions by providing ideas and prompts for creative writing or problem-solving. It can help faculty develop writing prompts, quiz questions, summaries of material, and more.
  • Data Analysis 
    • AI can analyze large amounts of data to look for patterns and trends even inform faculty about teaching strategies and engagement for different types of assessments.
  • Coding and Math Capability
    • AI has the ability to perform higher order math functions using the Wolfram plugin for ChatGPT and display the answer in Latex. It also has the ability to write programming code. However, as with any other capability it does not always get these right. This can be helpful for faculty looking to create specialized code for their students and for creating code with broken parts for students to work on. For challenges with this, visit Challenges of AI in Education.
  • AI Image Generators 
    • AI generated images can generate highly specific custom images for presentations or even explain concepts visually. They have been used to generate surprisingly beautiful, detailed, original, and realistic images based on text prompts. These generators can be used to create models of graphs or other visual representations of data for your students.
    • They can also allow you to discuss with students how they describe data, or the style of an artist, or more.
      • Ex: Have students describe their data to the image generator. Does the resulting visual properly convey the data? If not, how does changing the description change the output? Would this clarify your data for other people as well?

 

Heads UpTake Note: This list is not exhaustive and will evolve with these technologies.

If you need immediate assistance, please feel free to reach out to Learning Environments:

713-348-4357 | teaching@rice.edu | Learning Environments website